The calm following the creature’s defeat did not last long. Tyndareus swung around, his arm still extended, the barrel of his grenade launcher now aimed at the three figures huddled near the ravine wall.
Although he had not seen the 40mm high-explosive round hit the bear-elk, Pierce had felt its destructive power, and he knew that there would be no surviving the explosion. There wasn’t even time to flee, but that didn’t stop Lazarus from springing into motion. But he wasn’t running away from the impending grenade blast. Instead, he ran toward its source.
The unexpected charge surprised Tyndareus. He took a step back, recoiling in the face of aggression, despite the fact of being impervious to almost any attack that Lazarus might hope to bring against him. Lazarus surely knew it as well, but the knowledge did not slow him down.
Just as he was about to pass within Tyndareus’s reach, Lazarus veered to his left and launched himself up at the outstretched arm. The TALOS suit weighed as much as a small car, but the weight was distributed very differently. When Lazarus hit Tyndareus’s arm at a full charge, it was enough to spin the armored figure around. Tyndareus flailed, and in so doing, flung Lazarus twenty feet away. But he could not prevent gravity from taking him down. He crashed to the ground, releasing another grenade as he fell. The explosive round arced high and then came back down a hundred and fifty feet away, exploding with a harmless flash and bang.
Pierce saw Lazarus scrambling up and charging Tyndareus again, and then something like a wall blocked his view of the combatants.
Rohn.
Pierce was just starting to focus on the figure standing in front of him when something metallic flashed in front of him, tugging at his chest, spinning him halfway around. Starbursts bloomed in his vision as a heavy fist crashed into the back of his head and sent him stumbling away to sprawl face down on the searing hot ground.
He rolled over, not as gracefully as Lazarus, but with the same urgency, groping for his machine pistol. That was when he noticed the dark sticky substance smeared all over his hands and down the front of his combat vest.
Blood. His own blood.
Rohn had slashed him with a knife, a very sharp knife, judging by the fact that he was only now beginning to feel the faintest tingle of pain across his chest, where the blade had struck.
Screw it. I’m still alive.
He brought the gun up, but Rohn was now advancing on Carter. Pierce tried to settle the red dot sight on Rohn’s moving form, but his grip was sloppy, his hands slick. In the corner of his eye, he saw three more gunmen, the last remnants of Tyndareus’s small army, moving toward him.
Rohn’s back erupted in a spray of blood as Carter triggered a round, point blank into his body, and then fired again and again. The big man lurched with each impact, but kept advancing. Carter stumbled back and fell, the gun slipping from her hands, a look of terror on her face. Rohn’s hand came up, the blade poised to end Felice Carter’s life.
53
Gallo expected some kind of sensory feedback as she passed through the rock wall. Would it feel like walking through a dust cloud? Would it be like swimming through something denser than air but not quite liquid? The only noticeable difference was the absolute darkness. She couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open or shut. She held her breath, afraid to inhale the…whatever it was. That meant she had about forty seconds to cross the threshold of the Underworld, but how would she know when she reached it?
The answer to her question appeared suddenly before her, a faint glow directly ahead. It had to be Kenner, heading into the depths with Fiona. She looked back and could just make out a rough stone wall right behind her, looking as solid and impenetrable as it had on the outside. She reached out, probing it with her fingertips. There was no resistance at all. The rock might have been a hologram, a magician’s projection of smoke and mirrors. It occurred to her that she should mark her path or risk spending the last hours of her life wandering around in the dark looking for the exit, but she had nothing at all with which to do so.
I should have thought this through a little first, she mused. But how do you prepare yourself for walking through solid objects? It’s not like there’s a YouTube video that tells you what to expect.
The glow was receding, growing dimmer as the source of the light moved further along the passage. Gallo put aside her hesitancy and hastened forward. The passage, formed from an old lava tube, was wide with smooth walls, sloping downward. With each step closer to the light source, her ability to see increased, allowing her to move even faster. She picked up speed, running toward the light.