Ryan was still firing into the bodies heaped at the far end of the corridor, when the warlord shouted, “Clear!”
Ryan let up on the trigger. When he looked down, the magazine’s round counter showed twelve bullets remaining.
Nothing moved in the hallway but smoke and fire. The haze of burned cordite from Ryan’s weapon mixed with the clouds rising from the piles of dead. Fire raced along the great rents in the plaster that the pulse rifles had made.
Nara viewed the carnage on the other side of the firing port with stoic silence.
Damm was less subdued. “We cut them bite-sized!” he said, slapping palms with the sec man next to him.
The warlord didn’t join the celebration, either. Already at the door, he was waving for them to follow. “Come on, there’s a lot more where they came from,” Thrill Bill said. “We’ve got to move.”
As Ryan picked up his gear, Damm said, “How many of those mantraps have you got, Bill?”
“Not nearly enough to handle what FIVE’S throwing at us. We’ve got to get clear of Gloomtown, and fast, or they’ll box us in.”
“Gloomtown is a sealed level,” Nara said. “The only way in and out is controlled by FIVE.”
“The only official way out,” Thrill Bill corrected her.
In the hall outside, the warlord turned left and fell into a steady hard jog. Ryan noticed that the people in the corridor had stopped trooping after them. They were drawing way too much heat. It was safer to lie on top of one another in the side rooms, and pray that when the lasers sliced through the walls, they took out only the people piled above.
After a series of alternating right and left turns, the warlord stopped at another locked door. He opened it, then reached inside and hit a light switch. Ryan could see a long flight of metal stairs. Deserted stairs. The light was too dim at the bottom for him to be able to make it out. The stairwell was lined with redbrick walls, which looked ancient, and the mortar crumbled at the slightest touch.
“After you,” the warlord said.
When they’d all entered and descended a few stairs to give him room, Thrill Bill stepped in. He shut and relocked the door from the inside.
Ryan saw him take a compact, tape-wrapped package from a niche in the wall. He wasn’t sure what it was until he saw the man connect it to the door’s top hinge. Booby trap.
“A wake-up call,” Thrill Bill explained.
At the bottom of the stairs the floor was concrete. Ahead, was a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel, lined with more of the decaying brick. As they advanced, overhead they could hear muffled sounds of explosions, the growl of engines and the clanking of tracked vehicles maneuvering on concrete.
“We’re under Gloomtown,” the warlord said.
They trotted for another five minutes, following the tunnel as it wound underground. The walls on either side were featureless. No doors. No windows. But occasionally, there were breaks where sections of wall had either collapsed from age or been broken in on purpose. In the weak light from bulbs strung along the ceiling, Ryan could see into the cramped little rooms beyond. They were empty but for piles of dirt on the floor, and massive, rusting, I-beam supports that crisscrossed the interior space.
It was at one of these unremarkable breaks that Thrill Bill called another halt. He stepped through the large hole in the bricks, then ducked under the crossing I-beams and moved to the far wall.
Ryan, Nara and Damm watched him from the tunnel side of the break.
“I hoped I’d never have to use this,” the warlord admitted, as he bent and started to push the top off a heap of dirt.
“Use what?” Damm said. “I don’t see an exit.”
Ryan noticed a pair of iron hooks screwed into the mortar at about chest height.
Thrill Bill exposed the lid of a plastic crate. He opened it and took out a flashlight, which he set aside. The crate yielded two more tape-wrapped parcels, which the warlord hung by loops of cord to the exposed hooks. He stepped in front of the parcels and something beeped.