Dirge Danorum
Chapter 15
I wasn't crazy. Not full crazy, anyway. I was only beginning to understand the changes I was undergoing, and though I wasn't sure of my limits, I knew they had to exist. No matter how you looked at it, this wasn't a winning battle. Velvet was the reason I was still in the Ukraine, but it wasn't like I seriously thought I could protect her from everything.
This is the Zone. When it's time to go home, you're going home – no matter who's got your back. I was no joke, but neither was anyone else in this part of the world. Except Venge, maybe. There were battles I couldn't win, and situations I knew I wouldn't be able to get Velvet out of. Maybe this was one of them, but I'd be damned before I let her get taken by some people who – well, justifiably seemed to think they were fish and/or frogs.
I shoved her through into the gap, where she slipped on the messy remains of the female fish lady I'd blown away just moments before. Then I dragged Venge through and gave him a push. "You too," I said to Ever, who clearly intended to hang back.
There was no way we could fight this at the water's edge. We had to limit the number that could come at us, and this corridor, regardless of where it might lead, was the only option handy. Grigor followed Ever in, and I backed through after them, wondering how I was going to handle this.
Now that there was no shooting, and clearly no bullets, the creatures weren't hurrying. They'd gone full Romero, and were just crowding in at a deliberate pace. Where's a flaming easy chair when you need one? The circle was getting pretty tight when I got through the gap. Now it was one at a time, unless they wanted to put the females out front. Which would've been all right, because if you can sort of block out the head, the rest isn't so bad to look at. I'm not superstitious about the slimy skin, and these fish women were built.
Nope, they were sending the big ones. That was all right. I had a plan.
I kept backing up, listening to the others moving along behind me. If they ran into trouble, it'd be up to Ever. After me, he was probably the most reliable in close combat.
Once we'd gone far enough, I threw a knife into the knee of the seven foot tall monster lumbering after me.
I'd have preferred to kill him, but I wasn't sure how. His frog/fish head didn't leave much neck, so I wasn't confident about the throat. I'd have thrown it into his groin, but you don't do that to anybody, not even monster people. He was so big that I wasn't sure I could reach his heart, provided it was in the normal place, and certainly not with a thrown blade. The knee seemed like a safe bet. He let out a horrible croak and went down, causing several of those behind him to stumble – but they climbed right over him, so I crippled another one. Then I stopped and held my ground. The thing climbing over him slipped on his slick back, and I took advantage of that to go in.
For lack of a better idea, I went full-prison, and just shanked him in the abdomen as many times as I could in the space of about one second. He went down. Now we had three fairly bulky bodies blocking the passage. The others weren't squeamish about trying to climb over, and despite what I'd done, they weren't scared of me yet. The bodies weren't letting them come at me on their terms. A more careful one managed to get through with his balance intact, but I had a knife in each hand, and I knew how to use them. He joined the pile.
I didn't have enough knives to just throw them like a madman, and I no longer had the top-quality throwing knives that I'd brought with me into the Zone. These were random blades I'd picked up along the way. Combat knives, survival blades, folding knives, utility knives – I couldn't throw them reliably, and I thought my credibility would take a hit if I accidently bounced a handle off someone's forehead.
"Don't hover," I called without looking back. "You know I hate it when you hover. Find a way out." Of course the others had stopped when they realized what I was doing, but there was nothing they could do to help me. Depending on how bright these creatures were, either they already had, or would soon realize that they were going to have to come at us from the other way. We needed to have a way out by then. And if this was a dead end, well… well, I was going to run out of energy long before I could finish making fish sticks out of all of them.
Something was going on. They weren't backing off, but the push had stopped. The one in front and those just behind were staring, not that they could do anything else – I don't think you can blink if you've got eyes like that. "Yeah," I said. "You guys are pretty creepy. But not as creepy as my seventh grade guidance counselor." I pointed a knife at them. "So why don't you just go back in the water and let us go?"
I couldn't communicate with them. They were croaking at each other, and they had definitely been people once, but I couldn't connect with them at all. And if that meant what I thought it meant, then the situation was even worse than I thought. My hand wasn't giving me anything more than a vague danger warning. But there was nothing vague about this. It was inconsistent, and I wasn't loving it.
I'd never eat a fish sandwich again. One of them was edging forward.
"You'd go great with tartar sauce," I said, pointing my other knife at him. "I'll gut you… like a fish." Oh, what the hell. "I knew there was something fishy going on down here," I called over my shoulder.
Then my mirth faded. The creatures were passing something up through the tunnel. What was that? You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think it was…
I lunged forward and jammed both knives into the upper chest of the front monster, and muscled past him to slice down the other two. I snatched the Kalashnikov from the awkward claws of the female holding it – only the females would actually be able to get a claw through the trigger guard – and dodged back before anyone could do anything. They hadn't expected that – but now I had the rifle at my shoulder, and there was a clear shift in tone.
They certainly wouldn't have poured in here after us if we'd had real weapons.
"All right, well, like – don't follow me," I said, and after an awkward second or two, took off after the others.
It was a dead end. Well, it wasn't. The corridor opened into a round chamber with a high ceiling, and a big hole in the floor. The hole was full of water, and I had a feeling that there were some of the creatures down there just below the surface. They couldn't come out; we'd just kick them back in. I was willing to bet that if Velvet and the others had gotten here a moment or two later, they'd have already been up and through, and we'd have been hemmed on either side in the narrow corridor. See? It's not good to hover.
"Where the devil did you get that?" Ever asked, looking genuinely surprised.
"Fish men with AKs," I said, giving him a pitying look. "Get with the 90s."
"Are you all right?" Velvet asked.
"I'm fine. Keep lights on that." I pointed at the water. "How do we get out of here?" I addressed that to Ever. If anyone was going to have an idea, it would be him.
"I'm not sure we do," he admitted. "Especially if they've got more guns."
"They will. Stalkers will have been wandering down here over the years," Grigor said, and I was inclined to agree. The implication was in the open. We all moved away from the passageway, though if the fish people did start to shoot, the rounds would just ricochet around in here and hit us anyway.
And yet compared to the city in Velvet's mind, this situation, this cave deep under the Channel was like a Parisian vacation. Anything was better than that place, and what I'd be forced to watch if I ever found myself back there. Only now I was afraid I'd have to watch it here too. There's trapped, and then there's trapped. Which all knew which one this was.