Leviathan (24 page)

“No,” he whispered. “Almighty God,
you
are my strength. And I trust my life … to
YOU
!”

With a roar he surged back.

Steel was ripped from stone.

* * *

Connor finished rewiring the exit door that would allow them to escape the Command C
avern. He glanced up as Chesterton approached.

“
You finished with that, Connor?”

“
It's finished,” Connor replied, rising to gaze across the cavern where Barley and a handful of soldiers were rigging a formidable load of C-4, dynamite, claymore mines, and other incendiary devices. “Is that enough of a charge to blow that thing to pieces?”

“
It'd better be,” Chesterton grimaced, “'cause it’s all we've got. And once we blow it, this cavern is going to be superheated to about thirty thousand degrees for about ten seconds before the roof comes down. So we won't be getting back in here for supplies.”

“
Are you taking everything you can carry? Just in case?”

“
Yeah,” Chesterton confirmed, handing Connor a rifle. With a short pause, Connor took it. He knew it was an M-16 with a grenade launcher attached to the lower part of the barrel. It was what they called an M-203.

“
Do you know how to use that?”

Without waiting for an answer Chesterton handed Connor an ammo belt with a dozen 50-round clips and another shoulder belt with a large number of antipersonnel grenades that could be fired from the grenade launcher.

“Yeah,” Connor replied steadily. “I've fired a few rounds through one.”

“
Well this ain't no plinking contest, Connor. If that thing comes through that door, you just need to remember one thing.”

“
What's that?”

“
When in doubt, empty the clip. Ammo is cheap. Your life isn't.”

“
Yeah, I guess that—”

A thunderous collision struck the vault of Alpha Corridor, and Chesterton immediately spun, leveling his rifle. At the door, soldiers scurried back, shocked by the terrific impact, and Connor saw that Barley alone stood his ground, slamming detonators into the C-4 as fast as he could move.

“Barley!” Chesterton screamed. “Get out of there!”

“
Ten seconds!” the lieutenant shouted. He ran to a high load of dynamite and quickly adjusted a detonator. Connor ran up to Chesterton, who was screaming to the rest of the scrambling soldiers. “Get that other vault open so we can retreat! Do it now!”

A second impact, but deeper, continued like a prolonged nuclear blast, quaking the vault beside Barley. Connor glanced up as stalactites broke away from the ceiling, falling like spears.

“Look out!” he yelled, leaping to the side to avoid a two-ton impact of a calcite column. He rolled to his feet to see Barley working feverishly to finish the explosive charges.

Again a sharp impact struck the vault, and then another explosive blast and another impact, and Connor realized suddenly what was happening. The beast had finally pinpointed a specific weakness in the vault, a single section that it was attacking to overcome the portal. A hissing could be heard in the wall. Connor whirled to see Frank staring at the vault.

“What's that sound?” Connor asked.

“
It's nitrogen,” Frank replied, holding his place. “Leviathan has ruptured the nitrogen lines to freeze the steel bracketing!” Then the scientist's face brightened. “Of course! Of course that's what it would do!”

“
What?” Connor yelled. “What would it do?”

“
It's not attacking the vault at all! It's attacking the nitrogen lines! The lines rupture and spray across the steel freezing the steel bracketing that holds the vault in place! After that Leviathan can easily shatter the steel brackets because the steel will be brittle as ice! Then it's just going to knock the door into this cavern!” Connor heard a savage rending of metal in the wall above the vault.

“
Barley!” Chesterton bellowed. “Get out of there! That's a direct order! Get out of there now!”

Breathless and fatigued the muscular man looked up.
“One more second, Colonel, and I can—”

“
NO! Forget it! Move! Move! Move!”

In an explosion of rock and nitrogen gas, a monstrous foreleg blasted open a gaping hole twenty feet high on the wall, far above the fire door. A roar thundere
d through the dark orb as Leviathan's powerful limb, skin gleaming like black metal-leather, savaged the hole even farther—shattering the steel like wood, reaching in farther to pull back again, shredding the metal with black claws. Chesterton ran toward Barley who stuck an entire handful of detonators into a brick of C-4.

In a colossal display of
unstoppable strength Leviathan slammed both forelegs through the hole, one after the other. Connor and Frank backed up. Then Leviathan tore at the ruptured space for the length of the entire vault before it jerked both forelegs back through.

Silence.

Frank staggered. “Get ready!”

A runaway freight train hit the vault, and what remained of the foundation surrendered to
the force, the door bending outward from the top just as Chesterton reached Barley and roughly grabbed the lieutenant by the arm, dragging him to his feet.

Barley wildly hurled the remaining detonators pell-mell onto the dynamite and was instantly running with Chesterton across the cavern. They covered a hundred yards when an even more powerful impact struck the door and in a painful rending of metal and earth the vault was defeated, falling like a wall into the Command Center.

A sonic boom sounded in the cavern, dust rising. And although neither Chesterton nor Barley turned to look back, Connor knew from their expressions that they sensed death behind them, close and closing.

“
Get out of here!” Chesterton screamed as he neared, waving his hands. “We're gonna blow it! We're gonna blow it!”

Leviathan stood in the open tunnel and for the first time Connor truly saw it.

Rising almost sixteen feet high on its hind legs, the Dragon advanced into the cavern, standing like a bear, the thick body muscular and heavily armored, reptilian in aspect but beyond that, older than that. Its forelegs were long and bat-like and ended in claws that gleamed like black bowie knives. And its thick, green-black armor covered its entire form, the scales large and tight, bending easily with its movements and completely unscarred by the earlier combat. The neck was long, tapering to a wicked head that opened sharply, unhinging jaws as white and layered as a shark's.

Leviathan's dragon-eyes, green and glowing, scanned the cavern for the briefest moment before centering on them and focusing with malevolent, hateful intelligence.

Connor saw the thick, powerful tail whip around, almost fifteen feet of it, to smash into the wall. The tail's tapered end easily sliced off a section of steel plating and the Dragon lowered its head, unleashing a deafening roar that thundered across the expanse of the cavern, crashing over them with physical force.

At the roar Chesterton spun violently toward the Dragon, running backward and wildly firing his rifle as if the beast were on top of him. Then the Army colonel spun back again, his face vivid with fear, screaming and waving frantically.
“Get out of here you fools! Barley! Blow it!”

Barley ignored the order and grabbed Chesterton's shoulder, dragging the colonel toward the
door. Then with a shriek Leviathan raised its head to unleash a wide, waving stream of liquid fire that blazed upward at the ceiling, blasting the dome of the cavern into a cloud of flame, igniting the stone, raining ...

Enraged and ignoring the holocaust, Barley turned, screaming,
“Get out of here, Connor!”

Connor obeyed instantly, throwing himself low under the door and leaping beyond it, breathless and off balance. He couldn't find his stance in the chaos, the fear, and the confusion, and stumbled away. But concerned for Chesterton and Barley, he managed to cast a wild glance back to see the colonel shoved through the narrow space beneath the door, thrown by two powerful hands that handled him as easily as they would handle a child.

Dazed, Chesterton staggered up with a painful cry and fell to the side. His arm was on fire, and he had lost his M-16. Understanding instantly what was about to happen, Connor angrily threw his rifle to the side and reached out, grabbing Chesterton to jerk him away from the door.

Then Connor heard rifle fire and a defiant human cry on the other side of the vault, challenged by a bestial roar that trembled the earth. And to Connor's amazement, Barley was rolling beneath
the door, leaping effectively clear to aim a small black box at the gap.

He frantically pressed a button.

Connor felt a blinding sharp roar fill his head as a shock wave blasted a path beneath the half-raised vault and then there was only white flame, liquid fire, and pain that continued in a volcanic eruption to bring down the light and the darkness together.

* * *

Chapter 18
 

C
onnor thought for a moment that he was dead, but adrenaline and fear brought him back to hateful life. Then he felt something approaching, something ...
monstrous
.

A shattering impact struck the vault door beside them.

Instantly a handful of survivors moaned, rolled, staggered noisily to their feet. Connor blinked at the dim emergency lights, and then he realized that the shock wave had ruptured the power lines in this end of the tunnel. Reorienting with a violent effort, he felt himself for wounds, found none. He felt for Chesterton and found the colonel lying to his side. Fired by strength and fear, Connor shook him hard. Heard someone shouting.

It was Barley, bellowing.

“Connor!”

“
Yeah!”

“
Get Colonel Chesterton! I'm going ahead to open the vault at the far end of this passageway! We've got to get some distance on this thing! Get everybody that's still alive and follow me! You got it?”

“
Yeah, yeah, I got it! Just go!”

Barley's tall dark shadow disappeared down the corridor as Leviathan hit the vault again. A fiendishly long foreleg, talons gleaming black-red, snaked under the open fire door, reaching, scraping. But all of them were too far back from the portal.

“Chesterton!” Connor lifted the colonel to a sitting position. “Get it together! That thing's still alive!”

Another superheated blast hit the vault, and Connor saw liquid fire dripping to the narrowly-raised space of the vault door. Dust and darkness stirred at the beast's shuffling and Connor saw a long, clawed foot against the flaming stones. He spun back around.

“Chesterton! Come on, man! Get it together!”

With a groan Chesterton seemed to come around. In the dim light created by Leviathan's continuing, flaming attack, Connor saw the colonel lift a hand to his bloodied head.
“Oh man,” he mumbled. “Oh, god, that rolling in the dirt stuff is harder than you think when your arm is really on fire … It really is.”

Connor felt his teeth clench in vivid fear. There was no time left for compassion. Connor began dragging the wounded colonel to his feet.
“Come on, Chesterton. Get on your feet! That thing's coming through the wall in less than a minute!”

“
Barley ...” he gasped. “Where's Barley ...”

“
He's alive,” Connor answered, staggering down the hallway, finding uncertain footing on the fallen rock. He whirled back suddenly. “Frank! Where are you?”

“
I'm here!” an unsteady voice answered.

“
Come on, Doctor! We've got to move to the far end of this corridor.”

Frank leaned his hand against the wall as he moved.
“Yeah, I know.”

At the exit of the Command Cavern, Leviathan continued its attack, relentless and raging.
Connor knew the beast's blast-furnace flame and the strategically placed physical blows against the fire door would soon tear the structure from its moorings.

But in moments the survivors had recovered, gathering speed. They gained steadiness as they went forward, and then they were running, following the wide, twisting corridor for a half mile to come to the vault-sealed end that led into the Matrix, a cavern named for the spiraling columns of limestone and calcite that rose titanically from the 200,000-square-foot floor comprised of granite and calcite cave pearls. It was used primarily for storing heavy equi
pment, spare steel plating and additional ventilation ducts.

Connor was grateful that the lights in this end of the passageway were still functioning. They glared fluorescent white in the calcite-dust atmosphere raised from the trembling attack on the fire door, now far behind him. As he reached the end of the passageway he saw that Barley had already removed the control cover plate on the vault, rewiring the circuit. Familiar now with the routine, a half dozen soldiers began working the hydraulic pump, raising the door two feet and then three so they could enter the cavern.

A murderous collision followed by a victorious roar sounded at the distant end of the tunnel, alerting them to the fact that the beast had almost defeated the fire door. Quickly everyone began to slide beneath the vault into the sprawling cavern beyond.

But Chesterton broke away from Connor and leaned against a wall, staring back down the passageway. He drew a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol from his holster, infinitely weary. Yet he still retained his military bearing and Connor began to understand the true strength of intelligence and will that had made the man a colonel in the first place. Then Barley and two other soldiers slid beneath the narrowly raised vault, entering the cavern.

“We've got to slow it down,” Chesterton said weakly, face smeared in blackened sweat. “We can't outrun it.”

Connor grimaced, knowing he was right.

Overhead lights swung, vibrating to the thunderous bellowing that traveled the length of the tunnel, and Connor looked up to see the huge power cables running across the roof. His teeth came together with a snap.

Of course.

Immediately he spun, seeing where the cable tied into the intermediate connector box, high and to the side of the vault door. “Chesterton!” he shouted. “Get your men to bring me a ladder! Do it quick!”

Chesterton didn't even question
the idea; things were obviously too bad for him to question anything at all.

His voice rang out and Connor heard a response on the far
side of the vault, inside the Matrix, the rush of men scurrying to obey. In a moment two soldiers slid an extension ladder beneath the fire door. Other soldiers raised it to the wall, following Connor's instructions.

A violent, shattering concussion shook the cavern floor, and Connor knew that the vault had finally struck the ground, slammed out. Connor glared down the tunnel, trembling instantly, expecting to see the nightmarish shape rushing toward them, glaring, gaping, slashing.

Nothing happened.

Silence.

Frank was beside him, sweating, breathing heavily as Connor stared down the wide, twisting passageway.

“
Why isn't it on top of us?” Connor whispered.

Frank shook his head, quiet.
“It's probably feeding on the soldiers who died when the roof came down. Because of its enhanced metabolism, Leviathan has to eat about a thousand pounds of meat every two hours. I think we might have another minute.”

Connor backed carefully to the ladder.
“When it comes down the tunnel will it come fast or will it come slow and careful?”

“
It’ll come slow,” Frank answered. He wiped a blackened arm over his brow, smearing even more soot over his sweating face. “Because of what we just did to it, it'll be looking for another ambush. It's always learning. It'll probably be looking for explosives.”

“
What else would it look for?”

“
Heat signatures in the dark.”

Connor began climbing the ladder.
“Good.”

In a moment he was at the top. He quietly opened an intermediate breaker box. Like most of the circuit connecting points, the box was crammed with lines of varying power. Connor found a line of 10,000 volts. He studied it a minute, calculating.
“No, not enough,” he whispered. “Not enough to put you down for the count ...”

He continued to search until he came across it—a line of over 100,000 volts. It was as thick as his thumb. Connor knew it was a primary
feed line from the power plant. He began loosening the brackets as he looked down, observing Chesterton's upturned face.

He spoke slowly, distinctly.
“Chesterton, raise the vault all the way and tell your men to remove a section of the walkway right in front of the door. Then have them remove another section on the far side of the cavern.” Connor leaned down. “Tell them to put as much fiberglass and wood under the legs of the middle section as possible so that the steel is not touching the ground! I'm going to electrify the middle section, and I'm gonna use that thing behind us to ground out the current.”

Chesterton's eyes blazed.
“Let me get this straight! You need the middle section of walkway insulated from the ground so when that thing steps on the steel, the current's going to go through it and into the ground?” His relief was wild. “Do you think that will kill it?”

“
I don't know,” Connor replied. “There's no way to know how much resistance that thing has to a current.”

“
What do you mean?” Chesterton staggered.

Connor grunted as he twisted the brackets holding the wire.
“That thing weighs almost six tons, Chesterton. I don't know how much current it'll take to kill it!”

“
But that much will hurt it, right?”

“
Hurt it, yeah, but I don't know if it'll be enough to kill it. This stuff is complicated.” Chesterton nodded and ducked under the doorway, giving tense instructions to Barley. Instantly there were shuffling sounds echoing in the cavern, the tunnel.

Working feverishly, shaking sweat from his
face, Connor managed to break the sturdy ceramic brackets that held the high-voltage line in place. Because the line was heavily insulated, he grabbed the rubber coating with his hand.

Then, careful to hold the bare copper ending far from anything that could ground it out, Connor pulled the cable from the wall. It was backbreaking labor because he was forced to pull with one hand
and yet in thirty seconds, powered by pure fear, he had hauled out thirty feet of excess line.

Still holding the end of the line by the insulation, Connor rapidly descended the ladder. As he hit the ground, cautiously
holding the insulated section of 100,000-volt line in his fist, Connor saw that Chesterton had come back under the vault and stopped dead in place, white and trembling, staring with wide eyes down the passageway.

Connor whirled, glaring to see the gigantic Dragon shadow that blackened a close section of the darkened tunnel. The godlike image stood carefully outside the light.

Angry eyes glowed.

A growl vibrated the passageway.

* * *

“What was that?” Beth asked, staring at the wall of the Housing Cavern. The shock wave had trembled the entire structure, more than twenty rooms, even breaking a lighting fixture loose from the ceiling.

The guard, Private Thompson, held his rifle close.
“I don't know, ma'am,” he said carefully, staring at the wall beside her. “It sounded like some kind of explosion.”

“
What kind of explosion?”

“
I'm not in demolition, Mrs. Connor, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say it sounded like dynamite.”

“
Like someone was dynamiting one of those vaults?”

Thompson nodded.
“Yes, ma'am. Maybe. I don't know what else it could have been. But it was pretty deep in the cavern. A few miles maybe. Or maybe more.”

Dr. Hoffman was at her side.
“I believe that they are still alive, Mrs. Connor,” he said. “At least, from the sound of the explosion, it is clear that at least some of them are still alive. Perhaps your husband is among them. We must not give up hope.”

Beth turned to him, smiling faintly, grateful. Then she heard Jordan crying and she turned instantly away, moving toward the room where he lay. She didn't know who or what had caused the explosion, but she knew that there were obviously still some men alive in the deepest part of the cavern.

Coldly wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, she prayed that Connor was one of them.

* * *

Thor could not move another inch through the ventilation shaft. A large fan, easily powerful enough to clear the entire cavern of smoke, spun blindingly, only inches from his eyes.

He had crawled two hundred feet through the shaft before encountering it, a spinning black haze highlighted by the fluorescent lights that blazed from inside the facility. He could not see past the revolving blades, but he knew he had reached the cavern itself.

Yes, this was where the smoke had passed.

He studied the spinning black blades a long time. He knew that if he stuck a hand in there he would lose it instantly. The dusty edges would still be sharp enough to sever his arm. He glanced at the fan's foundation, visible in the dim white light, and saw that it was anchored into the wall with stout bolts sunk in concrete blocks.

He nodded, bringing up the battle-ax beside him. It was a difficult movement, turning the ax in the shaft until he held it by the broad, double-bladed head. Then he held it by the top of the wide steel with one hand, the steel handle of the ax protruding in front of him. For a moment he thought that he could time it, but the fan was spinning too quickly. He made two abrupt motions to thrust the handle through the blades, pulling back at the last second. Then he gritted his teeth with determination and shoved the handle with all his might, driving it forward.