Rise of the Elgen (32 page)

“Me too,” Jack said.

I counted the group. There were ten of us. Two were missing. “Where are Raúl and Tanner?”

“Raúl took Tanner to the mechanical room,” Taylor said. “He was having trouble walking. He said if there’s trouble they’ll escape through the pipe.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re right under the bowl,” Ostin said. “These pipes are all water mains to cool the grid.”

“So how do we get out of here?” Zeus asked. “You can bet they’ve sealed off the compound. We’d never make it to the fence by car.”

“I say we join Raúl at the escape pipe,” I said. I turned to Ian. “How do we get there?”

“Three corridors down, on the left, there’s an air duct in the ceiling that leads back to the butchery.”

“All right,” I said. “This way.”

Suddenly the flashing lights around us stopped. Then a voice boomed from overhead speakers, echoing down the hallway. “Michael Vey. So pleased you could join us.”

H
atch’s voice continued over the speakers. “You should have told us you were coming, Michael. I would have prepared something special. As usual you’ve made a mess of things. And, Frank, I knew you’d come back. Couldn’t resist, could you? You and I are going to have some fun. We’ll bob for apples. Throw water balloons. Good times for all.”

“The name’s Zeus,” I said.

“Inconsequential,” Hatch said. “Be advised that we have you completely sealed in and surrounded. So you have a choice. You and Frank can surrender yourselves, and your friends will have reasonably humane treatment. Or you can resist and you will all die painful deaths. It’s your call. Either way will amuse me.”

“Eat my shorts!” Ostin shouted.

“Oh, Ostin. You just can’t keep out of this, can you? Tell you what. I’ll up the ante. If Michael and Frank surrender, I’ll spare all of
your lives and throw in a box of jelly doughnuts for Ostin. So let’s see how much Michael really cares for you.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Taylor said.

“You want us, Hatch?” I shouted. “Come and get us!”

Hatch laughed. “I was hoping you’d say that. Captain Welch, make sure the cameras are all recording, I’m going to want a replay of this. Are we set?”

“Yes, sir,” a voice said. “Gate is opening.”

“Wonderful. Just wonderful. You know I always enjoy feeding my pets.”

From the bowels of the corridor came a loud, echoing groan like the sound of a heavy metal gate. Suddenly a high-pitched screeching echoed down the hall, shrill as a fork on a chalkboard.

“What’s that sound?” Taylor asked.

Ostin turned white. “It sounds like . . . rats.”

“Run to the air duct!” I shouted. I put my arm around my mother and helped her. The darkness behind us began to turn amber, the corridor distantly illuminated by some strange source of light. The first wave of rats came into view like the initial stream of a river, growing steadily heavier and thicker as the rodents began overlapping and running on top of one another, their bodies glowing like lava. They quickly closed the gap between us.

Jack threw a concussion grenade behind us, which killed a few of them but barely slowed the mass.

“Taylor, can you stop them?” I shouted.

“I’ll try.”

She turned and faced them, her hands on her temples. Ten yards in front of us the flow stopped as some of the rats began running in circles, confused.

“It’s working,” I said.

I was premature. The first wave of rats were quickly overcome by the rats behind them, as they pushed forward and climbed or jumped over them.

“There are too many of them!” Taylor shouted.

It was difficult to hear her over the squeals, which had grown in
volume until the mass of them sounded like the braking of a train on metal tracks. They continued to pour toward us.

“Up the pipes!” I shouted, pointing to the walls.

Everyone grabbed onto the pipes and began climbing. I pushed my mother up the nearest pipe, and she hooked the utility belt of her uniform onto a bracket, holding her in place. I looked back down the hall. Everyone was up a pipe except Abigail, who was standing in the middle of the corridor staring at the oncoming rats, paralyzed by fear.

“Abi!” I shouted. “Climb up!”

She didn’t move.

“Abi!”

Suddenly she fainted, falling to the ground.

Jack jumped down from his pipe and ran for her while Zeus began shooting at the rats heading for them, killing all he could hit. Jack lifted her and ran back to his pipe. He tried to climb with her but couldn’t secure a strong enough handhold to pull them both up.

I jumped down from my pipe and ran to him. “Jack, climb up! Lift her!”

I took Abigail in my arms as Jack climbed up. He reached down and with one arm pulled her up. He hooked her blouse around a bracket to keep her from falling, then wrapped himself around her, holding them both in place.

“Michael!” Taylor shouted. “Look out!”

Zeus continued to pick off the rats, but it was like shooting rubber bands at a hive of angry hornets. Just as the first wave of rats hit my legs, I pulsed and the rodents that hit me died in a bright flash. But there were far too many. They began to swarm me, jumping higher and higher. I swatted at them, staggering to move away from them.

“Michael!” McKenna shouted, waving me to her. “Over here!” She was clinging to a pipe directly across from me. I tried to get to it, but walking was like trudging through mud. Slippery, flesh-eating mud.

Suddenly a rat about the size of a cat hit me in the chest, knocking me over. As I fell to the ground a wave of the rodents covered me. I pulsed with everything I had to keep them from eating me, but they
were breaking through and I could feel their sharp teeth tearing at the Elgen uniform. My electricity was nearly exhausted. One last pulse, I told myself. Maybe I could kill enough rats to make a difference.

I wanted my last act to have some significance. I wanted my death to matter.

Just then I saw a brilliant light and felt a wave of heat. I could feel the weight of the rats lessen as they began jumping from my body. I opened my eyes to see McKenna standing next to me, raging like a blast furnace. The frenzied rats were running away from her heat.

“Get up, Michael!” she shouted.

I pulled myself up, then staggered over to a pipe and used my magnetism to climb to the top of it. McKenna climbed up after me, keeping only her legs blazing to ward off the rats. She couldn’t get more than three feet from the ground. She was suffering from dehydration and looked pale and dizzy. I reached down, grabbed onto her blouse, and pulled her higher. “You need water, don’t you?”

Her mouth was too dry to answer. It was cruelly ironic—we were clinging to a twelve-inch water pipe and she was about to pass out from dehydration.

Hatch’s voice calmly echoed down the corridor. “I’m betting you wish you’d just stayed home about now.”

With McKenna’s heat gone the rats had returned tenfold, and the tile floor below us was no longer visible, just a rising sea of glowing fur.

McKenna was panting heavily, and I saw her grip on the pipe loosen.

“Hang on!” I shouted.

Her eyes were closed, and she slowly shook her head. “I can’t. . . .”

I swung my body around hers, pinning her against the pipe. “I’ve got you.”

The rats continued to pour down the hall, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, swarming below us, waiting for one of us to fall. As their numbers increased they rose like the tide, and as they got closer they started jumping at us. Most of them hit well below us, though I saw Ostin kick one off his leg. For the moment we were too high up the walls for them to reach us, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Soon they
would be jumping on us, one or two, then dozens, dragging us down to the undulating fur below.

I wasn’t the only one who realized our predicament. Zeus, who was twenty feet ahead of me, began shooting out the hallway cameras. “If we’re going to die, it’s not for their entertainment!” he shouted.

Still they came. As far as I could see, the corridor glowed brilliant orange, like the inside of a toaster. I looked over at Taylor. Her eyes were wide with terror. She looked over at me and for a moment we both just stared. “They just keep coming!” she shouted. “They’re like a river!”

“That’s it!” Ostin shouted. “Zeus, shoot out the ceiling sprinklers!”

Zeus turned back and looked at us.

“Blow out the sprinklers!” Ostin shouted. “They can’t take water. Do it or we’re goners!”

Zeus looked down at the rats, then at Jack and Abigail, then over at me.

“He can’t,” I said, not loud enough for anyone but McKenna to hear. “He’ll electrocute himself.” I looked at Zeus, wondering what he was thinking. He wore an expression that seemed to be less fear than sadness. He looked once more down the hall at the rising flow of rats, then pointed his hand toward the farthest sprinkler, visible in the distance by the rats’ glow.

“Don’t do it!” I yelled.

My shout was too late. Fierce yellow bolts of electricity shot from Zeus’s fingertips, connecting with the sprinkler head. At first nothing happened, then, like a breaking dam, water burst from the ceiling, starting from the sprinklers at the end of the hall, then, one by one, working its way toward us. I looked at Zeus, who was stoically watching the water approach. Then all the hall sprinklers blew. Water burst from the ceiling in a torrential downpour.

The rats shrieked as the water hit them, and electricity sparked wildly below us in sporadic, brilliant bursts, like camera flashes at a concert. I held tightly to McKenna as she leaned her head back and opened her mouth to catch the spray, drinking furiously.

Zeus screamed, then fell backward into the middle of the steaming rats.

“No!” I shouted.

In an instant Jack shouted,
“Semper Fi!”
He jumped from the wall and started running up the corridor toward Zeus, sinking thigh-deep in the squirming bodies of dying rats. By the time Jack reached him, Zeus was completely covered by the rats, a bulge in a pile of moving fur. He reached down and lifted Zeus up onto his shoulders, rats falling off around him. Zeus’s skin was severely blistered, and blood was streaming down his arms and legs from rat bites.

Jack struggled through the mound of rats, like he was dragging himself from a snowbank. As he pulled his legs out from the pile, rodents were still clinging to him, and he flung them off. He ran to the end of the corridor where the sprinklers hadn’t been activated and pulled off Zeus’s wet outer clothing. He wiped the water off Zeus’s blistered body, then listened to Zeus’s chest and started CPR. Zeus suddenly gasped for air, then screamed with pain.

“Abi!” Jack shouted. “I need you.”

Abigail had regained consciousness just in time. She slid down the pipe and ran to Zeus’s side, putting both of her hands on him.

“That was crazy brave,” Jack said to Zeus. “Crazy brave.”

Zeus was barely conscious and didn’t respond.

I turned to McKenna. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, water dripping from her face. Her lips were pink again. “I’m okay.”

“Good, because we’ve got to go.”

We both slid down the pipe to the wet floor, which was layered with the bodies of dead rats. The carcasses squished beneath our feet. Taylor had already jumped down, and I crossed the hall and helped my mother to the ground. She was trembling with fear.

“Come on, Mom. We know a way out.”

She didn’t speak, but leaned into me.

“Everyone after Ian!” I shouted. I purposely didn’t mention the air duct. Zeus may have blown out most of the hall cameras, but I was guessing the Elgen could still hear us.

Jack lifted Zeus onto his shoulders, and he and Abigail ran down the hall after Ian. When we reached the air vent Ian climbed up the pipe first, pushed out the vent cover, and climbed inside the duct. Then he reached down to help us up. “Come on! Hand him up!”

Jack and Ian lifted Zeus, then Abigail, Wade, and my mother.

Hatch’s voice came echoing down the hallway. “Your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze me. But there’s no way out. The building is surrounded by hundreds of guards. Give yourself up.”

“You’re a freak!” I shouted. “Come get your dead rats!”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more. Guards,” Hatch said softly, emphasizing his confidence, “get them.”

Jack noticed a fire box a few yards down the hall, and he kicked it in and grabbed the ax.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“Whatever comes next.”

A moment later Ian yelled, “Bunch of guards sixty yards up the hall.”

“How many is a bunch?” I asked.

“Thirty? And there’s twice that down the hall, waiting behind the door.”

“Do they have those helmets?” Taylor asked.

“Looks like it,” Ian said. “You can’t help here. Give me your hand.” He lifted her up.

“Your turn, Ostin,” I said.

“After McKenna,” he said.

“Go without me,” McKenna said. “I’ve got an idea. Jack, can you break one of these pipes?”

“I think so.” Jack lifted the ax to the closest water main, then swung at it. The blow only dented the pipe. “Hold on!” he shouted.

He pulled back and hit the pipe again and again. On his fifth strike the ax pierced the pipe and a powerful stream of water shot across the corridor, hitting the opposite wall.