Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

The rope burned Krysty's hands and she bit her lip to endure the pain. Seconds later her boots hit the ground.

 

There was no choice but to leave the rope where it was and hope it wouldn't be spotted. If it was found later, it would be too late to matter. She hoped.

 

Jak turned and took the lead, running toward the foliage forty yards distant.

 

Krysty followed, drawing her weapon. If she had to use it, she'd only be one more shooter among the dozens left in the pit area. The only things she worried about were the bare places between the buildings, the forested areas and the wall. Care had been taken to keep them separated.

 

She ran, trusting Jak's woodcraft skills and her own persistent mutie powers to put her on the path to Ryan.

 

 

 

THE ONLY WARNING Dean and the other boys got was the heavy rustle of what sounded like leather on fabric behind them. They turned together, bringing up their weapons.

 

Dean's eyes burned, trying to sort out the shadows from reality over the sights of the Browning Hi-Power.

 

Several shadows were in motion, though. He peered at them intently as they approached. Then they started jabbering hostility.

 

"Monkeys!" Bobby Handley called out. "Just a bunch of monkeys! There's no reason to be scared!"

 

As the shadows went away and the moonlight leaking through the building fell across the monkeys, Dean saw that they weren't ordinary beasts of their kind.

 

These monkeys looked leaner, their legs more proportioned with their arms and upper bodies. Their heads, however, were half again as large as they needed to be, and they were filled with teeth and bright, burning eyes. The lower jaws held more teeth than usual, and the bottom canines thrust belligerently upward, curving dangerously, fangs that almost reached the eyes.

 

At first Dean thought the monkeys were humpbacked. A moment later he saw that the abnormality on the creatures' backs was folded wings.

 

Louis stepped forward, dropping his rifle into position. "Monkeys or not, fuckers might be dangerous. Wouldn't put it past the people running this show to infect them with rabies." He burned a blast a couple feet in front of the advancing wave of monkeys.

 

Instead of retreating or coming to a stop, the monkeys instantly went on the attack. Some of them leaped into the air like ungainly birds, the wings flapping hard enough to crack the air.

 

"Shit!" Moxen cried out, "Chill them!" His weapon was already up and firing.

 

Dean joined in, trying to pick his targets to make sure of the kill. The monkeys were too densely packed to miss, but a wound would probably serve only to make them angrier than they obviously were.

 

The attempt to hold the line was over in seconds. The monkeys came on too fiercely, none of them appearing to be frightened by the gunfire exploding around them.

 

Dean backed away, the Browning's slide blowing back empty. He changed magazines, ducking under the gliding attack of one of the creatures. The fierce jaws snapped closed only inches from his left eye, hot drool splashing against his cheek.

 

"Run!" Louis yelled. "Break off and try to find a place to hole up!"

 

Slamming the fresh magazine home, Dean fought his way free of the clutches of three monkeys who'd seized his legs. To his right he saw Moxen go down under at least a half-dozen of them. Moxen screamed shrilly.

 

Dean started forward, wondering how he was going to help the other boy.

 

Abruptly Moxen stopped screaming. His body quivered, then relaxed. When it started to move again, it was due to the monkeys piled on top of him stripping the flesh from his bones in bloody gobbets.

 

Dean turned and ran, finding he was nearly the last of them to move out.

 

The monkeys continued to scream shrilly and raced after them, at a disadvantage because of their shorter legs. But the disadvantage wasn't much.

 

"Outside!" Handley yelled ahead of Dean. "We'd stand a better chance outside, Louis!"

 

"No way!" the youth called back. "We get outside in the open, these bastards would chew us to bits in no time!"

 

Without warning, something clipped Dean's shoulder and nearly toppled him from his feet. He managed to maintain his balance and watched in horror as a group of the winged monkeys flew into the boys.

 

Four of them landed on Handley, knocking the boy forward and to the ground, blood covering his features immediately. The monkeys clawed his back and buttocks, tearing through the clothing to get at his flesh.

 

"No!" Dean cried out hoarsely. He turned and brought up his blaster, so scared he had to fight to stay alive, fight to keep moving.

 

"Forget him!" Louis ordered, suddenly coming up hard against Dean. His momentum was enough to propel them both into a hallway splitting off the main corridor. "This hallway's smaller!" Louis helped Dean stay on his feet, kept him moving. "Mebbe we can cut down the number that come at us!"

 

More boys screamed out in the main corridor. Dean couldn't even recognize the voices. He got himself organized and started to match Louis's pace, not wanting to slow the boy and get them both chilled.

 

The hallway ended abruptly. Dean stared at the wooden door ahead of them. The plaque, its white letters barely visible against the black in the shadows, read Gentlemen.

 

"Bathroom," Dean said.

 

"Go through it," Louis ordered, looking over his shoulder. "We got no choice."

 

Looking back, Dean saw the monkeys approaching them, some of the mutie animals unfurling their wings to launch into a glide. He fumbled for the door and got it open. Louis followed him inside.

 

The only light falling into the room came from the weak illumination reflected from the hallway. Once Louis shut and bolted the door, even that went away.

 

Dean heard the monkeys' claws scratching against the door. The sound grew steadily louder, coming quicker and quicker.

 

 

 

"WE'VE GOT INTRUDERS inside the pit," Wallis Thoroughgood said as soon as he entered the room.

 

"Who?" LeMarck demanded before anyone else had time to react to the announcement.

 

"Don't know." Thoroughgood pointed through the glass down at the pit. "They came through the window of the old convention center, slid down a rope and are hauling ass."

 

Connrad looked at one of his sec commanders. "Get word out to the wall guards. Tell them I want these people killed."

 

The man nodded and rushed out of the room.

 

Hardcoe gave the same order to Thoroughgood, who promptly vanished outside again.

 

LeMarck felt the tension in the room suddenly increase as all the barons leaned forward with their glasses in hand. He knew they were all thinking the same thing if any of the barons had been behind the insertion of extra troops, that baron was a dead man.

 

The situation didn't make for casual conversation.

 

LeMarck trained his own glasses on the wall by the convention center and spotted the rope immediately, then he picked up the thermographic lenses and began to search for the intruders. In seconds he had their heat signatures. Neither of them showed the special ID buttons that were in the body armor of the team members.

 

He grew cold inside, because he figured he knew who the intruders were, and there was no way Hardcoe wouldn't be blamed for it. Death hovered over the room, waiting to be released. He dropped his hand to his Glock.

 

 

 

THE SHRILL SCREAMS and echoing thunder of blasters drew Ryan to a halt along the stairwell that led from the second floor to the first. Weak light dribbled in from the mesh windows in the doors to the emergency stairs.

 

"Not after us," J.B. said quietly behind him.

 

Ryan eased forward, the SIG-Sauer at the ready, hammer locked back so it would take only a two-pound squeeze to touch off the first round. He peered through the scarred, metal-ribbed glass, feeling the Armorer's breath light against the back of his neck.

 

The light was better outside. Scanning the scene before him, Ryan felt his hackles lift. Four of the green team were down, scattered along a couple corridors and almost buried under dozens of creatures that looked like things from a mat-trans chili nightmare.

 

"Dark night," J.B. breathed.

 

"Back," he told J.B. "Before these bastards get our scent." He signaled to Owen and Mildred, backing the group up the stairs. It had been Ryan's intention to identify the green team, isolate them from his group's own movements and chill them if it came to that.

 

"Looks like the green team's almost fresh out of members," J.B. stated.

 

Just as they started up the second set of steps, something smashed into the emergency door below.

 

At the tail of the line, Ryan peered back at the door. A monkey's face almost filled the rectangle, then two others popped into view, shoving the first beast away.

 

"Move!" Ryan ordered. "They're onto us!"

 

The door rattled, the knob turning slowly. Excited monkey screams filled the space.

 

"Bastards can work the knobs," Mildred said as she moved up the steps.

 

Ryan sighted along the length of his blaster, then put two rounds into the monkey's face. The screams of the animals increased, quickly reaching a frenzied stage. The bullets left holes in the glass, one of them snipping through the wire mesh. More monkeys suddenly clawed at the door.

 

Before Ryan reached the second landing, he heard the door below open, then the rapid padding of monkey feet against the steps.

 

 

 

"THEY'RE MAKING FOR the Mirage!"

 

LeMarck looked at Connrad's sec man. "Are you sure?"

 

"Yes, sir!" It was obvious the sec man was panicked, knowing it appeared that his own baron had at least a fifty percent chance of culpability in inserting extra champions. Otherwise, he'd have never responded to LeMarck's question.

 

Dettwyler pulled a blaster and pointed it in Hardcoe and Connrad's direction. "One of you two bastards is trying to pull a fast one on us. I want to know which one it is."

 

Quietly and quickly, LeMarck pulled his Glock and kept it out of sight by turning his body.

 

"You don't pull a blaster on me," Connrad warned, "unless you're going to use it."

 

"I'll use it, all right," Dettwyler said, "if I find out you're behind this."

 

"Then you'd better be fast enough to kill me, too," Hardcoe said. "Because I'll kill you right after you pull that trigger if you fuck around anymore."

 

Dettwyler grinned nervously. "Thought you and Connrad were enemies, Hardcoe."

 

"Hasn't changed a bit. If I had the chance out away from here and I thought I could take him, mebbe I'd find out if I could." He paused. "But not here. Not now. The truce between us will be honored in this place. It's the only thing that keeps the peace between us. I won't see it broken. By anyone."

 

Giskard calmly stretched out his hand. A small derringer popped into his palm. His fingers closed around the blaster as he shoved the blunt muzzle behind Dettwyler's ear. "I'm more of a gambling man," the young baron said cockily. "I think I can pull the trigger on this little pocket cannon before you manage to squeeze through that one. Want to see?"

 

"Get the blaster away from him," one of Dettwyler's sec men ordered, pulling his own weapon and pointing it at Giskard.

 

LeMarck took a step toward Hardcoe, intending to use himself as a shield to protect the baron if it proved necessary.

 

Giskard laughed. "And isn't this a fine how-do-you-do, Dettwyler?" He shook his head, moving the derringer slightly but keeping it in contact with the fat man's jawline. "As soon as you pull the triggeror mebbe even only look like you're going to, why, mebbe all the people in this room are dead men."

 

Dettwyler didn't say anything.

 

"What I suggest," Giskard said, "is a moment of reason. You pulled the first blaster. By rights I think it should be you who first puts his away. Don't you agree?"

 

Face contorted with anger, Dettwyler complied.

 

With a sigh of relief, Giskard lowered the derringer's hammer. The barons ordered their men to follow suit.

 

LeMarck let out a long breath as quietly as he could, trying to appear indifferent to the whole situation. But his heart pounded inside him.

 

"Vinge," Hardcoe said, "I'll not see you make an attempt on Dettwyler, either, not while we're here."

 

"No man pulls a blaster on me and lives," Connrad said. The feathered earrings shivered with the fury moving the man.

 

"What you do away from here," Hardcoe said, "is none of my business. Here, I've had my say on."

 

"What we should all be doing," Giskard said, "is taking care of those interlopers, before they further interrupt the Big Game and we have to declare it a null effort. Then we'll be faced with leaving things as they are until next year and playing again."

 

Connrad eyed Hardcoe. "If that happens, it seems like things could turn out in your favor."

 

"I didn't put those people in there," Hardcoe stated.

 

"Mebbe we should go find out." Connrad turned to his nearest sec boss. "Pass the word along to those wall guards to get some people into the pit, track those two people down, kill them and identify them. I want their bodies brought out of there. And get some guards off the wall near the Mirage and into the building. Get some men in there with flame throwers. I don't want any of our people hurt by those monkeys before they have a chance to put down the interlopers."

 

"Yes, sir." The man left at once.

 

Hardcoe pushed himself out of his seat, his movements followed at once by Connrad. "I'm not going to stay in here and watch this. I want to be out there where I can see things for myself."

 

"Then so do I," Connrad said.

 

LeMarck took up his position and went with them. Never before during a Big Game had the barons left the security of the safe room. He didn't like the way the night was shaping up.

 

And if he was right about the identity of the two people out there in the pit, he was near to liking it even less.

 

 

 

"I DON'T KNOW what you're doing with these people," Bernsen said to Doc. "You're a man of science, hardly their ilk at all."

 

Doc sat against the opposite wall from the one Jak and Krysty had spent time salting with their explosives. He shook his head, listening to the frantic crack of weapons overhead, and offered a silent prayer to his Maker for his friends left so unprotected and outmanned in the pit.

 

"Are you acquainted with the works of the Bard?" Doc asked.

 

"William Shakespeare?" Bernsen looked puzzled.

 

"The very man," Doc agreed with a nod.

 

"He was no scientist."

 

"On the contrary," Doc said, "I believe he indeed was. And his spheres of investigation were the vagaries of the human heart versus the morality of civilization using power as a catalyst."

 

"Perhaps I'll look upon his works in time," Bernsen.

 

Doc wasn't fool enough to think the man was sincere. It was only an effort at placating him. "As the Bard said in his work The Tempest , 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.' I've found that, in my years, to be a most apt statement."

 

"But we have a chance to get out of here," Bernsen said. "Those people are going to get caught. In the process they're going to get us caught, as well."

 

"You cannot say that. These people are very good at what they do. You have not seen even a fraction of the perils they've faced together during their travels."

 

"Fool's luck." The scientist shook his head. "You, my friend, are guilty of a most destructive false pride."

 

"That shall remain to be seen, and I shall have a front-row seat."

 

 

 

"THAT LOCK'S not going to hold them long."

 

Dean knew that, listening to the way the scratching of the monkeys filled the bathroom. "There's not going to be another way out of here, either. One way in, one way out."

 

"Got to be," Louis replied.

 

A self-light flared in the darkness, illuminating first Louis's features, then spreading across the interior of the bathroom.

 

It was a big room, perhaps the biggest of its kind that Dean had ever seen. His heart pounded in his chest, causing blood to rush through his ears.

 

Stalls lined the wall to his left, flanked by urinals. Shattered mirrors clung haphazardly to the tiled walls. Bugs fled across the tiled floor, retreating from skeletons that were decades old and corpses that may have only been weeks in decaying.

 

"Up," Louis said, holding the self-light toward the ceiling. "Mebbe some crawl space we can get through." He cursed when the self-light burned his fingers, and dropped the flaming stick to the floor.

 

Dean hated being left blind in the darkness. His skin crawled at the sound of the monkeys' nails scratching against the door.

 

Louis struck another self-light, then pushed his way through one of the stalls. He stood on the toilet and shoved one of the acoustic tiles out of the metal frame that formed the ceiling. Glancing down at Dean, he said, "I think we can get through here. Hurry."

 

Dean hauled himself up beside Louis and caught the lip of the metal frame. It took a lot of strength to pull his body up inside. The collection of dust and odor sent him into a sneezing fit as he lay against the top of the ceiling. The floor of the next level was scarcely more than two feet above him.

 

"Dean," Louis called.

 

Looking back, Dean saw the other boy struggling to pull himself up. Reaching down, Dean caught the vest of Louis's body armor and yanked him through. As he passed through, Louis dropped the flaming self-light to the floor.

 

"See anything?" Louis asked.

 

"There wasn't time," Dean replied, choking as the dust filled his lungs.

 

Another self-light flared into being. Perspiration dripped down Louis's face, glowing like pearls. "Over there."

 

Dean looked, seeing the access shaft in front of them. He started for it immediately. Before he reached it, Louis dropped the self-light, but finding the entranceway to the access shaft was no problem. Dean crawled inside, then found it shifted straight up within a few feet.

 

Louis lit another self-light. "Can we make it?"

 

"I think so," Dean said. "Be a hard climb."

 

"Beats the hell out of staying down here."

 

The sound of the door finally crashing inward filled the bathroom and echoed through the crawl space. An instant later brown hairy hands gripped the sides of the metal frame where Dean and Louis had come up through.

 

"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.