First, though, she had to find a way out of the Hilltop Bastion and back to the ship. So far, they weren’t making much headway. She crawled ahead of Rodger through the utility tunnel. He seemed to be enjoying the view, judging by the beam from his light. It danced across the tunnel but conveniently seemed to center on her backside most of the time. A free view of her ass was the least she could give him for coming down here to find her.
Her light picked up another pile of feces ahead. The sight almost made her gag even though she couldn’t smell it. Bones and a single feather protruded from the pile. The Sirens had been inside the passages, and while these remains weren’t fresh, the number of piles was alarming. She began to wonder whether the creatures lived in the ducts.
The thought made her check the knife sheathed at her thigh. She continued crawling, doing her best to keep her rifle from banging against the metal. Rodger was having a hell of a time behind her. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear the ruckus he was making. Whatever was sticking out of his vest pocket kept catching on the strap of his rifle.
“Stow your shit,” she hissed.
Magnolia continued wriggling through the narrow passage, her elbows scraping on the metal walls, and her helmet grazing the ceiling. She squirmed faster, like the soldiers she had seen ducking under barbed wire in the films from the archives. Her HUD clock showed they had been moving for thirty minutes, but with Andrew dead, the mission clock didn’t mean much anymore. Their mission had changed from rescue and salvage to survival.
The light on her helmet showed another junction ahead. She pushed on until she was about five feet away, then pulled in her knees and turned to look at Rodger. He was scrunched like an animal in a crate. His beam hit her in the visor, and she ducked, shielding her face with her arm.
Rodger moved it away and then scooted up so they were visor to visor. His eyes searched hers in the half-light of her low beam, and for the first time in years she felt a flicker of something other than disdain for the opposite sex.
“Didn’t Timothy say to take a left here?” she asked quietly.
“A left, then right, then left, then another left.” He nodded confidently. As she turned away, he covered his vest pocket.
“What the hell do you have—”
The sound of claws scratching metal cut her off.
“Move!” Rodger said. Crouched on his knees, he brought his rifle muzzle up as she pivoted back toward the junction. Her light captured a Siren moving on all fours toward them, spiky back hunched and scraping against the sheet metal. A rope of saliva swung like a pendulum from its wide mouth.
A deafening crack filled Magnolia’s helmet, and the flash dazzled her eyes. Another shot followed, and she scrunched down to give Rodger more room. Agonized screeches bounced off the walls. She blinked away the stars and saw the beast flopping around, crashing off the metal ductwork.
“Hold your fire!” Magnolia barked.
As soon as Rodger lowered his rifle, she was crawling toward the monster. It was making too much noise; the racket would draw every Siren in the area to their position. She centered her light on the beast as it thrashed, smearing its blood all over the sheet metal. With a side-armed motion, she threw the blade down the tunnel. It sank halfway to the hilt in the side of the creature’s head. A moment later, it went limp, and Magnolia was moving on her elbows and knees toward it. She stopped a few feet away to make sure it was dead before grabbing the hilt of her knife. She tugged, and the blade came free, releasing a stream of gore onto the floor. It was hard to believe this had ever been human.
Magnolia went to push the corpse out of the way when the beast suddenly slashed at her. Something stung her right shoulder as she brought her elbow pad down on the creature’s skull. There was a screech followed by a thunk, thunk, thunk. Fueled by adrenaline, she slammed her pad down over and over. Soon the creature’s skull was like the shattered shell of a boiled egg, and her armored elbow was covered in blood.
“You can stop now,” Rodger said. “It’s dead, okay?”
A guttural roar seemed to answer him. The noise came from somewhere below them, but Magnolia didn’t need to see through the duct to know the source. The glowing beast from the cryogenics lab was out there, hunting them.
She looked down at her arm. The beast had gotten her good. Her light captured a pair of deep, bloody gashes. The claws had shredded her layered suit, and blood seeped out of the tears.
“Magnolia?” Rodger said again.
She applied pressure with her left hand and said, “I’ll be fine.”
The wound burned, but it was the radiation, not blood loss, that concerned her. Here inside the facility, the rads were minimal. She could survive for a while down here, but before she went topside—if she ever got out—she would need to patch the tears in her suit.
One thing at a time, Mags.
She pushed the pain and thoughts for the future out of her mind, and they moved quickly down the passage for several minutes. Her light ran over walls covered in scratch marks, and before long they came upon another pile of feces. This one was fresh, and she instinctively held her breath as she crawled over the top.
Halfway to the next junction, she came across an area with three vents on the right side of the wall. The metal grate of the center vent had been pried off.
She kept her rifle cradled as she squirmed toward the opening, waiting for a Siren to pop out into the passage. Every few feet, she stopped to listen, but the ringing from the gunshots made hearing difficult. Beyond the high-pitched whine was a faint humming that reminded her of the nuclear power plant on the Hive.
Timothy had mentioned that they would cross over the engineering room on their way through the utility tunnel. If that was where they were now, then they weren’t far from a passage that served as a back door to the control room.
She didn’t stop as she passed the first two vents, but approaching the third, she slowed. Her light captured the opening but barely penetrated the space beyond.
“Lights off,” she ordered.
Both beams flickered off, and darkness filled the tunnel, leaving only the faint blue glow from their battery units to guide them. Pain shot up her right arm as she heaved the gun up toward the opening.
She squirmed a few feet on her elbows and knees and slid over the vent cover. The ringing in her ears had finally faded away. She couldn’t hear the monsters, only the reassuring hum of machines. Curiosity prompted her to bump her light back on. If this was the engineering room, it could contain valuable fuel cells for the Hive. Perhaps she could use them as a ticket back onto the ship. She would deliver them to Jordan right before she plucked the eyes from his skull and fed them to him.
Shifting her helmet toward the opening, she raked the beam back and forth. Below was a room so big, the beam didn’t reach the other side.
“What do you see?” Rodger asked.
Magnolia angled the light downward, capturing the outline of several tarp-covered mounds. Beyond these, she could see shelves stacked with what could be supplies.
“Hand me one of your flares,” she said.
Reaching back with her uninjured arm, she felt one of Rodger’s sticks in her palm. She pulled off the top and hit the flare’s tip against the striker surface. The flame burst out, and she dropped it into the room. Two heartbeats later, the flare clanked to the floor.
The red flare lit up a room larger than the lab they had just left, revealing a fleet of vehicles. Trucks, cars, jeeps, and even a motorcycle were parked below. Unlike the rusted hulks she had seen on the surface, these vehicles had intact windows and unblemished paint, although their tires were flat.