Armageddon?? (88 page)

Both
men nodded grimly, and they began following their agents; the meeting room was
on the twenty-second floor and it was a long way down. Like every other
stairwell in downtown, the way out was clogged with a mass of people, and it
only took a few to panic and fall to turn the evacuation into a crush. The
secret service tried to clear a path, shouting “Federal Agents!” and “We have a
US Representative, let us through!” but with little effect on the crowd. Their
hopes picked up when one of the elevator doors began to open, but it revealed a
car packed to bursting with bodies.

“Citizens,
please, we have a senator and a congressman here, we need to evacuate them.”
The men and women in the elevator stared back with panicked eyes. Two of them
spilled out into the hallway, but the rest shrank back. The agents looked at
each other, considering whether to press the issue, but it was rendered moot as
the building suddenly lost power. With set expressions they returned to trying
to force a path for their charges through the crush.

Okthuura
Yal-Gjaknaath, Tartaruan Range, borderlands of Hell

It
was hopeless. No matter how she struggled her ripped wings couldn’t find enough
purchase on the air. The magma level had already dropped noticeably, but the
receding lava just exposed a steep, jagged rim of still-glowing rocks. To
Euryale it looked like a rack of red hot knives ready to tear her apart.
Already she seemed to be drowning in an ocean of merciless heat as she fell
into the volcano’s throat, the rim drawing away even as the ground rushed
closer. She knew it was hopeless, but instinct made her try to flare anyway,
throwing away the last of her airspeed to prevent an instant crushing death on
impact.

In
what seemed like a miracle, as she hovered for that final two seconds the sharp
glowing rocks were replaced by a shifting mass of gray-brown rubble. The gorgon
landed heavily, splaying onto the still scorching-hot stones and gaining a
fresh set of sprains and bruises, but to her utter surprise she was neither
incinerated nor broken. Elation lasted for only a moment as Euryale realized that
the lip had collapsed and she was crawling on a landslide. Desperately she
tried to out-pace the sliding rocks, scrabbling for purchase as the rim
continued to crumble into the throat. At last she was out, stumbling into the
crater proper and panting despite the searing air.

She
wasn’t out of danger yet though; the unstable portal was still churning the
lava, which was spitting out globs of molten rock at random. She’d emerged near
one of the shrines, a tattered mess of bent rods and half-melted wires, still
sparking feebly with residual psychic energy. A half dozen naga lay collapsed
in front of it, abandoned by their peers, who were slithering out the crater as
fast as their coils could carry them. Euryale found most of the naga rather
hard to tell apart, but one snakelike form was unmistakable; Yulupki had always
had a taste for tacky jewelry and for the ritual she’d liberally festooned
herself with beaten gold trinkets. Euryale had an overwhelming urge to leave
her there. It would certainly make explaining the disaster easier. No, it
didn’t make sense, too much was riding on Count Belial’s scheme and losing
Yulupki would be too much of a blow, to their portal capability and to morale.

As
she got closer she saw that the naga’s eyes were still open. “Baroness! Snap
out of it! Come on, you can’t stay here!”

“It’s
gone! My magic! I have no magic!” Yulupki wailed.

Euryale
shook her head. She’d seen Megaaeraholrakni suffer exactly the same thing when
she pushed herself too far. It was temporary of course. Demons could recover
from nearly anything that didn’t kill them outright, save the touch of iron.
“Snap out of it witch. You’re mewling like a kidling.”

The
naga didn’t seem to have heard her. “I can’t hear it… I can’t feel it… I am
nothing…”

Euryale
rolled her eyes then slapped the baroness across the face. The naga hissed and
bared her fangs, suddenly focused. “You’ll be fine… if you get out of here now.
Come on. I can’t carry you.”

A
thump followed by a sudden scream issued from nearby as a piece of lava
narrowly missed another of the naga, spraying the creature with glowing
fragments. Yulupki painfully began to slither up the slope towards the crater
rim, while Euryale went to find a Great Beast to help her move the other
wounded survivors.

Ford
Field Stadium, Detroit, Michigan

Lieutenant
Preston swept the binoculars across the smoke-shrouded asphalt, trying to
verify the charge placement. The scene took him back to Kuwait, the same dirty
haze backlit by towering flames. The plan was a desperation tactic to start
with, worked out in haste at the marathon emergency civil defense meeting just
two days ago. With only half his platoon available it would be a minor miracle
if they pulled it off. Worse, breathing gear was in critically short supply,
the best they could manage was taking gulps from medical oxygen bottles. Even
up on top of the stadium’s parking deck, the noxious air was burning his throat
and making his eyes water. His men down in the freeway cutting had it much,
much worse.

The
old-style surplus radio crackled to life. “Sir, I’m seeing lava flow under the
Wilkins Street bridge, it’s gonna hit you in five to ten minutes. Over.”

“Got
it Private. High tail it out of there. Have you got civvies on board?”

“Yes
sir, Alan been picking up wounded, truck’s full of them.”

“Great.
Get them clear. Out. Taguba, how are those charges coming?”

Sergeant
Taguba’s voice came in ragged gasps. “Just doing the… last column now…
Quarrie’s collapsed… put one of the bottles on him.”

Another,
higher pitched voice cut in - Sergeant Sharoff’s squad had already finished the
northern bridge and moved on to one of the ramps. “Sir, we ran out of satchels,
we’ve been improvising with loose blocks but we’re still stringing detcord…”

Lieutenant
Preston cut him off. “Sergeants, we’re out of time. Prepare to set timers,
three minutes, on my mark.”

There
was a long silence – on the radio at least. The city was anything but silent,
with the wailing sirens, honking horns, roaring flames, human screams,
drawn-out thumps of collapsing buildings and the omnipresent deep rumble of the
falling lava. Number four platoon, bravo company was the best approximation of
a combat engineering unit the Third Volunteers could manage, but faced with an
attack on this scale they most they could hope for was buying a little more
time.

“Ready.
My boys are pulling back.” Another pause. “Sharoff, in position.”

“Mark!”

“Timer
set.” Pounding footsteps came over the voice as Taguba wasted no time pulling
back.

“Timer
ru… sir…” Sergeant Sharoff’s voice cut off.

”Well
done, now haul ass! Samuels, stop the traffic now, any means necessary.”

“Yes
sir.”

Preston
could just make out diesel starting up as his men moved commandeered trucks to
block the freeway overpass. The civvies would hate them for it, but better that
than let them get blown up or dunked in lava. His knuckles went white as his
grip on the binoculars tightened. The smoke completely obscured the ramps now,
but there was a streak of movement… yes, yes! it was Taguba’s truck barrelling
down the freeway, his men piled into the bed. But where the hell was Sharoff?

“Sharoff?
Report! Sharoff? Lee?” Preston tried to force back the growing sense of horror
as the second pickup failed to appear. He dropped the binoculars and jumped
back into the SUV, addressing his driver. “Take us out to the edge of the lot.
As soon as the charges blow, we go down after our men, understand?”

Private
Russell was only nineteen, a trainee machinist when he wasn’t drilling with the
regiment. Preston guessed that the kid had spent a lot of his time fooling
around with cars before the Message, judging by the work he’d done getting the
ex-museum pieces back into working order. Russell’s hands were trembling on the
wheel as he steered the Cherokee down the parking ramp, and he gulped before
responding with a shaky “Sir yes sir.”

“Steady
now. The rubble will hold back the lava, we’ll be in and out before the smoke
gets us. If the gas has knocked them out, we’re their only hope…”

A
deafening, stuttering series of cracks and booms drowned out the Lieutenant’s
words. The smoke swirled and for a moment cleared to reveal the two freeway
bridges collapsing in a tumble of concrete rumble. A second later one of the
connector ramps came down, breaking into spinning chunks as its support columns
cracked unevenly. The charge placement was supposed to tip the decks on end as
they fell, and from here it looked like they’d not done too bad job. Splashes
of color showed where cars had been on the bridges when they fell. Preston
hoped they were abandoned, but if not… well, they were warned, and thousands of
lives were at stake here.

Private
Russell had the accelerator on the floor before the rubble had stopped falling
and the SUV surged forward, smashing through a low metal barrier, crossing an
on-ramp and charging down the grassy slope towards the freeway proper.
Visibility dropped to mere feet as they entered the now settling dust cloud.
Suddenly the vehicle swerved left, braking hard and throwing Lieutenant Preston
against the dash. Two shapes emerged out of the gloom, bent low and moving
slowly, passing a bright red bottle back and forth between them. Preston shoved
the door open, admitting a wash of heat and smoke to the cabin, and pulled the
men into the back of the SUV.

“Did
the others make it?”

Corporal
Lee had a horribly pained look in his eyes. “No… don’t think so.” His voice was
a croak. ”Sharoff insisted on wiring more detcord! I think the gas got them,
they weren’t moving. Sorry sir, no choice, had to leave them.”

A
cracking, rumbling, groan proclaimed the arrival of the lava, punctuated by the
distorted screams of tortured rebar. The makeshift barrier shifted but held for
now, checking the stream’s headlong rush towards downtown and the river. Preston
nodded to Private Russell. “Go!” he shouted, then in a quieter voice “we did
what we could. Now lets see where else we’re needed.” He reached for the radio
again.

Congress
Street, Downtown Detroit

At
last, they had reached the lobby. Sander was breathing heavily, at sixty-seven
he was hardly a young man. He paused to catch his breath, but what he saw
outside snatched it away again. The sky was turning pitch black, and ash was
falling like snow. Into the streets they went, but traffic had long since ground
to a halt as cars had stalled from the ash or been abandoned by their drivers.
Coughing and stumbling, they made their way slowly through the deepening black.
It was hard to keep a sense of direction; were they heading towards the river?

After
what seemed like an eternity, a piercing scream cut through the darkness. They
rounded a corner, only to see a city street backlit by a lava flow. A
side-channel of the main flow, it wasn't going at a breakneck speed, but it was
steadily making its way down Randolph street. Carl grimaced, knowing the park
had to be in flames by now. But worse than that, if the lava reached the
entrance of the tunnel to Windsor, a critical evacuation route would be cut.
"We've got to do something!" He yelled through the din.

"Our
job is to get you to safety, sir!" The agent grabbed his shoulder, but the
Senator from Michigan refused to be moved. Lights flashed ahead, dimly in the
smoke. A hulking yellow form resolved into a back hoe; it was an abandoned
highway repair site.

"There!"
He spied a dump truck with a bed full of gravel and ran to it. "We can put
a bit..” Carl’s voice trailed off into a hacking cough. ”…A bit of a barrier
up, we can dam the lava." The agents looked at each other, then at Sander,
who nodded. They weren't likely to make it out of the city alive, but the
longer they could keep the streets clear, the better chance other people would
have. "I'll do it, sir. I was in the Army Corps." The agent climbed
into the cab and fired up the engine.

Coach
Insignia Restaurant, Renaissance Center, Downtown Detroit

Gloria
had wept for a while, but the sorrow had receded for now. Perhaps it was the
unreality of the situation, like a disaster movie. Possibly though it was what
she’d been watching below, because she’d never expected to see this much
heroism in the face of hellfire and damnation itself. She had a fine view from
the deserted restaurant and she’d seen people dragging others out from burning
buildings, others digging through rubble of collapsed ones even as the lava closed
in on them and private cars actually driving back in to the city to pick up
more survivors. She’d seen a news helicopter buzzing around lifting children
off rooftops and another big helicopter dropping packages to the survivors –
after watching for a few minutes she was pretty sure they were gas masks of
some sort.

Then
there were the barricades, springing up everywhere as people tried to hold back
the burning tide for just a few more minutes. It had started with the freeway
collapse, that had gone down and sent up a big cloud of dust right before the
lava got to it, so it had to be deliberate. She wasn’t sure if that had been a
good idea, the stadium had gone up in flames and then the molten rock had
pooled and started heading west along the I75, cutting off escape to the north
as it went. Then again she’d probably be in hell already if they hadn’t damned
the flow, along with thousands of others caught in downtown.