s
Dark Rain
Extract
(pp 68-71)
Suddenly he lurched and screamed. I pulled back. He was standing, his right leg shaking wildly, blood spraying like a fountain from his open wound. In his hand he held the bolt I had shot at him. His eyes were mad behind his heavy glasses. He lunged forward and the table went flying. He was moving at me, fast, holding the bard like a knife. I reacted without thinking. The bow went off and suddenly he was gaping at me, trying to breath and choking on his own blood. He looked down at the but of the bolt sticking out from the middle of his chest. He looked kind of amazed. Then he grunted and dropped to the floor.
I looked at him for a moment. The room rocked and seemed to spin. I leaned on the workbench and tried to steady my breathing. It seemed very loud. I realized that my right arm was swelling and the pain was numbing my head. Through the numbness it slowly dawned on me that I should be reacting. I should be running, trying to find a way out. I was aware of the thoughts but I was not reacting to them. I should be running because I could hear running. I could hear feet. Lots of them, echoing, coming from the stairs.
Then I reacted.
I came out of my torpor as though I had woken from a heavy dream, struggling to organize my thoughts, crowded by questions. I reached across the bench and grabbed the first weapon I found. It was a Colt Magnum Insulated Automatic, designed for firing in extreme wet conditions, with a short, expanded barrel for dumdums. The kind of thing you’d use to blow away a bull in thirty feet of water. I snatched open a drawer and fumbled through the boxes of cartridges, spilling bullets all around. The echoing of the feet in the stairwell was getting louder. They must be practically at the door. I found a box of magazines. They were .44s and I guessed they were right. I stuffed it in my pocket and reached for the light lever.
I paused. I needed a way out. I stared around the room, paralyzed again. A voice in my head kept screaming at me: Act! Act! Act! The feet had stopped. There was utter silence. My mind was feverish. I scoured the shadows for a second door. Anything. A foot scraped. I fought to control the trembling in my fingers. Broke the box of magazines and rammed one into the but of the gun. I stared around me again. Something moved across the vaulted darkness. I fired without aiming and the shot thundered Around the crypt. I lunged for the lever. A shot cracked against the wall. I yanked down the lever, fell to the floor and rolled over and over until I hit a pillar. I scrambled behind it and pulled the infrared goggles over my face. Then I carefully peered round the pillar.
There were twelve of them moving in the ghostly black and red light. One of them was about my size. He was wearing some kind of headgear which I figured to be infrared goggles. The others were enormous. About seven foot and built like brick shithouses. They had no headgear on. They were taking up positions behind pillars and moving in on the area where Don’s workbench, and lifeless body, lay. There was something about the ease and fluidity with which they were moving that puzzled me.
Without taking my eyes off them I slowly backed away, towards the part of the crypt I hadn’t explored. I didn’t know how big it was, but I was figuring if I could lure them into it, I might be able to circle round and out towards the door. Only one of them seemed to have infrared vision. If I could take him out I could maneuver the rest at will.
I watched the guy with the headgear arrive at Don’s body. He stood over it for a moment. Then he looked back at the others and signaled to them to approach. They all walked over to him and stood around the body, looking down at it. Silent. In the pitch-blackness they stood, all of them, staring down at Don’s dead body. A dead body they shouldn’t be able to see in this darkness.