**** Elysium 1986 ****

Anton looked at the three figures in their radiation suits a little skeptically and whimpered softly. The dog did not seem to be unfamiliar with this kind of clothing, quite the opposite. His reaction and his worried look showed that he didn’t have any good memories in connection with the current appearance of Abigail, Harry and Yuri.
“Oh, my little one, don’t be afraid. I’m sure we’ll be back very soon,” Abigail purred sympathetically, kneeling down beside him and nuzzling his ears once more.
“Yeah, we don’t want to die in ghastly monster cave back there, with probably hundreds of crawlers in it,” Yuri grumbled affirmatively, noisily releasing the safety on his submachine gun. He was wearing an oversized hazmat suit that made him look like he was auditioning for a role as a dishwasher detergent commercial mascot – even if he didn’t want to hear it. Harry, looking toward the security door to the tunnel ahead, heard another frightened whimper. This time, however, he had the feeling that it was no longer Anton’s, but Abigail’s. The three of them had filled several bowls with water and food for the dog, not knowing when they would return.
“Ready?” Harry asked and the other two followed him wordlessly into the decontamination chamber. They closed the door behind them. Anton sat down in front of the glass and watched the trio with a worried look on his face. They could no longer hear his soft whimpering through the thick bulletproof glass.
“Remember: must keep critters far away from us. Mustn’t damage our suits, those crawlers,” Yuri explained. Abigail checked again the loaded barrel of her small silver Colt, which was not easy to grip with the suit’s gloves.
“I’ll try,” she replied somewhat sourly. At first, she took the giant’s sentence as an uncharitable allusion to her involuntary scuffle at the entrance of this underground base in the subway network, where he had only been able to save her at the last second from the snapping jaws of one of those horrible creatures. But she had known the big man from the Northern Cities long enough to know that this was no malicious joke. Then, as the door to the corridor opened to reveal the path ahead, Abigail was glad they were wearing those slightly bulky suits, and not just because of the obvious presence of radiation. The area with the bodies of the guards and crawlers must have been filled with a terrible stench, which she was fortunately spared. Silently, they stepped over the bodies and followed the lighted corridor slowly and carefully. Yuri led the way, his weapon at the ready. Harry had stowed his sword on the belt of his suit for the time being and now took a small radiation meter from his leg pocket and turned it on. The radiation had actually been a little higher near the bodies, and it dropped a little with every step they took down the corridor.
“Wait a minute,” Harry said, walking back to the bodies for a moment. Then he examined them more closely with the meter and made a surprising discovery.
“What’s back there?” Abigail asked, trying not to shout too loudly. Her voice sounded strangely muffled under the helmet.
“There’s a noticeable amount of radiation on the bodies of the crawlers,” Harry replied. “They are radiating much more than even the protective suits of the dead guards here. They really should be taken to a toxic waste facility. I don’t know if it wouldn’t be pretty dangerous to just – let’s say – incinerate them.”
“And we’ve all had pretty close contact with these things,” Abigail puffed slightly nervously. Had they ended up with more invisible damage from the fighting than the wounds inflicted by their enemies?
“Don’t worry, not been long enough to get bad consequences because of it. When you fly, in plane also have a lot of radiation, is quite normal,” Yuri tried to reassure her. He still had some basic knowledge on the subject from his military training. Maybe they should at least have Ralph get some iodine tablets from the pharmacy as a precaution when they were back on the surface?
“Yeah, right. I regularly fly to tropical paradises on vacation to tan my luxurious body in the sun,” Abigail sighed resignedly, then followed him when Harry had rejoined the group. Harry pondered.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that all the crawlers are giving off radioactive radiation everywhere underground, does it? Maybe just a group of them wandered into this area and that’s why they’re radiating? There was nothing about that in the police report,” he commented.
“But Yanny didn’t mention that the body with the tattoos had a radiation scan done either,” Abigail replied, holding her gun in both hands, the barrel pointed at the ground in front of her as she walked. “She would have told us, she’s thorough.”
“Probably not standard procedure either. Not even in forensics. At least not unless there are visual signs,” Harry continued to think.
“So open wounds, blisters and so on…?”, Abigail picked up the thought and he nodded.
“The question is also,” Yuri interrupted her, “why was Crawler able to teleport through me during fight?”
“Yeah, right, crap. I noticed that out of the corner of my eye while I was trying to help the guard on the ground. Completely forgot about it in all the excitement though,” Harry replied.
“Remember that after it happened, I suddenly had strong metallic taste in my mouth. I felt really nauseous,” Yuri continued. “Would suggest that crawlers outside are also contaminated with radiation.”
“Yeah, I guess they all have that in common then,” Harry nodded slowly, now looking at his comrade with a worried expression. Had he perhaps been exposed to a little more than they had suspected? “I still don’t understand how he was able to teleport through you,” Harry continued. Yuri just shrugged. None of them could make sense of it.
“It seems not all of them can. And not all the time, otherwise we would have no chance,” he said.
“True enough,” Harry said, finally stopping with the others when they reached a fork in the road. He looked at the gauge again. The radiation at this point was stronger than before.
“Left or right?” Yuri asked the other two. While the left corridor continued to be illuminated by neon lights, the right corridor ended in darkness after only a few meters. Yuri pulled one of the two flashlights he had brought from his leg pocket and, after a few steps, shone it briefly into the gloomy blackness. Surprisingly, the passage seemed to lead into a natural tunnel. The beam of light reflected eerily off the damp, smooth walls. From their position, however, not much could be seen.
“Left. We’re going left,” Abigail announced, trying to sound casual but in a slightly shaky voice as she turned towards the well-lit hallway.
“Alright,” Harry confirmed with a grin, who could easily imagine why she had made that choice so quickly.
“Are you coming?” she added in a slightly authoritative tone.
“I’m getting a little hungry,” Yuri merely remarked, then took the lead again.
“You should have put a sandwich in your helmet earlier,” Harry replied, taking the rear as before. But the giant was right; they hadn’t eaten for a long time, and Harry’s stomach was starting to growl as well. As they continued on their way, the radiation became much stronger and faster. It didn’t take long for the corridor, which wound its way through the underground in several bends, to widen noticeably. After another five minutes of marching, it seemed to have reached its maximum width. Now two cars could easily fit side by side. The corridor was now supported at regular intervals by wider pillars, which, they hoped, would give them some cover in case of an emergency. Of course, they still tried to move as silently as possible, although this proved to be extremely difficult given the reverberant acoustics of the place. Again, only a short time passed before they reached the entrances to numerous side passages that were accessible on both sides of the wide tunnel. These side passages were not blocked by doors, but they were not lit either. As far as they could see, there were five entrances on each side of the corridor, spaced at regular intervals directly opposite each other. Yuri was about to move to one of these entrances to take a closer look when they suddenly heard the sound of an engine. Yuri immediately turned off his flashlight and hesitated for a second. Abigail and Harry had immediately ducked behind one of the pillars and hurriedly gestured for him to stop running towards them. He paused for a moment and understood. The engine noise was coming much too fast. So he ran in the opposite direction, directly towards the side entrance he had wanted to take a closer look at anyway. He ran into the darkness, hoping desperately that no one would see him. The clattering sound came closer and closer, getting louder by the second.
“Fucking shit,” he gasped, flicking the flashlight on for a few seconds to get his bearings. It was a risk, he was aware of that. But he had to take it. If he ran into an abyss or a horde of crawlers, it would be the end for him anyway, and he wanted to at least see what was waiting for him here. But he saw nothing of the sort. What he saw surprised him even more. He found himself in a room with an area of about ten by ten meters and a height of about five meters. Several dozen large yellow barrels were scattered around the room, stacked in all corners. They all bore the radioactivity warning symbol. Many of them were rusty and poorly sealed, their liquid contents dripping onto the floor. They were clearly made of inferior metal, totally unsuitable for storing radioactive material. In some places on the floor, larger pools of this liquid had formed. What the hell was going on here, what was that supposed to be? After all, they were still at the level of the subway network, relatively close to the city. Nobody would be crazy enough to dump nuclear waste or something like that right under populated areas. Or would they? He turned off his flashlight as soon as he heard the vehicle turn in his direction from behind. Then he took off running and jumped to the side with all his might, rolling on the ground and landing in front of a stack of barrels. Seconds later, the beams of two headlights appeared where he had just been. Again, moments later, a rack truck appeared, carrying several barrels of the same design. They glowed dimly. The cab doors opened and three men in hazmat suits stepped out. Two of them held shotguns and large flashlights. He had not been able to see the third man because he had to duck for cover. His own suit was too conspicuous and too easy to spot if he tried to keep an eye on these men. Yuri held his breath, hoping they wouldn’t come his way but choose another corner to unload their cargo. His hands clenched tightly around his submachine gun. He was certainly not the timid type, but he knew full well that any damage to his suit in this room full of leaking barrels could be fatal. The cones of light from the lamps scanned the room roughly.
“I told you, I haven’t seen any of the creatures,” said a rough and deep voice. “Besides, they would have attacked us by now.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” another confirmed. “Okay, let’s drop this crap and get back to the hole. I hate this place, too much shit has happened here already.”
“Yeah, all right,” the first replied. “But think about the old deposit, that was even worse. I still get goose bumps just thinking about it.”
“Don’t remind me,” replied the third man. “I’ll never go back to the old deposit, no matter how much money they offer.”
“Maybe I’ll go in again to loot. We didn’t go through all the houses,” the first man said again. “There’s probably a lot of valuable stuff still lying around, we shouldn’t let it rot there. It would be a shame.”
“What good are a few gold coins and some jewelry in the middle of all that other damn junk if I get torn apart by those creatures afterwards? They swarm back there.”
“They travel in packs. You just have to know what times the old tract is abandoned, and I’m sure you could make a pretty penny, believe me.”
Then one of the men laughed sharply and boldly, while the other two cursed something unintelligible and obviously disagreed with the idea. Yuri didn’t understand what the men were talking about. What kind of hole? An old deposit? Looting? Houses? What kind of houses? Gold coins? Then he heard the sound of the lever lowering the tailgate of the truck. The men were obviously beginning to slowly unload their cargo from the back of the truck, barrel by barrel. He would have loved to interrogate these guys and squeeze the information out of them that would surely be of great value to TRAP. At least they hadn’t seen Abigail and Harry outside. Again he held his breath and made himself as small as possible.

Categorized as: Novel 4 (EN) | Novel Chapter (EN)

Comments are disabled on this post