Lucas checked a compass embedded in the stock of his SVD and pointed down the tunnel that branched off to their right. Yuri followed Lucas down the tunnel as they half crouched and half ran, moving away from the entrance as quickly as possible. After several minutes of walking they could no longer hear the pounding from the creature and they stopped in a small alcove to rest. Lucas confirmed that the radiation level in the tunnel was not dangerous and Yuri plopped down on the floor, glad to be off of his feet.
Lucas sat down across from Yuri and retrieved the cylinder from his vest. He pulled it out of its bag along with the damaged remote control and began to examine them. Yuri watched as Lucas turned the cylinder over, trying to figure out how it worked. The cylinder was matte black in color with two distinct halves separated by a half-inch strip of silver metal. Two indentations sat at either end of the cylinder and appeared to have lights in them, though neither indent was glowing at the moment.
“This looks like one of the new stun grenades,” Lucas mumbled, “but the size is all wrong. This is at least five times as large.”
Yuri interrupted Lucas’s examination of the object. “Is that the thing that’ll kill the creature?”
Lucas nodded slowly in response. “I think so. I’m not completely sure, but I think it will. It looks like what Iosif described, but I’ll have to figure out how to detonate it.”
Lucas continued to turn the device in his hand as he spoke and inadvertently slipped one of his fingers onto an indent at the end of the cylinder. The two halves immediately popped apart, lengthening the device by a full six inches and revealing a small panel and keyboard in the center of the device. The screen bloomed to life and Yuri scooted around to view it alongside Lucas.
After a series of flashing lines passed by as the device performed a status check. Each line ended with a small green dot indicating that the device’s systems were functioning properly. The last line, however, was different. Instead of a green dot, a flashing red “x” was present after the words “Remote detonation control status.” Lucas looked at the broken remote control where he had placed it on the ground and closed his eyes in frustration.
“Damn. We can’t set this thing off remotely.”
“Who cares?” Yuri picked up the remote and looked it over before throwing it back on the floor. “It just removes radiation, right? It shouldn’t hurt us, just that creature.”
Lucas shook his head and turned the cylinder around for Yuri to get a clearer view of the status panel. “Look at these two lines.”
Yuri squinted at the small screen, reading the lines that Lucas was pointing to.
Radiovacuum status —- Ready.
High explosives status —- Ready.
“Wait, high explosives?” Yuri backed away from Lucas as he nervously stared at the cylinder. “I thought this thing just removed radiation from an environment!”
“It looks like there were some upgrades to the original design. I guess whoever made this didn’t want to take any chances at killing one of these creatures. There’s enough explosive material in here to level a city block.” Lucas poked at the keyboard on the device, watching as the screen changed to show schematics of the device, along with simple instructions for arming and detonating it both remotely and locally.
Satisfied that he knew how to operate the device, Lucas closed it and returned it to the pocket on his vest. He looked at Yuri who was slowly nodding his head. Yuri looked up and met Lucas’s eyes through the face mask, then he spoke with the defeated tone of a man resigned to his fate.
“Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s kill this bastard.”
Lucas stood up and held out his hand to Yuri. The youth grabbed the proffered hand and stood, staring at Lucas as the soldier spoke to him. “You can still leave, you know. You’re a civilian and you aren’t supposed to be here. Just hide in the tunnels until the thing’s dead, then you can get back to your car before the recovery team comes to pick me up.”
“Even if I wanted to do that, what would I tell my family and friends? How am I supposed to explain to my aunt that her son died? I let him go out there alone and this thing killed him, but I’m not letting it end like that.” Yuri shook his head and gritted his teeth as anger rose in his voice. “No. Like it or not, I’m coming with you. This thing scares the hell out of me, but it killed my best friend. There’s no way I’m running away from it.”
Lucas sighed deeply and patted Yuri on the back. He briefly considered trying to force Yuri to do as he suggested, but he knew that would be an impossible battle. Despite the dangers, Yuri was dead set on avenging the death of his comrade, a feeling that Lucas knew too well.
“Come on, then. Let’s get going.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Time passed by slowly underground. While it felt like they had been traveling for hours, every time Yuri glanced at his watch he was surprised that less than a half hour had passed. Ducking around corners, slinking down corridors and leaping over crevices in the tunnels had left Yuri wondering where they were in the complex. Lucas appeared to know exactly where he was going though as he deftly maneuvered them around collapsed sections of the tunnels, through abandoned maintenance bays and even through a few surface level buildings.
Ever since leaving the creature behind at the hatch, neither Lucas nor Yuri had seen nor heard any sign of the beast. Yuri decided that if it had left them alone for this long then it must not have been able to find where they were. While this was somewhat unsurprising given the seeming randomness of their trek, he still felt some unease about the assumption that the creature wouldn’t know the area around its own home well enough to find them. Regardless of the true reasons behind being left alone by the beast, Yuri was glad for the temporary reprieve, especially after the close call near the cooling lakes.
Lost in his thoughts, Yuri bumped into the back of Lucas as the soldier abruptly stopped at an intersection. Yuri backed up as Lucas pulled out his Geiger counter and went from tunnel to tunnel, measuring the radioactivity in each passageway. With a satisfied grunt he put the Geiger counter away and turned back to Yuri.
“I think we’re close to its lair. I’ve been trying to follow the radiation trail to find a passage that leads near the main reactor chamber and I think this is it. The measurements from that tunnel are rising abnormally fast, probably from water runoff in the soil.”
Yuri nodded. “What’s to wait around for? Let’s get in there and kill it!” He started to walk down the passageway, but Lucas held up his arm, blocking Yuri’s path.
“Yuri, you can’t go down there. The radiation levels are going to get much, much higher. Even if that thing doesn’t get you, if you go anywhere near the reactor chamber, you’ll die anyway.”
Yuri frowned at Lucas and stood his ground, refusing to be pushed back. “If you go in, I go in.”
“I don’t have time to argue about this, Yuri.” Lucas drew his SVD and stepped back, raising it to aim at Yuri. “I’m sorry about your cousin, but I’m not going to let you—”
A crash from above the pair stopped Lucas mid-sentence. Both Yuri and Lucas stepped back into the tunnel they had come from. They shone their lights down the other tunnels of the intersection, trying to find the source of the sound. Lucas’s thermal and night vision scopes showed no evidence of anything in the passages, but the sound had most definitely been close by.