The doors hissed behind him, and Ryan turned and dived through, rolling around and kicking out his feet, shaking off and crushing the last of his attackers.
A few dozen spiders made it through the gap, others being pulped as the doors closed. But there were enough people out there to stamp and stab every last one of them.
By the time Ryan stood, Trader and J.B. had carried Abe to one of the beds, laying him down while Mildred quickly started peeling off his clothing. Krysty, Jak and Dean were finishing off the mutie arachnids, hunting down the last dozen or so that had scuttled into the dormitory.
“You all right, Dad?” asked his son, breaking off to help him to his feet. “You got a double-flash bite on your face. Like someone stuck a pigeon’s egg under the skin. Bet that sucker’s really going to hurt you!”
“You don’t have to gloat.” Ryan cuffed the boy playfully. “You get bitten?”
“No. Too quick for them. But poor old Abe looks triple sick, Dad.”
Krysty wiped sweat from her forehead, then cleansed her knife on one of the mattresses and sheathed it. “That must have been one of the world’s bad sights,” she said.
“What?”
“Opening those doors and walking in on those” She shuddered. “On those things. Without any warning. Gaia!”
Mildred called to Dean. “There’s two drinking fountains down the far end of the dorm. Go and soak a rag in one and bring it back. Jak, help him. Need lots of water to wash these bites. Your hat, John?”
J.B. looked puzzled for a moment, then quickly picked up his fedora and went to fill it with water.
Ryan looked down at Abe, seeing the numerous speckled lumps all over him where he’d been bitten. They were particularly thick around his lower legs and arms, but his face was also badly swollen, streaked with blood.
Chapter Ten
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron, seeing that barely two hours had elapsed since they’d all been tugged out of sleep by Abe’s screams.
Once he’d calmed down and Mildred had bathed the spider bites again, the gunner had recovered fast, keen to get his clothes back on as the ambient temperature in the redoubt was only just above comfortable.
The rest of those who had been bitten found that the initial swellings had quickly gone down, leaving only patches of red on the skin that itched rather than hurt at all.
J.B. went and sat on the bed by Ryan. “Noticed how bad the air’s become?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I wonder if those mutie insects have blocked off part of the vent system?”
“Could be. I guess they must have felt the vibrations of us moving around the complex. Probably the biggest even in Spidertown in the last century. So they all came looking for us.”
The Armorer nodded. “Have you thought about what might’ve happened if those automatic doors to the ablutions had malfunctioned and let them in during the middle of the night, while we were all asleep?”
Ryan grinned and shook his head. “Not something I want to think about at all, thanks, brother.”
Krysty had been dozing on the adjacent bed. Now she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. “If we’re all well enough, could we move and make a jump out?”
“Sure.” Ryan stood and stretched. “No real hurry, though, is there?”
“Just have the feeling that our little furry friends might’ve found some way through the heart of the redoubt and they’ll suddenly pop up in the gateway chamber.”
“I reckon not, Krysty,” J.B. said. “I didn’t see any of those big grilles anyplace else.”
She stood, sniffed and made a face. “Whys the air gotten so bad?”
Ryan started to answer. “We reckon that” But he was interrupted.
The same disinterested, bland computerized voice as before came through the speakers in the ceiling.
“All personnel in sections four and five. All personnel in sections four and five.”
“That’s us,” Trader said, standing and grabbing at his blaster.
They waited, listening, but there was no immediate follow-up to the message.
Abe cleared his throat. “Don’t know if you’re all hangin’ here for me, but as far as I’m concerned, we could get moving out of this place real soon.”
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110