Pandemonium (35 page)

The street curved north ahead as Abrams came to the first cross street that radiated from the central tower. One actuator was sticking, and his right leg dragged as a severed hose was bleeding out. He freed his right arm, even as his robotic arm continued to rise, and he flung a flashbang grenade like a quarterback in a high arc about thirty-five yards up the broad avenue, hoping to cause a traffic jam.

The intense flash of the grenade lit up the buildings and a strip of the skyline above. The deafening pop stunned the Henders creatures for a moment before they became even more aggressive and attacked one another.

“OK, guys,” Abrams called. “We got a good fight started up here! Now’s a good time to get past this street!”

Dima pushed a button on the dog whistle to call the mule back before they lost sight of it behind them. He figured it couldn’t distract their pursuers if it was too far away. The robot came around the bend and cantered forward, its metallic body dripping with creatures like a beehive.

A rat struck Nastia’s back with spikes that felt like bullets even though they were deflected by her Dragon Skin armor.

Bear ran back and swatted the rat that clung to her back. It grabbed his hand, striking it with a piercing blow. Cursing in pain, Bear flung the animal to the ground in front of him and crushed it under his boot.
“Fuck!”
he yelled, pulling Nastia as he ran ahead.

“Thanks!” Nastia said.

“Don’t shout, Nastia,” Hender reminded her. Nastia ran ahead behind Bear as Nell followed, and Hender knocked leaping rats and flying wasps out of the air behind them.

Abrams’s XOS suit wheezed as he drove forward up the last stretch. He tossed flares to the other side of the street as he had observed Kuzu do, but now, in the daylight, the ploy was less effective, judging by the storm of creatures still pursuing him. He pumped his bionic body forward through the thickening swarm that felt like a hailstorm impacting on his armor now. He noted that the cross street coming up on the right ended at an arch cut into the wall on his left. As he drew closer, he saw large red words stenciled on a door inside the arch:

SEKTOP 5

“We’re here!” Abrams said through the radio. He took a beating as a group of rats pummeled him, but his armor held up as he reached the farm’s gate.

The entrance to Sector Five faced another avenue that stretched directly to the central tower. A flood of creatures came down this street now like rush hour New York, but they curved in front of Abrams to join the clockwise gyre of predators circling the city. Once more, Abrams freed his throwing arm and fished out an incendiary grenade. He lofted this one forty yards up the avenue, targeting a giant spiger coming down the middle of the road. The grenade ignited as it tumbled like a star through the air. Amazingly, the giant spiger leaped up like a tight end, opening its vertical jaws, and swallowed the blazing grenade, which lit up its head like a jack-o’-lantern as it exploded.

The headless behemoth crashed on the road, sliding forward as its back legs still kicked under its second brain’s control.

“Nice catch!” Abrams muttered.

The ensuing feeding frenzy over the giant drew back the flow of creatures for the moment, and all of the predators attacking Abrams departed, sucked into the slaughter. Abrams used his dog whistle to drive Talon-1 after them now, firing its machine gun into the crowd. “Come on, guys!” he shouted as the bullets added to the beasts’ buffet.

01:46:03

“Open the door, Sasha.”

“I’m trying, Geoffrey! OK?”

“That’s good, honey. Just keep trying.”

“I am! Jeesh!”

01:45:51

Abrams reached the gate and then called Talon-1 back. “There’s a keypad lock! What’s the code, damn it!”

Galia yelled, “Punch in 00009999!”

Abrams focused one clumsy, armored finger on punching the keypad next to the gate. But even as he realized he had missed a button halfway through the code, the gate started sliding open, and he and Dima slipped through the crack. Abrams pulled Talon-1 through the door and pressed the button on the controls inside to close it. The controls responded readily and he stopped the lead-lined gate an inch from sealing. “Holler and we’ll let you in!” Abrams said, peering through the crack and glancing at Dima. He noticed a giant antique light switch next to the modern door controls.

Nell could hear the herky-jerky buzz of the Big Dog’s motors as it rounded the corner behind them. The mechanical mule was now a writhing mass of wasps and drill-worms as it kicked down the road like a colt. A spiger rounded the corner, skidding sideways as it stretched its head forward and swallowed the mule whole in its giant snapping jaws.

After a moment, the gigantic spiger spewed the machine onto the street, where it kept kicking on its side. Then, swiveling its head like a tank turret, the spiger searched for a new target, and its frill pulsed with waving light as it fixed its gaze on Bear.

Hender saw it pull forward with its four front legs and shove off its massive rear legs and tail. As it soared through the air, raising its spiked forearms high, Hender shouted, “Bear, turn left!” and leaped over Nastia and Nell. “Keep moving!” he yelled down at them as he landed on the soaring spiger’s back.

The spiger struck the street to the right of Bear, who had just scrambled far enough to the side to avoid being crushed, and Hender stabbed two of its three rear eyes in the same moment that he jumped into the air and then plunged another knife into one of its two front eyes. His legs burned as the spiger’s nants engaged in battle with his own and he leaped off the creature’s back, hooking his tail on the lamppost overhanging the spiger. “Run, Bear!” he shouted like a steam whistle as he spun round the lamppost in a tightening spiral.

The big man raced toward the left side of the street as Abrams opened the gate for him and shouted, “Hurry!”

Bear jumped through and Abrams closed the gate, leaving only a crack for radio signals.

Hender launched off the lamppost and landed on the back of the half-blinded spiger.

The beast honked and bucked in front of the gate to the farm, trying to scratch him off with slashing legs. Hender gripped its neon-striped back as he reached out two arms to pierce both its remaining eyes, planted a final knife in the center of its posterior brain with the expertise of a matador. Before Hender sprang off the disabled giant, some of its symbiants had already sensed its demise and changed allegiance, leaping into Hender’s fur.

Nell sprinted beside Nastia as they made their final run against the western wall. “Another spiger’s behind us,” Nell said calmly, masking her fear.

Nastia looked back and hyperventilated. “Oh, God.” The red spiger came around the corner behind them, even larger than the one it had been hunting. It seemed to spot the wounded giant beside them and lock on. As the hulking invertebrate prepared to spring, rats and swarms gathered around it, ready to share in its spoils.

“It’s coming!” Nastia screamed, seeing it on her visor.

“I don’t think it sees us yet,” Nell said. “It’s going after the spiger!”

They were only thirty-five yards from the gate. “Change directions when I say! OK?” Nell said.

“OK,” said Nastia.

“Two heads are better than one,” Nell said. “Tell me when it’s coming!”

Nastia saw the spiger in the rearview window of her visor. “Just go straight,” she said as she saw the giant flying toward them. “OK, go right!”

They cut right toward the other sidewalk as the predator landed where they had just been.

“Keep going!” Nell yelled, running at full speed as she crossed in front of the beast that was gathering itself for another leap.

Nell pulled an incendiary grenade Abrams had given her from a pouch on her jersey and found the firing pin by touch as she ran. The spiger leaped diagonally up the street toward them.

“Here it comes!” Nastia screamed.

“Go left!” Nell yelled.

They felt the creature’s shadow fall over them as they headed across the intersection toward the gate.

One of the spiger’s six-foot-long spiked arms whipped past Nell so hard, she felt the breeze in its wake as it impaled the street like a pile driver. She almost lost her footing and she triggered the grenade, rolling it under the spiger’s body behind her. At the same moment, the spiger stretched its neck down to the left with open jaws.

Nastia screamed as she saw the jaws engulf Nell.

01:45:48

Sasha spotted the two figures running toward the camera that was mounted over the gate to the farm. Geoffrey pointed, gasping. “That’s Nell and somebody else!”

Sasha screamed as she saw the spiger leaping behind them.

“Zoom in, Sasha!” Geoffrey said, gripping her arm.

Sasha did so reluctantly, as they saw the dragon swallow Nell.

Sasha covered her eyes, crouching down as Ivan barked. “I hate you!” she cried.

01:45:47

Nell felt the forest of pincers inside the spiger’s mouth stab into her back as acidlike digestive enzymes showered the Dragon Skin. The nants on her body burned in battle as the grenade under the spiger’s chest ignited, causing the beast to blow ten feet straight up as its jaws opened in shock, spilling Nell onto the road. The creature landed behind her and snapped its jaws involuntarily near her as she jumped to her feet and ran with Nastia.

“How’d you do that?” Nastia breathed.

“Let’s go!” Nell said.

01:45:39

“Oh, my God … oh, my God!” Geoffrey felt dizzy as he held his head. “She made it.”

“She did?” Sasha looked out from between her fingers. “You liar! She
did
! I love you, Geoffrey!”

01:45:39

Nell and Nastia bolted toward the left side of the street, directly toward the gate of the farm now. In the cross street opposite the gate, the stream converged on the spiger Hender had downed and now attacked the spiger Nell had felled, as well. Hender appeared briefly against the wall near the gate. “Here!” he hissed.

As they reached him, Hender wrapped his arms around them to camouflage them against the wall as they moved in front of the door, which Hender pounded with two fists to signal the others.

“Let us in, Abrams!” Nastia shouted.

Abrams opened the door. “Quick!”

A hundred Henders bugs rushed in before he closed the heavy door behind them with a rolling
boom
.

The farm was completely dark, and they were momentarily blinded as they turned toward Abrams.

01:45:37

“Switch to a camera inside the farm, Sasha!”

“Let me find one.…”

“Hurry!”

“I am, Geoffrey. I’m hurrying! I’m ALWAYS hurrying!”

01:45:39

As their eyes adjusted, Nell and Nastia staggered back in horror to see the glowing shapes moving over the floor, walls, and ceiling, and rising and falling in the air.

A rock fall had opened a gaping hole in the cavern’s ceiling above in the northwest corner. Filling the cavern with psychedelic phantoms, the creatures of Pandemonium had invaded the farm.

Glowing green, the Henders bugs that had gotten through the door flew up amidst the jellyfish-like animals suspended in the air, instantly clashing in battle as the molluscan balloons showered them with stinging cells.

Hender shrieked in fear, grabbing Nell’s shoulders as he cringed at the glowing shapes that filled this alien world, chirping and clicking around them.

“Follow me, fast!” Abrams yelled. “The others are in the bus!”

He dashed ahead in the squealing XOS, and they followed as glowing gammies spotted them through the rows of growing benches to either side of the road.

In a circular clearing ahead sat the RV-sized vehicle that had been converted into a field lab for the farm. As the creatures converged behind them, they chased them over the last thirty yards past bullet-riddled bodies of gammies that were already being devoured by other gammies.

Bear opened the door as they arrived and let them in.

Nastia turned and sat down on the steps, holding the door shut with her feet. “No, no, no!” she shrieked, sobbing.

Dima reached out and squeezed her shoulders. “It’s OK. You’re tough enough for Spetsnaz,” he said in Russian.

“No, I’m not! Who’s going to keep this door shut?”

“It’s locked now. Right, Bear?”

“Yes. Nothing can get in! Relax.”

Nastia pulled away from the door, and Dima pulled her to her feet. She turned and sobbed against him for a moment as Dima patted her back, and the others peered grimly through the windows of the bus. Nell saw the giant hole that had opened up in the roof of the chamber to the northwest.

Nastia quickly recovered and pushed away from Dima. She looked out the far windows of the bus and noticed the pile of jagged breakdown that reached fifty feet up the far wall of the cavern. “There was a cave-in?” she said.

“Yes,” Nell said.

“I thought you said we’d be safe in here,” Bear said to Galia.

“We would have been,” Galia said.

“This must have happened in the last few days,” Nell said, incredulous.

“Jeezus
Christ,
” Abrams said.

“What the hell is this, Nell?” Nastia asked.

Nell sighed. “This is Pandemonium.”

01:47:03

As Sasha found a camera view, they saw Nell and Nastia climbing into the bus, chased by a column of gammies.

“What?” Geoffrey exclaimed, moving his throbbing foot higher.

“Uh-oh,” Sasha said.

01:48:29

Abrams shook his head, climbing out of the XOS suit. “OK, what now?”

Nastia pulled out her phone with shaking hands to photograph the multicolored creatures swirling around them in the darkness.

“What are you doing?” Bear asked.

“This is an entirely new ecosystem,” she said.

Bear laughed. “We’ll probably never make it out of here, and you’re taking pictures?”

“That’s enough!” Dima said, glaring at Bear.

“The rumors were true,” Nastia said. “There are monsters here. They did run into Hell while digging this city.” The terror that had possessed her the moment before was momentarily replaced with scholarly satisfaction. “I have studied caves all my life,” she said. “There has never been a system of troglobites such as this. How big is the cave system they came from?”