The firelight lit part of the vault, and at the edge where the light gradually sank into shadow, a face hung there. That face was abnormally huge, far beyond normal proportion, the skin deathly pale and expressionless, beneath a hawk-hook nose were heavy lips thrust forward, the mouth a black hollow half open, a length of dark red tongue showing, saliva dripping from the lower jaw one drop at a time. Its neck was unnaturally long, the exposed skin black and coarse, the rest of its body hidden in darkness beyond the reach of the fire. It was not looking at us. It was staring at the roasted bat meat in Carter's hands.
Erin's breathing missed a beat. "That looks like Ghast," she said quietly.
Ghast shifted slightly, but it did not drop down. The heat of the fire kept it at a distance. Its gaze stayed locked on that piece of meat, the smell of cooked flesh spreading through the air. Carter froze. I snatched the bayonet from his hand and flicked the skewered meat to the side. The meat came loose midair and landed a few meters away. Ghast dropped from the vault almost in the same instant, fast and silent, clamped the meat in its mouth, and swallowed without chewing. In the firelight I saw what it was. It was not human. The facial structure was primate-like, but stretched and warped, the body close to a bear's size yet flattened, the hind legs short and bent, the forelimbs abnormally long, clearly built for wedging into cracks and climbing. Once it hit the floor it immediately pressed to the wall instead of standing in the center.
Carter kicked the remaining dead bat toward it with his boot. Ghast did not even look at the carcass. It was looking at us. Saliva was still dripping. "It can smell us," Erin said. Carter looked down at his greasy hands. "We just ate." I nodded. "We're covered in scent."
Ghast began to move forward, slow and steady, the muscles in its forelimbs visibly tightening with each step it set down. It no longer cared about the dead bats on the ground. The fire was still burning, but the smell of cooked meat coming off us was stronger than that pile of raw flesh. My submachine gun was within reach, but the rounds might not punch through its thick hide. Two loaded rifles lay more than twenty meters away by the stack of crates, and to get to them someone would have to draw its attention for a few seconds. And it was already too close.
I signaled to fall back.
We turned and ran toward the side corridor, and after only two steps it was as if something hooked our feet, I went down hard, my whole body pitching forward, my knee slamming into the concrete, and Carter and Erin hit the floor almost at the same time. The floor was flat and there was nothing there. In that instant I realized we had left the girl's remains in the stone cavern. And the direction we had just started running was the exit.
Ghast had probably never seen a creature like us standing upright and walking on two legs. It could smell the roasted bat meat on the three of us and had already filed us as moving prey, only the shape of this kind of "meat" still made it hesitate, and the heat of the fire kept it from rushing in immediately. So it clung to the wall and waited, as if waiting for us to hand over our bodies ourselves. Only when the three of us fell at once did it finally decide. Its body dropped low, then snapped forward. Its hind legs were thick like bent steel beams, and its landing point appeared precisely in front of Carter, clearly choosing the easiest bite. Carter swore, scrabbled at the floor, and when his hand found the bayonet we had been using to roast meat it was almost a reflex, he thrust forward in one motion. The blade drove straight into Ghast's forearm until the guard hit flesh and stopped. That bayonet had just come off the fire and still held heat. The instant it went in it was like pushing a red-hot iron bar into wet meat, and the air filled at once with a scorched stench. Ghast let out a short hiss, the pain making it tremble, yet it would not press its face close enough to bite Carter. It backed off a few steps, lowered its head and breathed hard, recalculating the distance between the fire and us. The heat bled out of the blade quickly with the blood, thin white vapor rising off the metal. Without that warmth, this stab would never have pierced its hide.
I used the gap as it backed away to rush back into the stone cavern we had just withdrawn from and drag out the remains of the girl, around ten years old, from the collapsed corner. Erin moved at the same time on the other side, saying nothing, only spreading the spare canvas and wrapping the girl tight, her hands steady as the straps ran over shoulder and back, like she was finishing something already decided. I did not explain. We had all seen the line of handprints reaching toward the exit and then cut off. This was not taking something along. This was taking what had to be taken. Carter gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, still holding the bayonet, watched us get the girl onto a back, his throat bobbed once, and he only said, "Don't be slow."
I cinched the harness, and when I bent to grab the submachine gun, a denser scraping came from the wall. It wasn't one moving. It was several moving at once. The next second a claw swept down from a crack in the wall behind me, straight for the top of my head, fast and vicious. I couldn't duck in time and could only raise the weapon to block, and the submachine gun was knocked out of my hands, sliding into darkness beyond the firelight.
More than one.
Four more Ghast slid down off the wall. Five, putting us and the fire in the middle. They moved along the concrete as if unwilling to let their bellies leave the shadow, but their eyes stayed locked on us—locked on the grease on our clothes, locked on the cooked-meat breath in our lungs.
"They didn't come to eat the bats on the ground," Erin said quietly.
Carter wiped the corner of his mouth, staring at the grease between his fingers. "They're here to eat us."
I didn't argue. The fire became the only barrier. The boards burned lower and lower, the flame shrinking down inch by inch. We stood back to back—Carter with the bayonet, Erin shouldering the submachine gun, me empty-handed, the girl's remains riding my back, the weight grinding pain into my shoulder blades. If we dragged this out, once the fire died we would be torn apart. I pulled a burning plank from the fire and swung it at the smallest one. The flame wavered in the air and it reflexively stepped back half a pace. A gap opened. I signaled to move. We broke through almost at the same time, shoulders skimming past the edge of the fire, the harness biting tighter as we ran. They hesitated only an instant, and the next second they were after us, drool drawing into thin threads that hit the floor.
Erin fired short bursts to suppress them. The rounds hit one of them, blood spraying, but it did not go down. Their outer layer was like hardened rubber and callus. The rounds could get into flesh, but they could not reach anything vital. The gunfire only slowed them for a moment, then drove them closer. We fell back while fighting, our direction drifting, until we were forced up against the steel door of the arsenal. Outside that door was the corridor where Redmane moved. That had been the route we deliberately avoided, planning to circle back after we recovered. Ghast took the choice away. The wood strips were down to embers. Erin's ammunition was running low. The ring tightened. The largest ones packed together like a moving wall. If those claws connected, bones would snap outright.
We had to gamble.
Carter and I threw the last embered strips at the front line. Erin's short bursts shoved the nearest two back half a step. Carter yanked the steel door open and we charged in with the girl on our backs. The door wasn't even halfway closed when a huge force slammed it from outside, the steel springing back. Carter drove his shoulder into the panel, face turning dark red, and still he couldn't hold against that brute strength.
Then Redmane appeared.
No warning. No sound. Only a mass of red hair surging into the edge of the firelight. It was bigger than Ghast, more direct, like a swung weight, it smashed the foremost Ghast over, and in the next instant its claws tore open its chest cavity. The other Ghast counterattacked almost at once, biting into Redmane's back and the side of its neck. Tearing sounds, bones cracking, the steel door booming all mixed together. Blood splashed the wall, splashed the door, splashed at the edge of our boots. They were fighting. Not for us, but for the same "food" in the corridor, and neither side would yield.
I glanced at the demolition charges and old explosive crates stacked in the arsenal, and I didn't hesitate, I only calculated. I piled the detonators and remaining charges on the inside of the doorway, ran the line fast, and dragged the fuse back to the bend of the side corridor. Erin re-secured the girl. Carter pulled the bayonet free and shifted to a rifle-butt grip. His face looked bad, but he didn't waste a word.
"Move," I said.
We fell back to the corner, and I detonated.
The blast first sucked the air out, then drove heat and fragments forward. Fixtures blew apart, concrete dust packed the corridor. The collapse sealed that section of hallway completely. Red hair, white face, blood, drool, claws, hissing, all buried underneath. We didn't look back. We didn't need to. An engineer's blast has only two outcomes: it doesn't break through, or it ends it.
—
When we climbed out to the surface, daylight stabbed at our eyes and made the world swim. Cold wind filled our lungs, clean as water. Erin sat down to breathe, and her first words weren't relief.
"The loot's gone."
Carter didn't answer right away. He patted the inside of his jacket, as if confirming something was still there, then slowly drew out a gold mask. Sunlight hit it, bright enough to hurt.
Erin looked at him. I looked at him.
"When did you take that?" she asked.
"Just now," Carter said evenly. "That hit wasn't for nothing." I walked over and drove a heavy punch into his shoulder. "Next time say it first." He rubbed the spot and grinned. "Risk hedge." "That isn't a hedge, that's being hard to kill." He tipped his chin. "Welcome to the market." Erin had been about to curse him, and in the end she only let out a small laugh. Brief, but the first time she truly loosened. We stood in the sunlight with the girl's remains on our backs and walked down the slope. No one mentioned what happened underground again. It was sealed under concrete now.