by James Axler
Breathing heavily from the effort, Ryan directed the beam of the flash back in the direction from which they had just come. As he had feared, there was more movement up ahead. The sounds of moving slabs from the far end of the passage had been initially masked by those they now stood near, but he could see that the shape of the passage was changing. Another slab moved across to block the passage less than 150 yards ahead. But, rather than boxing them in by moving in the same manner as the slab at their back, by moving from the right, this one moved from the left wall, blocked the way ahead while revealing a new opening in the newly formed space to their left.
There was a rank, musky smell that came from the new opening, traveling even that short distance in but a moment. It was the stench of animal feces, old blood and rotten meat, mixed with the warm smell of a live predator. A low growl came from the darkness, and as Ryan edged closer to the gap, drawing his SIG-Sauer, he could almost swear that some of the shadow was a swirling darkness deeper than the rest.
He figured that the open cavity was a pen, and that was how they kept the animals caged without having to leash them. Clever system: the animal would get you nine times out of ten, and if it didn’t, then you had to work out how the hell to get out of the enclosure.
First things first. He had the advantage. The animal might have been hidden in darkness, but he had a blaster. Furthermore, it could only come at him from the one direction. As long as he didn’t take his eye off the target… He watched the moving shadows keenly, gesturing with his free hand for the sec team to keep back, the flash beam sweeping across the roof of the passage in time with his movements.
He could have used the flash to find the creature in the darkness, but he preferred to let it come in its own time. The cavity probably wasn’t that deep, but what if the flash didn’t cover all the territory? The last thing he wanted was to drive the creature back into shadow, prolong the tension. Conversely, he had no wish to catch the creature full in the beam and make it react wildly and in shock. That way, there was no way of knowing what it would do. This way, it would act as all wild creatures: it would size up its enemy and make its attack.
And he would be ready.
Within the darkness, the differing shades of black moved, swirled and coalesced into shapes…into one shape. A shape that moved toward him at speed, snarling as it sprang up from the floor of the labyrinth.
Ryan tensed, following its line of flight with the arc of his arm. As it moved from the depths of its lair and into the ambient light cast by the beam of the flash, diffused as he held it away from the opening, so its shape became apparent.
It was a cat of some kind. Not the feral, scrawny creatures that hung around the edges of villes, scavenging in packs. This had more in common with the kind of larger wild cats that he had seen in the areas around the Rockies. It was larger than a big dog and far more muscled. Despite the fact that its ribs were visible, and it was obviously half-starved, it still had an impressive musculature gathered at shoulder and haunch, testimony to the power that nature had imbued in its legs. Power it showed by the force of its spring, and the size of paws that reached out to him, broken but lethally sharp claws extended. Its amber eyes were jaundiced and staring wide, the teeth yellowing and the breath so hot and fetid that he could smell it even at this distance.
Never taking his eye off the creature, Ryan squeezed the trigger of the SIG-Sauer three times. In the enclosed space that had been made for them, the rounds echoed off the walls, reverberating so that they felt powerful enough to burst the eardrums of all four men.
The big cat was deflected in its flight by the power of the three rounds as they ripped into its underbelly, scoring through the soft flesh and spilling intestines in midflight. The exit wounds spun the beast, bone shards deflecting the flight so that the spent rounds came out through the spine and the rib cage.
Ryan flattened himself to the far wall. Despite the shots chilling the creature, despite the look of dumb surprise in its eyes as they dulled and died, and despite the fact that the line of flight had been interrupted, the momentum of the leap was enough to carry the chilled cat forward so that it almost landed on Ryan, flattening him.
With a dull whump, the chilled flesh that the cat had now become landed heavily at his feet.
‘Thank fuck for that,’ he breathed as he trained the flash on it. ‘I thought—’
For a vital second he had been distracted. It hadn’t occurred to him that the pen might have contained more than one big cat. Why should it? He had assumed that any such pen containing two half-starved creatures would lead to their trying to tear each other apart. As, indeed, it might have if they weren’t a mating couple.
Hindsight was a wonderful thing. Given a chance to indulge in it, Ryan would have reflected that the Atlanteans had to breed more of these bastard animals somehow. But at that moment, it was the last thing on his mind and, with his ears still ringing from the triple discharge, he didn’t hear the second creature howl at the death of its mate and launch itself from where it had been waiting in the darkness.
Ryan felt the air move, saw a flicker of movement, heard nothing but tinnitus, but nonetheless was aware that under the ringing was a deeper, angrier tone. The flash caught the female cat in flight, ears flattened against her head. There was no time to fire, so he dropped to his right, hitting the floor badly so that his shoulder jarred and the SIG-Sauer dropped from a momentarily numb grasp as he tried to roll away from immediate danger. The female cat hit the wall, where he had been standing scant moments before, with a squeal of agony. His only hope was that she had stunned herself too much to recover before he had a chance to gain his feet.
He wasn’t going to get that lucky. His arm still numbed from impact, he hauled himself awkwardly upright. The flash was now rolling on the floor some two or three yards from him, the light directed toward him and the she-cat, casting dramatic shadows against the wall behind them. To survive, he’d have to drag his panga from its thigh sheath. But it was on the wrong side for him to grasp easily, the arm he usually used being the damaged one. And now the she-cat was up, shaking herself and snarling, circling to locate him, there was no time for fumbling.
Around his neck, Ryan still had his scarf. He hardly had cause to use it. It was a relatively ineffective weapon unless close-quarters stealth or a concealed weapon became a necessity. But now it was the only thing to hand, and with little time he had to make this count.
Using his good arm, he unraveled it from around his neck and wrapped it around the flat of his hand with a deft flick. In the ends were metal weights that, if used with a slingshot action and a matching accuracy, could stun an opponent. No way would it chill this fury-spitting hell-cat, but it may just stun her enough to buy him some extra time.
Stumbling as he adjusted to the imbalance caused by his useless arm, he started to twirl the scarf as the cat leaped at him. He had only the one chance. With a flick of his wrist, and a whispered prayer to whatever long-forgotten deity he could bring himself to believe in, he snapped the scarf so that the weights, carried by momentum, cannoned against the head of the leaping beast, striking her just above the snout and between the eyes. The creature let out a yelp of pain and landed to one side of him, rolling and tumbling as the sudden pain distracted her, shaking her head to clear the fog caused by the agony of the sharp blow.
‘Fireblast, where are you?’ Ryan bellowed as he backed away as fast as he could. It was a reasonable question. He’d been battling these beasts alone, when in truth he should have had at least some assistance from his team by now.
The three men were frozen not by fear but by shock and surprise. They had written him off because they would have been easily chilled by the first cat, let alone the second. The fact that he was still alive only added to their shock, and it took his words to snap them from their reverie.
All had handblasters: two carried heavy Lugers, the third a Browning. Suddenly snapped into action, they drew the weapons. The cat was rolling to her feet
in the glare of the discarded flash, and was an easy target.
The air filled with the roar of blasterfire. Round upon round, each man firing at least twice, overlapping so that Ryan couldn’t tell how many shells ripped into the beast. However many, it was more than enough to chill her. Her snout disappeared in a shower of blood and bone, her jaw hanging loose. Any sound was literally ripped from her throat as her chest and neck were opened up by blasterfire. Her carcass jerked as other rounds pounded her flanks, gouging open the flesh—not that she could feel it, as she had bought the farm with the first few hits.
It was more than just the deafening roar. The air was also filled with the stink of cordite, blotting out and overpowering the stench of death and the charnel house atmosphere that had previously prevailed.
‘Enough,’ Ryan bellowed, over and over again until the firing ceased. ‘Fireblast,’ he yelled into the sudden silence, unable to judge his own voice over the deafening ringing in his ears, ‘save some ammo. It’s chilled. Better late than never, I guess.’
He bent and retrieved the flash, which was casting a crimson glow from the gore splattered across the glass. He wiped it off and walked to the far wall, by the big cats’ now deserted pen. If he could open this somehow—and it had to, as he knew it was on a pivot system to close—then they could progress in the right direction. He ignored the smell from the pen and the pools of blood gathering around his feet.
‘Don’t just stand there, you stupe bastards,’ he yelled over his shoulder, ‘come and help me find some way of opening this. Otherwise we’re going to be stuck here until the Nightcrawlers come for us, and there’s no telling how long that would take.’
JAK HELD UP A HAND to halt his party. They could hear distant blasterfire echoing through the passages.
‘Someone’s found the wildlife,’ Mark said with some concern.
‘Ryan,’ Jak answered. ‘Sound like SIG.’
‘Hope they get past the obstruction in one piece,’ Mark added.
There was a second round of fire, much more intense.
‘It chilled now,’ Jak said wryly. ‘Mebbe should look for own instead listen them.’
‘You lead the way,’ Mark suggested. ‘You’ve got a better eye for these paths than I.’
Something that was literally, as well as metaphorically, true. Jak’s red, pigmentless albino eyes gave him a faded vision in the outside world, allowing as they did a less filtered light to reach his retina. But in the darkness, they came into his own. The sensitivity that had to be compensated by his smell, taste and hearing in normal daylight now allowed him to differentiate objects with a much smaller degree of ambient light to guide him. What appeared to the others to be nothing more than a continuing stretch of darkness was filled with shape and contour, the low levels of light seeping beyond the beam of the flash allowing Jak to see twists and turns in the passages that were invisible to the other three members of the party.
But it was more than that. Jak had an instinct for direction and a feeling for danger. He was taking them in the right direction, and at a pace that wasn’t as quick as J.B.’s, but didn’t leave them far behind. His experience enabled him to sniff out the direction in which the animal traps were laid and to skirt around them. They couldn’t follow J.B.’s route completely as the lines of yarn left by the Armorer and Mildred had become, at one point, intertwined, knotted and pulled so tight that they had broken, something that the parties ahead couldn’t know.
Nonetheless, Jak was leading them past the beasts, and his sense of imminent danger meant that they had so far avoided three traps: one was set in the wall and was triggered by a raised step in the floor. It was only slightly raised, just enough for the impact of a foot to trigger an air release that shot razor-sharp darts across the width of the passage, from ankle level to the roof. Jak saw it as a raised bump, and triggered it with a pebble that he tossed with practiced ease after staying them with a gesture. The raised step was on a hair trigger, to allow for even the slightest chance contact from whoever may pass, and the darts shot across from concealed holes with a hiss of air pressure, striking the far wall with a dull clang before clattering to the floor.
The second had been a pit trap like the one that had almost claimed J.B.’s life. Jak couldn’t have told the others how he knew it was there, only that there was something inside him that screamed for him to stop. Flattening to his belly, he had crawled ahead, testing the ground in front of him with an outstretched arm until he had reached a point where the ground had been softer, more malleable beneath his fingertips. Further probing had left the layer of topsoil, suspended on a flimsy film of material, giving way beneath his probing, triggering a reaction that led to the whole surface of the passage floor falling in for six feet in front of him.
Mark, Lemur and Cyran had peered into the abyss, the flash lighting the sharpened stakes pointing up to them, the remains of less fortunate travelers scattered on the pit floor.
‘Twice we should have perished without you,’ Lemur said softly to Jak as he stood upright and dusted himself down. The albino youth said nothing, but Mark pondered on how fortunate they had been when Ryan had assigned Jak to them. Twice, the albino had made him understand why: it was important that the Memphis leader and his wife be kept as safe as possible. The sec chief doubted that any of the other strangers would be able to insure this as well as Jak Lauren.
The third time bore this out. They had been within sight of a junction, the flash beam showing that they were about to reach a T-junction in the labyrinth, when Jak had pulled them up short.
‘What?’ the Memphis leader had asked, adding disbelievingly, ‘There’s no room for anything this close to the end of a passage, surely?’
‘Good job you not in lead,’ Jak said dryly, pointing the flash toward the floor. Barely visible on the stone-pitted dead earth was a wire, covered with dirt but just raised enough to catch his trained and better-adjusted eye. ‘Watch carefully,’ he said, edging toward the wire and extending the toe of his boot. It was something he didn’t particularly wish to do, but there was little other option. He had to trigger the trap somehow, and it was pointless to wish for something long with which to prod at the wire when there was nothing to hand.
On the plus side, it wasn’t likely that it was explosive, so he should escape with his foot intact…
As he felt the tension on the wire give at his gentle but insistent pressure, he tried to work out what kind of trap it could be. As Lemur had said, they were close to the end of a passage, and he had noticed that all traps came near the center of slabs, rather than the end. It made sense. The closer to an end, the greater the chance of the slab splitting when the trap was put in place. So what would this be, and how would it work?
It seemed to take an eternity for the wire to give, but when it did, the result was instantaneous. A blade swung from the ceiling, swooping down in an arc that would have cut through the skull of anyone who was in its path. It was scimitar-shaped, and as sharp, for the sound of it slicing the air was high and keening. As it hit the wall slab, bouncing back, it left a deep mark in the stone.
‘Above, below, and from each side. Is there nowhere that can be counted as safe?’ Lemur murmured.
‘Not think anything safe—stay alive longer,’ Jak said, examining the blade. He looked up at the ceiling. It had been concealed in a groove covered with earth to look like mold. The wire had been secured in the earth and run around the end of the slab, at the junction, so that it would not show on the wall. Jak felt the blade, admiring its honed edge, and wondered if he could somehow detach it. If he could, there was no doubt that it would be useful.
It was then that, inexplicably, Cyran reacted to a sudden animal cry. Giving a small scream, she bolted around the corner of the junction, headed to the left.
‘Come back,’ Lemur shouted, making to give chase. He was stayed by the hand of Mark.
‘No. If we go, we go together.’
Jak joined them and followed her with the flash. What
the hell was she doing? She had been incredibly calm and collected so far. It just didn’t fit.
What made it all the stranger was that she seemed to be heading toward the animal cry, rather than away….
Chapter Seventeen
How much longer can I continue to walk this fine line, this silken thread that is like that which connects my id and ego to the real world—or, at least, that which I call real. Truth is a subjective thing so much more than it is objective. It depends upon perspective, mood, attitude and intellect. What do you see and how do you see it? When you explain, are you accurate in detail, do you sin by omission, or do you mislead through nothing less nor more than inarticulacy?
Questions such as this are the things that concern me the most, especially at a time like this. Of course, it would be but a matter of moments to plow through these childishly simple locks now that I have divined the code through which the combinations are obtained. It is all a matter of going through…through life, through truth, through the means by which I can justify to myself my own actions. For I am a foul and wretched creature, torn between serving my own needs and sacrificing those for the good of those that I call my friends. For even if I have doubts about my own friendship, then there is little doubt that this is what they are to me. How many times have they drawn me from the fire when it seemed that I would be consumed by the flames?
She waits at my shoulder as I appear to labor over a task that I make arduous, yet could be over in an instant. I am compromising at this juncture. We could easily make our escape, seek out our friends, join in the fight. Yet the more I delay, the more likely that Odyssey will return and show me the secrets that, despite the need within me to fight, I still feel will show me the means of ultimate salvation.
I do not say no to either option. Instead, I take the cowardly way out and wait for chance and fate to force my hand. If I make a show of one thing while waiting for another, then the gods of fate will smile upon me and make for me a decision that will be right, whether I know it or not.