“There he goes!”
Up ahead they caught a glimpse of Einstein slipping through another hatch, Cerberus at his heels, its three heads snapping and snarling wildly. Sands and the others charged after him, but Einstein paused to lay down a spray of machine-gun fire that sent them diving for cover.
With no damage done, they sprang back to their feet and picked up the pursuit, zigging and zagging through the maze of passageways. Einstein had the advantage of a head start, but he was slowed by the large case he was carrying. Feeling the pressure, he wildly sprayed fire over his shoulder as he ran. But Sands and his men were in a squeeze, too. With every turn, they gained on Einstein, but the Psychs also gained on them. It wasn’t enough for Sands to lay down cover fire—the Psychs didn’t respond to threat the way a normal human would. Unless they were hit, they just kept coming.
As Einstein slipped through yet another hatch, not even thirty feet ahead of them, Sands needed back-up. The Psychs were piling through a hatch faster than he could take them out. Angel and Catfish threw down with their own bull-pups, laying down a curtain of fire that even the Psychs could not withstand. From the caterwauling on the other side, Sands knew they hadn’t fully retreated, but they would have to shove a lot of bodies out of the way to get back through.
They had lost sight of Einstein, and the next hatch led to an area in near-total darkness. They eased their way through, weapons at the ready. Sands slammed the hatch shut behind them and jimmied it with a pry-bar. In the back of his mind was the half-formed question of why Einstein had not bothered to do the same, why he had not sealed any of the hatches behind him as he ran.
“There, up ahead.” Angel pointed out a dim light.
“I see it.”
They double-timed it down a long corridor, coming to an open space. The light they had seen from the other end of the corridor came from a single spot that hung from a high ceiling. It created a well of light surrounded by darkness that obscured the boundaries of whatever chamber they were in. There was nothing to indicate a way out. Even the corridor from which they had come was invisible in the gloom.
“Where the hell are we?” Catfish asked.
Recognition dawned on Sands just as dazzling lights came up and the clang of slamming metal gates sounded all around them. They were in the Arena.
The three men instinctively aligned themselves back-to-back-to-back, guns at the ready. On six sides of the octagonal Arena, shouting, gibbering Psychs clamored at the gates, each shoving and tearing at the others, like starving predators eager to get at their prey. Only two or three at a time could squeeze their way up against the narrow openings, but in the chutes behind Sands could see more pressing their way forward.
Sands cast about for an exit, and at nine o’clock he recognized the “challenger’s cage,” the very one he had occupied many times. Its chute did not lead back to the Psycho Ward but to the main elevator. It was empty. He pointed.
“There. That’s the way out.”
They ran up to it, their sudden movement arousing the clamor of the Psychs to an even higher pitch. Sands tested the lock. It was sealed. He looked at the others.
“Please tell me Wolf didn’t have all of the thermite.”
Catfish said, “All I’ve got are grenades and flash-bangs.”
Angel shrugged. “Me too.”
“We’ll have to blow it with a grenade.”
“Are you crazy?” Catfish waved his arm over the empty space that surrounded them. “We’ve got no cover.”
The Psychs were tugging and pounding at the gates as if they meant to tear them out with their bare hands. The whole structure of the Arena was vibrating.
“We can duck back out the way we came,” Angel suggested.
“No we can’t.” Sands nodded at the gate through which they had entered, now sealed and straining against the weight of a half-dozen Psychs.
Starting with a low rumble and rising to a volume that drowned out even the Psychs, a booming voice filled the Arena:
“A-A-R-R-R-E YOU R-R-R-R-R-E-A-D-D-Y-Y FOR B-A-A-A-A-T-T-L-L-L-L-E!”
The recording of the familiar cry of the Arena emcee incited the Psychs to a wild chant of “BAT-TLE! BAT-TLE!” Some managed to sound convincingly human in their enunciation, while others merely screamed or pounded their fists in time. The jumbotron flared to life, ringing the Arena with images of Einstein’s leering face.
The same happened in the Vestibule. Victoria, Rashid, and the Drones watched in stunned silence as half the monitors were filled with Einstein’s face, half with images of the Psychs and the three men in the Arena. Ahmer was surprised to find Lani gripping his hand.
“That was a very neat trick with the elevator.” Einstein’s voice rasped as if it were cutting through electronic static. “Too bad I didn’t have more time to work with you boys…” He cocked his head, and his eyes appeared to find the two women in the Vestibule with uncanny perception. “And girls. I could have done for you what I’ve done for the Psychs.”
“Back at you—Ein-stein.” Sands elongated the nickname for maximum aggravation. “I’ve killed a lot of Psychs. I’ll be happy to add you to the list.”
The barb hit home. Einstein’s sallow face boiled purple with anger. But he managed a hangman’s smile. “You’re good at one-on-one combat, Sands. Let’s see how you do at battle royal.”
His image retreated, and the screens were filled with the three slavering heads of Cerberus before all went black.
“What the hell was that?” Victoria exclaimed.
Desmond crossed himself. Rashid clapped his hands together in prayer. The screens came back up, showing every angle in the Arena. The three men—surrounded by dozens of screaming psychopaths—stood in half-crouches, guns poised, their eyes juiced wide by nerves jangling with flight-or-fight impulses. As the staccato burst of the warning buzzer counted down to the release of the Psychs, Rashid spoke his prayer aloud. Ahmer listened, his Arabic too poor to join in, though he seconded the words in his heart: “O Allah, we ask You to restrain them by their necks, and we seek refuge in You from their evil!”
In the Arena, Sands and his men turned their backs to the wall, spreading themselves apart just enough to give each a clear line of fire. The buzzer counted down—six, five, four—and Sands leveled his rifle.
“I don’t feature waitin’” he growled—a favorite expression of G.K.’s—and he pounded one of the gates with a burst from his bullpup. Psychs wailed, spun, and fell as bullets ricocheted off the steel mesh and into the chute. Catfish and Angel instantly followed Sands’ example, each targeting a separate gate. A dozen Psychs went down, wounded or dead.
If only they had thought of the tactic sooner. The last, long blast of the buzzer sounded and the gates belched out their mindless furies.
The moment of shock felt by Victoria and the Drones at what amounted to the cold-blooded murder of defenseless men in cages was swept away by the horror of the battle that followed. Sands, Catfish, and Angel lay down a withering hail of fire, but the Psychs kept coming—limbs ripped away, torsos riddled, bodies stacking up like a revetment of flesh and bone—nothing stopped them but death.
Magazines emptied, and still they came. The instant it took to drop one mag and jam in another was all it took for several Psychs to close the gap, and the fight was down to pistols and knives.
Catfish managed to get off one last blast from his bullpup, taking the legs out from one charging Psych, but the crazed beast’s momentum carried him forward, and he wrapped Catfish up like a linebacker. Catfish struck down with his rifle butt, beating his attacker’s brains to jelly before the clawing and biting ceased.
Angel almost got wrapped up by another, but he was able put a knife in his eye. The Psych collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Sands got the same result planting a nine millimeter slug through a Psych’s ear. Headshots, they realized, were the most effective. Although the Psych’s bodies seemed able to withstand superhuman levels of abuse, like any mere mortal coils
they needed brains to make them go.
Sands heard Angel scream, but a Psych had him from behind, and he was struggling to knife him wherever he could reach. Catfish was down to fists, straddling a kicking, flailing Psych as he pummeled him with everything he had.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sands saw Angel being dragged away by four or five Psychs to the far end of the Arena. Another half dozen joined in, ripping at him with ragged teeth and nails. Catfish broke free from his attacker and charged across the Arena, launching himself at the backs of the Psychs that had Angel on the deck. Sands slashed out with his knife with such force that it cut his own foe’s neck clear to the spine. He ran to join the fray, but he feared he was too late.
Catfish had finished off three Psychs with the last shots from his pistol, but three more of enormous size were kneeling over Angel’s legs and torso like hyenas over a gazelle, ripping his flesh away with their teeth. Catfish punched, slashed, and stabbed at their backs, but they hardly seemed to notice him. Several smaller Psychs, crowded out by the others, or perhaps just less aggressive, hung back like cubs waiting for their turn at the kill.
Sands and Catfish managed to pull one of the giants away, but Sands had to knife him three times in the base of the skull before he went down. They turned back to rejoin the attack, but they saw that Angel had quit struggling. His hands were free, and in each one he held a grenade. With a last look to his comrades, he pulled the pins.
Sands and Catfish ran and dove over a stack of bodies. The shockwave from the grenades hit them like a punch in the chest, and they could feel the shrapnel thudding against the wall of flesh that protected them. The blast tore a wide gash in the top of the Arena. Insulation from the ceiling above fell like a heavy snow.
In the Vestibule there was an uneasy, tearful silence. The screens all went blank with the blast. Oleg tapped futilely at the keys of his console, trying to locate a live feed. Ahmer turned down the master volume to squelch the angry roar of static. The others looked questioningly at one another. In the horror and confusion they had witnessed on screen, they were not even sure of what had happened.
“Was that an explosion?” someone asked.
“I think Angel had a grenade,” said another.
“Did Sands and Catfish make it to cover?”
In the wayward beams of the few lights that still burned in the Arena, dust swirled, creating a yellow, hazy glow. The air was acrid with charred flesh and blood. Sands and Catfish struggled to their feet. The threat was over. The few Psychs who weren’t dead they finished off with pistol shots or a knife to the brain. They found Angel, his face almost unblemished, his eyes half-closed as if lapsing into slumber. The rest was a mass of mangled flesh and bone that Sands could not bear to look at. The glint of Angel’s gold cross caught his eye. He knelt to retrieve it. The chain was broken, and the cross came away easily in his hand. Catfish knelt beside him and placed his hand on Sands’ shoulder. Sands heard him mutter a prayer, but he didn’t know what it was.
After a moment of profound stillness, the two men stood. Sands looked up, through the rip in the Arena’s dome, at the balcony from where Einstein used to watch the Battles.
“Let’s blow this fuckin’ place.”
He yanked two grenades from his belt, pulled the pins with his teeth. Catfish did the same. Sands silently counted three. They threw their grenades up into the balcony and ran for cover. With four thundering explosions, Einstein’s masterwork of scientific horrors was blown to bits.
-18-
One today is worth two tomorrows.
—Benjamin Franklin
Sands sat in a corner of the Vestibule, brooding over the gold crucifix in his palm. He stared at the tiny figure, at the head wreathed in thorns, at the almost featureless face. He went deep into his meditative state, blocking out all that was around him, focusing on the little point of beard, the nub of nose, the two indentations that served for eyes. He tried to conjure out of that tiny piece of sculpted metal a human face, but no image of a benevolent Savior would come. Somehow, he didn’t even see Angel. Instead he saw the shining eyes of Rabbi Ben-Ezra—Bloodyface—and heard his lips whisper his final appeal: Elohim!
“Sands! Sands, snap out of it! We don’t have time for this!”
Victoria stood over him, her hand poised. After twenty seconds of calling his name and getting no response, she was ready to slap him cross the face.
“Huh? What is it?”
“We need you.”
She pointed over to the command center, where the Drones were huddled in conference, throwing worried glances his way.
“You okay, Bro?”
He hadn’t even noticed Catfish standing there.
“Yeah. Let’s get to it.”
He closed his hand over the crucifix and stuffed it in his pocket. The Drones got up to meet him halfway, but he waved them back to their seats and joined them at their consoles. Oleg stood to make his report.
“We’ve got some systems back online, but we can’t kill the engines and we can’t change course. If we’d taken over the lab instead of blowing it up—”
Sands silenced him with a look.
“Just sayin’.”
“But there is manual override,” Ahmer said. “If we get to the engine room we can turn the rudder. We can even shut down the engines.”
Bao shook his head. “None of that matters if we don’t defuse that bomb.”
Sands sighed. “We lost our bomb expert when we lost Wolf.”
There was a sound of defeat in Sands’ voice that Victoria had never heard before. She looked at Catfish. He had caught it, too.
“You can defuse that bomb,” Catfish declared. “You’ve done it before.”
“It’s been a long time, man.”
“So? I hear it’s just like riding a bicycle.”
Sands waited him out. Catfish threw his hands in the air.
“Okay, an exploding bicycle. But it’s the same principle.”
“You saw that rig. I’d probably just blow us all up.”
“You think you’ve lost your touch?”
“What touch?”
Catfish’s voice rose with irritation. “The touch in your ten fingers. Which you still all have, by the way.”
Sands looked back at him, his expression inscrutable. “Maybe you think it’s something else I got blown off.”
“Well, why don’t you show me.”
Staring Catfish right in the face, Sands reached deep into his pants. The Drones, en masse, took half a step back. Sands pulled out his hand—middle finger extended. The two men laughed.
Victoria caught a look from Lani, and they shared a single thought: Men.
“All right,” Sands said, the edge of command back in his voice. “How do we get down there?”
“The elevators are still dead,” Oleg replied. “But at least the stairways are clear.”
“Except for the ten thousand maniacs on the loose,” Catfish grumbled.
“Actually, I calculate it is only about three thousand,” Hari clarified.
Catfish rolled his eyes in Hari’s direction. “That makes me feel so much better.”
Ahmer cut in. “We could guide you to the engine room from here. But it might be better if one of us went with you.”
Sands asked, “Are you volunteering?”
Ahmer swallowed and forced a nod.
“Say it.”
“Yes, I am volunteering.”
“Hari, what about you?”
“Yes, please!”
Sands clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man.”
“Hey,” Catfish cut in. “What am I, the B team?”
Sands took an apple from a basket of fruit and held it up to Ahmer. “Any more of this?”
“In the galley.”
“And stores,” Lani added. “There’s tons of it.”
Sands tossed the apple to Catfish. “We need allies. There’re people on this ship that’ll sell their souls for one of those.”
Catfish turned the apple over in his hand and passed it to Victoria.
“Said Eve to the Serpent.”
***
Sands led Ahmer and Hari down the main stairwell, which stretched above and below them like the dark interior of a vast chimney. He wanted to double-time it down the steel stairs but was frustrated by the slow pace of the two young men, who moved clumsily under the burden of their equipment and shoulder-slung guns.
They came to the landing marked 4 GREED 4. Ahmer consulted his tablet.
“These stairs lead all the way to the hold. But we should not go farther past Deck Six.”
“Why’s that?”
Ahmer seemed to want to pause on the steps to continue the conversation, but Sands kept moving down towards the next level.
“I think we should like to avoid lower decks. Better to take the maintenance shaft.”
“Good idea. We need to pick up the pace, though. Let’s move it, Hari!”
“Coming, Mr. Sands!”
There was a cry of surprise from above and the clatter of metal on metal as Hari’s rifle came tumbling down at Sands’ feet.
Hari almost went over the rail trying to catch up to his gun. Sands snatched it up from the steps and shoved it into Hari’s chest. “Let’s try not to kill ourselves before the Psychs get the chance.”
“Yes, Mr. Sands. Sorry, Mr. Sands.”
Sands looked down at Hari’s neon-bright high-tops, the laces a spaghetti-like tangle.
“And lace up those shoes!”
“Yes, sir. I’ll catch up.”
Hari knelt down to tie his laces as the other two continued down. Sands moved quickly, as if he meant to leave Hari and Ahmer both behind. Hari considered just giving the laces a yank, wrapping the excess around his ankles and tying a knot, but it would be sloppy, and he didn’t think Sands would like it. He began methodically threading the laces though each eyehole, his concentration such that he didn’t notice the face watching him from a crack in the Deck Four hatch.
Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition Page 11