by Warren Fahy
“Yeah, OK.” Dima nodded at Nell as she climbed the spiral stairs inside the glass vestibule. He caught up to her as Bear rigged the ROV with explosives.
“We can set some charges in the underwater bedroom as well as this window,” Geoffrey said.
“Hey,” Sasha objected. “That’s my room!”
“We need to, honey,” he said.
Sasha frowned.
“Can you show Bear where it is? And leave all the doors open, and open the door to the foyer, too, OK?”
“OK. Come on, Bear. Ivan and I will show you the way.”
“Nastia, come here and help me,” Abrams said as he revved up the Dalek.
“I’m worried about Kuzu,” Hender said.
“Then let’s go upstairs,” Geoffrey said. “We can check the security monitors there.”
01:16:10
Kuzu had located a camera view from inside the room with the underwater window where they had gathered. He had turned up the volume on Maxim’s laptop and heard every word they said.
He rose now and tossed the laptop onto the bed. He grabbed his backpack full of explosives. “Come now!”
Maxim gripped the pistol he had slipped into his pocket as he went with Kuzu to the limousine.
01:10:10
Nell and Dima reached the gondola deck one hundred feet up.
Dima peered through the window in the granite wall, inspecting the landing of the gondola. The car was a ’50s Soviet space-age shape encrusted with rainbowfire except for its windows, which had been kept relatively clean, perhaps by mollusks like those that scraped the underwater window and the walls of Sasha’s bedroom.
“That’s it,” Nell said. “It’s driven by a diesel engine. Cans of diesel fuel are stacked next to it—see?”
“Yes. So we have to make sure it’s fueled up and prime the engine. It probably hasn’t been started in sixty years.”
“They started it recently. At least I think so,” Nell said as she threw the switch that turned on the bank of floodlights above the window. They illuminated the gondola’s dual cables that curved down and then up across the lake to a pylon rising from a nearby island. The vast space beyond the floodlights was aglow with creatures, some of which loomed like pink blimps in the distance to their right. Firebombers flared as they rose and fell in slow motion, streaming vivid pink tails. Orange bubbles flowed in flocks, changing direction in unison. Vividly colored balls rolled down the walls, and hundreds of yellow and orange gammies leaped on their long legs past the window with alarming speed. Hordes of creatures writhed on the gray mats that spread across the surface of the lake, which was filled with glowing shapes like giant flowers and winding snakes.
“What do those words say?” Nell asked, pointing to the sign over the hatch.
“‘Hell’s Door,’” Dima muttered, looking at her.
“Ah.” Nell nodded. “It says ‘Hell’s Window’ downstairs.”
“Oh,” Dima said. “This gondola—it’s supposed to get us across that lake?” He frowned. “And then—where?”
Nell shrugged. “It must be another escape route for Stalin. We think it must lead out of the mountain.”
“We hope?” Dima shook his head. “Well, it better.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
Dima gazed out the window at the hellish world there. “I don’t know about that.”
01:10:10
Abrams and Nastia opened the hatch and he fired in tight circles down the passageway. The rounds scarred the walls, floor, and ceiling as they raked the tunnel. He targeted ghosts as they peeled off in the distance, blasting them to calamari as they dropped to the floor. Leaving nothing to chance, he used all but a few ammo magazines to clear the Dalek’s path as Nastia plugged her ears.
Bear returned with Sasha after setting charges on the crystal walls of her bedroom. Sasha immediately ran with Ivan upstairs to get away from the loud noise of the gunfire, and Bear began rigging the underwater window with Semtex.
01:07:34
Hender stepped off the stairs into Stalin’s conservatory and ran to look at the video monitors over Maxim’s desk.
Geoffrey limped behind him.
“Oh, nooo!” Hender quailed.
“What?” Geoffrey panted, hobbling forward with Stalin’s cane.
“Where is this one?” Hender pointed at the screen on the wall.
Geoffrey moved closer to look: a limo barreled past the gate of Sector Three. It turned right into Sector Two, heading north—toward the palace. “Oh, no,” he agreed.
Hender said. “Kuzu.”
“But he can’t get through that gate. It’s locked. Right, Sasha?”
Sasha was just coming up behind them with Ivan. “Right. Papa never guessed my password. He doesn’t know the door code.” She folded her arms and glared at the limousine on the monitor.
01:07:19
“Here goes.”
Abrams set the bot down in the secret passage and started it with the dog whistle. It hummed like a giant Henders wasp as it levitated. An accelerometer inside the remote transmitted tilt and trajectory commands to the flying bot as Abrams sent it forward. With the Dalek’s forward camera, Abrams could see the tunnel on the screen of the dog whistle as it cruised at twenty miles per hour, equally distanced from the ceiling, floor, and walls.
“Amazing!” said Nastia.
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Abrams said, pursing his lips as he focused.
Bear finished setting three charges on the window. “I set the charges in that girl’s room to go off in twenty minutes.”
“Good. Set the charges on the window to go off in ten minutes,” Abrams said. “I set the charge on the Dalek to go off in nine minutes, but that’s more than I’ll need.”
“Roger. Ten minutes it is.”
“Did you open that door to the foyer?”
“Shit, I forgot!” Bear set the timer on the detonator and trotted down the corridor to wheel open the hatch at the end. “Woo!” he yelled back. “Somethin’ died out here, man.” He came back into the room and looked over Abrams’s shoulder. “That’s pungent. Hey, I hope that spiger’s still stuck in the side tunnel. Remember?”
“I was just thinking about that.” Abrams frowned as he started dodging the first ghosts peeling off the walls and ceiling the Dalek passed.
01:05:40
“We need Abrams to go out there and start the engine,” Dima said. “Those gammies are too crazy, and he’s got the best body armor.”
“Maybe we should shut the lights off and turn them on just before we head out to the gondola,” Nell said. “That will temporarily blind the aggregators and firebombers, at least.”
“But not those freaking gammies,” Dima said.
She nodded. “Probably not them.”
“I’ll get Abrams.” Dima jumped down the stairs.
“I’ll check the security monitors,” said Nell, right behind him.
01:03:04
Abrams accidentally turned the Dalek off as it sped down the passageway, and it came down in a controlled landing. “Damn it!” He restarted it, mashing the button and getting it going again as a ghost dropped down behind it and blew sticky trails that fell just out of the propellers’ circumference. “That was close!”
The Dalek dropped a signal relay as Abrams tipped the controls forward, pushing it faster down the stone artery toward the railroad tunnel. Up ahead, he saw the spiger backing out of the side tunnel, one of its hind legs trying to pry it free. Abrams steered the Dalek toward the wall, and the bot’s radar sensed the collision and corrected its flight path, curving it perfectly around the spiger’s thrashing leg.
“Nice move!” Bear said, shuddering.
Abrams could see the open hatch and piloted the Dalek through, rising in a barrel roll as he dropped another signal relay and veered to the right down the train tunnel.
“Good luck, man!” Bear grabbed another demolition pack and headed upstairs, passing Dima on the way down.
“How i
s he doing?” Dima asked. “We need him upstairs.”
Bear shook his head. “He’s busy.”
Dima approached Abrams. “How long till you get there? We need you to get the gondola’s motor running.”
“OK. I’m in the tunnel now. You wanna do this?” Abrams asked. “My hands are tired.”
“It doesn’t look too hard.”
“Just set it down when you spot the charges in the tunnel. The fork should be coming up ahead. Just remember to go left. Here!” He handed Dima the dog whistle. “Do I need the XOS?”
“Whoa,” Dima said as he tilted the Dalek too far and its avoidance system repelled it from the wall.
“You sure you can do it?” Nastia asked.
“Da. Can you get up the stairs in that suit?” asked Dima.
“Hell, yes!” Abrams said, strapping in and firing up the exoskeleton. He charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time as they shook and swayed inside the glass vestibule.
Nastia watched Dima steering the bot. “Sasha should do it,” she said, cringing. “Kids are good at this sort of thing!”
“Don’t worry! I can do it. It’s actually kind of easy.… Ahh!”
01:02:27
Hender saw Bear enter the conservatory from the room below. Abrams passed him in the XOS suit, heading upstairs. Bear immediately started pulling out charges from a demolition pack and spacing them across Hell’s Window. “Better get upstairs, you guys,” he said. “Abrams is getting the gondola going.”
“Kuzu’s at the front gate!” Geoffrey said.
“Oh, shit,” Bear said, turning.
The others watched the monitor as the sel got out of the limousine with Maxim in front of the gate to Sector 1.
“Papa!” Sasha shouted angrily.
01:02:12
As the Dalek flew down the train tunnel, Dima noticed something glowing in the bot’s minimized rearview cam. He maximized the rear view and saw the spiger burst out of the secret passage and bound down the tunnel after the Dalek like a Labrador.
Dima tilted the controls and his whole body forward to pick up the bot’s speed in front of the leaping giant, whose one remaining eye was better than two human eyes as it bounded down the tunnel like a dog chasing a squirrel with trinocular vision.
01:01:01
Hender noticed that, outside the gate to Sector One, Kuzu was doing the same thing that Bear was doing. “Kuzu!” He pointed.
Nell saw that the sel was setting explosives on the gate. “He’s setting charges.”
“How does he know how?” Bear asked.
“He’s smart!” Geoffrey said.
“You better go upstairs and help Abrams, Bear,” Nell said.
“OK, but you better hurry. You’ve got six minutes to get your asses up there.” Bear set the detonator on the window and ran upstairs.
Nell turned up the volume as Kuzu approached the camera outside the gate. He rose up, his face before the camera, one baleful eye staring into it with three stacked pupils. Then he spoke, in his own language: “Shueenair Shenuday, come now with me. We will make this world our own. We will be remembered by all sels, forever.”
“Let me meet you at the gate,” Hender responded in Kuzu’s language. “Nell can unlock it. Let us talk, Kuzu.”
“Yes. Open. Good idea, brother.”
Hender gripped Nell’s hand, and she felt the symbiants tingle on her skin. “Will you help me, Nell?”
“How?”
“Come with me to talk with Kuzu.”
“Sasha, you better go upstairs now, honey,” Nell said.
“I’m scared!” Sasha cried. “What about Papa?”
“Sasha,” Hender said to her, his fur illuminating lavender and green.
Sasha stared at Hender, mesmerized.
“Go upstairs now, OK? We will help him,” Hender said.
Maxim appeared on the screen now behind Kuzu, looking up with huge, tragic eyes into the camera, and Sasha saw him. “You didn’t guess the password, Papa!” she shouted, weeping, running to the screen.
Maxim’s eyes were kind suddenly, and he smiled, finally seeing it. “I love Sasha,” he said. “That’s the password, Sashinka. Isn’t it?”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “You guessed it!” she shouted.
“Go with them, Sasha,” Maxim said. “Go with them now, Sashinka.”
“OK, Papa!”
“Hender and Nell will meet you at the door, Kuzu,” Geoffrey said.
“Good,” Kuzu said. “Come now!”
01:00:44
“All right. I’m going out there and am gonna take a look at that big bad engine.” Abrams put his helmet on and cranked the dog wheel. He and Bear pulled the hatch open. As it swung inward, Abrams went through and Bear shut the door behind him. Bear stomped on a gammy.
Through the window on the platform, Bear saw Abrams check the fuel drums. Gammarids flowed like roaches onto the platform around his feet and crawled over him, moving in short, nervous bursts. But they could not bite through the hard-shelled body armor. Abrams lifted the hood on the large diesel engine and scanned it for the fuel intake and carburetor, shaking his head. He reached down into the engine.
Bear saw Abrams give a thumbs-up and jump down. Grabbing a heavy drum of fuel, he uncapped it and tipped it into an intake tube. He emptied it and threw it aside, opening another. He was crawling with bugs, small and monstrously large, as he tipped the drum with the robot arms. With his own arm free, Abrams pulled a pistol from his shoulder harness and fired five times at the platform, killing five gammies for the rest to feed on.
01:00:43
Nell led Hender down the stairs outside the conservatory, leaving the hatch open behind them.
“Dead,” Hender said as they smelled decaying flesh.
As they crossed the arcade at the top of the stairs, they passed the corpses of two men.
“Yes, Hender,” she said, stifling her nausea as they rushed past the bodies.
They hurried down one of the grand staircases to the foyer. Hender saw the limousine parked at the bottom with two open doors. The smell of death was overpowering. There were more corpses below.
“How die?” Hender asked.
“They were trying to kill Geoffrey.”
“Geoffrey killed other humans?”
“Yes.”
They passed through the palace, past more bodies, to the curving steps that cascaded over the courtyard outside.
“Why did he have to kill them, Nell?” Hender asked.
“To save the people he loves.”
“I see, Nell,” Hender said with a low, faint voice.
They crossed the courtyard to the gate, and Nell reached out to the touch screen control panel on the left side. Glancing at Hender, she cued the gate open a few feet and then stopped it.
Kuzu and Maxim entered, along with a gust of Henders creatures that streaked through before Nell could close the gate.
The flying bugs, ants, and rats that got through immediately homed in on the rotting corpses, tearing and drilling into their flesh.
Kuzu stood in front of the gate, and Maxim, seeming small beside the purple and red sel now, crouched meekly at his side.
01:00:42
Dima righted the Dalek and tilted the controls with exaggerated motions to point it forward as he drove the flying bot at increasing speed before the driving spiger. He reached the fork as he saw the glowing form behind him grow closer in thirty-foot lunges. He took the left tunnel at the fork and pushed the bot forward as fast as it could go, while the spiger loomed huge in the image-stabilized rear view display.
Nastia gripped his arm. “It’s going to catch you!”
“How much time is left on the timer on that window?”
Nastia ran to the window and looked at the red digital readout. “Two minutes and forty-five seconds!”
“Go upstairs!”
“Will you make it?”
“Go!”
“No!”
00:58:51
&
nbsp; “Come now, Shenuday!” Kuzu said.
“You can escape with us, Kuzu,” Hender said. “We can live with humans. They can live with us!”
“Now you lie, just like them!”
“There are good humans and bad humans! Kuzu!” Hender said. “Just like us.”
“Come!” Kuzu’s voice gunned like an engine, resonating in the courtyard. “This whole world can be ours. You must see it!”
“They saved our lives,” Hender said. “I love them, Kuzu.”
“Love humans?” Kuzu spit. “You make me sick!”
“There is no ‘sels’ or ‘humans,’ Kuzu.” Hender said. “There is only one and one and one. Don’t you remember? How we survived?”
“Remember, yes. I remember your kind never believed. That is why we almost died.” Kuzu trained both his trinocular eyes on Hender: “Die then!”
Hender turned to Nell. “Run!”
Kuzu turned to open the gate, and Hender leaped onto the larger sel’s back. Gripping all his limbs with his six hands, Hender tried only to thwart and neutralize his fellow sel as long as he could.
Meanwhile, Maxim stared at them, almost in a trance. Kuzu reached back with his upper arms, twisting Hender’s head as he tried to bite into Hender’s stretching neck.
Hender fended off his jaws with a hand that lost two fingers as Kuzu’s jaws clamped closed.
00:54:58
Dima waved the dog whistle through the air as the spiger snapped its jaws just to the left of the Dalek.
“Good!” Nastia cried, clutching his arm.
Dima looped the bot across the arching ceiling to the other side, thirty-five seconds from detonation.
He could not yet see the charges the men had set in the tunnel ahead stretching uphill into the endless gloom. As he rolled the bot in another spiral, the spiger leaped again, gaining another ten feet. The next leap would be enough, and he dodged to the right at the last second and then saw the charges wired across the tunnel’s ceiling. He killed the power and dropped the ROV just as the vertical jaws of the spiger swallowed the Dalek, and the signal went dead.
Dima stood frozen in dread.
“What happened?” Nastia said. “It didn’t work.”
Dima bowed his head, muttering a prayer.
A shock wave rumbled through the ground as the secondary explosion confirmed the target was destroyed. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Dima turned and squeezed Nastia in a crushing embrace. “We did it!”
