Ultimate Thriller Box Set (30 page)

The creature was simply massive. Those titanium gates wouldn't be able to hold up to a monster like this. This demon looked like it could eat a tank. How many of these things would Bub be capable of making if he escaped Samhain?

“What is it?” Andy whispered behind her, touching her leg.

“Shh!”

The awesome beast stopped in mid-charge and lifted an ear to the ceiling. Sun held both her breath and her bladder as it stared up at the vent she was perched over. One of its enormous eyes inched closer, squinting into the darkness of the duct. It got so close Sun could count the dark blood vessels that squiggled around its black cornea, each the width of a pencil. The demon blinked, then turned away and resumed its attack on the gate.

“Are you okay?” Andy nudged her.

 Sun exhaled. “Yeah. Don’t look through the grill.”

Sun continued forward, making the decision that if she did have to die, she wasn't letting Bub or this giant loose upon the world.

“Holy shit.”

Andy had apparently looked through the grill.

“Keep moving.”

“We’re in hell, aren’t we? We’re actually trapped in hell.”

“Let’s just hope Frank found those shovels.”

*

Dr. Frank Belgium opened the door to Green 5. He knew Green 6 and 7 contained medical equipment, Green 8 was the freezers, and Green 9 was the dry goods storage. This was the only room left to check.

Luckily, he hit the jackpot.

It was a large closet, and the overhead light didn't work. But stacked in the corner, gathering dust, was the excavation equipment. Picks, shovels, axes, hoes, and even a sledgehammer.

“Frank?”

Belgium spun around, looking for the voice.

“Up here.”

Sun was poking her head down through the ceiling vent. He helped her climb through, and then they both assisted Andy.

“I found the equipment,” Belgium told them. “Where's the cavern?”

“Green 11,” Andy said. “Let's move.”

“I want to check on Bub,” Sun said.

Andy checked his watch. “We’ve only got sixty-two minutes to dig out of here and get a safe distance away.”

“We need to see what he’s doing.”

Belgium watched Sun and Andy exchange a meaningful glance. He wished he had someone who looked at him like that.

Maybe, if he lived through this, he’d join a dating service.

If he lived through this.

*

Sun walked down the Green Arm toward the Octopus. She stopped at the titanium bars and pressed her cheek to them, looking left.

CLANG!

The ramming beast was almost through the Orange Arm gate.

 She switched cheeks and stared at the Yellow Arm. Bub had his hands on the bars. His yellow eyes locked on hers.

“No meeeeercy for yoooooou.”

CLANG!

The giant demon burst through the Orange gate and went barreling into the Octopus, knocking over tables, chairs, and millions of dollars in computer equipment. Then it sat in the center of the Octopus and stared at its master, awaiting direction.

“You’re neeeeeeeeext.”

Sun tried to focus. They needed time to break through the wall and escape, and couldn’t do that if Bub was on their tail.

When in doubt, tell the truth.

“There are four other titanium gates blocking the exit to the outside. You don’t have time to come for us.”

“I have tiiiiiiime,”
Bub hissed.

“No, you don’t. Since the nuke didn’t go off, they’re going to drop one on us. A big one.”

Bub sneered, his horrifying features becoming even more revolting.

“Liaaaaaaaaar,”
he spat.
“You will beg for deaaaaaath.”

The ramming beast pawed at the floor, then launched itself at the Green Arm gate. The shockwave jolted Sun backward.

That didn’t work out as I’d hoped,
she thought.

Sun flew into Green 11. Andy was attacking the concrete wall with a sledgehammer, awkwardly holding it with his left hand, and Belgium was having a time trying to figure out the proper swing of a mining pick. They were both sweating, and for their labors they'd only made a few cracks in the cinder block.

“I need help. Fast.”

“What's wrong?”

“Defense,” Sun said, thinking about the demon breaking into the Green Arm. “We're about to have company.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Bub believed Sun. Her government would have a back-up plan. He stared at the four sets of bars preventing his escape and felt anger welling inside him. Anger, and an emotion he hadn't known in millennia of existence.

Fear.

Strong as the beast was, it wouldn’t be able to get through all of these gates in time. Which meant is was within the realm of possibility that Bub might actually die.

The thought was horrifying. At the epicenter of a nuclear explosion the temperature was hotter than the sun. There was no way he could protect himself from that.

Humans.
How had these miserable hunks of carbon gotten so smart so fast? Sun had hurt him with her poison. Hurt him almost as much as those filthy Mayans did with their uranium ore. Bub could no longer alter himself to fit into the air duct—his body was busy trying to heal. Now, to add to his injury, he might actually have to comprehend his own death.

He concentrated. Was the Yellow Arm really the only way out?

Andy had been close to spilling his guts, but then Sun attacked him with the poison needle. That opportunity was lost, but perhaps there was another...

The demon walked down the hallway to Yellow 4. The door was locked, and there was a keypad on the wall next to it.

Bub didn't bother with the keypad. Regular doors he could handle. He turned around and gave it a quick kick with his massive hoof. The door burst inward.

General Race Murdoch was a hunk of dead meat, cooling in a pool of his own bodily fluids.

Bub had just enough of his essence left to suit the purpose.

*

Race had been dead. He was sure he'd been dead. He could even remember the moment his heart stopped pumping. His point of vision had become smaller and smaller, darkness enveloping him, until there was nothing.

So how could he be thinking? Race opened his eyes, amazed that his wounds were healed and his pain was gone. He soon realized why.

“Raaaaace. How was deaaaaath?”

“Quiet,” Race answered the demon. The words felt sour in his mouth, like he’d just eaten some bad ham. “What the hell do you want?”

“Why is everyone in the greeeeen arm?”

“They're having a tea party. You weren't invited.”

Bub gave Race's arm a swift tug, dislocating the shoulder.

“Tell meeeeeee.”

The General winced. “I can see where this is going. You torture me until I talk. If I die, you bring me back.”

“Yessssssss.”

Race hurt, but his level of annoyance was even greater. He'd been looking forward to death, had actually achieved it, and this smug son of a bitch had taken that from him. First Helen, now this.

Race wasn't going to tell him a damn thing.

“Well, I'll let you in on a little secret,” the General said. “Any minute now we're going to be radioactive. I'd be tickled pink if you stayed here with me, so I could watch you bake like a cow pie on Georgia asphalt.”

Bub tugged Race's dislocated arm and broke it at the elbow. Race cried out.

“Is there another way ooooooooout?”
Bub asked.

“Please...” the General winced.

“Another waaaaaaaaay?”

“Please...”

“Pleeeeease what?”

Race grinned, “Please kiss my lily white Southern ass.”

*

Then the man actually began to laugh. His pain must have been excruciating, but he was laughing right in Bub's face.

And Bub was afraid.

He picked the General up and threw him against the wall as hard as he could. Race left a bloody spot there, then slumped to the floor, broken and unmoving.

Bub hurried out of the room and went to the Octopus. With a shrill shriek, he commanded the beast to begin breaking down the gate to the Yellow Arm. There had to be another exit in the Green Arm. There had to be.

Bub would be damned if he lost his life because of some poorly trained pets on a fourth rate planet.

CLANG!

He would see for himself what they were doing. And then he'd slaughter them all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“What the hell is it?” Andy asked.

“It's a linac. A medical linear accelerator. A very unique one. Get behind it, let's push it into the hall.”

Andy stared at the piece of medical equipment. It was white, about five feet high and four feet wide, and sort of resembled a large kitchen faucet. Attached to a rectangular base was a curved arm that could rotate. On the end of the arm was a lens kind of thing. The lens pointed down at a fancy table.

Sun explained, “A cancer patient lies down on the table, and then their tumors can be bombarded with either electrons or photons from the collimator here.”

She tapped the spout of the faucet.

Andy nodded, getting it.

“Radioactivity.”

“Right. It kills cancer cells. Actually, it kills all cells, but it's made to target cancer cells.”

Andy got his shoulder behind the base and shoved. It barely moved.

“It's heavy as hell,” he grunted.

“It's actually about half the size of a normal model. They must have custom made it to fit inside the compound's entrance.”

Andy and Sun both put their weight into it, getting the machine to slide a foot.

“This is what Dr. Meyer used to fight his sarcoma,” Sun groaned, pushing as hard as she could. “Skin cancer can cover a large surface area of the body, so this particular model is modified for TSEI—total skin electron irradiation. Instead of a thin beam, it showers the entire body with electrons.”

“More powerful than an X-ray?” Andy asked.

Sun stopped pushing and sat down, breathing heavily. “An X-ray machine gives off 200,000 electron volts. This little baby can do about 25 million.”

“But if it's used to cure cancer, how can it hurt Bub?”

“Are you ready for a mini lecture?”

Andy nodded. Sun brushed the hair out of her face.

“Radiation is measured on the gray scale. Let's say Meyer's cancer required a dosage of 36 gray to complete treatment. Even though it's an electron shower—electrons don't penetrate deeply like photons, 36 Gray would make him sick or even kill him. So it's broken up into ten weeks of treatments, a single 36 centigray dose a week.”

“But if we give Bub a big dose at once...”

“It will destroy massive amounts of tissue. But it gets better. This machine can produce electrons and photons. Photons penetrate much deeper than electrons. So if we do a wide photon penumbra—a large beam width for a full body target—at 25 million electron volts, it could really cause some grievous damage.”

Andy said, “Nice. Let's do it.”

They got up and finished pushing the linac out of Green 6 and into the hallway, cables trailing behind it. Sun directed Andy to help turn the machine so it faced the Octopus.

“Anything else?”

“It'll take a moment to set up. Go help Frank with the wall.”

He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and ran down the hall.

Sun detached the treatment table and pushed it aside, and then used the control box to rotate the collimator on the gantry—the big counter weighted arm. She stopped it when the lower defining head was pointing straight down the hallway, aiming at the door to the Octopus.

That was the easy part. The hard part would be figuring out the settings. Sun took a solitary class in radiotherapy over ten years ago. She didn’t remember much.

There was a computer control console in Green 6 near the far wall. She went to it and turned it on, hoping it would all come back to her.

*

One of the reasons Dr. Belgium had chosen science as a career was his distaste for manual labor.

“So much for that,” he muttered, swinging the pick at the concrete. For all the oomph he put into it, the potato chip sized piece that flaked off the wall was hardly satisfying.

“How's it going?” Andy asked, walking into Green 11.

“How much time do we have left?”

“About fifty minutes.”

“In that case, not good. At this rate we won't break through until next Tuesday.”

CLANG!

The noise reverberated down the Green Arm.

“Uh-oh,” Belgium said. “It looks like that ramming beast has found a new target.”

Andy picked up the twenty pound sledge and hefted it to his shoulder. The bandage around his wrist had become dark red.

He gripped the hammer and let the wall have it.

*

The computer program that ran the linac had presets, calibrated to Dr. Meyer's dosage. Sun found a way to manually change them, but couldn't remember any dosage calculations. She had to deal with beam energy, field size, distance, filtration, quality, and a dozen other parameters. She decided the smartest thing to do was just shoot for the maximum on everything.

Dr. Meyer's beam energy was set at 6 MeV—six million electron volts. She changed it to 25, and went from there.

*

Andy and Frank developed a chain gang rhythm with their swings, one alternating with another. Slowly, gradually, they cracked through a single 8” x 16” cinder block, and were able to knock it into the wall.

Andy bent down and used his lighter to peer through the opening. He couldn't see a damn thing, but the flame on the lighter bent and blew inward.

“We found it,” Andy said.

*

CURRENT SETTINGS WILL EXPOSE PATIENT TO LETHAL DOSES OF RADIATION the screen blinked at Sun.

“Good,” she said.

Sun saved the settings in memory and started the program to charge the beam. She hurried out of the room to see how the guys were doing.