Mildred threw the lock on the armored door and glanced out the front windshield. The gnarled thing in the pit was ascending steadily, and the bug-covered walls started to wildly chitter in frenzied discord, like a crowd cheering the arrival of its ruler. “The recoilless isn’t going to do much damage to that thing,” she stated bluntly. “And we’re out of missiles.”
“We’ll use what we got,” Ryan said, pausing for a second as the Leviathan bounded over the line of corpses. “Mebbe everything at once will do the job.”
Buttoning the frock coat, Krysty turned. “J.B., give me a satchel charge.”
The Armorer spread his hands. “Used our last as a diversion to get past the plants.”
She pointed in the corner. “Then what’s that?”
“Bag of grens.”
Crossing the bucking floor, Krysty grabbed the bag and glanced inside. “High explosive?”
“Mixed.”
“Great. We got any more?”
“No, that’s the lot.”
“They’ll have to do then,” she said grimly.
“Bag of grens won’t stop that monster,” J.B. stated, jerking a thumb.
Way ahead of the others, Doc was already pulling down the access ladder to the roof hatch.
“Oh, yes, it will,” the woman said.
She turned to Jak and held up a hand. “Cut me.” The teenager furrowed his brow, then slashed out with a leaf-blade knife. Blood welled from the shallow gash across her palm reaching from heel to thumb. Smearing the blood over the bag, she tossed it to Doc. Making the catch, he reached inside and pulled the ring on a random gren, then flipped the bag out of the opening and slammed shut the hatch. It landed behind them on the soft ivy covering.
The ebony creature was still coming out of its dank hole. The body seemed endless, as if the inside of a long tunnel had been made into living flesh, its black chitin shining like armor in the light of the burning dead. Its visage was a gnarled twisted mix of bug and ,man, if such a hellish combination was possible. Huge segmented eyes stared with hostile intent at the tank.
“Payback time,” Krysty said, staring back at the colossus.
The thing almost stalked past the tiny parcel when the lumpy head gaped its irregular slash of a mouth just enough for an ivy-covered tongue to lick up the bloody morsel and swallow it whole.
As Leviathan burst out of the greenery and onto the loading dock, the pulsating head of the nightmare suddenly bulged outward and burst apart like rotting fruit, the separating pieces spraying out streams of pale pink ichor. The body writhed in agony, black chitin peeling away as searing gouts of chemical hell blossomed out from the mottled flesh of its yawning gullet. The whole length of the sectioned body convulsed out of control, smashing walls and making bricks rain from the sides of the already weakened building. Violently split down the middle, the vivisected mütie limply slumped to the ground twice. A pupilless eye burst from the impact, as shrapnel holes in the other eye pumped out a river of pink that spread on the floor and seeped into the sewer grating.
The ivy thrashed mindlessly, slicing apart its dead master in bestial frenzy. Leafy tendrils sank deep into the headless corpse, the vines pulsating as they pumped the thin ichor from the dead creature back into its huge trembling corpse.
Mildred worked the arming bolt on the 75 mm rifle.
Ryan stopped her. “No need to waste ammo,” he said, turning Leviathan around to drive forward again. “That’s as dead as anything gets.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” J.B.
pronounced, wiping sweat off the brow of his fedora.
“That is the unmitigated truth, my dear John Barrymore,” Doc added, wrinkling his nose. The stench coming from the devastation was almost beyond words. Roasting sewage was the closest he could approximate.
“Goodbye and good riddance,” Mildred muttered.
Reaching the freedom of the streets, Ryan turned in his seat. “Krysty?” he asked softly.
Squatting in front of the medical locker, the redhead didn’t stop tending to the wound in her hand. “Let’s get out of this bastard pesthole,” she growled.
Chapter 8
At an inexorable pace, Leviathan crawled from the furniture store along the main street. Their hearts still pounding, everybody stood post at a blasterport, weapons primed and ready, but nothing barred their path.