16
Muted sounds of thunder caught up to the SCEV crew as they sprinted down the dark hallway, preceding the surprisingly strong shockwave that tore at them an instant later, carrying with it a great cloud of dust. Andrews grabbed Rachel’s arm, supporting her as she stumbled and gasped in shock at the sudden rumble of the explosions. But the cacophony didn’t abate; it intensified, and Andrews felt the floor tremble beneath his feet.
“Keep moving!” he shouted, his voice barely audible above the raging din. “Don’t stop, the place is imploding!” But the light was failing, leaving the hallway in absolute darkness; their night vision goggles had nothing left to intensify. He was rewarded with vision a moment later as Laird switched on a flashlight, its harsh LED glow so powerful through the goggles that had it not been for the thick dust flooding into the passage, it might have overwhelmed the NVGs entirely.
“Follow me!” Laird shouted, as fragments of concrete began to fall from the ceiling. “Hurry, hurry!”
The team followed Laird as he set off down the hallway, wading through dust that only grew thicker with each passing second. The darkened passageway trembled and shook as the structure behind them collapsed upon itself. Andrews wondered about Mulligan’s fate. He heard Laird trying to raise the sergeant major over the radio, but there was no response.
Finally, they left the choking clouds of dust behind, though the occasional sound of falling rubble followed them, echoing down the hallway. Andrews sneezed, his nostrils clogged with filth—he could taste it in the back of his mouth. Laird turned right and descended a wide flight of steps.
“This way,” he said, voice pitched low.
“Where are we headed?” Andrews asked.
“There’s a train station down below. It’s open to the street, thanks to an earthquake or something. We can get out through there and go back to Five.”
“What about Four?” Andrews asked.
“It’s here, in a parking garage. It’s a closer reach, but the thing is, the parking garage is locked by a big steel gate.”
Andrews considered that. “Can we blast through it?”
“What, you mean with a missile?” Each SCEV was armed with AGM-114R Hellfire missiles that were packed with two hundred pounds of high-explosive. Originally intended as anti-tank weapons, chances were high that they would make quick work of the garage door. Laird nodded. “Oh, hell yeah.”
“Let’s go there, then,” Andrews said. “We can’t be leaving one of the rigs here, not if there’s a chance we can get it out.”
Laird hesitated, then nodded. “All right. We’ll need to pull around the block to get my rig, though.”
“Not a problem,” Andrews said. “We’re not going to leave any equipment behind if we can avoid it.”
They descended down the next flight of stairs, moving as quickly as they could.
***
The garage was two floors below the arena level, and it looked mostly undamaged. With high ceilings and several different entrances—all of them closed by sliding moat doors, Andrews noticed—it was obvious this level of the parking structure had been intended for freight to be moved in and out. The carcasses of scavenged cars and big tractor trailer rigs lay about, stripped of anything useful. It was pitch-black inside, so Laird left his flashlight on, providing more than enough light for the team to see by with their night vision goggles. As they picked their way through the garage, Andrews saw SCEV Four sitting in a clear area on the far side of the parking structure. The rig was hooked up to a stout-looking tow motor by thick, rusted chains. He wondered how long it would take to free it.
“Looks pretty quiet here,” Choi said, holding his assault rifle ready just in case. Even though he kept his voice pitched low, it still resounded with sibilant echoes inside the parking garage. Andrews motioned for him to be silent, then pointed at the rig, ensuring everyone saw the motion. He took the lead, jogging through the gloom toward the waiting SCEV.
Just as the group closed on the rig, Andrews heard a flurry of movement off to his right. Choi shouted a warning as a metal spear sailed through the air. It flew benignly past Andrews and struck Leona in the right thigh. She went down with a startled yelp, and the spear made a metallic clink as it struck the cement floor beside her. Choi fired at a car, cracking off five rounds in rapid succession. Through the NVGs, Andrews saw sparks fly as the bullets tore through sheet metal. Figures crouching behind the vehicle shrank back, fading into the gloom as they scurried between the rotting husks of long-abandoned semi-trucks.
“I’ve got her!” Laird said, stopping Andrews as he reached down for Leona. “You go get the rig open!” Behind them, Kelly fired a burst on full automatic at another motley group of survivors as they charged toward the SCEV crew. They fled beneath the gunfire, though none of them fell. Andrews was about to snap at her to stop wasting ammunition, then thought better of it. A few bursts of full automatic gunfire was a good deterrent to keep the goblins at bay.
Then more shapes loomed around the SCEV. A lot more.
“Oh, f*ck,” he said.
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
Andrews didn’t answer. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down behind a nearby car that had been so severely stripped that it provided a questionable amount of cover. More gunfire sounded behind them. Laird appeared, half-carrying Leona. The spear was gone, but she had a hand clamped over the wound in her thigh, and her face was set in a rictus of agony beneath her night vision goggles.
“Problem?” Laird asked.
“Dude, we’ve got a substantial blocking force between us and the rig—yeah, that’s a problem,” Andrews said.
“You’re kidding!” Laird looked over the car and saw the group arrayed in front of the SCEV. They maintained a degree of tactical spacing, which meant they had had some training. Andrews peered around the car’s dilapidated bumper, and he saw several members of the group break off. They were going to try to flank them.
“Okay, let’s fall back and try to get to Five,” he said. “I don’t want to get into a stand-up fight with these numbers.”
“Damn straight,” Laird snapped, frustration and stress evident in his voice. He had good reason to be short. Leona was wounded, and she would slow them down. “We’ll have to get upstairs to the train station and crawl up through the debris field. We’ll need to find someplace where we can get Eklund squared away first, though.”
Andrews started to answer, but something whacked off the side of the car in a blurring flash. He had the distinct impression it was an arrow. A moment later, something flared out in the garage, and a small boy ran toward them with a bottle in one hand. A flaming rag stuck out of the bottle’s neck. Andrews raised his rifle, but it was too late—the boy hurled the bottle at them and sped toward a car, vaulting across its empty engine compartment and disappearing behind its bulk before Andrews could establish a lane of fire. The bottle tumbled toward them, and he pushed Rachel aside as it shattered against the ground at their feet, erupting in a ball of flame that washed out the NVGs, causing them to whiteout from the overload.
Two dozen people emerged from the darkness, screaming war cries as they charged forward, holding spears, machetes, bows and arrows—and captured assault rifles.
***
Pushing his way upward, Mulligan eased his way out of the rubble that threatened to crush him. It took some doing, and clawing through the debris in pitch-black darkness didn’t make things any easier. He knew he was severely scraped up; how many diseases was he exposing himself to? How much bacteria had gotten into his blood stream? As he dug his way out of the wreckage, he found he was laughing at himself. Of all the things to worry about now …
His right hand found a void. He carefully pushed his way toward it, slipping beneath the twisted remnants of an I-beam, practically swimming in a sea of shattered concrete. His left shoulder met a piece of piping, and his progress was stalled until he could squeeze past it. He had to move slowly. The last thing he wanted was to cause the wreckage surrounding him to settle further and leave him forever entombed in San Jose.
Finally, he pushed into the void and found it was actually a way out of the rubble. Cool night air whispered across his sweaty, battered body as he clambered out of the twisted mess of metal, plastic, concrete, insulation, and wiring. Once he had fully extricated himself, he collapsed on top of the debris field, gasping for air. He hurt everywhere, so he just lay there, getting used to the pain. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he saw more than half of the roof had caved in, leaving some stray supports remaining; they held up nothing but empty air. Night sky loomed high overhead, full of faintly twinkling stars. From somewhere beneath the wreckage on the other side of the arena, he heard other people moving through the debris with painful grunts and whines. They weren’t his people, so he wasn’t going to investigate. Slowly, he sat up on the hard rubble and checked himself for any serious injuries. He was phenomenally lucky—only scrapes and some small cuts. They were painful, but not life-threatening. The thick body armor and elbow and knee pads he wore had likely saved him from greater injury, for which he was deeply thankful. More troubling was the fact he had lost most of his gear. His rifle was gone, his night vision goggles were smashed, and his radio headset was missing, probably somewhere in the rubble. He was happy to discover he still had his knife and flashlight.
More than enough …
In the distance, he heard gunfire—lots of it. He sat motionless for a long moment, listening to the sounds of combat. It definitely wasn’t coming from outside, which meant the team from Harmony Base was trapped somewhere inside the building.
Mulligan slowly clambered to his feet. He pulled a long length of steel piping from the wreckage and, using it as a walking stick, slowly began picking his way across the field of rubble.