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"Where to?" she asked.
"I was going to blast the face by Rocky Top," he said, examining the map. "But that would be easy for them to clear. So I think we'll find something a little tougher. Unfortunately, we're a bit cut off."
"What!?" Kittekut yelled.
"Oh, nothing we can't handle," the major replied. "But the drive out of here is going to be . . . interesting. On the other hand, it will give us time to think of new ways to amuse our visitors."
* * *
"Is it bad?" Shari asked as Wendy came through the door.
"Yep," Wendy answered. "Load the kids up. You have the emergency packs?"
Shari just shook her head and went to the back, calling for the children to get in line. She pulled out backpacks that were new to the children and passed them out. Each child got one and she put a warm jacket in it along with small packs of food. She admonished them not to go diving in, that the food might have to last a long time. She checked their shoes and in one case changed them out for some better footwear, then had them all line up to go to the bathroom.
Wendy, in the meantime, filled larger daypacks with food and water. She left room for some ammunition, but she hoped that Elgars would be able to bring combat harnesses; they had integral ammunition bags. She considered changing clothes, but the pair of leather pants she had picked up had sort of stretched out to fit and would probably wear as well as anything she had.
By the time she was finished Shari had lined up the kids and thrown Amber into a papoose on her back. Without another word they headed for the door. Looking both ways, Wendy led them out with the kids following in line and Shari at the rear.
* * *
Elgars palmed open her door and then strode across to her wall locker, peeling off her clothes as she went. The door popped open as if it had been waiting for her and she started putting on the gear. First was the uniform and boots, then body armor, helmet and combat harness. She considered all the weapons in the locker and frowned. She wanted the Barrett like a junkie wants a fix, but she finally decided that it was the wrong weapon for the situation. Finally she pulled out two pistols, the Steyr that Wendy had picked up, the MP-5 and the AIW. She grabbed three combat harnesses and loaded them down with magazines then pulled the sheet off her bed and filled it with ammunition for all five weapons. Fortunately the Steyr and the AIW both used the same type of bullets and the MP-5 used the same as one of the pistols.
Finally she felt that she was set. She was as loaded down as a camel, but once she joined up with the other women the stuff would get distributed.
Without looking back or closing up she strode back out of the room, headed for G sector.
* * *
Cally pried up another section of bunker and stopped, dropping down on her heels; in the broken moonlight she could see a still pale hand. She reached out to it and wiped at the thick hairs on the back. One of the fingers was bent back and the skin was gray and cold.
She squatted in the moonlight, quietly rocking back and forth on her heels for what seemed to be half the night. Then she piled rocks back over the hand, picked up her rifle and headed back up the hills without looking back.
After she had left, the Himmit wormed its way out of the wreckage of the bunker, put away the Hiberzine injector and followed her, without looking back.
CHAPTER 31
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
–Rudyard Kipling
"The Female of the Species" (1911)
Near Franklin, GA, United States, Sol III
2214 EDT Saturday September 26, 2009 ad
Wendy stopped at the top of the escalator and frowned; it wasn't working, but what was worse were the yells and sounds of firing from below.
"I don't think so," she muttered.
The problem was that as far as she could tell the Posleen had gotten around and below them. To avoid the Posleen, the group needed to drop several floors, very fast. But most of the elevators were shut down and so were the escalators. That left very few options.
"Come on," she said, heading back down the main corridor.
About halfway down she came to an attack pack and palmed it open. She looked at the array of gear and shook her head; there was no way to carry everything she wanted so she had to decide what she really needed.
Med-pack, among other things, that had Hiberzine in it and she'd used that too many times not to recognize the utility. Doors had already been a problem so she pulled out the door-pack including a tank of liquid nitrogen and a punch-gun. And they were probably going to be climbing some, so a coil of rope with a descent pack attached to it was piled on the top of her pack.
Finally recognizing that she couldn't carry the Halligan tool, or the rescue saw, which had a real appeal, she closed the door and went on.
Entering another maintenance hallway she tied the children together with part of the climbing rope and got them climbing down the ladder. It descended only six levels, but as they approached the base there was a strong wind coming up the ladder shaft.
"What's that?" Shari panted. Wendy could tell that the trip, especially carrying Amber, was already tiring her out.
"Air shaft," Wendy said. "That's how we're going to get to G Sector."
"You're joking," Shari said as they reached the bottom of the ladder. The corridor felt like a wind tu
The corridor was lined with ropes and the children grabbed them as they stepped off the ladder.
Shari grabbed one as well and walked to the end of the corridor. The opening there was the width of the corridor with droppable rail well marked with warning signs. On the right-hand side was a massive winch with a spool of cable that looked long enough to reach to China. Well before she reached the end of the corridor Wendy could see the massive airshaft beyond.
Air for a complex as large as a Sub-Urb was always a problem, especially when almost all of it was recycled in one way or another. To facilitate the transfer of fresh air, and to permit mixing of gasses, the Urb had four massive airshafts, each nearly a thousand feet deep and two hundred feet across.
The opening they were at was halfway down B sector, but it still was nearly eight hundred feet to the bottom.
"All I can suggest is don't look," Wendy said, walking to the winch and unlocking the clutch.
"You've got to be joking," Shari shouted back. The wind near the opening felt like a hurricane.
"This is long enough to reach the bottom and then some," Wendy shouted back, pulling out the first six feet or so of cable and dropping her climbing gear to the floor. "But we don't really want to do that; the entrance to Hydroponics is on G Four."
"Tell me you're joking," Shari said. She felt light-headed and the dim light from the shaft seemed to be coming from beyond a veil. She'd had this feeling before, when she was walking away from the Posleen assault in Fredericksburg. It was the feeling of utter, bone-drenching terror.
"I'll lower you to G," Wendy continued as if she hadn't heard the older woman. "The cable is rated for three tons at a thousand feet, so you don't have to worry about it taking your weight. The winch I marked for the different openings. When you get down there you'll have to work your way into the opening. Hook the cable up to the take-up spool and then swing it back and forth. I'll watch from up here; when I see you swinging the cable I'll send down the kids. You'll have to work to stabilize yourself on the way down; there's enough cable, though, that we can hook the kids up halfway and you can stabilize from the bottom. Be careful and don't let it pull you out the door."