“What else?” Geisz quipped, and started down.
“I just hope the Minister was right about this place,” Winkel said as he followed Geisz:
“Can the squawking!” Captain Edwards ordered. “You know better!
You’re the best of the best!” he reminded them. “Technic commandos! Act like it!”
The three troopers took the reprimand in resentful silence. Geisz, in particular, was irritated by Edwards’ audacity. She’d seen far more combat than he had, and she knew what was expected of a professional storm trooper. Still, now was hardly the time to be distracted by petty animosities. She had to concentrate on the task at hand, or she might not live to see Chicago again. Moisture was trickling from under her helmet, plastering her crewcut blonde hair to her scalp, causing her skin to itch.
She suppressed an impulse to scratch the itching, and focused on the stairs ahead.
Dust and spiderwebs.
And more dust and spiderwebs.
But nothing else.
Geisz saw the streaks of dust caking the metal railings, and suddenly realized there wasn’t any dust on the stairs.
Someone… or something… must be using the stairs on a regular basis, but not bothering to use the railings.
Three guesses what they were.
Geisz reached up and cranked the volume control on her right ear amplifier. There was a crackling in her helmet, then a sustained hiss as the transistorized microphone strained for all its circuits were worth.
What was that?
Private Geisz slowed, listening intently. She thought she’d heard the muffled tread of a foot on the stairs below. She leaned over the railing and swept the lower levels with her lamp.
Nothing.
“Anything?” Captain Edwards asked from up above.
“I don’t know,” Geisz replied uncertainly.
“Stay alert!” Captain Edwards advised them.
Geisz almost laughed. As if they had to be told! She cautiously took another turn in the stairwell, walking to the right, her Dakon II at the ready.
Something scraped below her.
Geisz stopped, leaning against the wall to protect her back.
“What is it?” Captain Edwards demanded.
Geisz ignored him, striving to pinpoint the source of the noise.
“What is it?” Captain Edwards asked again. “Why the holdup?”
Geisz motioned for quiet. She could detect the faint sound of heavy breathing in her right ear.
“I’m getting something!” Dougherty suddenly yelled. “Lots of them!
Above and below us! And…” he paused.
“And?” Captain Edwards angrily goaded him.
“And on both sides!” Dougherty said.
“Both sides?” Captain Edwards surveyed the stairwell. “There’s nothing there but brick walls!”
“This damn thing must be broken,” Dougherty muttered, adjusting the calibration control on his pulse scanner.
It wasn’t.
The wall behind Private Dougherty abruptly collapsed, tumbling bricks and mortar onto the stairs and creating a swirling cloud of dust.
“What the…!” Captain Edwards began, and then he spotted the forms pouring from the gaping hole in the stairwell wall.
Dougherty saw them too, and he cut loose with his fragmentation rifle, the dumdum bullets ripping into the nightmarish creatures and blowing their grisly bodies apart. He downed two, three, four in swift succession, and then one of them reached him. Momentarily paralyzed with fear, he screamed as a cold, clammy, moist hand closed on his throat.
Captain Edwards saw the hulking figure towering over Dougherty, but he hesitated, unwilling to risk hitting the trooper. The cloud of dust reduced visibility to only a few feet, and he wanted to be sure before he pulled the trigger. He moved in closer, aiming his rifle, when strong hands clamped on his shoulders and lifted him bodily from the floor.
Private Geisz, enveloped in the dust, tried to catch a glimpse of her companions. She saw several struggling forms in the middle of the dust cloud, then felt her blood freeze as a terrifying screech reverberated in the confines of the gloomy stairwell.
There was a loud, crunching noise, like the sound of breaking bones.
“Captain Edwards!” Geisz shouted. “Doughboy! Wink! What’s happening?”
No one answered.
A tall scarecrow shape loomed above her, its stick-like limbs clawing in her direction.
Something growled.
Private Geisz cowered against the wall, her meticulous training overwhelmed by her instinctive loathing of the form on the step above. She could see one bony hand reaching for her neck, could see its wrinkled, gray flesh and its tapered, yellow nails, and could even see the brown dirt caked between its extended fingers. She wanted to bolt, to flee for her life, to get the hell out of there. But at the very second when those gruesome fingers touched her skin, instead of racing pell-mell down the stairs in reckless flight and abandoning her mates and friends, she reached deep within herself and discovered her innermost self, her true nature, her fundamental essence, the steel of her personality. Her bravery was tested to its limits, and she wasn’t found lacking.
“Eat this, sucker!” Geisz stated defiantly, and angled the Dakon II toward the creature’s midsection.
The creature hissed.
Geisz squeezed the trigger.
Her attacker was blown backward by the impact of the dumdum bullets, its body bursting apart across the chest and face.
Geisz didn’t bother to check it; she knew the damn thing was dead. She punched the Dakon II onto full automatic and bounded up the stairs, into the dispersing dust cloud, searching for her companions.
Figures were all around her in the gloom.
“Captain!” Geisz yelled. As the last of the cloud dissipated, her helmet lamp revealed the hideous features of those nearest her. With a start, she realized she was completely surrounded by… them! There was no sign of her fellow commandos!
One of the creatures lunged at her, its red orbs glaring.
Geisz crouched against the railing and fired, swinging the Dakon II in an arc from right to left, taking out everything in her field of vision. She saw more monstrosities coming from the hole in the wall and fired into them, the fragmentation rifle functioning flawlessly, ripping them apart, literally blasting their shriveled flesh from their bones.
They fell in droves.
One of them was advancing down the stairs toward her.
Geisz spun to shoot them, but the Dakon II unexpectedly went empty.
Oh, no!
Geisz frantically released the spent magazine and heard it clatter on the stairs as she extracted a fresh magazine from her belt pouch and hurriedly inserted it into the rifle. She slapped her left hand on the bottom of the new clip, slamming it home, and she shot the creature in the face even as it sprang at her.
Suddenly, she was alone.
Geisz realized the creatures were gone. She scanned the hole, then up and down the stairwell. Bodies littered the steps, but none of them belonged to her friends or the captain.
What the hell had happened to them?
Geisz pondered her next move. If she were smart, she’d head for the surface and the jeep and take off for Chicago. But what if Doughboy and Wink and Edwards were still alive? Didn’t she owe it to them to try and find them? She thoughtfully bit her lower lip. Yeah, she owed it to them.
But how was she supposed to find them? The tunnels under the city were a virtual maze. Doughboy had carried their scanner, and without the pulse scanner she couldn’t get a fix on their belt frequencies. She frowned, disgusted. Why the hell hadn’t they issued scanners to everyone? She knew the answer to that one. The higher-ups wanted their arms free so they could carry more of the stuff up to the jeep.
And what about the stuff? The objective of their mission?
Geisz stared down the stairwell. It was down there, according to the Minister. About two floors below her present position. Canister after canister of it. Was the stuff worth so many lives? she wondered.