Leviathan (30 page)

It stared at the blood, the blood, to steal, to steal, to kill
-KILL-KILL-
KILL
!

Smoldering fangs distended.

Yessssss ...

It was time to kill
...

It lowered itself to all fours and the dark, dark shadow of Leviathan fell across the dead. Then it moved slowly forward, following the heated human tracks through the red light
, for there was the man, woman, and child.

Yes, had always been the man,
the woman, and child ...

To kill
, to kill, to kill ...

*
* *

Behind them the tunnel trembled.

In a devil's wind, Leviathan's roar rushed over them and Connor spun, staring back. They had run almost a mile and there was nothing yet behind them. But Connor knew the beast would catch them quickly enough if he couldn't slow it down. Even at the thought he reached out, snatching Beth's arm. Frantically he handed Jordan to her.

“Go, Beth!” he whispered. “I've got to slow it down!”

She began to speak and Connor shouted
, “Go, Beth! We don't have time for this! I'll meet you at the gorge!”

With a grimace she turned, following Chesterton. Then Connor was staring back down the tunnel and knew it was coming. Barley and Thor and the rest of the soldiers stood beside him. All of them were breathless from the frantic chase.

Glaring back down the tunnel, Thor was wild and gigantic with rage. In his breathless wrath he seemed truly mythic, titanic beyond belief. The Norseman's towering, colossal aspect even distracted Connor for a moment before he searched the walls surrounding them.

“
That thing will be on top of us in less than sixty seconds,” he breathed, wiping cold sweat from his eyes. Then he saw a connecting tunnel, deciding quickly that it was large enough for Leviathan's continued pursuit. He turned toward Barley.

“
How fast can you run?” he asked quickly.

“
As fast as I have to!”

“
Stay here, then. Hit that thing with a couple of LAWs when it comes down the tunnel. Hurt it! Slow it down! Then follow Thor and me as fast as you can! We're going down this tunnel to rig something up! Something that can put that thing in the dirt!”

Barley
unslung a second LAW. “Go, Connor! We'll hit it and then we're coming after you! And you better be ready, son, ‘cause we'll be coming fast!”

Instantly the big lieutenant began shouting instructions to the soldiers to lay down a field of fire and Connor turned, running with Thor close behind him. They sprinted until they reached a
junction of four corridors. Connor knew if they angled left they would go back toward Lucifer's Gorge.

He glared about the intersection and saw a major substation, housing at least 161,000 volts. But he didn't have the tools to access it and the power cylinder was far, far too dangerous to enter without protection. Then he looked up and saw a large breaker box centered ten feet above the tunnel door. It could contain as much as 50,000 volts. It wasn't as much as Connor wanted, but it'd have to do.

“That's it, Thor!” Connor gasped. “That's our chance!”

Far behind them Barley bellowed a command.

“It has come!” Thor shouted, whirling toward the chaos.

Trembling violently, Connor became frantic.
“Oh, man! This isn't going to work! I don't have time to access the breaker box! We can't get a wire out to—”

Enraged, Thor roared and whirled, leaping at the wall to slam his huge fist straight into the breaker box. In the next second his fingers locked like hooks over the upper edge of thick steel plate to explosively rip it from place, scattering screws through the corridor. Without a word Thor cast the dented plate aside, turning to Connor.

“Do it!” he rasped.

Connor staggered but he didn't have any time or emotion left for amazement or relief. He pointed quickly to a thick white electrical line.
“We need to get that line and let it dangle from the box, Thor. We've got to undo the brackets!”

Staring into the box, Thor growled,
“Can you touch the insulated section of the wire with a bare hand? Can you pull it out of the box?”

“
Yeah! You can touch the insulated section of the cable, but there's a thousand-pound pressure bolt holding the cable in the box so we're gonna have to find some way to—”

Thor snarled through clenched teeth as his hand locked around the wire, and with a superhuman effort he violently tore it out of the box, shattering bolts and ceramic brackets. Then with a long, straining effort, the giant hauled six feet of wire from the connecting pipe.

Connor shook his head, gasping. He saw immediately that it was a 10,000-volt line. “Just let it hang in the air, man. Don't touch the end of it with your hand. The current will kill you in a heartbeat.”

Connor spun, staring as he heard men screaming in panic and pain, Barley bellowing, the roar of the beast, and a continuous cascade of gunfire, rockets, and grenades.

We're out of time!” Connor gasped, turning to Thor. “Quick! Tear out another wire!”

Thor didn't even blink as he explosively ripped a second power cable from the breaker box—a 40,000-volt line. This time Connor was actually shaken to his bones by the display of brute strength.

“That's all we're gonna get.” He grimaced. “Just let the wire hang and don't let it touch the ground! When Leviathan hits the end of the wire, it's going to ground the current!”

Moving with almost unbelievable calm, Thor carefully lowered the wire until the bare copper dangled six feet above the floor. The bronze-tinted point, poised in the air, glistened dangerously in the fluorescent light as frantic strides approached.

“They're deeeaaaad! They're dead! It's right behind me!”

Barley's scream blasted down the tunnel and Connor whirled as the lieutenant charged around the corner. Instantly Connor was leaping back from the entrance and screaming,
“Hit the ground! Barley hit the ground don't touch the wire!”

Barley understood, quickly dropping ten feet before he reached the wires and squirming forward in a lightning-fast combat crawl. He went under the wires as the shadow of Leviathan struck the corner behind him, the beast closing fast.

A demonic, howling head led the Dragon around the corner, low and pursuing. And then Thor had leaped after Barley with Connor following even as Leviathan lunged and lashed out, a jet-black foreleg flashing between the distended wires.

Connor screamed and twisted away as the butcher-knife
claws slashed across his chest.

* * *

Chapter 22

A volcanic white bolt struck the Dragon through the face as it hit the 40,000-volt line, the power surging through its reptilian form to ground out on the hind legs and Connor spun away wildly as the six-ton beast was slammed against the roof of the passage.

Shrieking through the electrocution, Leviathan responded with a colossal twist and struck the side of the tunnel with a foreleg, hurling itself aside. The current broke from its body, and the Dragon crashed thunderously to the tunnel floor, disoriented.

Connor hauled a hot breath, felt his lungs blistered by the air.

Coughing, he realized that the entire atmosphere of the tunnel was suddenly superheated by the Dragon's presence and the electrical blast. He grimaced as Leviathan shrieked in pain, only forty feet away, its tendons knotting, coiling inward, tearing.

And Connor understood ...

“
Yes,” he whispered, staring. “That's what really hurts you, isn't it? That's what you
really hate
...”

Then Thor was over him and Connor was pulled to his feet, staggering through the howling, apocalyptic air. Dimly Connor realized that the 40,000-volt blast had knocked out the breakers in this section of tunnels. But he also knew that backup systems would keep the power alive in other areas of the cavern.

He noticed that his chest was bleeding, and he gazed down to see thin red lines drawn across the skin. No, he realized suddenly, it hadn't missed. But it hadn't struck deeply enough, either. They had traded wounds. And Connor had narrowly won.

Connor knew they couldn't outrun it.
Nothing
could outrun it. Still, though, they stumbled forward, gasping and stunned. They ran three hundred feet from the tunnel entrance, staggering in the painfully hot air when Leviathan violently roared behind them, recovering.

Rising.

The Dragon stood, hurling a shriek over them.

“
Enough!” Barley roared, spinning and dropping to a knee. He leveled the M-203 with white-hot hate, slamming in a grenade. “I have had enough of this GET DOWN!”

Connor and Thor dove to th
e side as the grenade hit Leviathan center-mass. The deafening explosion hurled a superheated shock wave back over them, and Connor was rolling away, throwing an arm over his face. Vengeful and defiantly holding his ground, standing fully against the blast, Barley slammed in another grenade, closing the chute with a hate-filled curse and then he had leveled and fired again.

Mushrooming flame... Barley reloaded, raging, screaming. Thor staggered to his feet, hu
rling aside the M-16. And understanding instantly, Barley unslung the M-79 grenade launcher and tossed it. Thor caught the weapon in the air, immediately snapping open the breech. In a flash he tore an antipersonnel grenade from the belt over Barley's back and shoved it into the chamber. He flicked it shut with a snap of his wrist as ... Leviathan roared and leaped ... Thor and Barley spun, firing together.

The twin
concussion slammed Leviathan back hard against the ground, bathing it in flame. And, as if in slow motion, Thor and Barley silently ejected the spent grenade canisters and calmly reloaded, stepping grimly toward the Dragon.

Brute force had met brute force.

Staggering and weak from the electrical surge, Leviathan rolled and tried to gain its feet, finally standing. It glared and then reached through the flames as if to embrace and Connor knew that this was a stand to certain death; Leviathan would either retreat here and now or they would die fighting where they stood and there was nothing else, nothing ...

White flames blazed before glaring green eyes. Then Thor sent a grenade into the Dragon's armored chest, turning the beast as flame erupted from its mo
uth to cascade down the passageway ...

Missing
...

The blazing white plasmic deluge streamed fifty feet to the side, impacting a sloping limestone wall. The concussion scattered broken stone across the tunnel, staggering Barley into Thor who caught him and effortlessly pushed the lieutenant back to his feet.

Barley raised his weapon again as he landed, enraged even more, to fire his rifle with flame blazing until the clip was empty. He followed instantly with another grenade, bringing down the far roof of the tunnel with the mushrooming concussion.

Committed to the stand, Connor snatched up Thor's fallen M-16 and raised it to his shoulder. His finger froze on the trigger, flame pouring from the barrel, the three of them and the Dragon, flame to flame, firing, firing and Connor realized he was screaming but he couldn't think of it as he glimpsed the blazing black shadow twisting, striking with an uncontrolled eruption of flame that streamed from its mouth to mushroom over its head. Twisting and shrieking, Leviathan struck blindly at the explosions and flames, convulsing beneath the continuous, thunderous impacts.

Fire in the air, thunder met thunder.

Then the Dragon bent and bellowed, staggering forward
. And with a roar Connor realized that weapons weren't enough would
never
be enough to stop this thing and, guided by a desperate death instinct, he swung the aim of the M-16 toward the electrical substation located close to the side of the beast.

Holding a steady bead, he began firing.

Instantly the substation's power cylinder exploded to scatter molten steel and electric blue bolts across the Dragon, a spider web of blazing tendrils of electric fire that cascaded over Leviathan's armor, spiraling over the beast in crackling, iridescent bolts that impacted the opposite wall like a cannon blast, violently shattering steel plating and stone.

It was too much.

Leviathan shrieked, hideous face raised to the ceiling.

“
Hit high!” Barley screamed, firing instantly.

With savage shouts of rage, Thor and Barley sent five, ten, twenty grenades into the tunnel mouth within sixty seconds to create a howling holocaust, a violent white world that brought the roof, floor, and walls together in a descending, molten mass of burning rock and steel. Connor heard himself shouting with last-stand madness, firing, firing the rifle until the weapon was suddenly and stunningly silent.

You're out, something told him, but Connor couldn't stop, continued shouting and waving the barrel for a full three seconds before he could gain even a dim shadow of control. Then, grimacing against the heat and smoke, he ripped out the rifle clip.

It took Connor a shocked moment, staring vividly at the empty magazine held right in front of his eyes, before he could recognize the fact that he was out of ammo. Breathless, fighting to calm himself, Connor raised his face to glare at the flames.

“Hold it!” he shouted, falling against a wall. With a curse Barley fired another grenade, the explosion all but lost in the roaring volcano at the tunnel entrance. The heat wave that swept over them scorched Connor's face.

“
Hold it, Barley!” Connor screamed.

Barley paused, his weapon
smoking. Breathing hard, sweating, the lieutenant shoved in another APG but didn't fire, keeping a cold aim as solidly as a statue. His chest was heaving.

Recovering his breath, Connor peered through the flames, searching. He could see nothing in the tunnel but white fire consuming everything, even the limestone floor, the calcite, and gypsum. The tunnel mouth had been almost completely sealed by molten rock. There was hell, there. And a dark wind howled over them, sucked into the inferno from the bowels of the cavern as the holocaust created its own wind.

A moment more of cautious searching and Connor knew that the beast was not in the flames. Just as he knew they hadn't killed it. Leviathan had retreated, somehow, beneath the force of the explosions and the disorienting trauma of the electrical blast.

Connor knew without doubt that if Leviathan had been at full strength, it would have charged through the blasts. But it had been wounded, and wounded badly, by the exploding power cylinder. He understood at last how a powerful electrical trauma, if he could only lock it down long enough, could hurt the beast. Or even kill it.

“Come on!” Connor yelled, barely able to hear over the ringing in his ears. “That thing has retreated! It's got to feed! It's going for easier prey!”

Connor realized that he should feel compassion for those who remained behind. But he was too weary and wounded to feel anything at all. He bowed his head, taking a deep breath, feeling the shallow wounds on his chest. The thin slashes burned, but the bleeding was already beginning to stop. In an hour he wouldn't even notice them.

“Can we reach the elevator shaft?'' Thor shouted at him. He also seemed temporarily deafened by the violence of the conflict.

Sharply Connor shook his head.
“No! It's still between us and the exit! We can't risk it! We're gonna have to kill it before we do something like that!”

With a hate-filled grimace, Thor laid the smoking M-79 on his shoulder.

“Then we will kill it,” he said.

***

“Boogety boogety ...”

Death, death back there.

Dragon, Dragon,
big
Dragon ...

“
Boogety boogety ...”

Colonel Blake held the M-16 close to his chest and moved through the darkness. Something had knocked the power out again but it didn't matter because he knew he was safe in the dark because the dark was his friend, his friend, the dark was a soldier's friend
...

Back against the wall he slid down the hall, sweating, sweating now, hair sweating, teeth sweating,
hair sweating because he was sweating and there was something out there but he had the M-16, the M-16, a soldier's friend, a friend ...

“
Heh heh,” Blake whispered. “Boogety boogety ...

Like a machine
!”

Red lights, red lights in the air
, red, red light.

Darkness.

Army's like a machine! A machine!

“
Can't break down like a machine,” Blake whispered, stopping in place at something, something. He turned his head slowly and wondered who he was and what he was doing here in dark big dark.

He stood listening.

Stillness, stillness.

“
Army's like a machine,” he whispered, so quiet, hands sweating, gun sweating cold sweating. “Like a machine, like a machine ...”

Shuffling,
shuffling somewhere out there.

Red
? ... Darkness?

Shuffling, sliding.

Moving, darkness moving.

Someone was screaming ...

“Like a MACHINE!” The M-16 fired into the air to white light and something there in the white-strobe face?

Scales?

Blake stared into the darkness.

Scales?

Had he seen scales?

“
Red light like a MACHINE!” Blake screamed, firing the M-16 again to the blinding roar and clattering of shells and unfamiliar invisible smell gone so long, so long gone ...

Blake stared wide-eyed into the darkness.

He took a deep breath.

No. Silence, silence there; silence was no good because it wasn't his friend. Scare 'em, scare 'em, that's ...

The gun blazed again in his hands, shells clattering.

“
HAWOOGAAAAAAAAAAH!”

He stared, stared.

“Yes sir! Army's like a MACHINE!!! The machine breaks down WE break down! We got to ... got to ... HAWOOOOOOGAAAAAAAAH!!!”

Sweating now, eyes, teeth sweating, and ... black???

Black rising, rising ... beside him!

“
HAWOOOGAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!!!”

Screaming he was screaming with white gunfire at the face so close DRAGON FACE beside him WHITE teeth opening
…opening beside him GAPING and –

* * *

Connor was the first over Bridgestone to see a nervous Chesterton poised on the other side, his rifle upraised.

“
Chesterton! Don't shoot! It's us!” Connor called out, unsure how well the weary colonel could see through the gloom. Then Connor saw Beth step out from behind the corner, still holding Jordan. Frank was beside her, face white, exhausted.

Crossing the bridge slowly, Connor embraced Beth and Jordan, holding together and tight for a moment. Beth's hand touched his chest and she gazed up hard. Quick. Her eyes glistened.

“I'm okay,” Connor said gently, nodding.

She said nothing.

“I'm okay,” he repeated, smiling faintly. “It was close.”

A moment, and she asked,
“Did you kill it?”

He shook his head, and they held each other a long time. Connor could hear Barley giving Chesterton a cold play-by-play while Thor knelt on the bridge, somber, staring back.

“We cannot outrun it,” the Norseman said, and they turned to him. “But this is a good place to make a stand.” He paused a long time. “Connor, do you think that you can rig up an electrical blast that will knock the Dragon into the gorge?”