After several seconds of silence, Yuri was preparing to speak, thinking that the noise was just something in a building overhead that had been knocked over by the wind. He opened his mouth to talk, but a second crash, this time much closer, made him snap his jaw shut. Lucas leaned his head out of the tunnel, glancing upward in the intersection.
Most of the passageway intersections had tall roofs and the remains of ladders that had once gone from the bottom of the intersection up to the top, where more hatches were no doubt positioned. All of the intersections that Yuri and Lucas had passed had no usable ladders, though, so they dismissed the intersections as mere curiosities, not realizing that the beast was using them to track his prey. Once they had reached an intersection with a weakened hatch, the beast struck, pounding away at the hatch with such ferocity that he had nearly torn it off with just two blows.
A third impact came several seconds later, though this one was accompanied by the sound of rushing air and the clatter of broken bolts as they rained down into the intersection from the smashed hatch. Lucas pushed Yuri into a side tunnel, directing them away from the passage to the reactor chamber. Yuri stumbled ahead as snarls came from the behind them, accompanied by the familiar rustle and clatter of the beast’s body and claws as it descended into the tunnels.
Instead of dropping directly to the ground, the beast had its claws dug firmly into the concrete walls of the intersection, crawling swiftly downward in a manner reminiscent of a reptile. The face of the beast appeared at the top of the tunnel entrance as Lucas backed up, retreating behind Yuri. Rows of teeth were revealed as the beast snarled openly at Lucas, who responded by raising his rifle toward the creature.
Remembering their last encounter, the beast quickly tucked its head out of the way as Lucas fired off two shots, both of which missed their target and impacted on the opposite wall. The powerful rounds exploded upon impact, showering the intersection with fragments of metal and concrete and causing the beast to lose its footing. The dark shape of the creature fell to the ground in a heap, though it was swiftly back on its feet. In the infrared scope of his SVD, Lucas watched the creature back up out of the tunnel to hide just out of sight.
“Keep moving!” Lucas called back to Yuri, whose only response was a grunt as he continued running down the passage. After several more minutes of running, Yuri and Lucas slowed again and strained to listen for the creature. Silence was their only companion, though, which once again proved to be more unnerving than knowing where the beast was. Stuck in a long stretch of winding tunnel with no nearby intersections or ways of escape, Lucas took up the lead and left Yuri to watch their backs with his flashlight.
Lucas stopped every few seconds to check his compass, trying to get an idea of where they were. He cursed hoarsely, still struggling to get enough air through his mask. “Shit! I have no idea where we are.”
Yuri started to reply when a slight vibration in the air gave him pause. He cocked his head and pointed upward to the low ceiling as he tapped Lucas on the shoulder. Lucas nodded in confirmation that he had heard the sound as well, then quietly began to retreat back down the hallway in the direction they had come from. A few feet ahead, where they had just been standing, the vibrations became worse and pieces of the ceiling began to shatter and fall to the ground.
“Go!” Lucas shouted at Yuri, who turned and ran back down the hall. As he ran, the ceiling in front of Lucas finally caved in and a shadowy mass dropped into the hallway. In his thermal scope, Lucas couldn’t make out any details of the mass, but his night vision scope clearly showed the creature’s outline, along with its two red, glowing eyes.
The beast snarled at Lucas and began to charge down the hall, gaining speed at a frightening rate. Lucas backed down the hall as quickly as he could, keeping the SVD trained on the creature. Only when the shadow had come within twenty feet of Lucas did he open fire, squeezing off two quick rounds from the SVD in rapid succession. The rounds exploded against the beast’s body, lighting up the hallway with brief flashes, though they didn’t seem to cause any ill effects to the creature itself.
Lucas could hear Yuri behind him, still running through the tunnel, then stopping as he reached what Yuri assumed to be the intersection. He continued to fire at the creature, which other than causing it to snarl and slow down slightly, was still having no effect. Damn! Did this thing grow body armor or something?
With only five rounds left in his current magazine and no time left to swap in another one, Lucas decided that it was time to put his sniper training to good use. He raised the rifle a few inches, leveling it with the creature’s face. Dropping to one knee, he pressed the rifle deep into his shoulder and flipped both scopes down. Lucas stared down the iron sights of the SVD and squeezed the trigger rapidly, dropping four rounds into the creature’s right eye socket. Lucas’s motions were so quick that the beast had barely gained any ground and was still several feet away when the explosives from the rounds went off.
Even from underneath his protective mask, Lucas’s ears still rang from the concussive blasts of the rounds. These were accompanied by a loud howling groan from the creature as it skidded to a stop. With one round left, Lucas dropped it into the center of the creature’s face where he assumed its nose or mouth might be. While the previous shots had startled, wounded and enraged the beast, the fifth shot was the last straw for the creature. Viscous liquid was expelled from the creature’s face from the impact, a mixture of the clear gelatin-like substance and a dark, black substance that Lucas had never seen before. The beast backpedalled down the passage, leaving Lucas to watch it retreat, panting heavily as he saw the single red eye vanish around a corner.
A moment of silence passed as Lucas kept watch down the hall, having quickly swapped out the empty magazine in his SVD for a full one. He wiped the strange substances from his chest and mask, puzzled by the dark liquid yet glad that there wasn’t enough of the clear gelatin on him to harden and cause damage to his gear. Yuri’s quiet footsteps sounded from behind him and he turned his head to check on him.
“You alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. How about you? That was one hell of a loud firefight.”
Lucas smirked and stood, satisfied that they were safe for the moment. “Fine here. That thing’s not, though. I think I took out one of its eyes.”
Yuri grinned broadly as he congratulated Lucas. “Hot damn! That’s fantastic!”
“Maybe.” Lucas shrugged. “I didn’t kill it, and now it’s wounded. If that thing’s like any other wild animal, all I did was piss it off and make it twice as dangerous.”
Yuri’s celebratory mood was instantly deflated upon hearing this and he grew quiet and somber. “So what are we doing now? Heading into the main chamber?”
Lucas pondered the question for a moment when a sharp pain exploded in his head. He gripped the sides of his mask tightly as stars sprang into view and the entire tunnel started to spin. Yuri reached out to grab his arm but Lucas waved him away, falling to one knee to support himself. An overwhelming feeling of nausea rose in the pit of his stomach and he fought it back, trying to keep himself from vomiting.
“What’s wrong?” Concern grew in Yuri’s voice as he tried to reach out again to help Lucas up to his feet.
“Don’t touch me, stay back!” Lucas growled as he spoke, fearful of what might be the cause for his sudden onset of symptoms. He grabbed the Geiger counter from his vest pocket and switched it on, then held it to his chest where the majority of the gelatin and black liquid had landed. The counter immediately spiked into the red zone and started clicking rapidly. Yuri’s face grew pale and he stepped back, unsure of what to do next.