The damnedest part was, this was the lowest level, so far as I knew. If they finally ran her to ground, I should have found her . . . or her remains. There was nowhere else for Arlene to go.
There were few monsters on this floor; I shot a couple of spinys in the back—hey, I’m not proud—but mostly avoided the patrols.
En route, I picked up two blue key cards and three yellows, plucking one off the “dead” body of a zombie. Something or someone had gnawed off its legs and one arm; it was still animate as I approached, and tried to bite me; but I was faster (and more ruthless). I blew its brains out, putting it out of misery, and took the key card tucked into its belt.
I found two maps, both burned beyond recognition. But by sheer persistence, I finally found it: one of those big, metallic doors that like to stand between me and where I want to go. One of those key-card teases that demand you stick it in.
But this bitch had a special feature—an irritating, unisex, nasally, parking-lot ticket-machine voice, the kind that says “Please take the ticket,” as if you’re a bumpkin from Mad Dog, Arkansas, who’s never seen a car park before. No monster could ever create such a surreal torture device of art. It took a human touch.
“Hello,” it said, “to exit the Computer Station, please insert your gold security card now.”
All right; I supposed yellow was as good as gold. I inserted the card, and the cheap trick chirped “Thank you. To exit the Control Station, please insert your blue security card now.”
I began to hear screams behind me, up the corridor; the damned door had probably notified “security” while it deliberately delayed me. I fumbled the blue key card into the slot—but I knew exactly what was coming.
“Thank you. To exit the Computer Station, please insert your red security card now.”
If there were a red key card anywhere on this level, I was a purple-assed baboon.
And I didn’t become a Marine to put up with this crap. Even the spinys were less frustrating than this!
But I had a solution. Last time I’d fired a rocket, I’d made the mistake of standing too damned close. So I made sure I got far away from that smug bitch of a door, placing myself squarely behind a column and part of a staircase.
I fired both rockets from the launcher simultaneously. Just to be sure. The result was outstanding, excellent, a credit to the Corps. As loud as it was, it didn’t deafen me this time. At this distance, the head gear worked like it was supposed to.
I walked through the smoking ruins of that bloody door with a sense of satisfaction greater than when I’d winged that toxin barrel and taken out a roomful of zombies with one bullet. I’d struck a blow against the True Evil, the chowderheaded humans who designed these installations!
From now on I refused to worry about plastic cards and security keys. Nothing could stop me. Then I found the lift that should have taken me out of there—the lift at the very end of the facility, my reward for having all the stupid cards.
The entire shaft was filled with human and animal remains, a hellish grain elevator. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring stupidly. Then nausea overwhelmed me and I vomited for several minutes. Weak and shaky, I thought for several more minutes that I had climbed the farthest down I could go in the Phobos installation. A dead end. Nowhere to go but back the way I came. I knew I couldn’t make it, but I was long past crawling into a corner and playing fetus. I’d go down fighting if I went, hoping somehow Arlene had escaped what was a death trap for me.
Even though it was a long shot, I thought again of the possibility of blowing up Phobos. Better that than let these bastards win! Then I noticed a foul, bloodred, evil-glowing circle in the floor; it had not been there a moment ago. A ghastly stench arose from the orifice, like human flesh frying on the griddle. I once missed getting firebombed by a Kerifistani terrorist; I was on guard duty at the Marine Corps compound when the main barracks went up. Thirty-three buddies burned to death. You never forget that smell.
They transferred me to Fox Company within forty-eight hours.
This hole pulsed like a heartbeat. There was a “ladder” made of light pink, fleshy cords that appeared to sweat.
I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that no human ever made this baby. Besides, this wasn’t a job for a rocket scientist; this was a job for someone rock stupid enough to be a Marine. Resigned, I slung my shotgun and rifle, holstered the machine pistol, and started climbing down the sticky, wet, springy ladder.
At the bottom there was plenty of light, at least; a sickly reddish light. The flesh-pit ladder dropped me into the largest corridor I’d seen yet. I would have said it was carved out of the rock of this moon, the same as Phobos Lab, but the inside of the walls seemed to perspire, like the ladder. Holding my breath and looking close, I saw hundreds, thousands, of small orifices opening and closing to the same steady beat as the red circle above. I decided that I’d done enough close examination for a lifetime.
Then, by God, I saw it—another A.S., biggest one yet! Even in the heart of hell, I was cheered to know I wasn’t alone. I didn’t exactly whistle a tune, but I smiled grimly.
Arlene’s mark was accompanied by a crude drawing of a skull and crossbones with an arrow pointing straight ahead. A second arrow pointed out a narrow slit in the wall, a slit that was a friendly hole-in-rock, not pulsating or anything disgusting; a slit into what looked to be the outside. We were hundreds of meters below the surface of tiny Phobos, but there was goddamn daylight coming through that opening.
But that was one mother of a narrow crack. Could I get through that? Could Arlene, even? I touched the edge of the slit—tacky blood, a couple of hours old, tops. Mary, Mother of God . . . I had a vision. She had gone out, right there. She shoved herself so hard, tearing at that crack, that she flayed off huge strips of skin—but she didn’t care. She wanted out; she wanted out bad; she wanted out right then, not five seconds later.
Leading me to the obvious conclusion: Arlene had seen something up ahead that even she was too terrified to face.
14
I stared at the skull and crossbones. Whatever was up ahead was bad enough for Arlene to claw her way through a tiny crack in the wall rather than face it. Yet she wasted precious seconds leaving the warning for Yours Truly.
Thank God I didn’t have to solve the mystery of the skull and crossbones. Getting through that crack would be an achievement all by itself.
Ahead I began to hear a low, slow pounding, almost like someone beating on a monster drum a mile distant. Well, I could take that—so long as it stayed there. I struggled out of my armor and pressed my right arm and shoulder into the crack.
But there I stuck. I braced my foot against the floor and shoved; several minutes and several pounds of flesh later, I was utterly convinced I could never fit through that crack unless I dismembered myself and threw the pieces through one at a time. Wonder if I’ll seriously consider that option when I see what’s ahead? I thought.
So now what? I sat on the floor, pounding my head with my hand in frustration. If I went forward, I was on my own. Arlene was no coward . . . if the Thing ahead scared the bejesus out of her, enough that she forced her way through a crack several sizes too small—then what in God’s name was it?
Numbly, I stood, pulling on the armor again. As Mehitabel the cat said to Archie the cockroach, wotthehell, wotthehell. I already roamed the halls of the damned; what did I have to lose? I suppose I could sit here and starve to death.
Shaking, I moved forward at snail speed, loaded rocket launcher in hand; but what if I found myself eyeball-to-eyeball with . . . with whatever It was? A rocket up the nose might piss it off—but at point-blank range, it would also fry Corporal Fly!
Ahead, I found an old-fashioned wooden elevator next to an old-fashioned rusted button. Somehow they seemed to fit right in here. In a place with living ladders, a few museum places were hardly out of line.
I pushed the button. With a slow grinding sound, the lift began to descend. S
o far so good. It reached ground level, and I clumped aboard. What the hell else could I do? There was one button, and I pushed it.
The lift creaked and groaned, like it was a hundred years old, announcing my arrival to anyone inside. I braced, wondering whether to shift to the shotgun. Then it stopped up one floor . . . and my God, I saw what was inside!
On a pair of iron thrones sat the largest, reddest, most horrible demons I could imagine, compared to which the other guys were fit for hosting kiddie shows on Saturday mornings. Giant minotaurs with goat limbs for legs, and curling, savage horns on the top of their flat, broad heads. The chests and arms were carved from pure muscle. Their claws were so vicious that there was no comparison to the puny stuff I’d seen up until now.
Princes of hell . . .
And they were looking directly at me. So far, so bad.
I froze, whimpering like a Cub Scout. All I could think was, Oh Lord, the sisters were right all along!
The hell-prince on the left rose, trumpeting a marrow-freezing roar of discovery.
Come on, come on, come on, Fly! Snap out of it; get the hell out of Dodge! I hated every minute of every day of basic at Parris Island—and I bow at Staff Sergeant Stern’s feet and kiss his shiny boots for every second of it: my training kick-started my paralyzed legs even while my brain was struggling to remember the Lord’s Prayer . . . all I could get was “Hail, Jesus,” and I knew that was wrong.
Faster than I thought myself capable, I bolted—but forward, right at the things—and skirted between the forest of red legs and into the black-dark beyond! If they’d been any smaller, they would have had my head for lunch.
I ran across a long stretch of floor and heard the familiar pig snorts left and right. I ran through utter blackness until I hit a wall, banging my shins. I hardly noticed. There I spun, snarling, fishing for my riot gun.
If the porcine sons of bitches wanted Fly Taggart, they could bloody well take him . . . but not cheaply!
They were converging on me; I could hear their snufflings and hungry growls. What the hell; I was dead anyway, right? I raised the shotgun and pounded a shell straight in front of me.
One of the pig-demons screamed in pain. Oh . . . you mean they can be hurt? I’d been wondering.
I scuttled right; the wall came to a point, folding back on itself. I slipped around and immediately barked my already-bruised shin on a barrel of that green, toxic mess.
Staring into the sickly glow, I had a shimmer of an idea. Quickly, before I could think twice and decide against it, I heaved over the barrel. The goo spilled out of the 120-liter drum . . . and now my whole corner was lit by a hellish, green glow. I could see!
I was in a pointy corner amid a forest of toxin barrels; but the monsters coming after me were still invisible. I was under attack by ghosts . . . and the ghosts and the pig-things were evidently one and the same.
But Yours Truly, Flynn Taggart, never forgets a scam.
I backed away from the flickering shadows, into the actual point. Maybe I couldn’t see them, but they sure as hell could see me; they charged.
I shot. Not a ghost; I shot a barrel.
The explosion chain-reactioned, and I dived for the deck. Too late, I remembered the ten or eleven rockets in my bandoleers. Luckily, the explosion stopped just short of me.
When the acrid rain of toxic waste stopped falling, I jumped to my feet. My entire body resonated, and my inner ear was confused; I balanced precariously on my hind legs, shotgun wavering up, down, and sideways . . . but my ghosts appeared to have died—again. At least, they didn’t attack.
Staring wildly around the room, now lit by the green glow of ten thousand droplets of toxin sprayed far and near, I realized to my surprise that the room was actually a huge, star-shaped chamber. That seemed right in line with everything else. If they could have swastikas, why not star-chamber proceedings? Alas, my restful reverie was short-lived; the hideous hell-princes had seen my explosion and come to investigate.
But this time, I knew what to expect. Nuns or no nuns, I told myself over and over that these were alien life-forms, not demons. They couldn’t be real demons, could they? Hell was a myth—wasn’t it?
I raised my rocket launcher and let the first hell-prince have it at forty meters. The blast blew the motherless bastard backward, but it got to its feet. I couldn’t believe it!
I fired a second time, pack-loaded with one smooth move, and shot a third rocket. The giant got up again and now it was joined by its comrade. This was not going according to plan.
They pointed their clawed hands at me; but instead of the usual balls of flaming snot, these “demons” fired green energy pulses out of wrist-launchers. I hugged the dirt as the stuff crackled over my head and made every hair on my head stand on end. Not very demonic, but pretty damned deadly!
My turn again; in desperation, I pumped rocket number four at the first hell-prince, and at last it seemed to do some damage. It got to its feet slowly and seemed confused about where I was. There was no reason to even try bothering the new one if I couldn’t find out what repeated hammering did to the first minotaur. Yeah, minotaurs. They weren’t demons; that Greek, Theseus, killed one.
Reload, rocket five, and finally that did the trick: number one went down and didn’t get up again. But with behavior I was starting to expect from all godless creatures, it reached up a clawed hand and grabbed the other hell-prince.
Number two struggled to free itself, and I seized my opportunity. Screaming like a banshee, I charged to just out of range of its reach. Enraged, it slashed furiously; but my prayers were answered, and it was too mad to think of shooting energy bolts. I leaned in to shove the launcher right down the creature’s enormous, howling mouth. And Fly let fly . . .
I won’t even try to describe its breath.
The minotaur swallowed the little rocket, about the relative size of a multivitamin, and was literally blown away. I was knocked silly by the blast at such close proximity.
I came to, surprised to be coming to. Losing consciousness in a place like this seemed like a one-way ticket to oblivion.
I was lying on the floor of the same enormous, starshaped chamber; but the walls had fallen, crumbling into constituent bricks outside, leaving the way clear to the outside. That whole concept of “outside” bothered me. Why wasn’t I a corpse-sicle, floating in space?
There was air to breathe. There was an overcast sky to watch, complete with low-hanging clouds; dark clouds before a storm. Wherever I was, it sure as hell wasn’t Phobos.
I found a platform behind the building. There was a switch. I pressed it and watched a stairway slowly rise. Wotthehell, Archie, wotthehell . . . I walked up the stairs.
At the very top was a Gate . . . a working Gate. It was marked by a flickering symbol that gave me a splitting headache when I tried to concentrate on the design. I approached it, eyes averted.
And damn me if there wasn’t Arlene Sanders’s last mark, right next to the Gate, pointing directly at the symbol. She’d written a single word: OUT?
I didn’t know. But I didn’t hesitate a moment. If that were the way Arlene went . . .
Then that was where I was going.
Without a glance back, I stepped aboard.
15
Time had no meaning for Fly Taggart—the memory of being Fly Taggart. He had no body but retained a consciousness somehow, somewhere. A sense of motion, but that might only be another memory.
Remembering a hand created a hand. Remembering a foot resulted in the sensation of a foot, a painful sensation from where his ankle had been bruised. Memory of a backache condensed into a patch of flesh and blood that was a back.
Memory of breath turned emptiness into a pair of lungs. Recollections of hot days on a summer beach left their imprint on a forehead slick with sweat.
Then he had a whole body, floating in a warm current of air slowly cooling; an upside-down vertigo turning his stomach, which meant he had a stomach. The fall wasn’t long, and he skinned h
is knees on a hard metal surface before falling forward on his face. The air was cold.
He blinked eyes in an aching head. He couldn’t see anything but white and red spots chasing each other across a field of darkness. The man panicked at the thought that he’d been blinded; but gradually vision returned. There wasn’t much worth seeing.
The light was dim. He wanted to breathe fresh air again, as he had before stepping on the platform. He’d been breathing the stale air of spaceships and the Mars station and the Phobos installations for so long he’d almost forgotten what fresh air was like. Even if it had been fake, he wanted it again. But when he filled his lungs, it was that disgusting sour-lemon smell he had first noticed when he killed his first zombie. He was a man again, but he didn’t want to be back in hell. Yet he had traveled somewhere, hadn’t he? He felt he’d come a very long way just to reach . . .
I didn’t know where I was. Instinctively, I reached with my left hand for the machine pistol, the weapon I could most quickly bring into play. My hand slapped bare flesh. There was nothing on my chest but air. I looked down and saw that I was naked.
Jesus and Mother Mary. And after all that work gathering shotgun, Sig-Cow, and rocket launcher.
Having lost my clothes during the strange journey didn’t bother me, except for the drop in temperature; but I didn’t want to turn into dead meat because I didn’t have weapons. A naked man is an unarmed man.
I wasn’t going to waste another second before reconnoitering. If there were monsters anywhere near here, then I had to get my hands on a firearm right away. The sour-lemon smell was a dead giveaway—zombies lurked somewhere in the shadows. I’d come through a gateway with nothing but my body, but at least I was breathing. I wanted to keep it that way.
The gravity was Earth normal. As my eyes adjusted to dim light, I saw I was in an oblong, rectangular building. Having had the experience of being “outside” before the transfer, I didn’t look forward to roaming corridors again. I almost hated that idea more than the prospect of fighting monsters.
Knee-Deep in the Dead Page 10