“What the hell” Battle said, then another stalactite fell from the ceiling and landed right by him. Within seconds it too turned into a twisted, gray gargoyle with slavering fangs and a nasty disposition. It leapt at Battle, who jumped backward, shouting for Puckett.
The ace was slow to react. The gargoyle would have had Battle if the agent hadn’t dodged behind a thick stalagmite. Danny put her shotgun to her hip and let loose a three-round blast and the gargoyle disappeared in a splatter of bloodless gray flesh.
“Look out!” Boyd called.
Ray glanced upward. It was raining the goddamn things. Stalactites were falling from the ceiling like icicles knocked off a roof edge by a bored kid. And when they hit the ground they all turned into the gray little creatures whose only purpose in life seemed to be to bite.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ray shouted, and they all began to run.
Ray took a glancing blow to his shoulder that scoured off a patch of flesh. Puckett took a direct hit to the head, but it didn’t seem to bother him any. One of the advantages, Ray thought, of being dead. Battle and Danny also took a couple of glancing blows, but their Kevlar armor protected them from any serious damage.
The gargoyles the stalactites turned into, however, were something else indeed.
Within moments there were two score of the things, nipping and biting at their heels. Nemo, trying to run, tripped and fell, and half a dozen of the things swarmed him. Ray dived in, kicking and punching at the little bastards as fast as he could. Fortunately, they broke easily. Unfortunately, they could bite like pit-bulls, and as Ray found out when one fastened onto his right calf, their slobber burned like acid.
“Shit!” He pulled Nemo to his feet. “You okay?”
The Monster was bitten about the left arm and right thigh, but he nodded. Ray turned to face more of their tiny assailants, snarling, and drew the Ingram machine pistol he had holstered at his hip. He let go a long burst that cut the little creatures down like a scythe through a wheat field. Danny joined them, her automatic shotgun sweeping a clear swath through them, and they put themselves back to back, with Nemo towering above them in the middle.
Ray risked a glance at Boyd. She — or he — had been remarkably untouched so far. He wondered if being the center of the mind shield was protecting her from the little bastards.
“Make for the other side of the chamber,” Ray shouted above the blasting, echoing roars of gunfire. He — or she — nodded, and started off. Battle and Puckett had also gone back to back, Battle beating off the waves of attacking gargoyles with bursts from his assault rifle, Puckett using his hands to mangle them, his acid to burn them.
It seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before they fought their way to the door at the end of the chamber and collapsed outside the room where the beasts were unwilling, or unable, to follow.
“All right!” Ray shouted. He was still jazzed from the fight and the adrenaline running through his system. He stopped and shook his fist at the group of slavering gargoyles crowded around the doorway, unable to pass through it. They immediately turned back to stone. “Ugly little bastards,” Ray sniffed.
Battle was breathing heavily. “Let’s tend our wounds,” he said, shrugging out of his pack and rummaging through it for his first-aid kit. He paused to snarl, “That fat freak bastard is going to pay for this.”
“Pay?” Danny said.
“Pay the ultimate price.” Battle glared at her, glared at everyone. “He’s dead, stinking meat, and he doesn’t even know it.”
“I thought we were supposed to capture him,” Danny said.
“And then do what with him?” Battle sneered. “Haul him off to jail? His fat carcass is too big for any cell. Plus he’s much too powerful to keep under lock and key. Look around yourself.” Battle gestured at the caverns. “How could we imprison a mind capable of doing all this?” He shook his head. “No. The freak has to die.”
As if to emphasize his point he rammed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle and stared at the team as if daring anyone to contradict him.
“All this ridiculous fighting isn’t as interesting as watching Bloat do things,” Travnicek said. “I’m damned near getting bored.” He was reclining on the fantastic winged-dragon couch that Bloat had provided for his bunker room.
Modular Man didn’t want to know. “Snotman is getting close,” he said.
“Snotman!” Travnicek sprang up from the couch, waved his arms, the cilia at the ends of his hands waving. The android was surprised by the vehemence of Travnicek’s reaction.
“He’s broken in at the Jersey Gate. He’s destroyed everything in his path, and I don’t think he can be stopped. Bloat’s too tired to do anything. Perhaps it’s time to leave.”
“Run from that little fuck? Never!” Agitated, Travnicek jumped up onto the ceiling and began pacing back and forth.
“Sir. I can’t stop him.”
“You know what that bastard did. He helped Typhoid Croyd try to assassinate me!”
‘But you didn’t die.” Modular Man spoke rapidly. “You evolved…” Carefully. “To this higher form.”
“No thanks to him,” Travnicek said. He seemed disinclined to follow Modular Man’s desperate logic and insincere flattery. He jabbed an arm at Modular Man, and the cilia writhed into a pointing-finger shape. “Dispose of Snotman. That’s an order.”
The android knew he was dead.
“How?” he said. “He’s immune to any form of attack I can launch.”
“Use your imagination.”
“I don’t have an imagination.”
“Hah. You got that right, toaster.” Travnicek paused. “He eats energy, right? So don’t give him any.”
“How do I fight him without —”
Travnicek, still on the ceiling, leaned closer to the android. His voice was harsh. “Are you a shooter or a shootee, toaster? A winner or loser? That’s what you gotta decide.’ He waved a hand. “Now go do your job.”
Modular Man turned about and left through the hatch, and Travnicek dogged it shut behind him.
He tried to think about running away. His programming wouldn’t let the thoughts progress very far.
He flew out of the tower, then began heading toward the Jersey Gate.
He swung wide of the causeway for the present, and swept over the gate, moving quickly so that no one would get off a shot. The gatehouse was rubble, with armored vehicles roaring as they climbed over the pile of stone and brick. The two fighting vehicles captured by the jokers were smoldering wrecks. The smell of burning flesh mingled with the smell of hot metal and rose into the sky over the gate.
Shootees lay scattered under the rubble, sprawled in little clumps through Liberty Park and under the treads of the vehicles. Soldier shootees lay outside in the street.
Modular Man, floating high in the fog, soared along the causeway. The military, sensibly, had declined to follow Snotman up the long, narrow causeway, designed as a death trap for advancing troops. Still keeping high in the fog, Modular Man moved along until he came to the fifty-foot gap in the causeway that Bloat had created. Snotman, Detroit Steel, and Danny Shepherd were standing uncertainly at the end of it.
Go home, the android mentally urged. Go back and get a boat and let me think.
Instead Detroit Steel turned toward Snotman and began hitting him. Strong piston-powered punches, hammer blows, vicious uppercuts, all rained on Snotman’s unaffected body. The young man remained motionless, not reacting in any way, absorbing energy.
The android tried to think of what to do. Rush down, push Snotman into the water?