**** Elysium 1986 ****

Ralph and Yanny had just arrived back at headquarters and were closing the door behind them when the cell phone rang. Yanny quickly pulled out the antenna and pressed the button to answer the call. But all she could hear was static and crackling.
“Aby, is that you?” she asked loudly. No answer.
“Hear anything?” Ralph asked, looking at her eagerly. Yanny shook her head.
“No, just static. When we called them from the university parking lot earlier, at least a few words came through before the connection went dead. Now nothing works at all,” she replied dejectedly. Ralph cleared his throat and ran a hand through his bristly hair.
“We’ll just wait. The car’s got plenty of gas, and if they need us, we’ll be on our way in no time.” It was true: in the trunk of Ralph’s car was a gym bag full of equipment and weapons. He had even thrown in a spare can of gasoline. If one of the grenades in the bag went off, the old green Ford Capri would leave quite a crater in the road. Yanny walked over to the desk, placed the cell phone next to the desk phone, and turned on the computer. If they were going to wait for the others to check in anyway, she might as well use the time to do some research on those strange symbols. Ralph, on the other hand, shuffled into the kitchen and opened the fridge to look for something to eat. The bag of chips he’d had for breakfast hadn’t lasted long, and his stomach was growling. He looked longingly at the cans of beer in the refrigerator door. Not yet… As long as the mission lasted, he had to stay sober. He was professional enough not to get drunk right now. He was, wasn’t he? Grunting, he reached for the plate of meatballs left over from yesterday.
“Ralph…?” he heard Yanny behind him. He turned around. She was standing in the kitchen doorway with a glum face. Wasn’t she supposed to be working on the computer?
“Yeah?” he replied questioningly, grabbing one of the meatballs and biting into it.
“Aren’t you worried about the others?” she asked, looking down at the floor. Was he worried about them? He thought for a moment, chewing, how to answer that. Yes, he was worried, because he had grown fond of them all after such a relatively short time. How would the last months have gone for him if he had not answered their ad in the newspaper? Would he still be alive today, or perhaps already shot by various old, unpleasant acquaintances on some dingy street corner?
“Don’t worry, young lady,” he replied, smacking his lips. “Our crew is a good bunch, they know what they’re doing. And as long as they can still call here, it can’t be that bad. Even if it’s just static,” he explained, putting reassuring confidence in his voice. Yanny smiled in response and seemed a little relieved as he pressed the other half of the meatball into his open mouth with his thumb.
“Thanks again for Caine Powerheart, the action figure is totally awesome,” she whispered.
“Mo ‘rovlem,” he replied, mouth full, waving her off. It was really adorable how much she had enjoyed getting that toy.

Harry’s sword stroke missed again. The bloody blade whizzed just past the torso of the Crawler, who had dodged at just the right moment. The TRAP agent had earlier decapitated the crawler that had lunged at the unknown guard from the tunnel ceiling, but it was too late. He lay lifeless, his throat gnawed, beneath his slashed tormentor. This specimen, however, seemed far quicker and more intelligent in its movements. It circled Harry nimbly on all fours, its greedy pitch-black eyes gleaming in the light of the spotlights. Harry, on the other hand, had to keep his footing on the rough, rocky ground, for their battle had now shifted directly to the tracks. He could not afford to fall to the ground, it flashed through his mind, or he would suffer the same fate as the guard. Besides, his fighting style depended on freedom of movement, and his sword was practically useless if he couldn’t get any momentum. How could he put a quick end to this opponent now? He had to try a trick and take a risk! Again, he threw a quick series of attacks at the crawler, which, as expected, managed to dodge them. With the last swing, Harry made a short leap forward, sliding along the stony ground and crouching down. To his opponent, it looked as if he had slipped and assumed this position to avoid falling completely over. The crawler’s killer instinct immediately took over, seeing a chance to pounce on his prey. The humanoid’s sinewy body tensed like a cat of prey, and he leaped with a mighty lunge directly at Harry, who was still crouching. His plan had worked. He gritted his teeth as he saw his hideous enemy flying towards him through the beams of the spotlight, its greedy mouth already open for a deadly bite. Harry reacted with lightning speed, lunging forward himself and swinging his sword upward in a twisting motion. Too late, his opponent realized that he had jumped directly into a counterattack. The uppercut was perfectly placed and executed, the blade slicing through the crawler’s body just below the ribcage, splitting him in half and landing with a thud on the wooden railroad ties. Harry himself was now struggling to stay on his feet, having put all his strength into the blow. As he staggered to regain his balance, he saw the crawler, its belly now three feet from his torso, begin to pull itself along the railing in his direction with its arms and a steadily snapping jaw. It left a wide trail of blood in its wake. The scene was downright grotesque, and if Harry had told anyone what had just happened, they would never have believed it possible. After all, the name Crawler given to these creatures by the press was more than appropriate, Harry thought as he looked at the crawling torso. Suddenly he heard Abigail screaming in the background, more gunfire echoing through the tunnel. There was no time to lose, he had to get to her and help her! Turning his sword blade downward, he leaped at the top half of the crawler and rammed the blade right through its skull into the ground. But just as he was about to pull his weapon from the skull, a mighty thud from behind knocked him off his feet. Another crawler had charged at him at full speed. Harry fell forward at an angle and still tried to roll away, but he was unsuccessful. On the contrary, the movement made it worse as he fell with his upper body on the rails and on the same side where Troy had broken his ribs on the Sea Lord in the semi-final. The protective vest he wore under his clothes could not prevent the recently healed bones from breaking again. He immediately realized what had happened, of course, and gasped like a drowning man, trying not to let the swelling pain overwhelm him. Get up! He had to get up, now! As he braced himself with his hands on the railing, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Crawler jumping in, having recovered from the joint fall much faster than he had.
“That’s enough…” he gasped, realizing that the adrenaline was almost dulling his senses. When the crawler was close enough, Harry’s hands shot forward and grabbed its head. The creature slashed at him with its claw-like hands, striking him several times in the face. But he no longer felt it; it was a fight for naked survival. Still holding the head, he stood up with all his might, pushing the crawler down so it couldn’t raise its arms to his face. Then he began to work the horrible creature’s head from below with short, well-executed blows of his knee. The crawler began to squeal like a stuck pig, and after the fifth or sixth blow, its resistance weakened considerably as its broken teeth began to scatter across the floor. This was the decisive moment! Summoning all his strength once more, Harry pulled the crawler up by the head as far as he could, then slammed it down onto the tracks below with full force. The loud crack of the skull left no doubt that his opponent would not get up. Motionless, he lay face down on the track. Harry stood up, holding his side and wiping the blood from his left eye, which was now running down his face from a long scratch on his forehead that the crawler had inflicted on him earlier. Then he staggered to his sword, grabbed it by the hilt, and pulled it out of his former opponent’s head. Abigail! Where was she? He glanced around quickly, but the first thing he saw was Yuri, already standing near the large steel door. When Harry realized what his comrade was doing, his sword almost fell from his hand in astonishment.

Abigail let out a loud and desperate scream as the crawler lunged at her, its gaping shoulder wound spurting blood. She had not had a chance to reload her revolver after shooting the creature. Its quick movements and the backlight of the searchlight had made accurate aiming impossible. In the heat of the moment, she had fired too many uncontrolled shots. Retreating to the steel door had only delayed the inevitable. The crawler knocked her over, and she landed on her back with a hard thud that drove the air out of her lungs. The monster was now sitting right on top of her. Unable to scream again, she stretched her arms out in front of her and pressed her hands as hard as she could against the bony chest of her attacker, who immediately tried to lean down and sink his teeth into her neck. His skin felt like old, chafed, damp leather. The foul stench of his breath was almost unbearable, and she turned her face away in disgust and despair as the first drops of his viscous drool hit her. Especially for her, whose excessive obsession with cleanliness had her firmly in its grip, this was her own personal hell. The snapping jaws came closer and closer to her neck as her arms weakened under the weight of the monster. She squeezed her eyes shut, whimpering, not wanting to see what was about to happen to her as she heard the horrible sound of the jaws snapping mercilessly shut just centimeters from her eyes. She was all the more startled when, from one second to the next, the weight of the attacker was ripped from her body. She opened her eyes to see Yuri above her, holding the struggling crawler by the neck with his left hand. She had never been so happy to see him. With his right hand, he rammed his combat knife deep into the monster’s neck and pulled the blade through with a quick jerk. The creature, still trying to scream, gave only a helpless gurgle as foaming blood spurted from its neck. Abigail shook all over as she watched Yuri. She knew how strong he was, but now he seemed to have gone into a mad fighting frenzy. The crawler must have weighed about 60 kilograms, and he was holding it up with just one hand as if it had no weight. Then, as a loud roar came from behind him, Yuri turned and looked into the eyes of the large, tattooed crawler. Bathed in the spotlight, he looked like a creature that had crawled straight from hell. The Alpha crawler spread his arms provocatively and stared at the giant with dead eyes. Again he roared shrilly in Yuri’s direction, pounding his chest with his fist. Yuri’s fury now knew no bounds. Holding the lifeless body of the crawler he had just lifted from Abigail, he pulled his combat knife from its neck and dropped it to the ground. Then he dug the fingers of both hands into the creature’s slashed neck and began slowly tearing the head from the torso. The sleeves of his leather jacket tightened around the bulging muscles of his gigantic arms as his victim’s head continued to separate from its body with a hideous sound of torn flesh and snapping spine. He did not take his eyes off the Alpha, who had now stopped in the cone of light and was not coming any closer. With a final jerk, Yuri severed the head and the crawler’s body fell to the ground. The giant held the head in front of him like a trophy, a piece of the dripping spine still dangling from its lower end. Then he threw it directly at the Alpha, who landed rolling at his feet. Growling, Yuri marched slowly towards the Alpha, his bloodied hands clenched into fists. He would destroy this crawler, he would not need weapons for that. He would snap it like a rotten twig. The Alpha, on the other hand, was unable to do anything in the first moment. His instincts told him to attack, but something prevented him from doing so. It was a long forgotten feeling that rose in him and slowly gained the upper hand. A trace that reached into a long past time, a long past existence. It was fear. Pure fear. He realized that he had no chance against this human, that he was hopelessly inferior in every way. This demonstration of strength and relentlessness made him realize his imminent death. A last spark of old sanity finally overcame the instincts that drove his body, and he opened his mouth for another bloodcurdling scream, backed away, then turned and ran into the tunnel. He ran in the opposite direction from where he and his pack had chased the TRAP agents. The few remaining crawlers listened to the Alpha’s scream and then fled, following him. Yuri, who had been preparing for another fierce battle, took a moment to realize that his opponents had fled and took a deep breath. He immediately turned and walked back to Abigail, helping her to her feet.
“You saved my life,” she whispered, still trembling. “Thank you.”
“No problem. You bought me train ticket earlier,” he nodded and waved her off. Abigail had to laugh, finding the response absurdly cute. It was probably also the relief of having narrowly escaped death that washed over her now.
“I’ll be happy to lend you my sword next time, so you don’t have to rip the heads off the crawlers one by one,” Harry said with a grin as he limped over to them, holding his side with the broken ribs. His katana lay loosely in his other hand, the bloodied blade resting on his right shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Thanks, just minor scrapes and a few bruises. Yuri prevented worse,” Abigail reported, reloading her revolver. “What about you?” she asked worriedly, noticing that Harry was holding his side and had blood all over his face.
“One of the crawlers knocked me over and I think I broke my ribs again on the tracks. Fell right on top of it,” Harry replied. The pain was already getting worse as the adrenaline rush of the fight began to wear off. He carefully pulled his backpack off his shoulders and took two items from it.
“This is the fuse, by the way. I actually managed to get one out of the supply closet before the creatures noticed me,” he explained, showing his comrades a hand-sized frosted glass tube sealed at both ends with gold caps. Then he opened the second item. It was a small black box containing two syringes and vials of painkillers. He had been carrying some with him ever since his last job on the luxury yacht. “Maybe you can get one of these ready for me right after we check on the guards,” he suggested.
“They can wait,” Abigail shrugged, pointing to the bodies further back. “They’re dead, I’m afraid; none of them are moving. The crawlers did a thorough job.”
“Too bad, had been thinking of intelligent questions about oversized steel door here,” Yuri grumbled, grabbing one of Harry’s syringes. His military training had at least given him a solid foundation in wound care, first aid, and splinting broken bones. Unfortunately, ribs could not be splinted. As Harry slowly uncovered his torso, they realized that at least he had been lucky in his misfortune. Once again, it was not an open fracture. Carefully and with surprising skill, Yuri placed the syringe under the affected rib and slowly pushed the fluid into the tissue. He placed the second syringe on his own bitten thigh.
“We need to get back to the surface, you need to go to the hospital,” Abigail told Harry glumly.
“No way, I’m going on,” he replied, pressing his lips together.
“But…” Abigail continued, but was immediately interrupted by him.
“We’re already a step further. At least now we know they’ll run if you do it right,” Harry grinned, then coughed, his face contorting in pain. “Because all those security guards and cops haven’t been able to do that yet.”
“They don’t have Yuri after all,” Abigail said with a smile, looking up at the giant who looked back at the dead guards, twirling his beard after throwing the empty syringes on the floor behind him.
“But it’s so easy… Just rip one’s head off and the others run,” he said, then stomped over to the bodies of the guards to examine them. Abigail, meanwhile, set about padding the inside of Harry’s vest with some makeshift bandages to give him some relief. A short time later, Yuri was also back. He had picked up his pistol and combat knife again and brought the two submachine guns with ammunition from the guards. He pressed one of them into Abigail’s hand, along with a couple of magazines. She went wide-eyed.
“Wow!” she blurted out, turning the gun in her hands curiously.
“Hold on tight when you pull trigger, or you fly away. Recoil like horse kick,” Yuri grinned. “Not much else interesting, but here…” he said, holding up a red smart card.
“That’s a key,” Abigail noted after a scrutinizing look and turned to the steel door. On the right side was a small box set into the rock wall with two dim lights and a slit.
“On overall of the guys is on the back symbol with lightning, is high voltage,” Yuri then reported.
“What?” Harry asked in amazement. “Were they… Electricians? Electricians with submachine guns standing guard outside a big steel door somewhere in the subway shafts, while a life-threatening plague of weird horror creatures has broken out down here?”
“Looks like it,” Yuri nodded, twirling the smart card between his fingers.
“I hate to break it to you guys, but this still isn’t enough for the North Beach villa,” Abigail sighed, now holding her new submachine gun close to her body. It made her feel a little safer.
“What’s plan?” asked Yuri, looking at the computer specialist. She pursed her lips and thought for a moment.
“First we’ll deliver the fuse to the subway, as promised, and then we’ll take a look at what’s behind the steel door. The whole thing is highly suspicious, first of all, and secondly, Harry doesn’t want to go to the hospital anyway, even though he should. Then we might as well keep snooping down here. Or does anyone have any other ideas?” she said after a moment’s thought.
“All right, let’s do it that way,” Harry confirmed, trying to keep his posture straight and his breathing as shallow as possible.
“This won’t get us anywhere with the crawler thing, but I at least want to know why there were these armed electricians standing around,” Abigail added, scratching her hip.
“Maybe this is their trade guild?” Harry grinned, then started marching towards the broken subway, still holding his side. The others followed. The painkillers would have to kick in soon. Hopefully.

Categorized as: Novel 3 (EN) | Novel Chapter (EN)

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