by James Axler
Stickies were the same—they killed for pleasure as well as food. The spindly muties could move almost as quickly as the giant spiders, but they were not solitary predators. They hunted in packs, and in packs they used sucker fingers and secreted adhesive to first capture, then to pull apart their prey. Stickies were hardwired to be afraid of nothing; there was no backing them down with threat of injury or death. Stopping one required a knife through the heart or a bullet through the head.
When Jak and Ricky released them, they knew they had to move extra quickly; even so, they got chased across the tops of the cages by the freed muties. After they jumped down and took cover behind steel bars, the stickies immediately lost interest—if they couldn’t figure out how to get out of the cells by themselves, they couldn’t figure out how to get in, either. Sniffing at the smeared blood of their kinsman, the stickies tracked the path that led out the doors.
Scagworms were less of a problem. As soon as they caught the scent of the kills and the scents of their natural prey, the spidies and stickies, they slithered out after them, jaws snapping.
With their abbreviated limbs, the stumpies couldn’t jump or climb for beans. After opening the cage doors, Jak and Ricky stood and watched from a safe vantage point atop the cells. Instead of immediately running for the exit, the stumpies fell into a loud, violent argument in the middle of the aisle. From their gestures and grunts, and the gnashing of tiny corn teeth, Ryan gathered the dispute centered on whether they should follow the scagworms or stay in the zoo and find a way to make the companions their next meal. In short order, sides were chosen and short arms and legs began to swing and kick. The grunting match turned into an all-hands-on-deck brawl. Ankle-biters of both sexes battered and choked one another, rolling around on the rubble.
The battle made the still-caged muties yell and scream, demanding to be released.
“Shut up, Shirley!” J.B. shouted at the scalie in the cell next to him. “Shut up or we’re going to leave you here to starve.”
The scalie shook the bars of her cell and screeched back, “Shir-lee eat!”
J.B. turned away, covering his ears with his hands.
Ryan waved for Ricky to release the flightless bird mutie, thinking the sight of it on the loose would make the stumpies stop fighting and send them in the desired direction.
Once freed, the monstrous penguin moved with amazing speed on its short legs and wide, rubbery feet, rocking from side to side, body fat undulating, keeping balance with outstretched stubby wings. As much as the creature’s acceleration surprised Ryan, it surprised the battling stumpies even more. It loomed over them, casting a giant shadow across their upturned, hairy faces.
What happened next made the one-eyed warrior grimace.
Before the ankle-biters could react, the big bird whipped down its beak, skewering a stumpie through the top of the skull, the point buried deep in the spinal column—it reminded Ryan of a nail being driven into a board with a single, deft, hammer stroke. The stumpie’s bowlegs buckled at the knees, its eyes squeezed shut and its jaw sagged open. With a crisp, nonchalant flip of its head, the bird disimpaled the corpse, sending it pinwheeling over the tops of the cells and slamming into the far wall. Flapping its ridiculously tiny wings, the giant penguin cocked its head to one side and eagerly eyed its next target.
The stumpies required no further demonstration. Internal squabbles forgotten, they beat feet for the exit with the bird in pursuit.
Following the plan, the scalies were the last to be released. The mutie caged next to J.B. didn’t go down on all fours and lick at the bloodstains on the floor like her kin. She waddled up to the bars of his cage and whined, “Why Mr. Hat no help Shirley? Why Mr. Hat not give Shirley first eat?”
“You’re free now, aren’t you?” J.B. asked. “Better hurry along, or the spidies will be wrapping up all the choicest bits.”
The idea that her favorite portions might be sucked dry or cocooned in silk as tough as steel wire redirected Shirley’s focus. In an indignant huff she turned from the cage, her pendulous arm flab atremble, swishing the hem of her filthy shift. Along with the dozen other members of her species, she crawled over the rubble and out the doors.
“We’ve unleashed a nukin’ whirlwind,” J.B. said ruefully. “Things could still go south in a hurry with this plan.”
“And we’re going to ride that bastard whirlwind out of this frozen hole,” Ryan promised.
He took the key from Ricky and opened the cage that held the female whitecoat. She lay huddled in the far corner of the cell, her hair frosted with concrete powder. Ryan reached down and with one hand pulled her to her feet. “Look at me,” he said. “Open your rad-blasted eyes.”
When she did, he could see the abject terror in them—she was certain she was going to die, and she was probably right. Tears rolled down her cheeks, making stripes of clean pink skin through the dust on her face.
“You’re going to take us to the mat-trans unit,” he said, “and by the most direct and quickest route. Any tricks, any delays, and we will feed you to the stickies. Do you understand?”
Her chin trembling, she nodded.
“How far is it?” Krysty asked.
“A long way,” the whitecoat said weakly. “Sixty-six levels above, on the other side of the redoubt’s perimeter. There’re elevators leading up through the core. They can take you part of the way.”
“No elevators,” Ryan said. “The muties are too dimwitted to use them. They’ll be climbing the stairs, sniffing for heat and blood. We’re going to have to follow them up, at least until we’re sure the people are occupied fighting them and we have a clear shot to the mat-trans floor.”
“Dark night!” the Armorer said. “Sixty-six stories is a hike.”
“At least the exercise should keep us warm,” Krysty observed.
After waiting a minute or two longer for the echoes of the scalies’ complaints to die away, the companions headed for the hallway.
Ryan pushed out the whitecoat first. They crossed quickly to the main corridor. It was obvious from the tracks in the dust on the floor which way the muties had gone. They turned right and followed, falling into a steady jog.
In the flickering overhead light Ryan saw something on the floor on the left. It looked like a huge piece of ceiling had come down and was resting against the foot of the wall. Then, as they walked closer, he realized the piece of ceiling was moving.
“Slow down,” he warned the others over his shoulder.
They approached cautiously, giving the potential threat as wide a berth as possible, given the narrowness of the corridor. As they neared the huddled form, the hallway light above them winked on.
Echo muffled a shriek with her hand and averted her face.
The scalie named Shirley squatted with her back pressed against the wall. She was gnawing on a severed human forearm and hand like an oversize ear of corn. Her fingers, her lower face and sagging neck were smeared with glistening blood. The rest of her victim had been separated into a number of large pieces, probably by the stickies and scagworms. Farther down the hall, a few other scalies hunkered over the scattered remains, looking warily over their shoulders as they fed.
As the companions passed, Shirley suddenly stopped eating and fell into a violent fit of gagging, her mouth agape, tongue lolling, eyes squeezed shut tight. With an anguished, guttural retch, she spit a gob of black fibrous stuff onto the floor, then resumed pulling the raw meat out from between the radius and ulna with her front teeth.
The owner of the limb had been an enforcer.
J.B. stepped over the wet hunk of coverall sleeve and pointed at the floor beside her foot. “If you’re not going to eat that...” he said. Without waiting for a reply he scooped up the small flat object.
Ryan recognized it as the enforcer’s Beretta.
The scalie mumbled s
omething around the mouthful of bones as J.B. wiped the blood and slobber off the handblaster with the pants leg of his coveralls. To Ryan it sounded like, “Arm goooood.”
But he could have been wrong.
J.B. quickly dropped the mag and checked the round count. After making sure there was a live bullet in the chamber, he stood over Shirley, blaster in hand, finger inside the trigger guard. He aimed the weapon at her bloody face; a second passed, then two, but he did not fire.
“Either pull the trigger, or don’t,” Ryan told him. “We have to move on.”
“Wish we had more bullets,” J.B. said, lowering the Beretta. “Or an ax. Or mebbe a machete.”
With startling speed, Shirley dropped the arm and lunged past J.B., reaching out for Echo’s bare ankle with gory fingers. She wanted meat with warm blood still coursing through it.
Ryan knew what was coming the instant Shirley glanced over the severed arm at the whitecoat’s leg: her eyes widened with delight. Scalies much preferred living vittles. That was something he couldn’t allow—they needed Echo alive.
As the scalie vaulted forward, he took a quick wind-up step toward her and snap kicked her in the middle of the face with the sole of his boot, driving his full weight into the blow. It was a head-on collision, and Shirley took the brunt. As she gave way, so did most of her front teeth. The stunning impact of boot-in-face reversed her course of her body one hundred eighty degrees, sending the back of her skull smashing into the wall.
It made a distinct crunching sound against the concrete.
Shirley slumped slowly onto her side, her ruined face and head pulsing dark blood across the floor.
“That ought to do it,” J.B. said.
As they advanced down the corridor, the scalies in front of them gathered up their picnics and fled into the gloom.
“Thank you for saving me,” Echo said to Ryan. “It wasn’t my idea to bring you here. Believe me, there was nothing I could do to stop that from happening.”
When he didn’t reply, she continued nervously. “I can’t take you in a straight line to the mat-trans. I want you to know I’m not trying to trick you. It’s something that can’t be helped. The fastest routes have been cut off by massive collapses and cave-ins from previous quakes. Entire levels had to be abandoned. Although you can get close to the mat-trans by elevator, the unit isn’t directly accessible that way anymore. To reach it from below you have to detour the badly damaged areas of the perimeter. That’s why we used the stairs when you first arrived. The big quake that just hit undoubtedly made things worse. I will try to lead you back to the holding cell on the twenty-fifth floor, and from there up the stairs to the sixty-sixth level, but it’s possible we may no longer be able to get through.”
Ryan was thinking the same thing. The mat-trans unit could have been crushed by the quake, or its power supply permanently cut off. Although it was a big risk, there was only one way to find out for sure. The whitecoat seemed to have recovered from her shock at the unexpected turn of events, but he wondered how she was going to react when she saw the muties they’d turned loose actually chilling her people, perhaps even pulling apart members of her own family. No matter what, he had to keep her focused on the task he had given her, or all was lost.
Around the hallway’s bend, at the stairwell entrance, they stepped over a pair of emptied man-size boots. There was no sign of more victims, though. Ryan figured if there were other casualties in the corridor, they had either been eaten or carried off, whole or in parts.
J.B. entered the stairwell first, with Ryan on his heels. They had no more than set foot inside when they were rushed by three hundred pounds and six feet of crazed, homicidal bird. Flapping its little wings, the animal slashed downward with its beak. The curved point missed J.B.’s skull and stuck in the brim of his fedora. Somehow, despite the surprise of the close range attack, as the hat was ripped from his head, J.B. managed to get the Beretta up. He jammed the muzzle against the center of the bird’s chest and fired over and over, putting six quick shots in virtually the same hole.
Though muffled by the plumage and underlying fat, the roar of blasterfire in the enclosed space was still deafening.
The penguin’s wings stiffened and it sat down with a thud, its bulk blocking access to the steps behind. Wisps of smoke rose from the blackened hole in its chest; its feathers were burning. The bird cocked its head to one side and eyed them malevolently. Though it was in agony, though it was dying, it seemed to be daring them to try to slip past its dagger of a beak. J.B. shot it once more, through the right eye. Brains and bits of skull splattered the risers and steps. When the head drooped forward, he booted the huge corpse onto its side.
J.B. reached down and picked up his hat. After brushing it off he stuck his fingertip through the newly made hole.
“Another two inches and you would have been bird meat,” Ricky said.
“Not a hell of a lot of bullets left,” J.B. said, screwing his hat back down. “We’re in deep shit.”
No one could argue his point.
They stepped around the dead monster and headed up the staircase with J.B. in the lead. He tracked the steps and landing above over the sights of the handblaster.
After they’d climbed ten stories, Ryan felt nicely warmed up; even his fingertips and toes were toasty. All the landing doors they passed were closed. There was no sign of mutie victims in the stairwell. Clearly they were on the right track, though. Neatly coiled piles of big-bore spoor practically shouted “Scalie!” The scagworms’ clusters of compact, black fecal pellets had already frozen to the treads. At the twelfth landing they found the first opened door. It looked like it had been pried from the metal jamb with crowbars. Stenciled on the concrete wall beside it were the words: Agronomics and Animal Resources.
They meant nothing to Ryan.
J.B. and Jak went through the doorway first, and they returned from the recce almost immediately.
“Big cave-in,” J.B. said. “The hall dead-ends about twenty feet in. It’s completely blocked, floor to ceiling. For sure the muties couldn’t have gone that way. They had to have turned back and kept on climbing.”
The albino nodded in agreement.
“Then we have to keep climbing, too,” Ryan said.
After another dozen levels at top speed, he was perspiring and starting to breathe hard. He could see the others were laboring, too, so he called for a quick break. Some of the landings they’d passed had names, most didn’t. The stairwell doors were all shut and unmarked by jaws, claws or sucker juice.
“The levels below have always been deserted,” Echo told him between her gasps for air. “They were built in anticipation of large scale development of Ark technology. They were supposed to house an influx of additional personnel and expanded research and manufacturing facilities. That was before nukeday, of course. The space was never needed.”
“Where is everybody?” Krysty asked
“Most of the people are in what we call the core of the redoubt. That’s another twenty floors up.”
“What’s there?” Ryan said.
“It’s where we all live. It’s the nerve center of the colony, scientific and military. There’s housing, nurseries, schools, hospital, cafeterias, entertainment.”
“What kind of entertainment?” J.B. asked.
“Games,” she said. “Music. Dancing. We watch movies, too. They’re all from the 1980s and ’90s, obviously. We’ve seen the same films so many times that everyone knows the dialogue, even the little kids. We chant it along with the actors and shout out the sound effects, the explosions, car crashes, and screams. On special occasions they turn off the sound track and we do all the audio ourselves.” She paused and after staring at him for a second, added, “You know, you really remind me of Snake Plissken.”
Ryan frowned at her. “Who’s that?”
E
cho opened her mouth to answer, but apparently thought better of it. “It’s not important, really,” she said. Then she plucked at the lapel of her lab coat and smiled. “Let the person who isn’t an archetype throw the first stone.”
“An arky what?” Ricky said.
The woman was rambling. Ryan gestured for J.B. to resume the ascent.
The next landing up had Bioengineering Level stenciled on the wall. The entry door stood ajar. Its stairwell side was badly dented, and the edge near the lock had buckled. The jamb showed bright scratches at roughly the height of a scagworm’s jaws.
“This is the level the holding cell is on,” Echo said. “But it’s on the far side of the perimeter.”
The whitecoat didn’t seem to understand what the torn open door meant. Perhaps she was still in shock. Or denial. If the muties had passed through the doorway, and there were living creatures on the level, they would all be dead, or wishing they were.
With J.B. in the lead with the Beretta, they pressed forward. Ryan kept Echo close with a hand on her shoulder. The damage to this level was extensive. The floor was covered in rubble and most of the overhead lights were out; those that were functional flickered on and off. Ryan and the others were looking for anything that could be used as a weapon, but there saw only chunks of concrete. The intersecting corridors on either side had pancaked, ceilings and walls had fallen. Only the main hallway was passable. Here and there bodies in lab coats were partly visible under the mounds of debris.
Echo didn’t try to stop to uncover them; she pointedly looked away, as if pretending she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, which was fine with Ryan.
The corpses had been fed on, at least the exposed parts—hands, feet, arms, legs—but the weight and the mass of the concrete that buried them had kept the muties from taking full advantage. Based on the partially eaten limbs, Ryan expected to encounter some of the creatures they’d released; he expected J.B. to cut loose with the handblaster in short order. But when the sound of blasterfire came, it was distant and muffled. Amid the faint rattle he thought he could make out screams.