I glanced down as the flame ate the fuse, spitting sparks and fizzing. Then it ran through the doorway back toward the dynamite. Even the deluge of water from the showerheads didn’t slow it. Jesus, the fuse burned faster than I had anticipated.
Tony and Zak appeared to help me with the door.
“No, it’s too late,” I shouted. “Get back. The dynamite’s going to blow.”
They moved back sharply, waving Boy to get down. Inquisitive as kids are, he’d leaned out from behind the bunker to get a closer look.
My eyes hunted across the ground. There, in the plastic grass, I saw it: a crowbar a hornet had used to break heads. But the ground was mined beneath the lawn. I looked at it, searching for any telltale marks in the grass. Dammit. Nothing to tell where the bombs were. Hell, what else could I do? I stepped onto the astroturf, hoping I didn’t trigger a mine.
Thank you, Lord. I reached the iron bar, grabbed it, then ran back to the bunker door that had now closed the gap to around six inches. It slid back before returning to batter the obstruction. Cut into the floor was an inch deep groove fitted with a steel slot where the door wheels ran. I slammed the iron bar into the groove just as the door came hissing back. It glided over the iron bar like it wasn’t there. But just as I was thinking, Shit, it didn’t work, the wheel that supported the half-ton door must have run into the iron bar. With a jolt the door stopped dead.
Zak yelled at me: “Greg! Get back! It’s going to blow!”
Jesus, I’d forgotten about the fuse. I slammed myself against the bunker wall. The thunderous bang shortcut my ears. I felt a tremendous concussion in the center of my head. Instantly the bunker wall jumped at me, knocking me square in the face and flinging me back to the ground.
I pulled myself to my feet, my ears ringing, blood dripping from my nose.
“You all right?” The voice seemed to be part of the ringing. I looked ’round to see Zak and Tony helping me to stand.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Go see if we’re in.”
With flashlights blazing they squeezed past the crippled door and entered the hallway. I followed, shaking the dizzy sensation from my head. In the glow of the flashlights I saw water oozing from a fractured pipe. The explosion had blackened the walls, and every tile had shattered. I checked out the door inside the chamber. Fantastically, it still held tight in one piece, but it was the wall beside it that had staved in. I followed Zak and Tony through crumpled metal panels into the locker room. The explosion had picked up the vacuum packs of clothes, then scattered them ’round the place. Those white rubber sandals covered the floor as if a blizzard had hit it, covering it with blobs of snow.
So… I’d made it back again. I was back in the bunker, only it was different this time. No longer the prisoner but the invader.
When I reached Phoenix, and met him face to face, I wondered what he would say. Come to that, I wondered what he would do.
Fifty-one
We went through the place like a hurricane. Zak and Tony followed me, gun muzzles pointing outward like spines on a porcupine, ready to blast anything that moved. They shone the flashlights left, right and center, scanning the rooms for danger. Once we were through the pneumatic doors that Phoenix could operate remotely, the other lightweight internal doors weren’t a problem. I kicked through one after another.
After screaming at us Phoenix fell silent. But he was watching; I knew that. From those concealed cameras he’d been seeing everything we did. He’d have seen us pass through the kitchen where I’d made popcorn with Michaela, through the living room, down the stairs to the operations rooms with their keypads that glowed like yellow eyes in the darkness. But I wasn’t interested in those anymore.
“OK, Zak,” I said. He turned ’round. I unzipped the backpack to pull out another bundle of dynamite, then I began unraveling the fuse. “There are bedrooms back through the double doors and along the corridor. Get in one of those with the door shut behind you.” I checked that the detonator was in place. “Ten sticks in this one. It’s going to kick like the devil. Ready?”
They nodded, their eyes on those white sticks. Now they’d seen what the stuff could do close up, they regarded it with infinite respect.
Phoenix’s voice came rushing back. “I’m warning you, get out now. You don’t know what you’re getting into. Run, Valdiva, run!”
Get this: Phoenix didn’t sound so much threatening as terrified. Something frightened him. He didn’t even seem scared of us… I felt that flicker of instinct in my gut… the little red warning light began to flash behind my eyes. The man genuinely warned us of some danger… only it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the threat. Something else lurked there… he was trying to save us…
I shook the thought from my head, but still a sense of unease wormed its way along my nervous system. Something isn’t right, Valdiva.
“You OK, Greg?”
I nodded. “Rarin’ to go, Tony.” I laid the dynamite at the foot of the twin doors that were labeled COMM ROUTE. If my hunch served me right, these two meaty iron doors blocked the way to a tunnel that connected with the main bunker. There, Phoenix waited. Along with whatever surprises lay in store.
I played out the fuse behind me, checking that it didn’t snag. “OK.” I flipped the cigarette lighter, touched the flame to the fuse end. Sparks flew. “Take cover-here she goes!”
OK, so maybe I did use too much. The explosion knocked in bedroom doors, filling the whole complex with smoke. Even the beds we crouched on jumped halfway to the ceiling. Closets flew open, sleeping bags, pillowcases, towels flapped ’round like crazy birds. For a second we lay there on the floor, trying to retrieve the air that had had been slammed from our lungs.
“Jeez,” Zak breathed. “Valdiva, you never do anything by halves, do you, man?”
I picked up the rifle from where the concussion had flung it across the room. “Come on, let’s finish this now.”
The corridor to the other rooms had been mutilated; you could use no other word for it. Mutilated to hell and back. Walls had been gouged by the explosion. Part of the concrete ceiling had broken away to come crashing to the floor. Every single door had been blasted inward. For the first time I saw the sick bay and the boardroom. There, tables and chairs had been up ended. Exposed wiring in the walls sent out cascades of sparks. A punctured fire extinguisher sprayed a blizzard of foam.
I nodded at the twin doors that led to the connecting tunnel. “We’ve done it. We’re in.” The massive doors had been crumpled the way you can scrunch up a sheet of paper in your hand. Smoke billowed, thick as fog. It reflected the beams of the flashlights right back at us.
I approached the smashed doors. The tunnel entrance yawned like a hungry mouth, eager to swallow us into its concrete gut.
“Greg! Get back!”
Tony pushed me aside to fire the machine gun into the fog of smoke. A figure blundered out through the mutilated doors, then fell to the floor and lay still.
I looked through the smoke, expecting to see Phoenix lying there. Instead I saw a witch head of wild gray hair. A bloody mass bubbled where the face should have been.
Zak nodded down at the figure. “We got bunker boy?”
“That’s not him.” My stomach muscles clenched. “That’s a hornet.. ..” I moved closer to the tunnel’s raw mouth. “Jesus, he must have let them in to guard the hive.”
Swarming through the gloom of the tunnel, like they were a plague of hungry rats I saw them. Dozens of them. Men, women. Young, old. Their faces blazed hatred.
“Hornets!” I yelled. “They’re coming this way.”
Tony stepped into the doorway to fire the machine gun at them. Flame a yard long erupted from the muzzle. I could even see bullets roar into the gloom like balls of light to ricochet off walls, or to rip into bodies.
“Too many,” I shouted. “Zak, hold still.” I reached into the backpack on his back and pulled out a bundle of dynamite. “Get back into the stairwell.” I pulled the lighter from my pocket.