Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake - Страница 45
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Before long his breathing was choked and labored, and his fingers and calves were cramping.
“Keep going,” he heard Sun say behind him.
She touched his foot. It gave him a smidgeon of hope.
Then he heard the squeal of the batlings echo through the vent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sun didn’t like enclosed spaces. With Andy in front of her, and Dr. Belgium at her heels, she felt like a sardine. The dust coated the inside of her mouth and nose, and made her eyes water.
Belgium tapped her ankle. “They’re right behind me.”
“Faster, Andy!”
“There’s a light ahead. Just a few feet.”
Sun scurried forward, trying to push Andy’s feet to move him quicker.
“There’s a vent. I’m over a hallway.”
A clanging sound; Andy banging on the vent, trying to force it open.
Behind Sun, Dr. Belgium screamed.
“Biting me! They’re biting!”
Two more clangs, and then Andy disappeared.
Sun saw the light ahead. Andy had knocked out the grating, and gone face-first through the opening on the bottom of the vent.
“Keep moving, Frank!” she yelled. “Just a few more feet!”
Sun got her head over the opening and blanched at the ten foot drop. Andy knelt on the floor, moaning softly. His staples had come loose, and his head gushed blood.
“Andy!”
He glanced up at Sun, his face bathed in confusion. He must have hit the floor hard.
Sun couldn’t wait for him to get his bearings.
“Andy! Catch me!”
She wiggled through the opening and fell into his arms. He caught her and hugged her tight to his chest, and they tumbled over onto their sides.
Andy blinked, then grinned at her.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said. “People will talk.”
“Coming down!”
Dr. Belgium dropped through the grate like a stone, landing on top of the couple. He hit Sun with such force that she saw stars and had the air knocked out of her chest.
Belgium was followed by a dark wave of batlings, which quickly filled the hall with swirling fury.
Sun sucked in a breath and looked around. They were in the Blue Arm, only a few yards away from her room. She had a can of mace in there. Along with something that might be even more helpful.
Sun managed to get to her feet and scrambled for her door, batlings swooping on her at all angles. She tugged the knob, dove onto the bed, and wrapped her fists around the two racquetball racquets she’d left there since her earlier game with Andy.
Sun rushed back into the fray in time to see Dr. Belgium run screaming down the hall.
“Andy!” she yelled, tossing him a racquet.
The batlings went straight for blood, biting at Suns wounds. She pulled off the ones that had begun to chew, and adopted her game stance.
The demons flew fast, but not as fast as a racquetball bounced. On Sun's first swing she smacked one down the hall, splattering it against a door.
It felt good.
Another dove straight at her face, screeching , and she backhanded it to the left.
WHACK!
She forearmed another into the ceiling.
WHACK!
Two flew at her head-on, and with an overhand smash she catapulted both into the floor. Sun hit another so hard its claws got stuck in her racquet string. She yanked it out and tossed it aside.
The former American Racquetball Association Women's Champion swung again and again, her racquet slicing through the air in all directions, knocking away batlings as fast as they could fly at her.
She chanced a look at Andy, who was displacing so many demons he seemed to be waving around a large net.
The batlings smartened up. They stayed out of Sun's swinging range, and tried to attack her from the side and from behind. Sun dodged left, jumped, and hammered two more.
Less than twenty remained, and Sun kicked it into overdrive, bringing the fight to her attackers. She set her jaw and sprang into the thick of them, staying on the balls of her feet, moving the racquet as fast as she could. Blood hung in the air like a mist, coating her face, making the racquet handle slippery. The constant flapping and screeching became intermittent, and then almost non-existent.
Just a handful remained, and the veterinarian hunted them down, one at a time.
A final demon, screaming like a smoke alarm, bee-lined for Sun's face in a suicidal attempt to get at her throat.
Sun whacked it so hard it bounced off two walls.
The veterinarian turned completely around, searching for another flying attacker.
There were none. The floor was littered with the dead and dying; almost a hundred of them. Several were still twitching or trying to flap their broken wings. The once pristine hallway now resembled a slaughterhouse.
Something touched her shoulder, and Sun whirled around, ready to swing.
Andy.
“I'm checking Race's room for the cattle prod.”
She touched his head. He flinched.
“I’ve got some super glue in my room.”
“For what?” Andy’s eyes looked up, as if he could see his own scalp. “You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s better than staples. Surgeons use it. What time do you have?”
Andy checked his watch. “Thirty-six minutes until we’re fried.”
“I’ll meet you back out here in two minutes.”
Sun turned to go, but Andy caught her arm.
“Wait a sec.”
She turned. “What is it?”
Sun searched his face, saw tenderness.
“Watching you, since all of this began, you’re so brave.”
“We’re both brave.”
“No. I’m just trying to stay alive. You told me about your fear of bats, how they freaked you out. You faced that fear, and won. I want to be like that.”
Injured as he was, she never had a man look at her with so much longing.
“It’s easy to be brave,” she breathed. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
Andy put his arm around the small of her back, pulled her close, and kissed her.
Sun hurt in a hundred places. Andy tasted like blood and sweat and dust, and he smelled even worse, and his hand was pressed right up against an open batling bite on her side, and this was the worst possible timing in the history of male/female relations.
It was also the best kiss of Sun’s life.
She kissed him back, enjoying the spark of electricity that ran helter-skelter over her nerve endings. She may have even moaned a little.
When they finally broke the kiss, Andy said, “Wow.”
No one had ever given Sun a “Wow” before.
“Meet me back here in two minutes,” she said. “And be careful. We don’t know what else is running around here.”
Sun hurried to her room, and only after closing the door did she wonder what happened to Dr. Belgium.
CHAPTER THIRTY
When the hallway filled with batlings, Dr. Belgium looked to Sun and Andy to tell him what to do. He watched Sun tear down the hall and run into her room.
Good idea, Belgium thought.
He took off after Sun, a swarm of demons striking him from all directions. He almost panicked. The batlings instilled the same primordial fear as a swarm of bees or a nest of vipers. Even worse, they were intelligent, aiming for Belgium's eyes, biting at his legs and back and other places he couldn't swat with his hands.
The high-pitched squealing sound they made, the electric pain appearing all over his body like bullet hits, the blood blinding his eyes—part of him wanted to just give up and die.
He quickly realized he wasn’t going to reach his room alive. The creatures were in his face, and he couldn’t see. Every time he knocked one off, another took its place.
So Belgium did what he was taught in grammar school.
Stop, drop, and roll.
The batlings that clung to him were crushed under his weight. The others couldn’t land on him. Dizziness be damned, this was the perfect protection.
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