James Axler – Stoneface

“Are you all right?” he asked, helping her to her feet and handing her the ZKR. It was undamaged.

She took a long, shaky breath. “I think so. Electric shock, considerable voltage. Good thing I protected my eyes.” She kicked the shattered, smoldering remains of the beetle. “Goddamn nasty little toy. Like a flying stun gun.”

The lights over the lift door were blinking. “We’re going to have company,” Ryan said, tugging the badge from Doug’s lapel.

They sprinted back toward the storage area, hearing the hydraulic hiss of door panels sliding open behind them. Ryan reflected that the prospects of their surviving inside the complex were moving from poor to zero. All the odds were stacked against them, but that was nothing new.

The explosive report of a gunshot sounded from the rear, and a bullet whipped between them, spinning end over end from the sound of it. The slug chewed off the corner of a varnished, ornately carved table on Ryan’s right.

“You idiot!” bleated a male voice from somewhere behind them. “Don’t shoot in here!”

Ryan and Mildred exchanged tight grins. The freezies wouldn’t shoot out of fear of damaging the relics, but since they were under no such obligation, they unlimbered their autoblasters. Spinning, Mildred and Ryan triggered the Heckler amp; Koch MP-5 and the Walther MPL at the same time. The blasters roared into the trio of armed, business-suited men dogtrotting toward them in a flanking maneuver. A crate filled with light bulbs jumped and blew apart under the leaden hail. They didn’t bother to gauge the accuracy of their shots. They fired, whirled and ran among a collection of life-size statues.

They changed direction twice, then sank down in the shadow of a giant television screen and electronics console. Male voices filtered to them, but they were too distant to be understood. The tones were undeniably petulant, like children ordered to perform an unpleasant task.

“There’s got to be another way out of this rat’s maze,” Mildred panted.

“Speak for yourself, Mildred,” Ryan replied.

“No, not us. Them. They’re the rats. Hear them?”

“Yeah. They sound like bratty kids. And neither Doug or Bob were afraid of us, almost like they couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“Exactly,” Mildred said. “John likes to say, ‘crazy as a shithouse rat’ to describe mental illness. I think we’re dealing with the equivalent here. If you pack rats too closely together for too long, you get homicidal rats, suicidal rats, cannibalistic rats, insane rats. Not too different from the people in this place.”

They stopped whispering when the sound of the voices grew louder.

“How’s Doug?”

“How should I know? I’m not a medic. Where’s Bob?”

“He was supposed to check out the merchandise. Somebody go look.”

The voices drifted away, becoming distant and incomprehensible again. Ryan, suddenly realizing that he was very cold, repressed a shiver. It felt like he was squatting in the path of a frigid blast of wintry air. Wetting a forefinger, he held it up in several directions.

“Air movement that way,” he whispered, nodding ahead of them. “Bastard cold air movement.”

They crept in that direction and saw the shadowed, circular mouth of a hole in the floor about fifty yards away. Rising, they raced toward it, casting glances over their shoulders every few feet. It was more of a shaft than a tunnel. Icy wind blew up through a thickly meshed metal screen, stinging their faces, bringing water to their eyes and ruffling their hair. The frame of the hatch cover had a combination lock, but no handle or knob. Beneath it they saw ladder rungs affixed to one circular wall.

Ryan took aim with the SIG-Sauer and emptied the clip at the lock. He stood fast as ricochets whined and screamed around him. The 9 mm rounds smashed and shattered the combination lock, blasting the steel catch to scrap. He wrenched the hatch cover up and gestured to Mildred. “After you.”

She didn’t protest, but quickly climbed into the opening. Ryan followed her, not bothering to shut the cover after him. The men would have undoubtedly heard the shots, so as he scampered down the rungs, he swiftly ejected the spent clip of the pistol, took a spare from the harness and slid it into the SIG-Sauer’s butt.