“Hell no!” Duncan had made that mistake at the other end of the rail tunnel, ten miles back. He wasn’t about to do it again. “Take the stairs.” They raced out of the rail tunnel and into the platform at Central. At this point, hordes of the creatures were fleeing in front of the dirt bike, the signal somehow having gone through the mass of bodies that something on the bike was painful to the creatures and they were currently as much prey as predator. More salamanders were still pursuing the bike back in the tunnel—many, Duncan assumed, in a rage at the loss of their tongues from the cutting torch he still wielded in his right hand. The light in the platform seemed to offer little additional deterrent. Duncan let go of the spotlight with his left hand, the lanyard on its end allowing it to swing off his forearm. He wrapped his arm around Black Zero’s mid-section as she accelerated the dirt bike up a short set of concrete steps to the top of the platform, crushing the wheels over the limbs of two the beasts that had been crawling up to the platform.
The bike launched off the stairs and from his brief moment in the air, Duncan could see at least forty or fifty of the things scrabbling all along the floor of the platform and starting to take to the walls in an effort to escape the airborne dirt bike and its fire-wielding passenger.
The bike landed with a heavy jolt as it impacted the floor, two salamanders lunging away from the landing site so as not to get crushed by the fast moving vehicle. Anna Beck, Callsign: Black Zero, steered the bike for the corridor that would lead them back to the hangar where all this had started for Duncan. He was eager to get Lori to safety but he wasn’t sure yet how to do so. He hadn’t come up with a survival plan in case he was locked in his own base with enemy combatants and murderous amphibians—and certainly not before he had even taken up occupancy in the damn place.
The bike raced down the corridor with salamanders skittering everywhere, both looking to escape and attack. Duncan was struck by inspiration. “Stop outside the restroom!”
To her credit, Beck didn’t argue. She just pulled the bike up against the restroom door, put her feet down on the floor and cracked a flare to throw behind them and stall their pursuers. Duncan launched off the bike and sprinted into the women’s room. He came to a sliding stop on the tile floor, facing a white tile sink with pink accents. He quickly snatched the tall can of hair spray on the counter that Lori was fond of using. He turned and started to race out the door when he heard Beck calling from the corridor. “Bad time to take a leak, Boss!”
Duncan leapt out of the doorway to the women’s room in time to see an overly large salamander falling from the ceiling and twisting as it fell to attack Beck. Beck was pulling her M9 bayonet from a sheath on her leg—the only weapon she had left.
In mid air, as Duncan leapt, the salamander fell and Beck began her thrust with the knife, Duncan held out the can of hairspray in one hand and the still lit cutting torch in the other. He sprayed the noxious flammable chemicals and the resulting ball of flame engulfed the salamander. It squealed loudly, flipped over and bounced off the bike’s handlebars. Beck’s swing with the knife completely missed and Duncan’s arc through the air took him crashing into the far corridor wall, but as he slid down it, he rotated his torso and fired another blast of flame back down the corridor behind the bike, causing the pursuing amphibians to retreat in a frantic scrambling herd.
He stood and turned back to face the other direction and fired another blast down this direction of the corridor, singing a few salamanders as they retreated toward the hangar at the end of the hallway. The first salamander he had blasted was on the floor and curled as if in a fetal position. It was no longer shiny and slick looking and it was clearly dead. The smell of the cooked meat reminded him of the smell of grilled hot dogs, and he made a mental note to chastise himself later for how hungry the stench made him.
“I don’t want to know how you knew there was hair spay in the women’s bathroom, do I?” Beck said, as she replaced her knife in its sheath.
Duncan climbed onto the bike beside her, preparing to fire more blasts from his makeshift flamethrower as they went. “Just drive, smartass.” Beck chuckled and gunned the engine. Duncan glanced back and saw that the pursuing salamanders had already regained their courage and were coming back after the dirt bike again. He hoped the fleeing creatures ahead of them would run for longer, but if they didn’t, he had enough of the lacquer to roast a few dozen of the things.
As it turned out, he only had to fire one more blast and the remaining creatures fled at top speed, wiggling side to side ahead of them as the dirt bike raced toward the hangar. Duncan heard a rumble ahead that sounded to him like an explosion, followed by small arms fire. Beck heard it too.
“Faster or slower, Boss?”