As Ryan pushed out from under the slunk, Damm was pulling Nara to her feet. He had a satchel slung over one shoulder. “This way!” the mercie leader said, vaulting the van’s ruined side wall.
On Nara’s heels, Ryan hopped down into the green slop. Already he thought he could feel something strange going on inside his lungs, a kind of chill, deep down, and a heaviness that made it hard for him to draw breath. He hoped it was just the power of suggestion. But he felt a noticeable strain in his chest and an accompanying weakness in his legs as he fought through the piles of slime to catch up with the blonde.
In the glare of the oncoming APCs’ headlights the bleak, softly shrouded landscape before him stretched on and on, as far as he could see. If those lights went out, he knew he would be instantly, irretrievably lost.
And shortly thereafter, very dead.
Unseen, gauzy curtains of slime slicked over Ryan’s face, his nose, his lips. An acrid, evil taste filled his mouth. He spit as he ran, and as he spit, he fought to keep from puking. Sticky moisture, from the humid air, from the mounds of slunk he stomped through, had seeped through his clothes and onto his skin.
At least he wasn’t the last in line. Perhaps because their infections were more advanced, the other mercies were struggling to keep up. Leading the ragged file of seven, Damm headed for the only source of light other than the fast-closing APCsa dim, greenish rectangle at ground level.
Floodlights from behind swept over them, and almost in the same instant they were hit by another cannon pulse. Ryan felt the wave of heat above his head and to the rear. He heard a sizzling sound, then a scream cut off short.
When he glanced back he saw the man behind him was gone, turned to vapor along with tons of bacteria. Another cannon pulse slammed the wall ahead of them. Though momentarily blinded, he kept on running; there was no stopping now. As he sprinted through the billowing steam cloud, the stench of frying slime enveloped him.
Ahead of him, Damm vanished into the rectangle of paler green, then Nara. He hit the foot of the ramp and skidded on the thin layer of water that was sheeting off the concrete.
Above was more light.
Above was hope.
Gasping for air, Ryan charged up the incline. There was no mere chill in his lungs now. There was burning cold and a tangible, sloshing weight with every step.
He was drowning.
He wanted to cough, but he couldn’t let himself. Once he started, he knew he’d never stop.
Behind them, he could hear the roar of the APCs’ engines. No way could he outrun the pursuit. Certainly not uphill, on foot, with lungs half-full of bacteria.
Forty feet up the ramp from Ryan, Damm slowed long enough to unsling the satchel from his shoulder, pull a lanyard inside and drop the bag on the ground.
As Ryan dodged around the obstacle, he could hear the hissing of the fuse inside.
Damm cried back at him, “Run! Run!”
Run was all he could do.
There were no turns to hide behind, just an uptilting expanse of straight and narrow.
Though it felt as if he were dying, Ryan drove himself onward. The resounding clank of metal tracks on concrete filled the tunnel, as did the light from a bank of headlights. The APC driver gunned his engine and shifted into low gear.
Ryan had gone no more than twenty steps farther when he was slammed by a giant hand, flattened on the streaming pavement by a single blow while above him, chunks of hot metal sang off the walls. Shaking his head to clear it, Ryan scrambled to his feet.
The lead APC lay on its side, blocking the middle of the tunnel. The track on its left side had been blown apart. Fire boiled up from inside the passenger compartment. A pair of undamaged headlights cut tunnels through the spreading smoke.
Nara was already moving, if stiffly. Blood leaked in a trickle from her nose and ears.