Aftermath (18 page)

I bit back the sarcastic comment that almost slipped out and nodded instead. Surprise might well be our only advantage and I didn’t want to ruin it by letting masked boy know we were coming. Still, being able to hunt them down psychically sure would make things easier on us. Swallowing back a sigh I kept walking.

And walking, and walking, and skipping for a few minutes, then back to walking.

Finally we broke through a line of trees and spotted what was, by all accounts, what we’d been looking for: a hole in the ground.

While it didn’t look like much, a rocky archway surrounded by a cluster of foliage that had been shredded in an effort to expose the hole, it was the only thing we’d come across that offered us any clue as to where masked boy had gone. Crumbled rock littered the entranceway, scrape points high across the stone arch, just about the right height for a giant trying to squeeze through. Darkness beckoned beyond.

“This looks like the place. We drawing straws to see who goes first?”

Thud grunted. “A real demon always goes first.”

“Which explains why your girlfriend is always calling me.”

He growled and started after me but Shaw thumped him on the shoulder and stopped him cold.

“Now is not the time.”

“I agree,” Rahim told her, and then shoved me forward. “Take point, Frank.”

I slouched in defiance but did it anyway, taking just a second to let my eyes adjust at the cave opening. At least if something was waiting for us inside, I would die first.

Fuck it. I needed a vacation anyway.

Chapter Sixteen

The mouth widened just a handful of yards past the entryway, opening up sufficiently to allow us all to walk side by side if we wanted to. The roof stretched above us a good twenty-five feet or more, and I could feel the downward slope growing steeper, each step taking a little more to slow my forward motion. The walls and floor were hewn smooth in a way none of the locals could have done without power tools. They might well have been glass. About every ten feet or so there was a rounded alcove that made the place even wider and made our footsteps echo through the place like a booming drum line. Stealth wasn’t gonna be our friend.

We burrowed down the tunnel for about ten minutes, nothing changing, when I saw a spark in the distance.

“What the—?”

That horrible country song, “The Thunder Rolls” by Garth Brooks, came to mind as the cavern erupted in a roar and something punched me in the chest at the speed of sound. The impact knocked me on my ass and my head thumped against the stone floor, stars exploding in my vision. It was like the 4
^th
of July for the colorblind.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled. “Someone shot me.” Everyone scattered for cover and I crawled for it, blinking away the flashing lights and slipping into one of the alcoves as another shot rang out, a wasp buzzing past.

“You okay, Frank?” Rachelle asked in my ear.

“Vest took the brunt of it,” I answered, dusting off my chest. My ribs throbbed beneath the body armor and I could feel a slight hitch in my breath but I’d done more damage to myself stubbing my toe stepping out of the shower. “I’m okay.” I got to my feet and peeked around the corner, expecting yet another gunshot but only silence greeted me.

“They’ve got an ambush point set where they can hear us coming,” Lance said. “They don’t need to waste bullets since there seems to be no way around them.”

“Anyone have a grenade?”

“Seriously Frank?” Rahim stared as if hoping the bullet had killed me. “You want to bring the entire place down on our heads?”

“Well, the first part if not the latter.” I had to agree lobbing explosives down the tunnel was probably not the best of our options at that juncture no matter how satisfying it might be. Still, I kept the idea in mind in case we came across masked boy and his cohorts cowering in a dead end cavern.

“Okay then, plan B. We roll Thud down the tunnel and run behind him, using him as a meat shield.”

“Why don’t we roll your ego down there,” he countered. “No way they’d be able to get a shot past something
that
big.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. Haven’t you morons ever heard of covering fire?” Kit raised her AR-15 and fired a few rounds into the darkness. “One of you idiots who can, you know, actually see in the dark might actually hit something if you tried it. Then we can advance to the next alcove and do it all over again.”

“That was plan F, but thanks for jumping ahead. We have an alphabet for a reason.”

“Mainly so I can spell out how you can go fuc—”

“We’re wasting time,” Rahim said, cutting her off. He shouldered his rifle and moved the edge of the alcove. “Cover me.”

I groaned. “I got this. Keep Rala at the back.” Before the wizard could run out and get himself shot, I darted across the tunnel into the alcove on the other side. Three fingers raised so they could be seen, I peeled them back until the last one and bolted down the tunnel.

Rahim waited just an instant so the muzzle flash wouldn’t illuminate me, and then snapped off a couple of quick shots. Kit fired a couple right after him, from a lower position in an attempt to confuse our ambushers. No one returned fire and I made it to the alcove without issue.

After counting to three again, I leaned out and peered down the tunnel. Even with my sight being able to cut through most of the murk I couldn’t see anything. Either our attackers had bailed or they were staying hidden. A few more shots rang out from our end so I took advantage and ran down the tunnel to the next alcove, throwing myself into it with gusto.

Too bad it was occupied.

Two shocked and green faces stared at me as we collided, surprise and my momentum knocking them both backward a few steps. Time seemed to slow as they brought their rifles up, my heart pounding in my chest, the world creeping around us.

No, not really. That didn’t happen.

They were just dumb as dirt and took
forever
.

The two greenies fumbled their weapons so much that I felt bad for them. For a full five seconds I watched as they tried to adjust the straps that had gotten tangled around their necks and shoulders, only managing to tie themselves up worse when it was all said and done.

“Here, let me help you,” I said, then I shot them both in the head, one after the other while they stood there looking stupid. They flopped to the ground like wet sand bags and lay there in their silly little loincloths with their hair all matted and tied in colored bands. If ever there was an argument for evolution, they weren’t it. It was pretty clear who’d given them the guns and tasked them to take us out or slow us down but they might well have been a monkey with a math problem. No amount of banging on rocks or shoving bananas up their asses was gonna give them the answer.

“Frank!”

“I’m good,” I shouted back. “Ran into a couple of cave dwellers. Think our plan might need an adjustment.” A bullet ricocheted off the wall as if intent on proving my point. “Our
friends
seem to agree.”

“Can you see anyone?”

I ducked low and peeked out, squinting to see down the tunnel. Luck rewarded me with the barest of glimpses of a green face and milky white eyes disappearing behind the wall of an alcove a couple yards down on the opposite side.

“No,” I shouted back, reaching down and pulling my boots off. Before I could convince myself I was being as dumb as the two greenies lying dead in my current hidey hole, I ran off down the tunnel, my socks muffling the sound, feet slipping and sliding in conjunction with the growing slope.

Good thing I’d washed them recently.

To stay out of the line of friendly fire—or not so friendly given who I was traveling with—I stuck close to the wall nearest me. The greenies must have heard me at the last minute because one leaned around the corner with his rifle ready. I popped off a shot that sent him scurrying. Before he recovered I slid into the alcove across from him like a runner stealing home and sighted down the barrel of my .45. He and his buddy were just as hapless as the last two. They crumpled to the floor with white eyes going dim while I reloaded.

“Covering fire!” I yelled and leaned out into the corridor and let loose with a bunch of lead. The others ran toward me, adding their own shots to the mix, and joined me a few moments later.

“These are Judas’s people,” Rahim said, staring across the intervening space at the dead greenies. Lance knelt down beside the bodies, enthralled.

“Yup. He must have convinced them that we’re the bad guys in this scenario.”

“Are we not?” Styg asked, speaking for the first time since he’d told me there was nothing he could do to resurrect Karra. His pale face glowed in the darkness. “This is their home and we are invading it. Would you do any less were you in their shoes?”

I shrugged. “First off, they don’t wear shoes. Secondly, I probably wouldn’t but we’re not here to question the morality of our play. In this case the end justifies the means.”

“I suspect our masked villain feels the same or we would not be here.”

“The victor makes the rules,” I told him, ending the argument. “Let’s be sure we’re the ones winning and there’s no one on their side named Victor.”

Shaw leaned back into the alcove after peering down the tunnel. “This corridor seems to go on forever. Judas’s people could be lined up for miles, draining us of energy and ammunition while our foes set about their task.”

While I hated to agree with Shaw about anything, she was right. We could be trapped in the labyrinth of tunnels for days at the rate we were going. Masked boy could have freed Marduk and Buddha and Odin for all we knew by the time we managed to get through the gauntlet. And then I had an idea.

Then I had another idea because the first one with the grenade had already been ruled out.

“Who here had a Slip-N-Slide as a kid?”

Kit reluctantly raised her hand.

“You had an awesome childhood,” I told her. “Anyway, same principle applies here. Meet you all at the end of the ride.”

Since I figured action would be more telling than words, I went to the far side of the alcove and bolted out into the corridor, dropping to my knees and letting momentum and the downward gradient do the rest. The smooth surface of the tunnel worked exactly as I’d hoped it would.

While a little bit of friction built up and warmed my knees and shins, I was flying down the tunnel at a pretty good clip and actually accelerating. The first two alcoves I passed were empty but the second set had a couple greenies in each. Like GI Jesus I spread my arms out to both sides and capped the bastards as I whipped past. Those in the ones ahead got the hint that something was coming their way and peeked their heads out of their holes. I responded by playing Whac-A-Mole with their faces.

“I’ll be back to collect my tickets later,” I yelled. “Don’t spend them, you fuckers.”

All hell broke loose shortly after.

I could hear my people storming down the tunnel a ways behind me, the sound thundering through the place as if World War III had kicked off. The greenies responded by stepping out into the corridor and unleashing a barrage of gunfire. They obviously failed gun safety 101 because those at the rear of the firing squad unloaded into the backs of those in front of them. Bodies toppled everywhere and bullets
buzzed
through the corridor sounding like the living quarters of the Home for Single and Happy Women.

A few moments later my plan hit its first real snag. No longer cowering in their cubby holes, dead and dying greenies were strewed across the corridor. I slammed into a couple as I barreled downhill, arms and legs and all sort of gooey body parts entangled themselves around me. They hindered my shooting pretty much right away but they turned out to be pretty solid in terms of defense. Bullets slammed into the corpses and saved my ass from getting shot up but I wasn’t racking up as much of a body count as I would have liked. All I could hope for was that I was providing enough of a distraction that the rest of the folks could gun down those I missed.

I dared a glance behind me but things were moving too fast for any sense of clarity. People were screaming and shooting and dying and leaping for cover, all in the span of seconds. There wasn’t anything to be done about the chaos I’d left behind me so I focused my attention on what was coming up. That was when I realized it was the end of the road. The tunnel shot off sideways in both directions and a giant stonewall hurtled toward me.

A bunch of greenies stood with their backs to the wall, rifles raised and spitting fire. They held their ground as I raced toward them, either thinking they could stop me or too afraid of their master to disobey the order to take us out.

I honestly think it comes back to that bit about them not being all that bright though.

Barely slowed by the bodies I slammed into their legs at a vicious clip, knocking them asshole over elbows. Then I hit the wall.

Fortunately with all the greenies in the way it was like being slapped with a ham sandwich. The sudden stop twisted us all up into a pinwheel of limbs and knocked the breath from my lungs. Judging by the huffing and groaning it had done the same to them. I set about disentangling myself—squeezing the trigger to help clear some space—and staggered to my feet, standing over the jumbled mess of greenies. My stomach tightened when I recognized the one of them still alive.

“Lookie who we have here,” I said, pointing my gun at the woman’s face. Her weird white eyes stared at me unblinking. “If it isn’t my best friend Mia. How you doing, Mean Joe Green?”

She sneered, her pretty emerald face bearing memories of the battle that had led me and my friends out of the interstice the last time we were here. Topless, as was the custom there, her side and ribs had taken the brunt of the damage, rippled scars striping her from her underarm to her thigh. She’d taken as good as she’d given from the looks of it.

“I have to give you credit though,” I told her. “Didn’t imagine you’d survive a fight against a dragon. I was pretty sure when we left you here you were as good as dead.”

She spit on the ground. “That’s what you get for underestimating me.” Her voice spilled loose out of sync with her lips as if someone had dubbed the movie of her life poorly. I remembered that from the last time, the interstice translating everyone on some subconscious level. It made communicating easy but it also added to the fun factor.