Revolution (56 page)

    “Should we help them?” Rayne asked, approaching the doorway with his upraised pistol.

    “No, stay back. If you stick your head out, our own people might blow it off. There’s no way they can differentiate between us and the enemy.

    Peter’s forehead was soaked with sweat and it was starting to run down his face in tiny rivulets. The automatic thunder continued to reverberate in the hallway.

    After a few minutes of intense firing, the gunfire let up. Then, it stopped. They heard the sound of boots hitting the floor in the corridor. A few moments later, they heard a voice outside the door.

    “Hey, anyone in there?” an unfamiliar female voice shouted.

    “She must be one of ours. I don’t hear her talking through a helmet filter,” Karyn whispered.

    “We’re with Campion!” Peter shouted.

    “Bravo Squadron!” Karyn added.

    “Okay! I’m coming in!”

    At first, all they saw was the barrel of a rifle poking through the door. Then, a soldier wearing gray and black camouflage armor entered. The soldier glanced to her left and saw them standing against the wall.

    “Is one of you the sergeant?” the young female soldier asked.

   “He is,” Brennon replied, indicating Rayne with her thumb.

   “Corporal Bosworth would like to meet up with you,” the soldier said.

    “Okay. Take me to him,” Rayne said.

     They followed her into the devastated corridor. Craters and shrapnel were spread across the floor and walls like a decimated battle-zone. The soldier led them down the hall past other soldiers who were systematically checking rooms one-by-one.

    “Don’t shoot! I’m with Bravo Squad!” a female voice shouted from a nearby room.

     Brennon turned toward the doorway and saw their compatriot, Lorick Thompson, leaving the room with another soldier.

    “You made it!” Karyn shouted, running to Lorick and hugging her.

    “We did it, Karyn!” Lorick exclaimed, hugging her back.

    They quickly disengaged their embrace and got back to business.

    “Where’s this corporal I keep hearing about?” Brennon asked the young female soldier.

    “Down here,” the soldier said as she entered another room across the hall. They followed her into a sizable control room and met with a tall, thin black man.

    “Corporal Bosworth, nice to meet you,” the tall soldier said, extending his hand.

    “Peter Rayne,” Rayne said, shaking his hand.

    “You’re the Sergeant?” Bosworth asked.

    “That’s me,” Rayne said. “But the real person in charge is actually Corporal Brennon.”

    Rayne stepped aside to let Brennon through.

    “Hey, Todd. I like your timing,” Brennon said, stepping forward and shaking Bosworth’s hand in a vise grip.

    “You know how good I am in a scrape,” Bosworth said, smiling. “We knew you guys were in trouble when we heard the explosions. We double-timed it until we reached you.”

    “We appreciate it. Believe me,” Karyn said, smiling back.

    “So what’s next on the agenda?” Bosworth asked.

    “We proceed with what we’re doing; going down the corridor and checking all the rooms,” Brennon said. “Let’s move out.”

    They returned to the main corridor and continued their systematic sweep of the rooms. Eventually, they reached a large, bare, metal-walled chamber with a single black steel door on the opposite side. Rayne recognized it as the entrance to the underground forest. Glancing left, he saw an empty transport platform. Glancing right, he saw a long hallway converging into linear perspective. He turned back to face the black door.

    “That’s the entrance to the terrarium,” Rayne said, pointing to the black steel door with his rifle barrel.

    “All right, then. Stand back,” Bosworth ordered, producing a laser grenade from his belt.

    “No problem,” Rayne replied, heeding his request.

    Peter covered his eyes as Bosworth tossed the grenade across the chamber. The grenade struck the steel door and bounced to the floor in front of it. Seconds later, he saw a bright red light emanating from around the edges of his hand.

     Rayne took his hands away from his eyes and regarded the destruction. Artificial sunlight streamed in from the tweny-foot hole, illuminating the chamber with natural looking light. The North American forest looked surreal juxtaposed with the shattered metal wall.

Chapter 40

Manhunt

    Campion turned the metal wheel to the left, loosening the locking mechanism, and pulled the door open. The area beyond was completely dark. The door had no wheel on the other side. It could only be opened from the maintenance corridor. She stepped into the darkness, shining her flashlight ahead. Her flashlight illuminated an ancient-looking gray stone wall.

    This must be one of the
Powerdrome’s attractions
.

    She shined her flashlight around the narrow hallway, and observed that it traveled into darkness in two directions. The scanner technician stepped into the corridor with her.

    “That way,” Connor said, pointing to the right.

    Campion nodded at her and moved in that direction. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the technician following her in front of a line of soldiers. Jane brushed her hand against one of the walls and was surprised to find it was damp – like in a cellar. It also felt cold like real stone.

     Looking over her shoulder again, she watched the rest of the squad following her with raised weapons. Most of them had never been here before, so she figured this place would make them uneasy. She saw lights in the distance ahead. Clenching her rifle in a firm grip, she moved forward.      

    “It looks like we’re in one of the Powerdrome attractions,” Campion said.

    “Great. I’ve heard about some of these attractions. I hear they can get pretty out-of-control,” Connor said.

    “That’s what a close friend of mine told me,” Jane said, grinning as she thought about Rayne’s adventures.

    The hallway was now wide enough to travel in pairs, so Campion and Connor advanced side-by-side at the vanguard of the squad. The technician held the scanner in one hand and her pistol in the other like a Wild West gunfighter holding two six-shooters.       

     Ahead in the corridor, they saw thin beams of light shining in from tall, narrow windows in the stone wall to the left. They reached the first light beam and discovered it was artificial sunlight streaming in from a window approximately five feet high and a foot wide. They continued the advance. She slowed her pace when she heard a noise in the corridor ahead. It was a soft, metallic clinking noise – like someone jingling keys – coming from the darkness beyond the beams of light.

    “Do you hear that?” Jane asked.

    “Yes,” the tech said.

    “What is it?”

    “It sounds like something’s moving in the darkness ahead.”

    “That’s what I was afraid of,” Campion said, scowling as she focused her rifle ahead.

    Jane thought she could see a subtle movement in the distant shadows. The metallic clinking noises became louder. She spotted tiny glowing red lights moving in the darkness.

     Suddenly, a sharp blast of automatic thunder reverberated in the corridor behind them. Jane turned and saw the other soldiers in the double-line instinctively turn to look with her. She saw white flashes in the distant darkness as automatic gunfire continued. She switched on her headset and shouted into the receiver.

    “Who’s firing down there?” she asked.

    “We’re encountering resistance!” a harried-sounded voice spoke from her headset speaker.

    “What kind of resistance?” 

    “I don’t know! They’re not human!”

    “What?”

    Jane turned to look ahead and felt a chill in her spine. A human skeleton wearing black chain-mail armor shambled through one of the light beams. Its eyes glowed red inside dark sockets. More red eyes moved in the darkness behind it.

********

    “We need to round up the troops,” Bosworth advised.

    “Good idea,” Brennon agreed. She switched on her headset and spoke into the receiver. “C-1 to Battle Group. Converge on my signal.”

    “Is that the only way we can go from here?” Bosworth asked, pointing toward the forest beyond the blown-out wall.

   “No, there’s another transportation system leading to a different section of the complex down that way,” Rayne indicated, pointing down a long silver walled corridor to the right.

    “Then we definitely have to send a team that way,” Brennon said.

    “Okay, good enough,” Bosworth said. “We’ll organize into two teams. One team will go with me into the forest and cut through to the VIP bunker. The other team will follow you to the transport system.”

    The rebel soldiers divided into two groups. One group followed Bosworth into the terrarium while the other rode the transports with Rayne and Brennon.

    Peter found himself rocketing down a dark tunnel with unknown soldiers. The tunnel was lit intermittently with artificial lights, but there were still long stretches of darkness that made him uneasy. They didn’t even know where they were going. 

    After several tense minutes of traveling down the long, semi-dark tunnel, they arrived at another large transport platform. There was a black steel door on the opposite wall. Rayne disembarked with the others and walked toward it. As they approached the door, Peter felt a chill as he read the sign written in bold red letters above it:
Body Bank Level 5
.

  ******** 

    “Commander, we’re having trouble bringing them down!” a soldier’s harried voice punctuated the muffled automatic thunder in Campion’s right ear receiver.

   “We have more coming at us from the front,” Jane spoke into her headset and switched it off.

    The thundering of gunfire was already loud enough in the hallway without hearing it again through her headset’s right earpiece.

     Campion took aim at the foremost armored skeleton shambling toward her. She fired and watched bright sparks shoot off the skeleton’s chest plate. Connor opened fire next to her, hitting the second skeleton stepping into the beam of light. They each unloaded a full magazine into their antagonists and observed their handiwork. The robots halted as a thin mist of smoke hovered around them.

     Jane felt a chill run down her spine when the skeleton she shot took a tentative step forward. Then another. The one Connor hit moved forward next to it through the smoke cloud. Jane dropped her spent magazine and pressed a fresh one in from her belt.

    “Let’s try aiming for their heads this time,” she suggested, lifting her weapon higher and firing.

     Campion’s shots went wide, striking sparks off the stone window frames on the left wall. She swept her rifle to the right and watched the closest robot’s skull explode in a shower of white sparks. Its head was reduced to a smoking cluster of wires and melted circuitry. It continued its advance as sparks shot from its shattered head.

    “What does it take to kill these things?” Jane asked, aiming for its legs.

     She fired, watching sparks explode on the robot’s kneecaps. The skeleton tottered unsteadily and collapsed.

    Campion switched on her headset and issued a quick command; “Aim for the legs.” She switched it off when she only heard muffled gunfire in the receiver.  

    After blasting more than a dozen of the relentless attackers, Jane wound up and hurled a laser grenade into the darkness beyond the crumpled bodies of the fallen robots.

     She covered her eyes and awaited the familiar flash of light. When she saw red around the edges of her hand, she took it away and looked ahead. She couldn’t see anything through the smoke. She gestured for the squad to advance. They stepped over the metal carcasses of the blasted skeletons, being careful not to touch any exposed, sparking wires protruding from the mangled parts.

    Campion’s eyes squinted as she entered the smoke cloud. They stepped over more robot carcasses and continued advancing. Jane almost lost her balance when her next step encountered only empty air. Beth grabbed her before she could fall on her face.

    “The crater,” Connor said, pointing downward.

    “Thanks,” Campion said, rolling her eyes.

    They dropped down together into the five-foot deep crater and advanced.

     “Commander, there’s another room over there,” Connor said, pointing to the blown-out wall to the right.