“We’ll show you,” I said. “We—er—we have to go out that way. I guess.”
“Good luck,” said Jamal. “If you can blow stuff up, the ’tronics for all the barrier stuff to get out of here are in the front office, on your way out.” He stood up, to Mongo’s sorrow. Mongo settled for nibbling delicately on his fingers. I was ready to intervene but apparently Jamal knew (crazy herding) dogs well enough to realize this was a sign of affection.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The office may be empty,” said Jamal. “There’s some kind of whiztizz out front. Bill just told me him and Benny were going to go take a look. You guys weren’t supposed to be here at all”—he nodded at Arnie and Val—“but there’ve been like three more cobeys open up on the deep line and they haven’t got the humanpower to cover everything. So they were blasting on with opening Goat Creek up because this was going to be the big central whatever, and they were sending in some kind of shielded truck to take you away but it got sent to one of the cobeys instead.” He shrugged.
I looked at him. He looked nervously back at me. “I know you had your hands over your head and everything,” I said. “I don’t think you were exactly bluffing. But why aren’t you more afraid of us? And why are you telling us how to get out?”
Jamal’s eyes slid away from mine. “Oh . . . well,” he said. “My mom . . .”
Arnie laughed. “I told you, babe. There are so many of us.”
I heard myself saying, “If there are so many of—if there are so many, why are only you and Val here?”
“Huh,” he said, and opened the door. Takahiro tactfully retreated behind me and Jamal went out first. “I’m worried about Clare,” Arnie said. “But most of us are pretty half-volt. Little ’uns. Not me, although I’m stiff as a seized brake. Not your stepdad. Not you. Not you either, whoever you are,” he added, looking at Takahiro.
We all followed Jamal out the door, including Mongo and the gruuaa flood, I for one feeling bewildered and rather silly. The corridor was still grey and empty. “There,” I said as we went past the room where Paolo was, and Jamal opened the door and went softly in. “Oh, man,” he said.
“I’ll lock you in, shall I?” said Val.
“Oh yeah, thanks,” said Jamal’s voice from behind the door.
Val’s hand lingered on the knob before he closed it. “If you need to get out,” he said, “the charm will break from your side.”
“Thanks,” said Jamal’s voice.
We went on. The gruuaa were still rolling on in front of us but as we went farther down the corridor it was like they were hitting some kind of shoal, and getting humped back toward us.
The corridor suddenly widened, and the ceiling got a lot farther away. From feeling like we were walking into an ambush I felt like we’d just walked out onto the open battlefield and the guys with the cannon and the air-to-rescue-party missiles would blow us away in a minute.
We were maybe all breathing a little hard as we approached a big open door on the left. The corridor was badly lit all along its length, but there was a lot of bright flickering light shining out through that door. It didn’t look friendly. Well, it wasn’t likely to be friendly, was it?
“Wait here,” said Arnie. “Let me scope it out. And I’ll leave Jamal’s gun under someone’s desk.”
I began to notice that there was some kind of confused noise going on—I thought outside the building. Some kind of whizztizz, Jamal had said. Maybe Jill and Casimir and the gruuaa had found a way to make my non-plan work after all. We were about twenty feet from the end of the corridor, which was barricaded by a gigantic pair of double doors, like they sometimes used this end of the corridor as a garage for their cobey-unit trucks. But I was mostly thinking about Jill and Casimir and Bella and Jonesie and the others. The sick feeling in my stomach, which had mostly gone away while we were talking to Jamal, was coming back, and had brought friends. Uggh.
The light flickered in a different pattern. There were some pinging and popping noises and the double doors cracked open. Not enough to let me squeeze out, let alone Val or Arnie, who was Val-width and a good head taller.
But the crack let the noise rush in. There was crashing like an army getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there was shouting like an army getting mad about getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there were revving engine noises like army trucks having trouble bashing their way through a lot of undergrowth—and there was one voice shouting all by itself like whoever it was was really mad at someone else for doing something stupid—like maybe getting locked out of their own compound?
And there was barking.
There was Bella’s deep bay, and Bella was not a barker. I’d heard her bark maybe once before—but the noise a wolfhound makes is pretty memorable. There was Jonesie’s no-nonsense not-completely-ex-fighting-dog bark and then Dov’s mess-with-me-at-your-peril warning bark. No, I thought. Don’t do it. Those guys have guns. The gruuaa can’t protect you from bullets. My sick feeling was getting a lot worse.
Val said, “Wait here,” and followed Arnie through the office door.
Mongo and Taks and I went to the front door and peered out cautiously. It was strangely hard to breathe; it was like there was a giant hand pressing against my chest. I had my own hand on Mongo’s collar. I wasn’t sure what the gruuaa who had been with us were doing; in the weak shifting light I couldn’t tell them from the real shadows. Maybe they were swirling out to join their friends in the field. I tried to look for the gruuaa-network thing that I’d hoped Jill and Casimir could use—but that had been when we’d been assuming the army guys we had to deal with were inside the buildings, not outside. It was just supposed to look weird. It wasn’t supposed to have to stop anybody.
Yes. There it was. It was all mixed up in the undergrowth that the army guys were having trouble with. And I was pretty sure there were more gruuaa weaving themselves into it now—the ones that had been with us, presumably. Somehow my stomach didn’t feel any better.
I jumped back as the doors jerked open a little farther, dragging Mongo with me. I was just thinking, It’s dark out there, and the corridor lights are really showing up that the door is opening—when the corridor lights went out. Then there was the mother and father of all BANGS and the office lights went out too—but at the same time an alarm went off, WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP, the loudest thing you ever heard, and a bunch of emergency lights burst on outside as the front doors ground slowly about three-quarters open.
We could get out. But so could the bad guys get in. Or see us trying to get out. And there were a lot of bad guys out there. There was certainly something going on besides picking up two prisoners. I could see three trucks branded with the cobey logo from where I had flattened myself against the corridor wall.
I couldn’t hear anything through the alarm, but I could see the two guys with rifles running toward us.
Then three things happened simultaneously. The guys with rifles stopped like they’d run into a wall of something like extra-strength plastic wrap—invisible in the murky twilight and slightly springy—and I found that I was breathing and blinking and moving more easily.
Not quite invisible. As I stared at it I could see spiky, too-many-leggy, wiggly, faintly sparkling shadows. But there were new . . . strands, like skinny wires, that the leggy-wiggly things seemed to be winding themselves into. Were these what Arnie and Val were doing in the office? I didn’t think the gruuaa alone would have that rubbery strength.