Labyrinth

by James Axler

  “Looks like a bit of a rogue,” Doc said.

  “Part of his charm.”

  Two photos to the right of the presidential shot, the same uniformed officer was smiling alongside a man and woman in buttoned up lab coats with pocket protectors. The scrawny-framed woman had a Betty Crocker hairdo dyed black, a smear of bright red lipstick and rouge spots on both cheeks. A face with all the animation of a doorknob. The lab coated man was shorter than the woman, and virtually bald. His eyes and mouth turned up at the corners giving him a vulpine look.

  This photo was signed. “To Colonel Robert Townsend, Onward and Upward, Dr. Enid Mead and Dr. Bob Shumer.”

  “Sweet mother of God!” Mildred exclaimed. “Not that Bob and Enid!”

  “What are you talking about?” Krysty said. “Do you actually know who they are?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Mildred said. “I didn’t make the connection with their first names. Everybody used to call them Mead and Shumer. In the years before skydark, they were notorious. Poster children for the ethically challenged whitecoat. Academic outlaws. Their line of scientific research was internationally banned, but obviously unofficially condoned here in the States. And underwritten to the tune of this redoubt.”

  “What was their field of specialization?” Doc asked.

  “Gene splicing,” Mildred said. “Manufacturing brand-new organisms from the construction plans of existing ones.”

  “In other words, playing God,” Doc said.

  “Why was their work banned?” Krysty asked.

  “There were religious conflicts, of course,” Mildred replied. “All the major and minor religions went ballistic over the moral issue. But the global ban came about because of safety concerns from the scientific community. Bringing new organisms into the world is a very dangerous proposition. Theoretically, it’s possible to create something that could threaten all of humankind, and that we would have no defense against.

  “Think of the world as a house of cards, each card an organism that depends on all the others for support. Something designer-made could upset the balance and bring it all crashing down. It could be a more efficient component. A stronger plant. A more successful breeder. Or a new disease vector. Tinkering with species’ barriers offers the chance that the diseases of one will transfer to another, jumping the normal boundaries. Which could set new and terrible plagues upon humanity.”

  “What did they create?” Krysty asked.

  “Mead and Shumer started their work on a microscopic level. Tailoring bacteria for specific tasks, like the industrial production of pharmaceutical drugs. But when they had refined their technique sufficiently they moved up to higher life forms, and finally to vertebrates, taking a few genes from this species and a few from that. They grew DNA-conglomerate embryos in test tubes, then implanted them in host mothers who brought them to term. Bob and Enid worked with fish, chickens, cattle and pigs, supposedly trying to produce better quality livestock.”

  “A chicken that tastes like fish?” Doc said. “Or a fish that tastes like chicken? Some would say that it’s hardly worth the trouble.”

  “No, Doc, it had do with increasing resistance to diseases common to particular naturally occurring species, and with increasing those species’ growth and maturation rates. Bigger and faster is better.”

  “So what went wrong?” Krysty said.

  “Murphy’s law,” Mildred said. “Mead and Shumer were plugging along in anonymity, nobody really understood what they were up to until a fire broke out at their main lab. After the fire was put out, it appeared that some of the transgenic creatures they had been developing had escaped the lab’s quarantine. Because of the potential threat to public health the event had to be reported to the authorities, and when the news was leaked to the press, it caused a major panic in the immediate area. The escape turned out to be a false alarm, but it brought the whole matter to light. In the court of public opinion, Bob and Enid were tried and convicted of ethical misconduct. ‘Playing God,’ as you said, Doc. Within weeks, their university cut off their research funding and fired them. To the world’s scientific community Mead and Shumer were pariahs, and their professional careers were down the toilet. It all happened a year or two before the Little Pueblo dam was put in.”

  “Looks like Bob and Enid took their research underground,” Krysty said. “Literally.”

  “And the name of this labyrinthine facility takes on a new significance,” Doc added.

  “I need to find out more about what was going on here before nukeday,” Mildred said.

  “Why?” Krysty said.

  “I need to find out if the demons in the dam are real. Because there’s a good possibility that they are. If they do exist, we have to be prepared to fight them.”

  Using the map in Colonel Townsend’s office, they located the position of the redoubt’s laboratory floor and the mat-trans unit. The mat-trans was on the tenth floor belowground; the lab was at the next to bottom floor, number eighteen.

  Back in the cubicle area, they found a service elevator, which was still operational. As the lift doors opened, from the floor above they heard a clanging noise.

  Then another. And another.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Running as fast as they could, Plavik and ville folk arrived at the park a good ten minutes after the shooting had stopped. At his direction they fanned out and spread along the trees before closing on the tomb’s entrance.

  The body on the grass was visible to all. It had been dumped beside the boulders. It lay curled on its side. And it wasn’t moving.

  “Bob protect us, it’s one of ours,” Pilgrim Dennison said to Plavik.

  There was worse news coming.

  Pilgrim Ardis raced up to them, having just checked on the prisoners in city hall. “The new women are gone,” he told his fellow pilgrims. “And Randi and Valerie Louise are chilled. They got themselves beat to death, looks like with a chair. The blasters we took off One Eye and the others are gone, too. And so are their packs.”

  “The two that got away last night must’ve come back for them.” Plavik said. “Sprung them free.”

  On his signal, twenty-five men moved from the cover of the trees and took up firing positions along the front of the tomb. Kneeling, they held their weapons trained on the entrance door.

  Plavik and the other pilgrims advanced to the body by the boulders and stood over it.

  “One of ours,” Plavik confirmed.

  “Doesn’t look good for the rest,” Pilgrim Ardis said. “Wherever they are.”

  Plavik had hoped that the missing pair of strangers would try to get in the tomb again, and be slaughtered by the armed men he had placed on the roof. The opposite had occurred.

  They found the dead guards on the redoubt roof in scattered pools of gore. Shot to pieces, every one.

  “It’s like they were stuck in a meat grinder,” Ardis said.

  “Look at all those shell casings,” Dennison remarked.

  “And not one hit, apparently,” Plavik said.

  Pilgrim Dennison turned to stare at the entrance door. “Do you think the strangers got in?”

  Plavik grimaced. “There’s no way of telling. All the rocks are moved clear. They could have done it.”

  “How’d they know the trick to open the door?” Ardis said.

  “Damned if I know,” Plavik replied. “Mebbe they didn’t open it. Mebbe they shot up our men and took off across the desert. Figured to cut their losses and get clear.”

  “We can’t go inside to find out for sure,” Ardis said. “We can’t open the lock. And that door won’t be pried.”

  “And even if we could open it,” Dennison reminded them, “going inside would be a sin against our faith. Bob and Enid’s tomb is sacred, not to be trespassed.”

  “If the four of them took off across the desert,” Plavik said, “we’re done with them, forever. They’re either gonna die of thirst out there, or they’re gonna think real hard about ever coming back here.”r />
  “And if they’re in the tomb?” Dennison said.

  “If they went inside, we can make sure they’ll never come out. We can make it their tomb, too.”

  Plavik waved over some of the field hands milling on the edge of the grass. “Get over here, you lot,” he said. “We got some work for you.” When they gathered around, he said, “We think the chillers might have got in Bob and Enid’s tomb. We want you to put the rocks back. Every one of them. Make sure that door is blocked good and tight.”

  The men hurried to complete the task. They didn’t bother lugging down the big stones. They just pushed them over the grass to the head of the stairs, tipped them over the top step, and let them bounce down the stairs and roll up against the side of the vanadium steel door.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  And the boulders began to quickly pile up, filling the floor of the stairwell and then the steps.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For a second it stood almost toe-to-toe with Ryan.

  The Galil roared thunderously in the intake channel’s tight space, bucking hard in his hands as he fought the full-auto muzzle climb. Sequential starburst flashes lit up the passage, and lit up the attacking beast.

  The strobe light, freeze frames burned an image into his brain.

  A relatively narrow upper torso flaring to a wider bottom. Three sets of legs. The head broad and flat, with wide set, enormous black eyes.

  He only saw it for an instant. The multiple, point-blank range, heavy caliber bullet impacts blew it backward, head over heels, down the channel into the darkness and the belly of the dam.

  After Ryan’s and J.B.’s heads cleared from the clatter of autofire, they could hear Wicklaw shouting at them.

  “Did you get it?” he cried. “Did you get it?”

  “Hand me back a torch,” Ryan said, “and we’ll have a look-see.”

  “Me, too,” J.B. said, holding out a hand for his torch.

  The floor and walls of the channel were splattered with gobs of creamy white juice. It was what passed for the creature’s blood. And there was a lot of it.

  “I’d say we hit it,” J.B. said.

  “Don’t touch that stuff,” Ryan warned him. “Could be acid, or some kind of poison.”

  They moved down the channel, careful to step around the larger splatters, weapons ready in case it came at them again from out of the darkness. They advanced to the point where the passage started to angle down more steeply, then stopped.

  “There’s something down there, on the floor,” J.B. said. “Over there. See it?”

  Ryan held out his torch. At the extreme edge of the light, in the middle of the channel lay something that looked like a piece of wood, or a broken tree branch. He knew it couldn’t be either. The intake channel’s grate wouldn’t admit an object that big.

  “I think our demon dropped something,” J.B. said, pocketing his pistol. “Cover me.”

  He carefully moved forward, using the left wall to keep his balance on the down-angling floor. He squatted and grabbed hold of the object, then dragged it back to the light of the grate. Wicklaw, Jubilee and the other man looked down at it with a mixture of astonishment and horror.

  It was a leg.

  Fully extended, it would have been close to four feet long. It had three joints—shoulder, elbow, and wrist or ankle. From the shoulder down, each section of leg was shorter than the last. The foot or hand at the end was flat-bottomed and covered with black bristle. Instead of toes or fingers, it had four black talons that appeared to be retractable. It wasn’t covered with skin. Its surface was brown and hard and covered with sharp little points. Closer inspection showed the points were actually stiff hairs jutting from tiny, cone-shaped protruberances. At the shoulder, where it had been blown free of the torso hung a rag mop of sinewy white tissue.

  J.B. pointed at the ridge of horns that jutted from the side of the leg, from shoulder to elbow. “That’s some blade,” he said.

  The row of horns got smaller and smaller as they approached the elbow. It looked like a serrated sword had been welded to the limb. And it acted like one, too. A single passing swipe of the thing had opened up the other wounded man like a can of peas.

  “Triple wicked,” Ryan agreed.

  “Is the demon dead?” Wicklaw asked.

  “You mean, is the unkillable killed?” J.B. asked.

  “Did you really destroy it?” the ex-pilgrim insisted.

  “I’m pretty sure we did,” J.B. said. “But if we didn’t, at least it’s gonna walk funny from here on.”

  Wicklaw blinked, openmouthed, as the truth sank in. His belief system had just taken a body blow. The demons weren’t immortal.

  Ryan nudged the severed leg with his boot. “We’ve never come across anything quite like this,” he said. “It’s in a different league than the other muties.”

  “Faster, you mean?”

  “Not just that. Think about it. All the other mutie species are radblasted distortions of what was here before nukeday. You got your human-based mutations—stumpies, scalies, stickies. And you got your animal-based mutations. Some are bigger than they should be, some are smaller. Size wise, this thing is at least a hundred times bigger than it should be. That armor is like a crab’s or a bug’s, and the leg sort of looks like that, too, but the hair on it is from an animal. Like it’s part bug, part bear.”

  “The hair and the smell is all bear,” J.B. said.

  The leg reeked of funk and musk.

  “Whatever the hell it is,” Ryan said, “it can really move. It’s nothing like a crab. More like a jumping bug. We were damned lucky to nail it. If we’d been caught in a bigger space, with more than one entrance and less firepower, if we hadn’t known it was coming, it would have gotten us. It’s fast and agile, and it’s got a wagload of nasty weapons.”

  Ryan was silent for a second, then he added, “And there’s more than one down here.”

  “If this dam is a nest,” J.B. said, “we’re really in for it, Ryan.”

  The one-eyed man dropped the Galil’s magazine into his palm and checked the round counter. “I’m down to eight shells.”

  J.B. said, “I’ve got six in the Llama, still five in the Smith.”

  “If we stay lucky we might be able to turn back one more attack like that,” Ryan said. “We’ve got to find more ammo for the guns we’ve got, or more loaded blasters.”

  “There’s another problem, too, even if we find guns and ammo,” J.B. said. “Assuming there’s a way out of here, there’s a whole lot of open space between us and it. Open space is where we’re going to be the most vulnerable to attack. How are we gonna cross it?”

  “Only one way I can think of—as quickly as possible.”

  Ryan turned to the others and said, “Did you hear that? When we leave here we move on the dead run until I say stop. If we come under attack again or get ourselves cornered by one of these critters, put your backs to the wall and stay close together. Now let’s find that stairwell.”

  After they returned to the main corridor, they continued in the same direction as before, running in long, even strides. The corridor echoed with their footfalls. Under the circumstances, speed was more important than stealth. The longer they remained in the kill zone, the worse the odds got. Though they brought up the rear, Wicklaw and the gren-wounded man seemed to have found their second wind. Perhaps the close call with a demon had something to do with it.

  Ryan signaled for a halt as they neared the hole the demon had exploded from. The caution was necessary. It was always possible that where there was one demon, there were more.

  With J.B. covering his back, Ryan crossed the hall, avoiding the yellow slime. He put his ear to the concrete wall, listening for signs of life. There was nothing. If another demon lay in wait deep inside the hole, it was still as the grave.

  When Ryan looked up, J.B. had the Llama braced in two hands, sights trained on the gash. He waved him off and waved the others onward, aiming the Gali
l into the opening, finger resting lightly on the trigger. When they were well past, he ran to overtake them.

  “One monster per hole, looks like,” J.B. said as he caught up.

  “Territorial bastards,” Ryan commented.

  “Lone hunters,” J.B. said. “I’d hate to think what they’d be like if they worked in a pack.”

  “We’d already be dead.”

  In search of the stairwell, and a way down to the bottom of the dam, Ryan and J.B. started checking the hallway’s few and widely spaced doors. They all opened onto interior rooms. Some were lined with metal-cased control panels studded with switches and toggles and dark indicator lights. The gauges and dials all read zero. Some held banks of computer consoles, all dead. There was also a storeroom with rows of metal shelves bearing spare parts—pipes, fittings, gaskets, sealed bearings, fasteners, housings, replacement motors and electronic components. Ryan and J.B. only looked inside long enough to verify that there were no stairs. And no Bob and Enid-era weapons cache.

  Beyond the storeroom they came upon another cluster of eroded corpses, little piles of human remains soaking in yellow muck. Ryan and J.B. used their gun barrels to poke through the mounds of rags strewed against the bottom of the wall. In the middle of one of the mounds, Ryan found a third handblaster and a few spent shell casings. This one was an Astra copy of a Walther PPK, in .380 semiauto. Short on stopping power, it was primarily a belly gun, meant to be used at close range. The action was partially open, an empty cartridge had jammed sideways as it was ejected. Ryan racked the slide, clearing the jam. The semiauto pistol had four hollowpoint rounds in its mag.

  “Bob and Enid sure brought a strange collection of blasters down here,” J.B. said to Wicklaw. “Milspec full auto assault rifles. Black-powder wheelguns. And now an Astra .380. Be hard pressed to chill a full-grown mutie jackrabbit with that little thing.”

  “No one knows what they brought,” Wicklaw said. “Must’ve been whatever they had on hand.”

  “Yeah, well, no wonder they got their butts kicked.”