As a millipede dropped off the last row of cans and started out of the supply closet, Doc shot it twice at both ends, blowing off its pinchers. Already moving, Ryan and J.B. charged forward to hit the door with their full weight. It slammed shut, cutting the insect in two. Pumping blood, the mutie wailed in agony and Doc soundly kicked it away, the dying bug hitting the wall with a splat and leaving a gruesome stain.
“That’s where the first crack leads to,” Mildred cursed, her ZKR trained on the door. “The damn fuel storage closet!”
“Droid couldn’t stop them there without chancing the whole damn base would blow,” J.B. added. “And neither can we!”
“How many bugs you think there are?” Dean demanded, quickly thumbing fresh rounds into the spent clip of the Browning. He shoved it into a pocket and started on another. Not too many loose rounds were left, so he’d have to make every shot count.
Even as the door shuddered from an impact on the other side, Ryan caught a flurry of motion in the crack. ‘
“Too many!” Ryan snarled, pumping lead into the darkness. The muzzle flash of the weapon lit the crevice in a wild strobe just enough to show a swarm of millipedes crawling along the sides and top of the opening past the makeshift barricade.
“Back to the mat-trans!” Ryan ordered, firing the Steyr. There was a gush of blood and a childlike scream, but another mutie crawled over the twitching corpse to reach the edge of the crack and snap at the companions.
Riding the Uzi in short controlled bursts, J.B. laid down some suppressive fire with his blaster, while the others retreated for the stairs. From there they covered the man until he joined them.
“What the hell is going on?” Krysty demanded from the next level below, her arms loaded with foam coffee cups.
“We’re leaving!” Mildred grunted, leaning against the stairwell door to try to keep it closed. “Anybody know a way to lock this thing in place?”
Whistling sharply, Jak tossed a knife upward and Ryan caught it by the handle, then rammed the thick blade under the door jamb. Hesitantly, the others released the door and it held, but clearly not for long.
Nobody needed any encouragement to start racing down the stairs. As they reached the middle level, there was a slam from above and a rustling sound that grew in volume. The companions charged through the flickering control room. Jak tried to stab another knife under the jamb, but it wouldn’t hold. Abandoning the effort, the group moved into the antechamber, closed the vanadium-steel door and locked it tight.
“Safe at last,” Doc exhaled in relief, mopping his brow of a handkerchief.
Seconds later, there was a thump against the metal, followed by a scratching noise as something raked across the dense material.
“Bugs are fast,” J.B. said, removing his glasses and tucking them into a shirt pocket.
“Mildred, any more jump juice?” Ryan asked, heading across the chamber.
“Not a drop,” she said, shaking the empty canteen.
“Too bad for us, then. Everybody in!” Ryan ordered, striding to the chamber.
As the companions crowded into the unit, the heavy thumping increased against the steel portal to the chamber, then a soft electronic mist started to gather at the ceiling and floor. A tingle filled their bones, but even as the companions felt themselves drop through the floor into the infinity of the subelectronic void they noticed a change, a subtle shifting from the usual procedure, and they instantly knew that something was terribly wrong.
Chapter Four
“We’ll camp here,” Cranston shouted over the engines, and eased the big Harley off the dried riverbed and over a bumpy culvert to head toward a gigantic rock mesa.
The jagged column of stone rose from the sunbaked red ground to dominate the countryside for miles. Several tiny creatures with wings circled the top of the mesa, but the details and even their cries were lost in the distance. The sheer sides of the mesa were vertical walls of grayish rock, impossible to climb. No plants grew from the sides of the mesa, not even vines of scrub brush. It was as bare as a dead man’s bones.