The Furies

by Mark Alpert

  After thirty seconds of slaughter Sullivan’s men retreated, ducking into the drainage ditch on the other side of the fence. A moment later they lobbed a dozen smoke grenades over the coils of concertina wire. Billows of thick white smoke erupted from the canisters, and soon the fence was hidden again. The snipers kept firing, using memory alone to aim for the holes in the fence, but John saw several Riflemen emerge from the wall of smoke and dive for cover in the cornfields. Within a couple of minutes most of Sullivan’s surviving men were inside the fence and advancing on the outbuildings.

  Dozens of guardsmen stood at the corners of the outbuildings, alternately firing their assault rifles into the fields and ducking behind the cinder-block walls. They had night-vision scopes too, but they couldn’t see the enemy through the rows of cornstalks. After a while it became clear that the Riflemen were outflanking them. When Sullivan’s men got close enough to the outbuildings, they threw fragmentation grenades at the defenders. The blasts flashed like supernovas on John’s spotter scope, and when the glow faded he saw the corpses of the fallen guardsmen twisted into grotesque shapes.

  Ariel tried to aim at the attackers, but there was too much cover and they moved too fast. She pulled back from her rifle’s scope and turned to John. “You see anything?” Her voice was frantic. “Any targets at all?”

  He shook his head. “All I know is they’re getting closer.”

  “Bloody fucking hell! It doesn’t make sense!” She stared into her scope again, grimacing. “We can’t see them, but they can see us! How do they know where all our guardsmen are?”

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s like they have a fucking map of our defenses!” She looked over her shoulder at Conroy. “Are you monitoring the radio bands, cuz? Could one of the guardsmen be talking to Sullivan, telling him our positions?”

  Conroy shook his head. “Only my most trusted men have radios.”

  “I suspect you’ve misplaced your trust.” She turned back to John. “Use your scope to look at the guardsmen. See if any of them are handling their radios.”

  With some anxiety John pointed the spotter scope at the defensive positions. He looked at the guardsmen behind the outbuildings, but he didn’t know what he’d do if he saw one of them speaking into a radio. He was worried that Ariel would immediately aim her rifle at the guy and execute him. His hands trembled so badly he fumbled the scope, pointing the thing at the sky instead of the ground. And in that instant he saw something, a small flash of green against the vast darkness. A green cross.

  John focused on the object. It was the drone, beyond any doubt, but it seemed much larger than it had before. “Look at the sky, ten o’clock.” He pointed at the unmanned aircraft. “It looks like it’s flying lower now.”

  Ariel raised her rifle and scanned the sky until she saw it. “It’s the Reaper! And you’re right, it’s only two or three miles up.”

  “Why did the federal agents lower it? So they can observe their raid on the farm?”

  She nodded. “The drone has infrared cameras. They detect heat, so they can see everything in the dark.”

  “Do you think Sullivan is intercepting the video from the drone’s cameras?” John thought of something Sullivan had mentioned during his conversation with the Elders. “He said he could disable the government’s drone if he wanted to. So maybe he also has access to its video feed.”

  She lowered her rifle to the floor and gripped his arm. “That’s it! That’s how the bastard can see our positions!” She jumped to her feet and turned around to face Conroy. “I’m sorry for doubting your judgment, cuz. Is the Stinger ready?”

  “Aye, milady.” He bowed his head and then dashed to the other side of the circular room. “I’ll open the hatch.”

  While Ariel picked up the bulky tube of the Stinger and hoisted it to her shoulder, Conroy grasped a handle on the curving wall and began turning it rapidly. John heard the sound of metallic scraping inside the dome on top of the silo. He looked up and saw a steel panel move to the side like a sliding door. The gap widened until it was a huge square, ten feet across, like the opening in the dome of an observatory. But instead of a telescope, Ariel pointed a missile launcher at the sky. She looked through the Stinger’s night-vision gun sight, then waved John to her side. “Come here. Help me target the drone.”

  He stood up and gazed at the sky through his scope, trying to find the drone again. After a few seconds he spotted it. “Okay, it’s there, in the lower-right corner of the opening. It’s moving to the left.”

  “Got it.” As Ariel pointed the Stinger at the drone and tracked its progress, the launcher emitted a high-pitched tone that grew steadily louder. “The infrared seeker is locked on.”

  Conroy rushed toward the other snipers in the room and pushed them away from Ariel. “Move to the side! There’s going to be a back blast!”

  John got out of the way too. Ariel tipped the launcher upward and to the left, compensating for gravity and the drone’s velocity. Then she pulled the Stinger’s trigger.

  A plume of exhaust spewed out of the back end of the launcher as the missile streaked out of the front. The rocket shot upward at incredible speed, zooming in an almost straight line toward the drone. At the last instant it made a course correction and swung into a tight left turn. Then it slammed into the Reaper and exploded.

  Conroy shouted, “Huzzah!” as the fireball lit the sky. Ariel lowered the launcher and smiled, watching the flaming pieces of the drone plummet to earth. And then, before John could congratulate her, a much closer explosion rocked the silo. The steel shell of the structure rang with the blast, and everyone in the room fell to the floor.

  “Shit!” John was deafened. He could barely hear his own voice. “What the fuck was that?”

  “Grenade!” Ariel shouted. “It hit just below us. Conroy, close the hatch!”

  Conroy raced back to the other side of the room and turned the handle again. As the hatch slid closed, Ariel scrambled toward the slit. The other snipers did the same and so did John, who was just as anxious to see what was happening outside. He pointed his spotter scope at the ground and saw the guardsmen in full retreat. They’d abandoned the outbuildings and were running back to the barn and farmhouses. Sullivan’s men pursued the guardsmen, shrieking their war cries and firing their carbines as they ran. The fields were littered with fallen soldiers from both sides.

  Less than two hundred yards away, a pair of Riflemen halted and stood abreast. Moving as one, they raised their grenade launchers to their shoulders. The weapons, John realized, were pointed straight at the silo.

  “Watch out!” he shouted, pulling Ariel away from the slit. He threw himself on top of her and covered his ears.

  The blasts punctured the steel wall of the silo. John felt the heat on his arms and legs, and bits of shrapnel pinged against his back. When he looked up he saw patches of night sky through jagged holes in the dome. Ariel was unhurt, thank God—she squirmed underneath him, yelling, “Get off me!”—and Conroy lay nearby, stunned but conscious. But the other snipers were dead. They hadn’t pulled back far enough before the grenades exploded.

  Ariel wriggled free. As soon as she saw what was left of the sniper’s nest, she pointed at the spiral stairway and tugged at John’s arm. “Let’s go, let’s go!” she shouted. “We have to get out of here!”

  Blood trickled down John’s back from the bits of embedded shrapnel, but he didn’t feel much pain. The Fountain protein was still doing its job. He stood up and hooked an arm around Conroy’s waist, lifting the guardsman to his feet. Then they followed Ariel to the stairway and bounded down the curving steps.

  Another explosion shook the silo as they descended. More debris rained on their heads, but they didn’t stop. They kept spiraling downward, to the bottom of the silo and then below the surface. Soon they reached the catwalk that ran down the rocky wall of the cavern. Haven was deserted now. John scanned the cavern’s floor, still dimly illuminated by the emergency lights, but he didn’t
see a single person, not even in front of the entrance to the train tunnel. The evacuation had apparently been successful. The Pyramid and the surrounding buildings stood silent and empty, their stone walls laced with skeins of orange cable.

  When they reached the bottom of the catwalk, though, the silence was broken by shouting. John turned toward the noise and saw about thirty guardsmen, Haven’s surviving defenders. Panicky and exhausted, they’d retreated through the trapdoors in the barn and farmhouses and barreled down the other stairways to the cavern. Conroy swiftly took charge of the men, directing them to the train tunnel. The final straggler was Gower, who was bleeding from a wound on his shoulder but still cradled his assault rifle. He staggered toward Conroy and fell into the older man’s arms. Gower opened his mouth, but he was shivering so violently that his words were unintelligible.

  “Calm down, lad.” Conroy inspected the shoulder wound, which had soaked his shirt with blood but didn’t look very deep. “You’re not badly hurt.”

  Gower shook his head. “Behind,” he gasped. “They’re behind us.”

  “Sullivan’s men? How far behind?”

  Before Gower could answer, they heard the Riflemen’s war cries echoing down the stairways. Ariel shouted, “Move!” and all four of them raced for cover. They ran along the base of the Pyramid and hid behind its far corner just as Sullivan’s men spilled into the cavern. John saw them for the first time without the green shading of the night-vision scope and noticed that their faces were black with camouflage paint. He didn’t see Sullivan among them, but he recognized a couple of the men from the torture session in the pine woods. There were about fifty of them in all, not much more than the number of guardsmen, but the Riflemen were mad with rage and bloodlust. They saw the fleeing defenders at the far end of the cavern and rushed pell-mell toward them.

  But they didn’t see Conroy. The Master of the Guardsmen grabbed Gower’s assault rifle, leaned over the stone blocks at the corner of the Pyramid and opened fire on the bastards.

  Five of the men in the front ranks collapsed. The others halted, looked around frantically, and turned tail. Conroy downed three more Riflemen before they found cover on the other side of the Pyramid. Then he ducked behind the stone blocks and turned to Ariel. “Go to the tunnel, milady,” he ordered. “I’ll hold them off till you’re safe.”

  She frowned. “You can’t hold them off for long, cuz. There’s too many.”

  “That’s true. But I have a surprise for them.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small, square device. It had an extendable antenna and a black button at its center. It looked like a remote control for a garage door.

  Ariel paled as she stared at the thing. She grasped Conroy’s arm above the elbow. “Nay, you can’t trigger it yet! You—”

  “Please listen, milady. The explosives will go off in a sequence. First the Pyramid, then the other buildings, then the walls of the cavern. You’ll have enough time to reach the tunnel. I’ll stay behind to make sure they don’t follow you.”

  “Let me stay here instead of you, cuz.” Ariel squeezed his arm. Her eyes were glassy. “You already saved me once. I should return the favor.”

  “Nay, this is my duty.” Conroy shook his head. “But you can repay the debt by giving a message to your mother. Will you do that for me?”

  She nodded. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Conroy raised his hand to her face and caressed her cheek. Even though he was three hundred years younger than Ariel, he gazed at her as if she were his daughter. “Tell Elizabeth it was an honor to serve her. And tell her I always treasured the gift she gave me.”

  A sudden hail of bullets struck the stone blocks at the Pyramid’s corner. Sullivan’s men had regrouped and were preparing to advance. Conroy removed Ariel’s hand from his arm, then turned to John and Gower. He pointed at the far end of cavern, where the other guardsmen were filing into the train tunnel. “Now, go!” he shouted. “Get Lily to safety!”

  Conroy turned around, raised his gun, and fired back at the Riflemen. Ariel and Gower just stood there for a moment, unwilling to abandon him. Then John grabbed both of them by the arm and started running toward the tunnel.

  They kept their heads low as they ran. A couple of bullets whistled past, but Sullivan’s men focused their fire on Conroy. John heard an intensely loud barrage of gunshots behind him, the sound of fifty men strafing the Pyramid, but he didn’t turn around, didn’t look over his shoulder. He hurtled forward, pulling Ariel and Gower along with him. After half a minute they charged past the geothermal plant and turned toward the tunnel’s entrance. Only then did John look back, and he immediately wished he hadn’t. Sullivan’s men had come around both sides of the Pyramid and trapped Conroy between them. The Master of the Guardsmen convulsed as the bullets slammed into him, but before he fell he raised his left hand, the one that had been holding the remote-control device. An instant later the Pyramid exploded.

  The blasts erupted on all four sides of the structure, pulverizing its foundations. Hundreds of stone blocks broke loose from the sloping walls and plummeted to the cavern’s floor. The Riflemen had barely enough time to look up before the falling blocks buried them.

  Within seconds the Pyramid was a spreading pile of rubble, all its secrets smashed to bits. And while the debris still tumbled and crashed and settled, the explosives in the other buildings began to detonate. The structures collapsed one by one, like dominos falling, starting at one end of the cavern and swiftly progressing to the other. John was only steps away from the tunnel when the shock wave from the blasts almost knocked him over. Gower sank to his knees, but John took one of his arms and Ariel took the other and together they pulled him up. They dragged him into the tunnel just before the geothermal plant exploded, hurling mangled pipes and machinery across the cavern.

  Then the explosives in the cavern’s walls detonated. This was the final step in the entombment of Haven, obviously intended to guarantee that no one would ever dig up any evidence of the Furies. The blasts cracked the natural pillars and arches that had held up the roof of the cavern. Without those supports, millions of tons of rock and soil began to fall. John and Ariel and Gower were twenty yards inside the tunnel, still sprinting forward, when the cascading rock sealed the entrance they’d just dashed through. Some of the debris spilled into the tunnel, and a cloud of dust buffeted them from behind. The air grew hazy, obscuring the battery-operated emergency lights on the ceiling. John could just barely see the figures of the thirty fleeing guardsmen, about a hundred yards ahead. Aside from them, though, the tunnel was empty. The steel rails stretched into the distance, but there was no train on them.

  “Mother of Creation!” Ariel yelled. “They left without us!”

  “The train was probably full,” John said, coughing from the dust. “Everyone will unload at the other end, and then it’ll come back.”

  “What makes you think—”

  She was interrupted by a deep reverberating groan that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. The floor of the tunnel rumbled and bounced, throwing them off balance. John got the feeling that the planet itself was angry at them. Vast mountains of loosened rock were sliding into the cavern, and the sudden shift of so much mass was destabilizing the whole area. Then they heard a louder, sharper noise just above their heads, and when John looked up he saw cracks forming in the tunnel’s concrete ceiling. Within seconds the cracks lengthened and widened. Clods of dirt poured from them, showering the train tracks.

  “Run!” John screamed. He grabbed Ariel and Gower again. “The tunnel’s collapsing!”

  Now they ran faster than ever, because it was worse to be buried alive than to be shot or blown up. They ran through veils of falling dirt, which splashed on their heads and funneled into their clothes. Behind them, the ceiling buckled and gave way, and chunks of concrete dropped into the tunnel along with tons of thudding earth, but they managed to stay a few yards ahead of the collapse. After a minute or so they closed the distance between t
hemselves and the guardsmen, who looked at the three of them in terror. They were caked with dirt, brown from head to toe.

  Then John looked beyond the guardsmen and saw a silvery glint at the end of the tunnel. It was the train, coming back for them.

  He let go of Ariel and Gower and raced past the guardsmen. He sprinted toward the open-top freight cars at the back of the train, which was moving in reverse at about twenty miles per hour. As he ran he waved his arms to get the attention of the train driver. Ariel had told him the man’s name was Bardolph.

  “Stop, Bardolph!” he screamed. “Stop!”

  After several seconds John heard the screech of the train’s brakes. It slowed to a halt just as he came abreast of the last car, but he kept running until he was within earshot of Bardolph, who’d poked his head out of the engine’s window to see what was going on.

  “Get ready to move forward!” John shouted at him. “I’ll give you a signal when everyone’s aboard!” Then he turned around and urged the guardsmen to run faster. “Get in the last car! Come on, come on, move it!”

  But they needed no encouragement. With the tunnel collapsing in sections just behind them, the guardsmen leaped into the last car. Ariel brought up the rear, helping Gower onto the train, and then John leaped aboard himself and whistled at the driver. “Go, go! Fast as you can!”

  It was going to be close. The train was a hundred years old and slow to accelerate. As they crept forward a fissure opened in the ceiling directly overhead, spilling gobs of dirt into the last freight car. Ariel screamed and some of the guardsmen wailed. But then the train gathered speed. Soon they were charging down the tunnel, outracing the collapse. The earth continued to shift and fracture behind them, but the groaning and thudding grew steadily fainter.