Caver Carl began to pray. His softly sobbing voice was so high, so full of fear, that Fet at first thought it belonged to a boy.
Bolivar pointed at the staring moles—and at once the riders were upon them.
The woman-thing ran straight at Caver Carl, knocking him back off his feet, landing on his chest, and pinning him to the ground. She smelled of moldy orange peels and spoiled meat. He tried to fend her off, but she gripped his arm and twisted it in the socket, snapping it instantly.
Her hot hand pushed at his chin with enormous strength. Carl’s head was forced back to the breaking point, his neck extended and fully exposed. From his upside-down perspective, by the light of his miner’s helmet, all he could see were legs and unlaced shoes and bare feet running past. A horde of creatures—reinforcements—came at them from the tunnels, a full-on invasion trampling through camp, beings clustered over twitching bodies.
A second creature joined the woman on him, tearing away his shirt in a frenzy. He felt a hard bite at his neck. Not a hinged bite—not teeth—but a puncture, followed immediately by a suction-like latching. The other clawed at the inseam of his trousers, shredding them below his groin and clamping onto the inside of his thigh.
Pain at first, a sharp burning. Then, within moments… numbness. The sensation was like that of a piston thumping against his muscle and flesh.
He was being drained. Carl attempted to scream, his open mouth finding no voice but only four long, hot fingers. The creature grabbed hold of his cheek from the inside, its talon-like nail slicing his gum all the way to the jawbone. Its flesh tasted salty, tangy—until it was overwhelmed by the coppery flavor of his own blood.
Fet had retreated immediately after the crash, knowing a losing battle when he saw one. The screaming was nearly unbearable, yet he had a mission to complete, and that was his focus.
He climbed backward into one of the ducts, finding there was barely enough space to accommodate him. One advantage to fear was that the adrenaline coursing through him had the effect of dilating his pupils, and he found he could see his environs with unnatural clarity.
He unwrapped the rags and twisted the timer one full rotation. Three minutes. One hundred eighty seconds. A soft-boiled egg.
He cursed his luck, now realizing that, with the vampire battle in the tunnel, he would have to travel deeper into the ducts used by vampires to transverse the river, but also backward, with his arm badly bruised and his leg dripping blood.
Before releasing the timer, he saw the bodies of the moles on the ground, squirming as they were consumed by clusters of vampires. They were already infected, already lost—all except for Cray-Z. He stood near a concrete pillar, watching like a blissful fool. And yet he was untouched by these dark things, unmo
lested as they rampaged past him.
Then Fet saw the lanky figure of Gabriel Bolivar approach Cray-Z. Cray-Z fell to his knees before the singer, the two of them outlined in smoke and dusty light, like figures in a Bible stamp.
Bolivar lay his hand upon Cray-Z’s head, and the madman bowed. He then kissed the hand, praying.
Fet had seen enough. He set the device down inside a gap and took his hand off the dial… one… two… three… counting in time with the ticking as he grabbed his duffel bag and retreated backward.
Fet kept pushing back, feeling his body ease after a while, lubricated by his own flowing blood.
… forty… forty-one… forty-two…
A cluster of creatures moved toward the duct entrance, attracted by the smell of Fet’s ambrosia. Fet saw their outline in the small aperture, and lost all hope.
… seventy-three… seventy-four… seventy-five…
He skidded as fast as he could, opening his duffel bag and removing his nail gun. He fired the silver nails as he retreated—screaming like a soldier emptying a machine gun into the enemy’s nest.
The nails embedded deep into the cheekbone and forehead of the first charging vampire, a nicely suited man in his sixties. Fet fired again, popping the man’s eye and gagging him with silver, the brad buried in the soft flesh of its throat.
The thing squealed and recoiled. Others scrambled over their fallen comrade, snaking quickly through the duct. Fet saw it approach—this one a slender woman in jogging sweats, her shoulder wounded, exposing her collarbone, scraping it against the tube walls.
… one hundred fifty… one hundred fifty-one… one hundred fifty-two…
Fet shot at the approaching creature. It kept creeping toward him even as its face was festooned with silver. Its goddamn stinger shot out of its pincushion face, fully extended, nearly touching Fet, forcing him to scramble harder, slipping on his blood, his next shot missing, the nail ricocheting past the lead vampire and burying itself in the throat of the creature behind it.
How far along was he? Fifty feet from the explosion? A hundred feet?
Not enough.
Three sticks of dynamite and a soft-fucking-boiled egg later, he would find out.
He remembered the photos of the houses with their windows all lit up inside as he kept shooting and screaming. Houses that never needed exterminators. If there was any way he could survive this, he promised himself he would light up all the windows in his apartment and go out on the street just to look back.
… one-seventy-six… one-seventy-seven… one-seventy—