Larry remembered the rifle. He threw the butt against his shoulder, and began to fire. The explosions were shatteringly loud in the closed space; he screamed at the sound of them but the scream was lost in the roar. Flashbulb images of tile and frozen lanes of traffic exploded one after another like a string of black and white snapshots as fire licked from the muzzle of the .30-.30. Ricochets whined like banshees. The gun whacked his shoulder again and again until it was numb, until he knew that the force of the recoils had turned him on his feet and he was shooting out over the roadway instead of back along the catwalk. He was still unable to stop. His finger had taken over the function of the brain, and it spasmed mindlessly until the hammer began to fall with a dry and impotent clicking sound.
The echoes rolled back. Bright afterimages hung before his eyes in triple exposures. He was faintly aware of the stench of cordite and of the whining sound he was making deep in his chest.
Still clutching the gun he whirled around again, and now it was not the soldiers in their sterile Andromeda Strain suits that he saw on the screen of his interior theater but the Morlocks from the Classic Comics version of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, humped and blind creatures coming out of their holes in the ground where engines ran on and on in the bowels of the earth.
He began to struggle across the soft yet stiff barricade of bodies, stumbling, almost falling, clutching the railing, going on. His foot punched through into some dreadful sliminess and there was a gassy, putrid smell that he barely noticed. He went on, gasping.
Then, from behind him, a scream rose in the darkness, freezing him on the spot. It was a desperate, wretched sound, close to the limits of sanity: "Larry! Oh, Larry, for God's sake - "
It was Rita Blakemoor.
He turned around. There was sobbing now, wild sobbing that filled the place with fresh echoes. For one wild moment he decided to go on anyway, to leave her. She would find her way out eventually, why burden himself with her again? Then he got hold of himself and shouted, "Rita! Stay where you are! Do you hear me?"
The sobbing continued.
He stumbled back across the bodies, trying not to breathe, his face twisted in an expression of grimacing disgust. Then he ran toward her, not sure how far he had to go because of the distorting quality of the echo. In the end he almost fell over her.
"Larry - " She threw herself against him and clutched his neck with a strangler's force. He could feel her heart skidding along at a breakneck pace under her shirt. "Larry Larry don't leave me alone here don't leave me alone in the dark - "
"No." He held her tightly. "Did I hurt you? Are... are you shot?"
"No... I felt the wind... one of them went by so close I felt the wind of it... and chips... tile-chips, I think... on my face... cut my face..."
"Oh Jesus, Rita, I didn't know. I was freaking out in here. The dark. And I lost my lighter... you should have called. I could have killed you." The truth of it came home to him. "I could have killed you," he repeated in stunned revelation.
"I wasn't sure it was you. I went into an apartment house when you went down the ramp. And you came back and called and I almost... but I couldn't... and then two men came after the rain started... I think they were looking for us... or for me. So I stayed where I was and when they were gone I thought, maybe they're not gone, maybe they're hiding and looking for me and I didn't dare go out until I started to think you'd get to the other side, and I'd never see you again... so I... I... Larry, you won't leave me, will you? You won't go away?"
"No," he said.
"I was wrong, what I said, that was wrong, you were right, I should have told you about the sandals, I mean the shoes, I'll eat when you tell me to... I... I... oooohhhowww - "
"Shh," he said, holding her. "It's all right now. All right." But in his mind he saw himself firing at her in a blind panic, and thought how easily one of those slugs could have smashed her arm or blown out her stomach. Suddenly he had to go to the bathroom very badly and his teeth wanted to chatter. "We'll go when you feel like you can walk. Take your time."
"There was a man... I think it was a man... I stepped on him, Larry." She swallowed and her throat clicked. "Oh, I almost screamed then, but I didn't because I thought it might be one of those men up ahead instead of you. And when you called out... the echo... I couldn't tell if it was you... or...or..."
"There are more dead people up ahead. Can you stand that?"
"If you're with me. Please... if you're with me."
"I will be."
"Let's go, then. I want to get out of here." She shuddered convulsively against him. "I never wanted anything so badly in my life."
He felt for her face and kissed her, first her nose, then each eye, then her mouth.
"Thank you," he said humbly, having not the slightest idea what he meant. "Thank you. Thank you."
"Thank you," she repeated. "Oh dear Larry. You won't leave me, will you?"
"No," he said. "I won't leave you. Just tell me when you feel like you can, Rita, and we'll go together."
When she felt she could, they did.