No need to answer — the creature standing behind Pinky closed its taloned paws around his neck and jerked him, wheelchair and all, into the air. The gun went flying as the genetic demon slammed Pinky from side to side, up and down, on walls and ceiling, Pinky screaming as he went — the thing was using the wheelchair as a bludgeoning tool, so that Sarge and the others had to hit the floor, but not before Reaper was struck glancingly in the face, sending him spinning backward.
Sarge and Duke fired at the imp, and Reaper — though stunned, firing through a blur — fired, too, trying not to hit Pinky. The hulking genetic demon retreated…
As Reaper’s eyes cleared, it appeared to him that rather than retreating, exactly, the imp was carrying off its prize…Pinky.
“On me!” Sarge yelled. “Let’s move!”
Despite having come close to a gunfight with Sarge a minute or two earlier, Reaper only hesitated an instant when Sarge gave the order. Training and situational urgency took over and he obeyed, running after Duke and Sarge, into the corridor, around a corner.
They got there in time to see the genetic demon drag the bleeding, moaning Pinky through an open nanowall — and into darkness beyond.
Sarge raised his hand for a halt as he assessed the situation…It was darker, around this corner. Dim here — with only the auxiliary lighting, faint and getting fainter. Up ahead, through the nanowall, it was dark as a cavern.
Pinky and his abductor were nowhere to be seen.
There was a smell coming toward him from that impenetrable darkness: rank, vinegary.
“Listen,” Duke said.
Many mouths breathing. Many hundreds of claws clicking on the floor, faster and faster…
And then another sound: a kind of chattering; a furious discussion but without a language. An angry discourse in grunts and clicks and sounds you might hear from a monkey in the last stages of rabies.
And then the throng came sprinting out of the darkness. A throng of genetic demons, half-formed and misbegotten. All of them coming right at the squadron, with their jaws salivating in anticipation.
“What the…” Reaper muttered.
Sarge cocked his weapon. “You with me here, Reaper?”
Reaper cocked his light machine gun and fixed Sarge with a look. “I don’t know who’s more dangerous — you or them.”
Sarge gave out one of his rare smiles. “Sure you do, Reaper. It’s me.”
The sounds were louder now; they could make out a great moving mass in the shadows up ahead…coming toward them.
“Withdraw,” Sarge said calmly.
They moved back to the wider corridor they’d come through…and moved to the corridor the enemy was going to come from.
“On my command,” Sarge said softly, raising his weapon.
An instant later, the demonic undead were upon them — as if the imps had sent the half-turned as the first wave of attack.
“Okay motherfuckers,” Sarge yelled. “Let’s play!”
Sarge and Reaper and Duke were rushed by at least a dozen walking dead men, their eyes uniformly red, their mouths streaming black blood, their clothes tattered, their faces contorted with the hunger to kill — there was not the faintest remnant of their former humanity in their expressions — some of them with overgrown foreheads, the beginnings of talons.
Hoping to disorient the enemy, Sarge sent a burst of fire into the ceiling lights, plunging the room into semidarkness illuminated by bursts of automatic weapons fire: a deadly strobe-light show.
The living-dead seemed to dance in the “strobe lights” as the thudding gunfire rocked them, making them spin and jump. But they kept coming, forcing the men to step back and back and back, hurling furniture about as they came.
An imp came hulking in the doorway, then, an unusually big one having to bend to get its head through, slashing the air with its talons, knocking some of the undead out of the way — the blows splashing the creatures bloodily against the wall — as if they were minor irritants between it and its prey.
Reaper could spare only a glance for his sister — saw her huddled against the wall behind them, her fist crammed into her mouth.
Should have armed her, he thought. We’ll need every last weapon we can get working.
Another imp rushed at Reaper, slashing at him, raking his right arm — Reaper shoved his gun into the imp’s mouth and pulled the trigger. The top of its head joined the ceiling and its body met the floor.
“Field of fire!” Sarge bellowed.
The men emptied their clips with a deafening barrage of concerted automatic-weapons fire, chewing the living-dead up, spraying the walls and floor behind the creatures with blood and bone fragments — but only opening the way for the big imp.
Sarge had led the attempt to drive off the enemy, and now he led the retreat, turning and bolting to find another, more defensible position. Reaper’s gun emptied and he went to follow Sarge, both of them slapping fresh clips into their weapons as they ran, Reaper shouting for Sam to go on ahead of them — his warning unheard over the roaring of their pursuers.
Duke ran out of bullets a half second after the other two, and was last to run — trying to cover their retreat — turning, taking one step, only to be caught by a great shadowy paw, the dark bulk of the big imp grabbing him the way a grizzly would, pulling him close —
“Duke!” Sam shouted, seeing him caught up and hurled at the wall like a toy hurled by an agitated child — he struck an overturned table and screamed as the splintered table leg went through him, back to front.
Reaper turned in time to see his sister running to Duke.
Damn her — she should be getting out of here!
Reaper turned and fired almost point-blank at the imp — it raked its forepaws in front of its face as if warding off a swarm of bees. Reaper used its momentary distraction to get to Sam, skidding as he went in a pool of black blood, having to leap over a feebly clutching, dying half-turned.
“Go,” Duke was telling her, his voice barely audible. Blood running from the corners of his mouth. “Get out of here…”
Sam grabbed Duke’s gun — Reaper thought she was going to put Duke out of his misery and Duke thought so, too, closing his eyes —
Just then, Reaper had to turn away and fire at an imp and one of the undead, keeping them back — the bigger imp stalking back and forth, roaring and slashing frenziedly at the undead who’d gotten in its way — and turned back to see his sister pulling Duke to his feet, as he wailed in pain. She helped him stagger toward the door.
“John — help!” she shouted, as the creatures came at her and Duke.
Sarge had turned, and he and Reaper laid down a withering cover fire — as all four of them retreated through the infirmary’s nanowall. Sam helped Duke into the room.
On the other side, Sarge smacked the nanowall control panel, just as the first of the half-turned started through it — three of the living-dead screamed as the wall solidified around them. An arm and leg jutted out of the metallic gray nanowall, writhing and kicking.
A dead end — the demons had raged through here and the way out was blocked by fallen debris.
Reaper and Sam had escaped — into a trap.
Reaper turned to see that Sam had gotten the big splinter out of Duke, stopped his bleeding with a medikit spray. Duke might live — the wound was low on his chest, looked like maybe below the lungs, above the liver.
A massive thud from the nanowall — the creatures were hurling themselves against it — made them all step back, reflexively pointing their weapons at the thumping gray rectangle.
Sparks and arcs of electricity spurted from the nanowall. It undulated, as if struggling to keep itself defined as a rectangle, and the arm that was reaching through was able to push a little farther in, clutching at the air.