Dirge Danorum

Chapter 16

"Should we try diving?" I asked Velvet.

"Yeah, because that worked out so well for everyone in Alien Resurrection," Venge said.

"Shut up."

Velvet folded her arms. "They wouldn't expect it, but it's their turf. We'd be better off to try to fight our way out dry."

"Not really an option. Especially if they have more guns."

"We don't even know if there's anywhere to come up for air if we go down. We don't know where to go – just flashlights, breath to breath?" Ever shook his head. "Too risky, even for me." He was probably right. Sources of air weren't a sure thing – these guys had gills, after all. They didn't need a place to come up because they had no reason to come up. There could be nothing but water down there for a hundred miles.

It wasn't looking good. Or rather, it hadn't been looking good for a while, it'd been getting worse, and now it looked pretty black. But by now everyone in that cave had been threatened with an unpleasant death at least once since entering the Zone. Some of us were more prepared than others, but none of us were kidding ourselves. Even Venge knew the Zone was a dangerous place, and that mortal peril was a part of it.

None of us were seeing a way out of this, and it affected each person in a different way. Venge was looking glum; Velvet didn't show any change; Grigor looked grim; Ever looked bemused in a subdued sort of way, but that would fade when he realized this was one he wasn't likely to think his way out of. You can think your way through a lot of things – but not tons of solid rock.

"Keep an eye on it," Ever said, nodding toward the passage. This annoyed me – partially because of impending death, and partially because I didn't like him ordering me around. I also knew that I was constantly telling people to do things, and they generally did them – but that didn't mean they liked it. And he was right; somebody had to keep an eye out.

So I pointed my light down the passage and kept the side, knowing the light itself made me a perfect target.

"Do you have a play here?"

"Does fighting our way out count as a play?" he asked. "We're better off dry than in the water; even if there was somewhere to go down there, we'd be hypothermic in minutes. Besides, we can't fight in the water – they'd have all the cards. I've seen what you can do. How about it?"

He was asking if I could actually fight our way out of here. Of course I couldn't. You can jog for a long time, or you can sprint for a short time. I hadn't fully explored just how far I could push my body into overdrive, but we'd have needed ten of me just to break through. It was true, I had power that other people didn't – but I didn't completely understand it, and it had to be rationed and used wisely. This wasn't Street Fighter; I couldn't just go in and hope for the best. Meter management 101.

On the other hand, we were in the corner with no options. If raw Ultra was all that was on the table, then that was exactly what these fish were going to get. They'd win in the end, but they wouldn't forget me.

I couldn't see any of them down there, but it wasn't like they'd left – they were probably camped outside the far opening. They'd had enough of being butchered in close quarters; as far as they were concerned, we could come to them. They had all the time in the world.

But we didn't. I'd been leaning against the rock, but now I straightened. There was a way – one way. It was a long shot, but I was getting used to that. It was also pretty clichéd, but cliché certainly seemed to have a place in this part of the world.

"If we're going to do this," I said, turning to the others. "We have to do it now." They knew what I meant. Waiting couldn't do us any good. The enemy's guard would be at its lowest now, while they were expecting us to stew here for a while. "The air was moving out there. Not much, but it was. There's more than one way to the surface from the lakes."

"What are you talking about?" Velvet asked, cocking her head. She spoke in Russian, but I went on in English.

"There's no use trying to go back. You'll never find your way back, and you'd still have to get through the rest of them. Your only chance is to go deeper." I checked the AK's magazine. It appeared to be full. "They didn't send us down here because there's no way out – they just didn't expect us to last long enough to find it."

"You want to hit them hard," Velvet said slowly. "So we can get away."

"Oh." Venge was picking up on. "You'd do that?"

I shrugged. "Not just me." I jerked a thumb at Ever. "Him too."

"I'm coming?" he looked surprised.

"Yeah."

"Good to know I have input."

"If you come it buys us twice as much time."

Grigor cleared his throat, and we all turned to look at him. "I'm sure that if dying heroically is what you want to do, someday you'll have your chance, young man – but not today. Not yet, at any rate."

"And I was looking forward to it too," Ever said. I jabbed him with an elbow.

"What have you got?" Hey – I hadn't been looking forward to it. It had been a last ditch sort of plan, and I'd liked the idea of going out knowing that Velvet at least had a shot. But if Grigor thought he had something, well, that worked for me. My plan was the kind that I was happy to see shelved.

The old stalker pointed his light up, and we all looked. "That is not stone," he said.

He was right. I hadn't been looking up with my flashlight, but there was a distinct discoloration, and it wasn't at all like the rest of the rock. But I still wasn't sure what I was looking at.

"What is it?"

"It's a foundation," Grigor replied, gazing up at it thoughtfully. "An old one. Half a century at least."

"We're pretty far down," I said, not liking where this is going. "What would be down here?"

"Only one thing," Velvet said. "We're still on the wrong side. I don't see what good this does us."

Grigor opened his bag and took out a cloth-wrapped bundle, handling it carefully. He drew back the fabric, and we all took a step back.

"You've been running with that?" Ever asked, looking impressed.

"Jesus Christ," I said, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to be a Buddhist. Grigor was holding a respectable amount of what appeared to be very old TNT.

"You want to blast through," Ever said, looking dubious. I didn't blame him – I'd been there the last time we tried this, less than 24 hours ago. Neither one of us had enjoyed the experience.

But it wasn't like we had anything to lose. Grigor took the time to determine the location with the best chance of cracking the foundation, and then it was my job to climb up there and figure out a way to place the bomb. Velvet threw me her lighter, and I hurried to light the fuse before I came to my senses.

Maybe this would give us a way out, maybe it would bury us. Either way it beat a watery grave with the fish people. I dropped back down and hurried to join the others in the passage. We had an awkard wait; we'd thought it better to have too much fuse than too little, under the circumstances.

We couldn't even talk; we didn't want the enemy to know we were clustered in the passage, because if they had more weapons, we'd be easy kills. So we waited in silence.

All noises are worse in confined spaces, but this wasn't so bad, maybe because of our position in relation to the blast.

The passage shook, but we weren't afraid of bringing down the solid stone – the risk was that the foundation would crumble more than intended, and block us in the passage, away from whatever we'd opened up – and it almost happened.

Through the choking dust, we had to climb up a hill of rubble with very little clearance – but there was a gap up there. Not a big one. The Merc wouldn't have been able to get through, but it was enough for us.

Some of the water was still visible, and the fish people were swarming out of it even as we started to climb. I pivoted and put the AK to my shoulder, taking aim at the pale abominations scrambling up after us.

Something in the weapon snapped as I squeezed the trigger. I shouldn't have been surprised; that was what happened when you kept old guns in damp environments and never cleaned them. No wonder we hadn't been shot at – they had weapons aplenty, but none of them worked. I swung the AK into the nearest monster, smashing it across its bulbous head in a shower of wood and rust, then turned and hurried up after the others.