never heard it hit bottom.
Kurt’s ladder was rocking worse; more of its bolts had ground out. He climbed up till his head was even with the causewalk; he was about twenty-five yards from where Sanders lay pinned. Kurt struggled to acquire a decent firing position—he leaned out of the ladder, braced against the ring rail. He shouldered his rifle and laid its beams ahead.
Sanders was being mauled. The ghala was crouched on top of him, vising Sanders down. Sanders instinctively lashed out, throwing thumb-bolts and web-chops under the thing’s neck, striking for pressure points, thrusting up knife-hands in attempts to unseat its ribs. But the ghala leaned closer, mocking, as if impervious to pain. Perhaps it felt no pain at all. It barely flinched at Sanders’s death blows.
Kurt’s ladder was still swaying; he couldn’t draw a good bead. He knew he had only one round left in the integral clip—there’d be no time to reload. He planted his foot against the shaftwall, trying to still the ladder as he continued to sight down.
Sanders squirmed beneath the ghala’s weight. Its head jerked to the left. It stared directly into Kurt’s double flashlight beams.
“Shoot!” Sanders yelled. “Goddamn it, shoot!”
Kurt froze behind his sights; his trigger finger felt like a curl of stone. He was paralyzed as the ghala’s primeval face leered back at him. Huge, orbicular eyes glittered a baleful shine. It was grinning, he realized. The ghala was actually grinning at him.
It turned back, slithering closer. Its lips slid up, showing yellow-black gums and silvery teeth that seemed to tense, lengthen, and quiver, shining with drool. Lowering then, its jaw came unhinged, its black mouth spreading wide to admit Sanders’s face.
The ladder stilled. As Sanders began to scream, Kurt squeezed off his last shot.
The concussion made the entire cavern vibrate. The bullet took the ghala’s head off at the jawline.
Kurt hauled himself onto the cause. He furiously butt-slammed the top rungs with his rifle until the ladder cracked off and crashed to the bottom of the pit.
Sanders pushed the body of the dead thing off him. Black blood and a dark yellow fluid oozed out of what little remained of its head.
“You really like to keep a guy in suspense, don’t you?” Sanders complained.
Kurt focused his lights down. “Oh, shit.”
“Come on!”
By now the first ghala had made it to the next level catwalk. Kurt and Sanders kicked and hammered and butt-stroked the next ladder until it fell. Below, the ghala raced to a third ladder, which promptly crashed over the side before the thing could even get its foot on a rung. The catwalk itself then gave way from the shaftwall and fell, leaving the ghala to hang one-handed from a black winze cable. Eventually, the cable snapped and the ghala plummeted very quickly to the bottom of the shaft.
“Happy landings, motherfucker!” Sanders shouted into the pit.
Above them, the ridge was beginning to buckle. Several stulls fell over and hit the floorwall with mammoth thuds.
“I think this place is trying to tell us something,” Kurt made the suggestion.
They fled down the manway. Behind them, the cavern began to shift out.
The two of them practically flew out of the manway. Kurt dropped his empty rifle and fell to hands and knees. The moonlight bathed his face; a clean, cool breeze stirred through the trees like a breath of life. They were out, and they had survived.
Sanders pointed to the fishing line tied off on the outside piton. “You want the honors?”
“Brother, they’re all yours.”
Sanders jerked the fishing line. Exactly four seconds later, triple explosions erupted heavily from within the earth, followed by a deep, rising rumble. Kurt and Sanders jogged to the tree-line as the mouth of the manway blew out a titan blast of dust and sound, and it was then that the entire ridge collapsed in on itself.
««—»»
They stood side by side in Willard’s shattered basement, facing the sinister pen which contained the two remaining ghala.
“What do we do with them?” Kurt asked.
Sanders picked up the spoon, ring, and fuze assembly of the grenade he’d set off here earlier. Since it was only a concussion grenade, the body had ruptured, not fragmented. He stooped to pick up the blown metal case, then put all the pieces in his pocket. Of the few rounds he’d fired down here, he left the spent cartridges on the floor; he’d touched them only with gloves. “We’ll take care of those two,” he said. “No problem.”
“I guess we could shoot them in the pen and bury them someplace.”
“No,” Sanders said, and led Kurt up the stairs to the study. “Willard was right over all, just insane in his methods. Those two things in that cage are an unknown species of life that medical science has never seen. They’ve got to be researched, taken apart, studied. We could learn something from them, something that might do us some good.”
“But I thought the whole idea was to not alert the authorities.”
“That is the idea. Civilian authorities would turn this into a joke. But the
The money from Willard’s safe still lay stacked on the desk. Kurt looked at it bleary-eyed. He wanted a cigarette bad, he felt that he deserved one after all that had happened that night. He looked down and saw a pack of Willard’s Luckies on the floor.
Sanders was counting the money.
Kurt lit one of Willard’s cigarettes. He took a long, smooth drag, then violently coughed the cigarette out of his mouth onto the floor.
“We split fifty-fifty,” Sanders said. “Fair enough?”
Kurt was still coughing. “I’m a fucking police officer, for God’s sake. I don’t take ill-gotten gains.”
“How is it ill-gotten? It’s Willard’s and Willard is dead. He’s got no surviving heirs, no relatives, no kids.” He put his share of the cash in his green string bag. “You want to leave your half sitting here for the Army to pocket?”
“Army?” Kurt said.
But Sanders was already on the phone. He switched on Willard’s desk intercom so that Kurt could listen in, too. After undo hassle with more than one night operator, Sanders’s call finally got punched through. Two rings, then:
“ASA Headquarters, Specialist Clabo speaking, sir! This line is not secure.”
“This is Warrant Officer Smith,” Sanders said, “from the 54th Battalion.”
“Yes, sir! May I help you, sir!”
“Log and copy the following information.”
“Ready, sir!”
“I’m reporting a perimeter-positive non-CBR-related hazard. Make sure you get those words down right, Specialist. It’s very important.”
“Yes, sir! I got it, sir!”
“This is a Status Black emergency. Do you know what that is, Specialist?”
There was a long pause. “Yes, sir!”
“Then write it down.”
“Done, sir! Grid coordinates, sir?”
“No grids available, Specialist. Log and copy the following location.” Sanders gave him Willard’s address, county, state, and zip code.
“Logged and copied, sir!”
“Report everything I’ve told you ASAP to the field officer of the day and the S-3. And I repeat. This is a
