James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Smell us,” Dean said.

“Not for long,” Louis promised. “Get moving.” He retrieved a gren from his pack and pulled the pin. Turning, he lobbed the bomb back onto the acoustic tiles.

Dean went up the shaft, bracing his back against the side with his palms extended in front of him, shoving his way up with his feet. Louis was right below him.

When the gren blew, it sent a flash of light stabbing into Dean’s eyes. Monkeys screamed in terror and in rage. Dean kept climbing, feeling the wave of heat pass over him. Wherever they were headed, it had to be better than where they were.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ryan was the last man through the door on the second level. Monkeys filled the landing below, their eyes glowing ruby red. He paused for a moment, squeezing the SIG-Sauer’s trigger as rapidly as he could until it was empty.

Monkeys flopped backward, chilled by the full-metal-jacket rounds.

He stepped back to reload, and J.B. stepped forward.

“Grens,” the Armorer said, showing Ryan the spherical objects in his hands. J.B. pulled the pins with his teeth, then tossed the bombs into the stairwell.

When the explosion sounded so quickly after, Ryan thought for a moment that J.B. had miscalculated the time and blown them all to hell. Then he realized that the other explosion was farther off.

The two bombs the Armorer had launched erupted right after he pulled the stairwell door closed.

“Might have discouraged them some,” J.B. said, adjusting his hat, “but they’re still plenty interested.”

Ryan took the lead. He sprinted down the hallway, past elevators with sagging doors torn from their tracks. Moonlight poured in through the windows at one end of the corridor and filtered out the set at the other end. They crossed two intersections before the monkeys came boiling out of the stairwell, screeches and blood-curdling howls reverberating throughout the corridor.

Taking the first left at the next intersection he came to,

Ryan slapped at doors, kicking them open. The locks had been broken or shot out over the years. All of the rooms were bedrooms of some type, though the furniture had been stolen or torn to pieces.

None of them offered any hope of escape.

“Those were winged monkeys,” Mildred said, her words broken up by her struggle to breathe during the exertion of running.

“Yep,” J.B. agreed. “Big teeth for monkeys, though.”

“All we need,” the woman said, “is for a green ball of fire to drop from the ceiling and suddenly proclaim, ‘I am the great and powerful Oz!'”

Ryan didn’t have a clue as to what Mildred was talking about. He sucked in air through his nose, keeping his lungs charged with fresh oxygen as he focused on surviving the trap that had been sprung inside the Mirage.

He took a right at the next intersection, spotting the huge plate-glass window at the end of the hallway. “J.B.” He lifted the SIG-Sauer and started to fire rounds at the glass, which starred but didn’t shatter.

“Take the glass out,” Ryan ordered. “We’ll go over the side, get back into the forest. Mebbe lose ourselves. We can’t hold this building.”

J.B. lifted the Samp;W scattergun to his shoulder and fired. The flechettes struck the window already weakened by Ryan’s rounds and blew out nearly the whole section.

Ryan stopped at the window, looking around warily for snipers posted outside. He knocked the ragged chunks of glass from the bottom track of the window with the barrel of the SIG-Sauer blaster.

Mildred touched his shoulder as she came up beside him. She pointed. “Look.”

Ryan followed her line of direction and saw two figures dashing through the forest less than a quarter mile away.

He reached into his pack and took out his binoculars. Focusing them, he made out Jak and Krysty just as they slipped under low tree branches. He kept tracking them until he saw them come out on the other side only a few feet from a large pond surrounded by a raised bank.

Muzzle-flashes burned hot against the shadows and foliage behind them, marking the course of their pursuers.

“Fireblast!” Ryan snarled, watching his lover as bullets cut through the brush around her.