Providence - Max Barry Page 0,101

The nearest raised its head and sniffed the air, or so it looked like. It had tiny black salamander eyes and a face like the inside of a cow and he slotted the butt of the lightning gun into his shoulder. It was maybe smarter not to do this, to instead get down into the hole and make as much progress as he could before doing anything to alert the soldiers. But he had the gun and Jackson was dead and this salamander was here.

He squeezed the trigger. The gun spat electricity in brilliant jagged lines. The rocky ground between them cracked and coughed dust. The worker split into two sections, three if you wanted to be generous. He would call it three; its legs were barely attached. Its body caught fire. It made a thin mewling sound. Its front legs pawed at the ground. It crawled forward a short distance and stopped to burn in peace.

The worker ahead in the procession turned to see what had happened. Anders pointed the rifle at it but it didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Its head weaved left and right and then it turned and continued toward the vomit hill. Behind the burning salamander, other workers milled, confused. He watched them explore around the flaming corpse, seeking the ant-trail of their colleagues. One came within thirty feet of him and didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

“You dumb shits,” he said.

The gun’s charge remained at 100 percent, he was glad to see. He had been reckless on the ship, he thought, hosing down corridors like he was pressure-washing them. He didn’t need to do that. He just had to point and give it a little pop. He was tempted to stay and burn workers all day long, but Gilly was a thousand yards away, so he made himself approach the hole. It was large enough to accommodate him and the workers, as far as he could see, but that was the problem: He couldn’t see a hell of a long way before it got dark, and then who knew. He tasted the familiar fear, tickling the back of his throat, feathering across in his brain.

Hey, Pauly.

He turned on his suit’s exterior illumination. It extended only twenty or thirty feet but was, he had to say, a hell of a lot better than a glowstick. He made his way down sloping rock to the entrance. A little circle of white light danced before him like a friendly spirit. The ground grew rougher, less weather-polished rock and more newly dried resin, a little easier to stumble over in the dark and be swarmed by monsters. But he walked on and let the hole envelop him. The tunnel walls drew closer and he decided he was getting a little too up close and personal with the workers after all—who knew what they did if they were startled, or if a manager salamander turned up—so he raised the barrel and popped one in the tunnel ahead of him. It cried and burst into flame and he hadn’t even thought about this but the firelight immediately improved the lighting situation a thousand times over.

He advanced past it, flames licking around his suit, and popped another one. He continued like this for a few hundred feet, following the tunnel as it turned, until the parade of workers stopped. Then he paused, listening. He’d passed a few forks and side tunnels but hadn’t noticed any salamanders in them. He was still on the highway, as far as he could tell. Which made the lack of traffic suspicious. He checked behind and ahead. Nothing. Gilly was fifteen hundred feet away. Anders resumed walking.

It came at him faster than he expected. He was being careful with the light, keeping his spirit guide light trained on the floor at its maximum distance, and still the thing was on top of him almost before he could react, glinting teeth and thick limbs, and he hadn’t expected them to run at him. He’d been waiting for the sound, huk. But instead it charged at him like a horse and he squeezed the trigger and splashed ignited ozone. It lunged and fell apart and the pieces hit him and knocked him down. There was fire in his face. He struggled free of the dismembered salamander and rose