Four…
Her eyes locked on the trapdoor looming tantalizingly just out of reach. She thought of Rook, and wondered if he was alive and, if so, would he try to find out what happened to her. She reached for the latch to unlock the trapdoor.
Five…
She released the latch and pushed the door open just as the explosion ripped through the lab. The force hurled her out into the cool night air, and she fell hard to the ground.
Queen stood and looked at the smoke that poured from the open trapdoor. She took no comfort in the sight. Armina was still dead, and those wretched souls upon whom Darius and Slifko had performed their sick experiments were doomed to lives as insane killing machines. She wondered if Deep Blue would find a way to notify the authorities of what lived in the underground lab or if he would take other measures. The oborots had to be put down for their own sakes and for those of the innocent people they might victimize.
She took a few deep breaths and tried to collect herself. After a minute’s rest, she was ready to move on. That was when the first beastly head poked up out of the escape shaft.
The oborots had braved the burning lab and, once again, they were coming for her.
She turned and ran, dashing with reckless abandon through the darkened streets, her mind racing faster than her feet. The shortest path of escape would be east, directly to the port where she had arranged for a boat to meet her. She glanced back and saw more oborots joining the chase. She wondered if all the remaining beasts were on her trail. Probably. They had to smell the blood, her own and that of others, on her. She resigned herself to the fact that she now had to outwit an entire pack of crazed creatures that wanted her blood.
The boat that awaited her would be patrolling the port, the pilot keeping an eye out for her. Unless he was waiting near the shore at exactly the place where she made her appearance though, there was no way she could hold off an entire pack while waiting for the boat to reach her. Time for plan B.
She veered to her right, sprinting through the town square. It was oddly named, she thought, because it was shaped more like half an oval, with one end enclosed by a circular wall with a drive cutting through the center. Here, throngs of people had once dined at the Polesie Restaurant, stayed in its companion hotel and milled through the Pripyat shopping center. Despite her dire circumstances, it still struck her as odd to consider that this ghost town had once teemed with life.
Up ahead, three oborots rounded the corner of the shopping center and came for her. Wondering how they had managed to get in front of her, Queen turned and dashed into Energetik, Pripyat’s so-called palace of culture. This place had once been the city’s center of community life, featuring concert and dance halls, a library, a gymnasium and a swimming pool. She sprinted through the bare hallways, the glow of the full moon through broken windows and holes in the walls providing scant light by which she navigated around and over the scattered books, tiles and debris that choked the floor. She stole a glance back to see the three creatures closing in on her, but the rest of the pack was not in sight. At least, not yet.
She turned a corner and dashed down the wide hallway. The oborots were closing fast. Soon she would be forced to make a fight of it. She could shed her backpack to gain a little more speed, but she needed what it held—and not just the remaining grenades—to make her getaway.
Up ahead, broken doors, hanging askew from twisted hinges welcomed her into a room lined all around with dingy, broken white tiles. The swimming pool lay directly in front of her, the shallow end giving way to a deep diving area on the far end. She circled the pool and sprinted alongside it, the oborots so close she could hear their every breath and the distinctive sound of their hairy footfalls on the hard tile floor.
She reached the far end of the pool, cut a sharp left, took two steps, and leaped. Her stomach turned somersaults as the floor fell out from underneath her. She reached out and grabbed the edge of the diving board. As her momentum swung her forward, the oborots flew past her, falling in a pile to the bottom of the empty diving pool. Queen hauled herself up onto the diving board, drew her pistol, and put a bullet into the skull of each of the writhing beasts.
Her shoulders sagged and she exhaled a long, ragged sigh, but her relief was short-lived. She heard the distant sounds of the pack of oborots and knew that somewhere in the depths of the palace of culture, the others were back on her trail.