Labyrinth. James Axler

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      Chapter Four

      The extinguished torch dropped from Ewald Starr’s shock-stiffened fingers. Pain squeezed him like a giant fist, making every muscle bulge, every sinew strain to the snapping point.

      Unmasterable pain.

      As he screamed and hopped in the dancing half light, a torrent of humid air poured from the gash, driven forth by whatever was coming. The scent that rode that evil wind triggered something deep in his brain, something primal. An unfamiliar taste, metallic and sour, flooded his mouth. The taste of panic. And of imminent, crushing defeat.

      Worse suffering was on its way.

      Much, much worse.

      Ewald shoved Tolliver and his lit torch ahead of him. “Go!” he shrieked. “Go!!”

      The direction didn’t matter. To stand still was to die.

      The four of them raced away, running blindly into the black maw of the corridor. Dunbar couldn’t maintain the pace for more than a few yards before falling behind. Bringing up the rear, with nothing between him and whatever it was, his grunting turned frantic.

      Ewald, Tolliver and Willjay didn’t look back.

      When the clicking started again, rattling down the hallway after them, a distant, desperate Dunbar cried out, “Help me! Help me!”

      They didn’t stop; in fact, they somehow found the strength to run faster. And Ewald wasn’t the only one praying for it to take Dunbar. To take him and choke.

      A cowardly prayer, promptly answered.

      Dunbar’s screech lasted only a second before it cut off. The clicking quadruple-timed, doubled that, doubled it again, climbing in volume and pitch, a triumphant roar that ended a horrible crescendo of wretching.

      Ewald knew there was no guarantee that the thing would be satisfied with Dunbar, that it wouldn’t pursue and chill them one by one. Like the stairwell, the hallway was a kill zone; they had to get out of it, and quick. Over Tolliver’s right shoulder, Ewald saw a double doorway. “In there!” he cried.

      They burst through the heavy metal doors and onto a short concrete landing that overlooked a room so broad and so cavernous they couldn’t see the far side of it. Overhead, the undersides of steel I-beam trusses and buttresses were dimly visible. The network of their upper surfaces and the ceiling were beyond the reach of torch light. Smell of death was like a sledgehammer pounding inside Ewald’s head.

      “Man, look at your arm!” Tolliver said. “You’re hurt triple bad.”

      Ewald’s right arm had ballooned up to nearly twice its normal size and turned black, but it no longer pained him. He couldn’t move his grossly swollen fingers, and he couldn’t bend or raise the arm. Hanging straight down from his shoulder, it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. When he tested his forearm with a fingertip there was no sensation, and the spongy flesh didn’t spring back. The pressure left a deep dent and split the skin, like it was already dead meat. For a second Ewald thought he was going to puke.

      “You better give me that blaster,” Tolliver told him. “You’re in no shape to use it.”

      Ewald grimaced at the graybeard’s shaking hands. No way could Tolliver aim the Uzi. He probably couldn’t even fire it. Not that the ex-mercie would have willingly surrendered his weapon, anyway.

      “Don’t worry about me,” Ewald said. “I can shoot lefty just fine. We’ve got to keep moving. Got to find another way down.”

      The landing’s short flight of steps led to a polished concrete floor. Beyond the hazy circle of light cast by the torches it was pitch black. At Ewald’s direction, they turned and speedwalked in a straight line until they reached a wall. From the floor to a height of about seven feet, it was lined with narrow, sheet metal enclosures, control panel after control panel with LCD readouts, gauges, warning lights, and thousands upon thousands of exposed switches and terminals. All dead.

      As they followed the wall, to their right, out on the floor, a low, hulking cylindrical shape came into view. The twenty-foot-wide, machined steel housing sat in a matching circular depression in the concrete. Ahead, there were more of the dam’s generator turbines. One after another they squatted, stretching off into the darkness.

      Around the silent machines were scattered bodies. A litter of corpses in random piles and puddles, in varying states of decomposition. The vast generator room was both slaughterhouse and dumping ground.

      A kill zone even less defensible than the stairwell and hallway.

      “Move it! Move it!” Ewald said, pushing the others to a trot.

      They didn’t get far.

      When the clicking began, СКАЧАТЬ