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“No, and it certainly doesn’t smell any more pleasant than the festering pit we just left, does it?” Doc said, covering his mouth and nose.
Indeed, it didn’t smell any better outside. In fact, the reek was much worse. It was warmer here than in the mat-trans corridor, and more humid, and the pervasive odors of rot and mold surrounded them. Although he didn’t say it, Ryan was pretty sure of one of the components making up the miasma around them—rotting meat.
“Need a light.” Bending to grab one of the carpet strips, he rubbed it in the filthy fur of a dead rat body, smearing it with feces and hair, then wrapped it around the blade of his panga. “Mildred, J.B.’s got a flint on him, find it.”
“I’m not dead yet…” Ryan half turned to see the Armorer holding out the small stone, a scowl creasing his eyebrows.
“Hell, never said you were, just figured you were takin’ a little nap after our running around up there. Since you’re awake, you can make yourself useful and carry the rest of that carpet. We’re gonna need more fuel when this runs out.”
J.B. accepted two handfuls of the thin strips, stuffing them in his pockets.
Kneeling, Ryan struck the flint against the steel of his knife, sending a shower of sparks into the makeshift torch, which flared into sullen light. He caught Krysty’s worried stare and nodded, wordlessly telling her it would be all right, when in fact he had no idea whether any of them would survive the next few minutes. With Jak and J.B. incapacitated, their numbers were down by a third. That meant two of the best warriors in the group were out of action, and Ryan estimated their ability was more or less cut by half, particularly with two others carrying them along. Doc and Mildred were more than capable, he’d grant them that, but they simply weren’t in the other two men’s league. Krysty was another story, easily equal to any of the other men when it came to chilling, as she had demonstrated time after time. Her lethal performance in the hallway had proved that point yet again.
Rising, he raised the torch overhead to cast the maximum available light out in front of them. “All right, let’s move out. Stay close and sing out if you see anything. You ready, Doc?”
The old man stared at the limp corpse of one of the rats with unfocused eyes. “Would that I had a piece of string to swing it on, that is a fine pastime for a young boy to while an afternoon away, is it not?”
“Ah, Doc…” Ryan toed the stiffening body with his boot. “You saying you used to swing these on a string?”
“Oh, yes, it was great fun for the boys to scare the girls with—that or a dead cat, you see.”
“And they say the twenty-second century is uncivilized. Sometimes I think you boys don’t have anything on the nineteenth.” Mildred muttered.
At the moment, Ryan agreed with her. “Doc? Doc, snap out of it. We might be walking into trouble down here, and we need you in the here and now, understand?”
The white-haired man’s eyes blinked once, twice, then he stared up at Ryan with his more-or-less usual gaze. “Beg pardon, dear sir, I was gamboling down the misty paths of memory lane for a moment.” Doc hoisted the LeMat in front of his face. “It shall not happen again, I assure you.”
“All right, let’s go.” Ryan’s torch was already burning low, and the first order of business was to find a better light source, and quick.
His blaster extended into the room, Ryan took a step out, then another. The stench hit him like a physical blow, almost overpowering in its intensity. Beside him, Doc exited the elevator, and immediately turned to be quietly sick in the corner.
The floor was alternately slick and dry, making footing treacherous. Bringing the torch down, Ryan saw more mutie shit covering the floor as in the hallway, just not as deep here. The lumps were larger, however, some the size of a child’s fist, which sparked a faint alarm in Ryan’s mind. “Go slow, everyone. We don’t need any twisted or broken ankles here.”
“Yeah, we got enough problems already,” Mildred replied.
“Well, here is some news of import that may cheer us.” Doc darted off into the darkness, only to return a moment later wheeling something in front of him on squealing, crusted wheels. “I found a chair.”
“Great, Doc, great.” Ryan grimaced as he stared at the ancient piece of furniture, which looked as if it would fall apart if he breathed on it, much less sat down. It was also covered with feces, which Doc busily brushed off. “What in the hell are we supposed to do with it?”
The old man’s expression turned sly, as if only he knew the answer to a great riddle. With effort, he wrenched off one of the metal arms in a squeal of rusted metal and held it up. “Wrapped in your clever mixture of mutant shit and U.S. government-approved carpet—supplied by the lowest bidder, of course—I believe this would make a more than adequate torch, would it not?”
“He’s got you there, Ryan,” Krysty said.
“Guess he does.” Shaking the guttering remains of his first torch off the panga, Ryan cleaned and sheathed it before breaking off the other chair arm. In two minutes he had fashioned a pair of torches, one of which he passed to Doc. “You found them, you get to carry one.”
“Its lustrous gleam blazes like the bejeweled flame that lit the brazier whenst mankind came together to celebrate the first Olympiad in Athens, shining out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark—or is that a stream of bat’s piss? In either event, I will guard it with my very life.”
“I’d settle for finding a light of some kind, electric or otherwise—” Ryan began to reply before Krysty’s urgent whisper cut him off.
“We’re not alone.”
Everyone froze, and Ryan lifted his torch higher to try to spot what might be coming at them from the dark. “How many?”
“A lot, all around us—and they’re bigger than the ones in the hallway.”
Now Ryan heard the skittering of many feet; the peculiar rustle-clack of the pig-rats as they approached. A shadowed form remained just out of the yellow circle of torchlight, and Ryan’s breath hitched in his throat for a second—it was as large as a medium dog. He brought up his blaster, but with a flash of a naked, pink tail as big around as his thumb, it vanished into the gloom.
“What’s the plan?” Krysty asked.
“Give me J.B.’s Uzi.” Holstering his SIG-Sauer, Ryan accepted the submachine gun, unfolded the stock and snugged it into his shoulder to brace when he fired. “All right, we follow the wall until we come to another exit. They can’t surround us then. Keep your blasters out and shoot anything inside the light. Above all, keep moving. There must be another way out of here. Let’s move.”
Keeping his back to the wall, and the torch in front of him, Ryan led the way, searching for the corner that would take them deeper into the cavernous room. The patter of many paws and hooves grew louder now, as if they were being shadowed by a veritable mob of the hideous beasts.
Ryan stopped short when he saw what he was about to walk into. The muties had been crapping down here for so long they had created piles of feces as high as Ryan’s head. He couldn’t even see the wall beyond in the dimming light. “Far as we go this way, people. Follow me.”
A flash of greasy, gray fur appeared in the torchlight, and Ryan squeezed the trigger of the Uzi, sending a single bullet into the pig-rat’s skull, the noise of the shot drowning out the scurrying of the stalking rodents for a few moments. It skidded to a stop at his feet, a mottled pink and back tongue lolling out as it spasmed and died. Even lying on its side, the creature’s body rose almost to Ryan’s knee.
“Good lord!” Mildred said. “They grow them big down here.”
“Keep moving. That shot scared them off, but they’ll be back, and probably a lot more next time.” Ryan set the pace, but was distracted by Doc, who stepped ahead of him to peer at a pile of shit, torch held high.
“Doc, we’ve got to keep moving.”
“Is it? It is! Give me a minute or two, my dear Ryan, and I will have the answer to your prayers in hand shortly.” Dropping his torch on the ground, Doc plunged his hands into a pile of shit, flinging fist-sized lumps aside with an expression of demented glee on his face.
“Ryan!” Mildred’s urgent hiss swiveled his head around to see a pair of the large pig-rats creeping in behind them. Stepping in front of the women, Ryan aimed and fired two careful shots that took the muties down, but they were quickly replaced by more. Ryan waved the torch, which seemed to keep them at bay, but the brutes only retreated far enough to be outside the immediate reach of the blazing brand. Lifting the torch overhead again, Ryan saw they were encircled by a double ring of the beasts, with dozens of claws scraping the floor as they approached. Finding the fire selector on the Uzi with his thumb, Ryan flicked it to full-auto and prepared to send a burst into the front line.
“Whatever you’re doing, Doc, you better do it fast!” The pig-rats were only a couple yards away now, grunting, snuffling and drooling in their desire to tear into fresh meat. Tightening his grip on the submachine gun, Ryan squeezed off a burst. The 9 mm rounds punched through a trio of muties, sending them squealing away to be set upon by their comrades.
The crack of Krysty’s and Mildred’s blasters also joined the fray, but Ryan saw it was hopeless—there were just too many of the vermin. He triggered short bursts until the Uzi clicked empty, then handed it to Mildred and drew his SIG-Sauer intent on making the nearest mutie’s attempt to steal a bite a fatal decision.
He had just drawn a bead on the closest one, which was hungrily eyeing his leg, when a two-foot-long tongue of flame shot past him and into the mutie’s face, searing it to a crisp as he watched in stunned amazement.
Chapter Ten
The pack of pig-rats halted its advance upon seeing the face of their comrade immolated right next to them. The burn victim screamed in agony and staggered away, its eyes heated to milky-white blindness. One of the others snapped at its foreleg, and when it turned to face that threat, another snuck in from behind and went for its underbelly. In seconds, the wounded one was down and dead, feasted upon by a half dozen of its fellows.
Ryan turned from the grisly sight—now nicely illuminated—back to Doc, who now held a curious apparatus. It looked to be a pipe about two feet long, bent at a sixty-degree angle, with a two-foot-long tongue of blue-orange flame erupting from a small nozzle. The other end was attached to a pair of large, steel cylinders by stiff rubber tubes. Above the odor of feces, Ryan now detected the faint scent of what smelled like burned garlic.
Doc’s face had lit up like a boy’s on Christmas morning. “MAPP gas welding torch—liquefied petroleum gas mixed with methylacetylene-propadiene. If I can get a hand with the fuel tank—” he waved at the pair of tall cylinders with a pair of gauges at the top “—we should be able to stroll out of here like walking out of church on a sunny Sunday afternoon.”
“Then let’s go. Neither Jak nor J.B. are getting any better while we stand around gawking!” Mildred said.
“Doc, look out!” Ryan aimed his blaster past the old man, who spun at the same time and adjusted a knob on the handle of the device, sending a five-foot burst of flame at the encroaching group of rats trying to ambush him. The searing fire drove them back, and Doc advanced into the group, wielding the pipe like a demented conductor, swinging it back and forth, singeing hair and mutie skin as he cleared a path through the pack surrounding them.
“Ryan, help me move the containers!” he snapped. “Everyone else stay close!”
Ryan kept his SIG-Sauer ready as he grabbed the handle sticking up above the pair of tanks. Upon a closer look, he saw that they were fastened to an upright, mobile cart, the rubber wheels jammed solid with fecal matter. Tipping the handle toward him, Ryan tried forcing them to move, but neither one budged an inch.
“Hold up, Doc!” Ryan tugged on the handle, breaking the cart loose from where it had stood for the past hundred years, and dragging it out before Doc could damage the hoses connecting the flaming wand to its fuel source. “Okay, stay close to the wall! Everyone, follow us!”
The muties snarled and shrieked their displeasure, but none were bold enough to risk the fire to attack the norm keeping them at bay. Guided by the wall on his left, Doc steadily drove through the crowd. Ryan was torn between keeping up with the old man and watching their back, but Krysty and Mildred seemed to be doing fine in that regard, the two women teaming up to protect their own flanks and guard each other. Pig-rats snapped and whined, but the occasional well-placed shot kept any rear force from becoming too organized or large.
Slowly, they forged deeper into the room, which Ryan was beginning to think had no end, but seemed to go on forever, with the group surrounded by darkness and muties, only held at bay by Doc’s improvised flamer. Always, the pig-rats probed their defenses, looking for a weak spot to swarm in for the kill. And time after time, wave after wave, Doc, Ryan and the others fended them off with fire and lead.
After what might have been the sixth or seventh assault, Doc, his narrow chest heaving like a bellows, pointed with the blazing torch. “Ryan, I see something ahead. It looks like a wall. It might be the way out!”
“Go! Go!”
Doc increased the spray on his torch, sending a stream of fire arcing out, scattering scorched muties out of his path. Ryan and the others increased their pace as well, pulses quickening as they realized they might be close to leaving this hellhole.
Then, as quickly as he had spoken, Doc stumbled to a stop, the torch drooping in his hand. “Holy mother of God…”
Ryan skidded to a halt beside him, the cart almost banging his shins before lurching to a stop. “Doc, what the hell, why you stopping now?”
In answer, the other man simply raised his arm and pointed.
At first, Ryan couldn’t make out what was ahead, but then they advanced into the light and his blaster rose instinctively, even though he knew it probably didn’t have a chance in hell of putting this new enemy down.
From around the wall lumbered huge, furry shapes, their front claws scraping through the muck, and their rear hooves clattering on the floor. Each of these muties, six in all, stood as tall as Ryan on their four legs. One of them yawned, exposing teeth as long as his hand, capped by a double pair of tusks the length of his forearm. Ryan knew that if they wanted, each one of these abominations could lunge forward and bite his head off, or disembowel him with one swipe of their three-inch claws.
Mildred, her eyes wide, was bringing up her blaster to target one of the huge beasts, but J.B. got his hand up first and managed to clamp his fingers around hers.
“No! No shooting, you hear?” he whispered.
“But we can take them out right now, before they kill us,” she hissed back.
“If they’d wanted us dead, we’d be on the floor, guts around our ankles,” Ryan said, his low voice carrying to everyone in the group. “No one makes a move until I do, got it?”
Mildred nodded. Ryan didn’t have to check the rest; he knew what the answer would be.
He did, however, steal a glance at Doc, who was staring as if entranced—but not at the six horse-sized mutants. “Is it not amazing, my dear Ryan? That life, in all of its blind and infinite wisdom, somehow finds a way to continue, to forge forward, despite all of our pathetic attempts to shape or control or destroy it?”
“Hey, Doc, right now that life you’re so all-fired moony over is about to swallow us whole, so why don’t we try to get by them as quick as possible? If I can get the shotgun, it might even—”
Doc shook his head, his gray-white hair flapping around his shoulders. “No, Ryan. Look closely at what lies ahead of us, and tell me if you think we have any chance of escaping this room alive.”
The old man’s words were spoken with perfect, chilling clarity, and the look on his face was anything but insane, if Ryan was any judge. He looked back at the huge pig-rats, none of which had made a move toward them yet.
None of them…Ryan glanced around to see that the rest of the pig-rats had also retreated to a safe distance, many of them sitting on their haunches and regarding the party, as if they were an audience, watching some sort of macabre play.
He peered closer at what he first thought was a wall, only to realize the torch light was playing tricks on his eyes. It had to have been, for the barrier curved away at the top, and was covered in thick, matted gray fur, liberally caked with shit. And even stranger, it pulsed in and out rhythmically, almost as if…
“Fireblast…” Ryan breathed as he realized exactly what was lying in front of them. At that exact same moment, the wall of flesh and fur undulated and rippled. From the top he saw a massive paw, longer than he was tall, tipped with curved, short-swordlike talons at the end, descend toward the floor. He stared in mingled revulsion and awe as the leviathan—for there was no better word for it—continued to turn over.
The queen of the mutie pig-rat horde was an appalling vision straight out of a nightmare, brought to breathing, quivering life. Easily twenty feet tall lying down, she had to be at least three times as long from her twitching nose to her huge, naked pink tail, a bloated rodent mountain at the center of her filthy empire. Completing her turn, which Ryan figured she didn’t do very often, brought a double row of her engorged teats into view. As he looked on in horrified fascination, a dozen mewling, blind, four-foot-long infants swarmed over her, seeking out the swollen glands, which oozed a thick, greenish-white liquid from their tips. The next generation eagerly suckled at her chest, climbing over each other in their eagerness to get at the life-giving fluid.
The face of the mother was just as large as the rest of her, with huge, black eyes swimming in a puffy face swollen with layers of fat. Her teeth were the hugest Ryan had ever seen, jutting from a mouth so cavernous that if she yawned, he figured he might be able to walk inside if he stooped a bit. She regarding them with a penetrating stare, however, appearing anything but a mindless rodent. Her gaze seemed particularly drawn to the flaming torch, hanging almost forgotten in Doc’s hand, and she twisted her head away, although her eyes never left the flickering flame.
That seemed important to Ryan, but damned if he knew exactly how at the moment. A straight-up fight was impossible—it would only result in their immediate deaths, even if he managed to get the shotgun off J.B. and firing. The torch itself was good on the smaller animals, but the huge rats would simply devour them before they could be burned to death. He didn’t doubt that a bite from those massive jaws could easily sever a limb.
“Ryan!” The urgent whisper made him glance back at Krysty, whose normally calm face was furrowed in concentration. “Be careful. Do not underestimate her. She knows…things. She—thinks like us….”
Krysty’s words scared Ryan even more, but at the same time, the glimmer of a plan was forming in the back of his consciousness. He just needed another moment to put it together….
One of the guards swung its head over to his leader, as if seeking permission for whatever he was about to do. The queen’s eyes flicked toward him, then back to the group, and the huge pig-rat started forward, saliva dripping from his jaws, his killing intent more than clear.
Chapter Eleven
The silent exchange gave Ryan an idea.
“Wait!” His command shattered the stillness, even checking the guard mutie, who stopped and cocked its head, regarding him in what Ryan could have sworn was puzzlement.
“Doc, you said these things were smart, right?”
“Verily, they exhibit intelligent behavior beyond any rodents I’ve ever seen. The queen structure is most fascinating, almost like a collective hive. It would also explain the simultaneous reaction of the first group we encountered.”
“Good, then they should understand what I’m doing. Give me the torch.” Ryan grabbed the weapon from the old man. “Stand back. If this works, we’re going to have to move fast. If not, everyone take as many of the fuckers down as you can before they get you.”
Moving slowly, Ryan held the welding torch up so all of his rapt audience saw it. He twisted the knob, releasing a spurt of blue-orange flame into the air, which got everyone’s attention. Two of the giant pig-rats hissed angrily at the sight, but a short bark from the queen silenced them.
Next, Ryan brought the pair of tanks forward so they were in plain view to everybody. Slowly pulling his blaster out, he carefully ejected the magazine, keeping them both in his hand as did so. Using his thumb, he flicked a bullet onto the ground, angling it with his toe so that it pointed at the nearest pile of shit.
“Everyone stand back.” Making sure the colony of muties was still watching, Ryan leaned over, keeping his eye on them as he did so, and carefully applied the flame to the casing, making sure the bullet still faced away from the group. Seconds passed, then a minute, then, with an explosive pop the cordite in the shell ignited, sending a burst of flame up as the lead corkscrewed into the dung heap.
Stepping back to the pair of fuel canisters, Ryan began bringing the blazing torch closer to them. The queen’s eyes went from the blackened casing to the four-foot-tall containers, and she suddenly screeched in alarm. The guards tensed to spring, but another howl from her froze them where they stood, poised to leap on the group.
Having reloaded his blaster while the muties were distracted by the bullet, Ryan’s weapon was back up in a flash, pointing at the queen’s head, which felt like threatening a mutie grizzly with a flyswatter. But the torch, coming ever nearer to the valves that regulated the flow of oxygen and fuel, was Ryan’s ace in the hole.
Now he just had to make sure the bluff he was running didn’t turn into a dead man’s hand.
Doc, as if noticing what Ryan was doing for the first time, said mildly, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, my dear man. The explosion would kill us all.”
“That’s what I’m counting on, Doc, and that she realizes it, too.”
Doc’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “My dear Ryan, you are one of the most low-down, conniving, sneakiest men I have ever had the privilege to meet.”
“Just trying to make sure we all don’t get our faces—or any other parts—chewed off. And don’t start slapping my back in congratulations just yet. If you haven’t noticed, we still aren’t out of here.” Ryan grabbed the handle of the tank cart. “All right, we’re going. Don’t make any moves unless they do first—then chill anyone who does.”
Holstering his blaster, Ryan started hauling the cart toward the rear end of the queen, keeping the torch near the fuel tanks and his head as far from her giant behind as possible. The huge pig-rat nearest to him growled low in its throat, its long, pink tail, as thick as Ryan’s thigh, whipping back and forth. For a moment, Ryan thought he’d have to draw and take the big bastard down, but a gigantic, hairy leg swept over and clouted the guard in the head, making him stagger away.
Ryan glanced up at the queen, who regarded him with cold, malice-filled eyes as she nodded slightly. Stepping around the stunned guard, he motioned the rest of the group forward with his head. Up close he saw the pups still gulping down the noxious fluid, which smelled even worse than it looked.
The queen shifted again, rolling back over with an effort. Ryan couldn’t blame her. In her place, he wouldn’t have trusted himself either. The procession was oddly silent, only the irritated squeaks of the young as they scrambled around again for the milk, the thick, sibilant breathing of the rats as they watched the humans leave and the hiss of the lit torch breaking the silence. Ryan felt more than heard the pack of medium pig-rats pacing them, flowing around the queen’s head to follow the group.
A sudden shot caught Ryan off guard, and he stumbled, catching himself before dropping either the torch or the tank. Before the echo died away, he heard something slither down a pile, and looked to his left to see a medium pig rat with a bloody hole where its right eye had been roll to a stop from the nearest pile of dung.
The guards had tensed again, ready to leap, but a shrill hiss from their queen stopped them.
