Freedom

Chapter 12

I touched down, switching my light on and sweeping the immediate area. The place was hard to describe. It was just ugly. I saw moldy bricks, boarded-up doorways, rusted pipes, and a lot of things I was beginning to get used to. Sagaris was right beside me.

"Let's keep it quiet in here," he murmured.

"Wouldn't want to wake anything up."

"They come in to sleep during the daytime."

"Will those guys out there come in after us?"

"I doubt it. They're gutless; that's why they set a trap instead of doing their own hunting."

"Right."

"Should've brought a shotgun," Sagaris said to himself, and I silently agreed. We weren't armed for this; the building was big, but this room was downright claustrophobic. I switched off my chest light and slung my carbine, taking out my Glock and a hand light.

"Don't use that unless you have to." He checked his HK91's magazine. "Things go bad in here, we don't get out." That sounded pretty serious coming from a guy with a Russian accent.

I gave him a neutral look. "Let's not be here any longer than we have to be." He nodded, and I started toward the door.

The corridor was a nightmare, cramped, and thoroughly unattractive. Panels hung from the ceiling, clumps of unidentifiable growths clinging to them. There was some kind of anomaly on the floor that we didn't know what to make of. We could feel it gathering around our feet, but when we shone our lights down, there was nothing there. We moved quickly to get away from it, but blundered into some webbing that struck me as disturbingly sturdy. After we clawed our way free, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast chamber, maybe some kind of production floor. By unspoken agreement, we decided we had better chances in corridors, where we only had to worry about attacks from two directions.

The desiccated corpse of a stalker lay at a junction, a Desert Eagle still in hand, rusted beyond any possible use. We left him alone. There were some dead snorks in the next hallway, but it looked like they'd been there for a while. Rats occasionally skittered around our ankles, but not in quantity. I wasn't worried about them – I knew what to do if they decided to swarm.

The building was as quiet as it was labyrinthine. I'd tried to choose a path that would take us closer to our goal, but we quickly lost any semblance of direction. It was mutually understood that we'd take the first exit. If there were hostiles outside – well, then there'd be a fight. The unknown had previously seemed like a good alternative to a losing battle against ambushing bandits. Now I wasn't so sure. There was something cloying about the place. There was a pressure on my chest I couldn't explain. Mild claustrophobia, maybe. I wanted out, and I could tell Sagaris did too.

The walls turned from brick to tile, and I almost stumbled over just about the most awful thing I'd ever seen. It was a spider, and it probably weighed as much as I did. With legs extended, it would have been six or seven feet across, easily.

Fortunately, it was dead. It lay on its back in the middle of the stained, communal shower, its legs curled above it. Even in the glow of my light, Sagaris looked a little green. I probably did too, and that's quite a feat, since I'm Asian.

We stood there and stared at it for a while, not out of fascination – well, that too – but because neither one of us wanted to try walking past it. When we finally got the courage up, it didn't move. It really was dead and dried out. That made us feel a little better, but as we got deeper into the locker rooms, keeping a careful eye on the ceiling as well as the walls, we began to find the real lair.

The webbing was all ancient. It was dry, even crumbly to the touch. But it was everywhere, making an already hideous place borderline nauseating. I'd put away my Glock; I didn't know what we were up against in here, but I was no longer confident in a 9mm to do the job.

Remember what I said about the spider being the most awful thing? Forget that. I turned a corner, and the light on my AK lit up the main attraction at the nightmare expo. We'd agreed to be quiet, but neither of us could help swearing aloud at what we saw. Like the spider, it was dead, held to the wall by ancient, petrified webbing.

I estimated that the creature was eight feet tall. Maybe eight and a half. I had to look up, way up – just to see a face I'd rather not have seen at all. The thing was humanoid, and it brought to mind the blood drinkers that haunt almost every corner of the Zone. But it was not a blood drinker – at least, not the kind we were used to.

First of all, it was gray instead of brown. It was also too big. The blood drinkers – the normal ones, if you can call them that – look more or less like twisted, muscular men, except for their faces. That wasn't the case here. This thing was bony, and there were cruel-looking spiked horns growing out of it all over. It had to weigh six or seven hundred pounds, all of it muscle. The face was that of a blood drinker, save for additional spines and horns around the crown of the head.

The skeleton was scaled up along with the rest of the body, and I shone my light on the enormously heavy brow. It had to be an inch thick. Try getting a bullet through that. The tendrils making up the thing's mouth were frozen, splayed out in something like a scream. I supposed the venom from the spider must have seized them in the place.

I hadn't been aware that something like this existed, and by the look of Sagaris' face, neither had he. I wondered how the stalkers at the bar would feel, knowing there was something like this so close. Would they be able to sleep? I wondered if I could.

I swallowed. "We need to go." Sagaris nodded, looking a little wild about the eyes. We moved on, wanting to run, but too afraid to do more than walk, checking every corner with our lights.

Sagaris abruptly angled his light down, and reached over to force mine toward the floor.

"Lights out," he whispered. I didn't hesitate; I turned it off, feeling a flash of apprehension at the sudden darkness.

"What is it?"

"You smell that?"

There was something on the air, something more than the mold and decay that pervaded the rest of the building, but I hadn't the faintest idea what it was.

"What is it?" My voice was barely audible. I could hear myself breathing.

"Spore Lichen."

"What?"

"The bulbs don't like the light. If you shine it on them, they release spores."

"What then?"

"They make you very sick. You're throwing up and you can't see for two days," Sagaris replied.

In other words, a death sentence. In a place like this, at any rate. Swearing, I blinked rapidly, trying to get some kind of night vision. No point; there was absolutely no light. We stood in perfect blackness. I tried to calm my breathing.

"Find the wall," I said finally, reaching out and feeling my way down the corridor. The wall ended; we were in a room. Blindly, I started out into the dark. I thought I could see something, but I wasn't sure. It might have been daylight peeking in through a crack in a wooden shutter. Sagaris was thinking the same thing. "There," he whispered.

"Yeah." I sped up just a little, but it was enough. There was suddenly no ground in front of me, and I plummeted about eight feet to hit a metal grating. Hard. I know how to fall, and I was armored – but that only did so much. I couldn't help but let out a groan of pain, and I know the fall had made plenty of noise.

"You okay?" Sagaris' voice floated down from above.

I groaned, then stopped and held my breath.

"Hey," Sagaris hissed. I made shushing noises. They would have sounded ridiculous at any other time, but he got the message. I listened. It was there. A regular sound. No, not regular, but sort of rhythmic. Footsteps? It was kind of like marching.

It was coming from beneath me. I gingerly felt the bars I was lying on. It was some kind of drain.

I listened to the sounds and rustling. It was quiet, but not too quiet. Something – somethings – were moving down there, and they were doing it in almost absolute silence.

Aw, hell. There were solid bars between me and whatever was down there. I was still clutching my hand light. I angled it down, covered it with my hand, and switched it on. I spread my knuckles just enough to let a narrow beam fall down for just a fraction of a second – and that was long enough for it to shine on the parade below. I had only the briefest glance; I didn't dare keep the light on any longer, but I saw.

I don't know what they were, but there were a lot of them. And they were shambling through the tunnels beneath Rostov like they had a purpose.