Fic, Dreadnought, Part 4 of 8, Ryan, 15
Oct. 17th, 2020 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Dreadnought, Part 4 of 8
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Ryan, Claudia, Becker, Lester, Lorraine
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count: 20,000, split into eight parts.
Summary : Waking up in the Permian under a pile of rock wasn’t a high point in Ryan’s life, nor was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, but then help comes along from a very unexpected direction.
A/N : This fic was started four years ago for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial art fic challenge for this wonderful artwork by the very talented ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tli. Naturally, it grew into an utter monster all too quickly and when it became obvious I’d never finish it in time, I wrote The World After as a prequel.
The chittering echoed along the narrow tunnel, shedding Ryan’s nerves and leaving him jittery from the constant assault of adrenaline on his system, but for now at least, the crystal bracelets were doing their job.
The parachute jump had gone better than he had expected. They’d both landed without breaking any bones, although Ryan knew he’d collected a nasty bruise on his arse, which was the least of his troubles right now.
The air in the tunnels was hot and dry. Ryan could feel sweat tricking down his spine as he and Becker advanced in a curious mix of caution and recklessness, driving the predators before them with the resonance from the crystals, while behind them, more of the fucking things followed, like sinister sheepdogs. Keeping his finger off the trigger of his M4 carbine took all Ryan’s willpower. They were using the under-barrel torches to light they way and so far, neither of them had succumbed to the almost overwhelming desire to put a three-round burst through several bony heads.
The tunnel was only wide enough for one man at a time, and for the moment, Becker was on point, with Ryan covering his arse. Ryan wasn’t sure what was worse, staring one of the fuckers in the face while walking towards it, or knowing that several of them were no more than ten paces behind. At first, Ryan had tried backing up the passage, but that had slowed them down too much and he’d soon given up that idea. Now, he simply looked over his shoulder every few minutes. The view never improved. Each time, he was faced with the sight of slavering jaws, displaying an impressive set of teeth that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a shark below three large, snuffling nostrils.
The predators knuckled forward on their skeletal forelimbs, claws scraping ominously on the rough rock floor of the tunnels.
Ryan did his best to ignore the snuffling, the chittering and the scraping, letting it wash through him rather than trying to block out the sounds. As long as they were able to keep moving, that was all that mattered. His world had narrowed down to the simple business of putting one booted foot in front of the other. The tunnel climbed steadily, occasionally gaining extra height in flights of steps hewn out of the rock. Sometimes the passage widened, breaking out into what appeared to be natural cavities. When that happened, the predators quickly spread out, filling the available space like teenagers flocking into a popular nightclub.
“Starting to really dislike these fuckers,” Ryan muttered.
“Only starting? You’ve more tolerant than me, mate.” Becker sounded amused. “Fancy taking point for a while?”
Ryan kept pace with the young captain and as soon as the tunnel widened enough, he slipped past, letting Becker close in behind him. In front of him, a predator clung to the roof of the passage like an oversized bat, moving backwards as smoothly as Ryan was able to advance. Below it, another creature knuckled its way back, head swinging from side to side as though trying to shake water from its ears. They gave no sign of being in pain, but Ryan soon discovered that if he moved more quickly than they were bargaining for, they jumped back like a spider in a bath.
After half an hour on point, Ryan glanced up to discover that above him, the roof of the passage looked less stable than he’d become used to. They’d passed through two areas where the passage had widened and when they came to the third, Ryan noticed a change in the air. It felt fresher, as though a draught was entering from somewhere close by. He swept his torch beam around the small chambers and saw scattered rocks on the floor from a roof fall. Moments later, predators flooded into the void, pouring out of crevices in the rock and scuttling across the floor like cockroaches.
Keeping his breathing as even as possible, Ryan fixed his eyes firmly ahead and kept moving but moments later, the chittering in front of him suddenly increased its tempo and the headshaking became even more pronounced. He took a step forward. The predator shuffled back by half a metre, but then came to a halt, drool dripping from its clenched jaws.
“The bugger won’t shift back.” Ryan did his best to shine the torch past the predator to see how many were queued up behind it. What he saw instead made him draw in a sharp intake of breath.
The passage behind three of the creatures appeared to be blocked by a rockfall. Piles of the reddish stone lay in a tumbled heap from floor to ceiling. One of the predators had backed up as far as it could, driven by the resonance from the crystals on Ryan’s wrist, but it couldn’t go any further. It snapped and snarled at the other two as they crowded it, and it looked like a fight was about to develop.
Ryan fought to control his breathing. He felt like the passage was closing in around him, squeezing the air out of his lungs and compressing his chest. His nerves were stretched to breaking point and the urge to turn and run was rising in him, getting increasingly hard to deny, but there were predators behind them, all hungry for flesh and blood. The memories of the attack that had resulted in him being left for dead came back with the force of a sledgehammer in the guts.
“Take it steady,” Becker said, laying a hand on Ryan’s shoulder.
Ryan muttered a curse of profound anatomical improbability.
“And the same with a frozen ferret,” Becker added.
The mix of vulgarity and humour was enough to banish the demons from Ryan’s head. “Do we kill them or try to get past them?”
“They’ll be doing the killing for us at this rate.”
Becker was right, the fight was intensifying, with the predators focussed on each other now, not on the two humans who’d been driving then steadily upwards in the tunnels. Becker and Ryan did their best to flatten themselves against the wall of the tunnel, allowing the predators room to get past. One of the three, smaller than others, did just that, breaking off from the fight with a high-pitched squeal of pain. It left a chunk of its flesh behind as it barrelled past Ryan in what seemed to be blind panic. It flung itself at the predators that were currently keeping to a safe distance behind Becker and another fight broke out.
“Fuck this,” Ryan said, reaching a decision. “Cover me!”
Letting his M4 hang from its strap over his shoulder, Ryan grabbed the shotgun from his pack and pumped a shell into the breach. This was not going to do his hearing any good, but they had to get through the rockfall, and to do that, they had to get through the predators, and waiting for the fuckers to tear themselves apart didn’t seem like the best of alternatives.
The shotgun blast was deafening in the confined space, drowning out the snarls of the two antagonists. At point blank range, the shotgun was a devastatingly effective weapon. One predator’s head exploded, and it dropped like a stone. Ryan used a small lever to pump another cartridge into place, as Becker had shown him. Locked and loaded, he took aim again. The second shot was equally effective.
“Nice,” Becker said, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the mess of blood, brains and bone that they would have to work around. His voice sounded distorted and distant as Ryan’s ears still rang from the blast.
Ryan replaced the shotgun in his pack and picked his way over the dead predators to get at the rock pile. “Not going to be easy,” he commented, using his torch to see if there might be a way through. “Get those sods shifted so we’ve got some room to work.”
A section of the roof had collapsed, leaving behind a thin crack in the rock above the tunnel. It was too small for Ryan to crawl through, but he could just see on into the blackness of the tunnel beyond the choke. Ryan grabbed a rock from the top of the pile and chucked it backwards. Becker caught it and lobbed it behind him.
That established a routine. Ryan would drag a rock off the heap, and Becker would move it further down the passage. It was hot, exhausting work. Sweat dribbled down Ryan’s face and tracked down his back. The dust from the fall got into his lungs and made him cough, but progress was steadily being made and soon they would be able to crawl over the blockage into a more stable section of passage.
Ryan looked back, seeing a massed army of predators lurking behind Becker in the tunnel. The bastard things would be after them like a rat down a drain as soon as they’d wriggled through the now-widening hole at the top of the fall.
“Time to change over,” Becker said, moving to let Ryan take his place.
Ryan leaned against the wall and dragged the stale air of the tunnel into his labouring lungs. Behind him the predators were snarling at each other as they fought in the confined space over the bodies of their own kind. Food was no doubt hard to come by in the mountain tunnels.
As Becker worked, a small but steady trickle of sand and stones fell from the fissure above the tangle of rocks. The rock above that section of passage was broken and looked water-worn in places. Ryan didn’t know much about caves – and what he did know he generally disliked – but he remembered being told that most caves were water-worn, and it seemed possible that if water did sometimes run down the cracks in the rock, that it might have lead to instability in this area.
A space had opened up in front of Becker and would soon be big enough for them to get through, but Ryan had some doubts about whether it would still be open if they returned that way. But as the chances of a return appeared to be vanishing small, Ryan didn’t let that thought trouble him too much. It was what was happening now that concerned him.
“Watch yourself, Becker,” he cautioned. “I don’t like the look of that roof.”
Becker turned and grinned at him, his face streaked with dirt. “I don’t like the look of your friends, but I think we’re stuck with the fuckers. I just hope Connor’s gadgets will continue to give them a nasty headache.”
As Becker was speaking, the rattle of stones from above intensified, and moments later, the rocks above Becker started to shift. Ryan grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him backwards but in seconds they were engulfed in a roof fall, stones pattering down on them like hail, as larger rocks thumped down on their backs. Both of them instinctively covered their heads.
As soon as the immediate danger appeared to have passed, Becker flung himself back at the unstable rubble slope that had formed. Uppermost in both their minds was the knowledge that they needed to get to the other side of the blockage as fast as they could. Scrabbling like a terrier at a rat hole, Becker managed to haul himself through the hole he’d uncovered. Ryan grabbed their packs and quickly shoved them through after him. As soon as that was done, Ryan pushed his M4 through and attempted to follow. It was tight fit. He had to get both arms through first, in the hope that the rest of his body would fit and that the rocks above wouldn’t slip again, trapping him half in, half out of the hole.
“You need to lose some weight, mate!”
Ryan dragged in enough breath to retort, “Fuck off!”
Long, taloned claws scraped at his leg, trying to hold Ryan back. For a second, he froze, remembering the last time he’d felt their touch, but then instinct took over and he started to squirm forward again. With the crystal bracelet ahead of him on the other side of the rock fall, there was obviously nothing stopping the little fuckers getting close to him. Expecting to feel the steel clamp of jaws on his flesh any second, Ryan kept wriggling forward. With another heave, and help from Becker grabbing his arms and pulling, Ryan was through.
One of the bony arms came through after him, talons extended. Becker grabbed a rock and smashed it down on the thin but powerful limb. It promptly retracted like a spider withdrawing into a hole.
“Shit!” Becker stared in horror at Ryan’s arm.
Ryan looked down, puzzled. It was his fucking leg that was throbbing from the scrape of the predator’s claws, not his arm, then the reason for Becker’s shock sunk in. The leather bracelet was still fastened to his wrist, showing from beneath the cuff of his jacket but one of the crystals was dull now, not shining brightly as it had been when he’d started the squeeze through the boulder pile.
“Must have caught it on the rocks,” Ryan said.
Becker picked up another large stone and hurled it at bony head that had started to poke through the hole after Ryan. It struck with a sharp crack. “Come on. I’ve got no fucking idea how close they can get now, and I don’t want to hang about to find out. In front of me, quick, and run!”
Ryan didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed his rifle and his pack and started to run. The passage ran straight for about ten metres then started to turn, almost like a spiral staircase in an old castle, climbing steeply up. He took the steps two at a time, remembering the days of tabbing up Pen y Fan in full kit. This was harder, and from his laboured breathing, the CO2 content in the air was higher than he would have liked, but slackening off wasn’t an option, not with predators likely to be following them up the steps any minute, and those fuckers could bounce around like rubber balls in a squash court when they wanted.
The steps rose and turned. Ryan ran and didn’t look back. Becker was covering his arse, that was all he needed to know. The steps were regular, which made life easier, but he had no idea how much further they had to go or how long they could keep up this game of cat and mouse.
The sudden blast from Becker’s shotgun told him that one of the bastard things had just got too close for comfort. He spared a quick glance over his shoulder and saw one of the predators dropping down onto the steps. It twitched once and then was still. Becker, a look of grim determination on his face, just kept running and Ryan did the same.
As he powered upwards, the pressure in his ear drums started to increase, and Ryan was conscious of a high-pitched ringing noise in his ears that he’d put down at first to the after-effects of the shotgun blast, but sound steadily intensified to the point of pain.
“Jesus!” Becker exclaimed. “What’s that fucking noise?”
“Someone doesn’t want them getting out of the tunnels,” Ryan gasped, pushing on, even though his head was a mass of screaming agony and it felt like someone was poking red hot needles through his ear drums and into his brain.
They should have expected something like this. Without some form of defence, there would be nothing to stop the creatures over-running the fortress, and if the tunnels were to be a viable means of escape there would also need to be a way of clearing a path. His guess was that they were getting close to some sort of permanent installation to keep the predators at bay and there might well be repeater stations in the tunnels, possibly in the dug-out caves that they hadn’t stopped to investigate. Claudia Brown’s intel on the enemy base was clearly patchy but, in her defence, he doubted many people had ventured into this death trap and lived to tell the tale.
Ryan gritted his teeth against the pain and kept moving. He was getting dizzy now and it was becoming harder to keep up the pace. All he wanted to do was crawl into a ball and stuff his fingers in his ears in an attempt to keep out the noise. His only consolation was that it must have been playing hell with the predators’ echolocation systems.
The only question was whether he and Becker could hold out long enough to find their way out of the fucking tunnels.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Ryan, Claudia, Becker, Lester, Lorraine
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count: 20,000, split into eight parts.
Summary : Waking up in the Permian under a pile of rock wasn’t a high point in Ryan’s life, nor was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, but then help comes along from a very unexpected direction.
A/N : This fic was started four years ago for the
primeval_denial art fic challenge for this wonderful artwork by the very talented tli. Naturally, it grew into an utter monster all too quickly and when it became obvious I’d never finish it in time, I wrote The World After as a prequel.The chittering echoed along the narrow tunnel, shedding Ryan’s nerves and leaving him jittery from the constant assault of adrenaline on his system, but for now at least, the crystal bracelets were doing their job.
The parachute jump had gone better than he had expected. They’d both landed without breaking any bones, although Ryan knew he’d collected a nasty bruise on his arse, which was the least of his troubles right now.
The air in the tunnels was hot and dry. Ryan could feel sweat tricking down his spine as he and Becker advanced in a curious mix of caution and recklessness, driving the predators before them with the resonance from the crystals, while behind them, more of the fucking things followed, like sinister sheepdogs. Keeping his finger off the trigger of his M4 carbine took all Ryan’s willpower. They were using the under-barrel torches to light they way and so far, neither of them had succumbed to the almost overwhelming desire to put a three-round burst through several bony heads.
The tunnel was only wide enough for one man at a time, and for the moment, Becker was on point, with Ryan covering his arse. Ryan wasn’t sure what was worse, staring one of the fuckers in the face while walking towards it, or knowing that several of them were no more than ten paces behind. At first, Ryan had tried backing up the passage, but that had slowed them down too much and he’d soon given up that idea. Now, he simply looked over his shoulder every few minutes. The view never improved. Each time, he was faced with the sight of slavering jaws, displaying an impressive set of teeth that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a shark below three large, snuffling nostrils.
The predators knuckled forward on their skeletal forelimbs, claws scraping ominously on the rough rock floor of the tunnels.
Ryan did his best to ignore the snuffling, the chittering and the scraping, letting it wash through him rather than trying to block out the sounds. As long as they were able to keep moving, that was all that mattered. His world had narrowed down to the simple business of putting one booted foot in front of the other. The tunnel climbed steadily, occasionally gaining extra height in flights of steps hewn out of the rock. Sometimes the passage widened, breaking out into what appeared to be natural cavities. When that happened, the predators quickly spread out, filling the available space like teenagers flocking into a popular nightclub.
“Starting to really dislike these fuckers,” Ryan muttered.
“Only starting? You’ve more tolerant than me, mate.” Becker sounded amused. “Fancy taking point for a while?”
Ryan kept pace with the young captain and as soon as the tunnel widened enough, he slipped past, letting Becker close in behind him. In front of him, a predator clung to the roof of the passage like an oversized bat, moving backwards as smoothly as Ryan was able to advance. Below it, another creature knuckled its way back, head swinging from side to side as though trying to shake water from its ears. They gave no sign of being in pain, but Ryan soon discovered that if he moved more quickly than they were bargaining for, they jumped back like a spider in a bath.
After half an hour on point, Ryan glanced up to discover that above him, the roof of the passage looked less stable than he’d become used to. They’d passed through two areas where the passage had widened and when they came to the third, Ryan noticed a change in the air. It felt fresher, as though a draught was entering from somewhere close by. He swept his torch beam around the small chambers and saw scattered rocks on the floor from a roof fall. Moments later, predators flooded into the void, pouring out of crevices in the rock and scuttling across the floor like cockroaches.
Keeping his breathing as even as possible, Ryan fixed his eyes firmly ahead and kept moving but moments later, the chittering in front of him suddenly increased its tempo and the headshaking became even more pronounced. He took a step forward. The predator shuffled back by half a metre, but then came to a halt, drool dripping from its clenched jaws.
“The bugger won’t shift back.” Ryan did his best to shine the torch past the predator to see how many were queued up behind it. What he saw instead made him draw in a sharp intake of breath.
The passage behind three of the creatures appeared to be blocked by a rockfall. Piles of the reddish stone lay in a tumbled heap from floor to ceiling. One of the predators had backed up as far as it could, driven by the resonance from the crystals on Ryan’s wrist, but it couldn’t go any further. It snapped and snarled at the other two as they crowded it, and it looked like a fight was about to develop.
Ryan fought to control his breathing. He felt like the passage was closing in around him, squeezing the air out of his lungs and compressing his chest. His nerves were stretched to breaking point and the urge to turn and run was rising in him, getting increasingly hard to deny, but there were predators behind them, all hungry for flesh and blood. The memories of the attack that had resulted in him being left for dead came back with the force of a sledgehammer in the guts.
“Take it steady,” Becker said, laying a hand on Ryan’s shoulder.
Ryan muttered a curse of profound anatomical improbability.
“And the same with a frozen ferret,” Becker added.
The mix of vulgarity and humour was enough to banish the demons from Ryan’s head. “Do we kill them or try to get past them?”
“They’ll be doing the killing for us at this rate.”
Becker was right, the fight was intensifying, with the predators focussed on each other now, not on the two humans who’d been driving then steadily upwards in the tunnels. Becker and Ryan did their best to flatten themselves against the wall of the tunnel, allowing the predators room to get past. One of the three, smaller than others, did just that, breaking off from the fight with a high-pitched squeal of pain. It left a chunk of its flesh behind as it barrelled past Ryan in what seemed to be blind panic. It flung itself at the predators that were currently keeping to a safe distance behind Becker and another fight broke out.
“Fuck this,” Ryan said, reaching a decision. “Cover me!”
Letting his M4 hang from its strap over his shoulder, Ryan grabbed the shotgun from his pack and pumped a shell into the breach. This was not going to do his hearing any good, but they had to get through the rockfall, and to do that, they had to get through the predators, and waiting for the fuckers to tear themselves apart didn’t seem like the best of alternatives.
The shotgun blast was deafening in the confined space, drowning out the snarls of the two antagonists. At point blank range, the shotgun was a devastatingly effective weapon. One predator’s head exploded, and it dropped like a stone. Ryan used a small lever to pump another cartridge into place, as Becker had shown him. Locked and loaded, he took aim again. The second shot was equally effective.
“Nice,” Becker said, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the mess of blood, brains and bone that they would have to work around. His voice sounded distorted and distant as Ryan’s ears still rang from the blast.
Ryan replaced the shotgun in his pack and picked his way over the dead predators to get at the rock pile. “Not going to be easy,” he commented, using his torch to see if there might be a way through. “Get those sods shifted so we’ve got some room to work.”
A section of the roof had collapsed, leaving behind a thin crack in the rock above the tunnel. It was too small for Ryan to crawl through, but he could just see on into the blackness of the tunnel beyond the choke. Ryan grabbed a rock from the top of the pile and chucked it backwards. Becker caught it and lobbed it behind him.
That established a routine. Ryan would drag a rock off the heap, and Becker would move it further down the passage. It was hot, exhausting work. Sweat dribbled down Ryan’s face and tracked down his back. The dust from the fall got into his lungs and made him cough, but progress was steadily being made and soon they would be able to crawl over the blockage into a more stable section of passage.
Ryan looked back, seeing a massed army of predators lurking behind Becker in the tunnel. The bastard things would be after them like a rat down a drain as soon as they’d wriggled through the now-widening hole at the top of the fall.
“Time to change over,” Becker said, moving to let Ryan take his place.
Ryan leaned against the wall and dragged the stale air of the tunnel into his labouring lungs. Behind him the predators were snarling at each other as they fought in the confined space over the bodies of their own kind. Food was no doubt hard to come by in the mountain tunnels.
As Becker worked, a small but steady trickle of sand and stones fell from the fissure above the tangle of rocks. The rock above that section of passage was broken and looked water-worn in places. Ryan didn’t know much about caves – and what he did know he generally disliked – but he remembered being told that most caves were water-worn, and it seemed possible that if water did sometimes run down the cracks in the rock, that it might have lead to instability in this area.
A space had opened up in front of Becker and would soon be big enough for them to get through, but Ryan had some doubts about whether it would still be open if they returned that way. But as the chances of a return appeared to be vanishing small, Ryan didn’t let that thought trouble him too much. It was what was happening now that concerned him.
“Watch yourself, Becker,” he cautioned. “I don’t like the look of that roof.”
Becker turned and grinned at him, his face streaked with dirt. “I don’t like the look of your friends, but I think we’re stuck with the fuckers. I just hope Connor’s gadgets will continue to give them a nasty headache.”
As Becker was speaking, the rattle of stones from above intensified, and moments later, the rocks above Becker started to shift. Ryan grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him backwards but in seconds they were engulfed in a roof fall, stones pattering down on them like hail, as larger rocks thumped down on their backs. Both of them instinctively covered their heads.
As soon as the immediate danger appeared to have passed, Becker flung himself back at the unstable rubble slope that had formed. Uppermost in both their minds was the knowledge that they needed to get to the other side of the blockage as fast as they could. Scrabbling like a terrier at a rat hole, Becker managed to haul himself through the hole he’d uncovered. Ryan grabbed their packs and quickly shoved them through after him. As soon as that was done, Ryan pushed his M4 through and attempted to follow. It was tight fit. He had to get both arms through first, in the hope that the rest of his body would fit and that the rocks above wouldn’t slip again, trapping him half in, half out of the hole.
“You need to lose some weight, mate!”
Ryan dragged in enough breath to retort, “Fuck off!”
Long, taloned claws scraped at his leg, trying to hold Ryan back. For a second, he froze, remembering the last time he’d felt their touch, but then instinct took over and he started to squirm forward again. With the crystal bracelet ahead of him on the other side of the rock fall, there was obviously nothing stopping the little fuckers getting close to him. Expecting to feel the steel clamp of jaws on his flesh any second, Ryan kept wriggling forward. With another heave, and help from Becker grabbing his arms and pulling, Ryan was through.
One of the bony arms came through after him, talons extended. Becker grabbed a rock and smashed it down on the thin but powerful limb. It promptly retracted like a spider withdrawing into a hole.
“Shit!” Becker stared in horror at Ryan’s arm.
Ryan looked down, puzzled. It was his fucking leg that was throbbing from the scrape of the predator’s claws, not his arm, then the reason for Becker’s shock sunk in. The leather bracelet was still fastened to his wrist, showing from beneath the cuff of his jacket but one of the crystals was dull now, not shining brightly as it had been when he’d started the squeeze through the boulder pile.
“Must have caught it on the rocks,” Ryan said.
Becker picked up another large stone and hurled it at bony head that had started to poke through the hole after Ryan. It struck with a sharp crack. “Come on. I’ve got no fucking idea how close they can get now, and I don’t want to hang about to find out. In front of me, quick, and run!”
Ryan didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed his rifle and his pack and started to run. The passage ran straight for about ten metres then started to turn, almost like a spiral staircase in an old castle, climbing steeply up. He took the steps two at a time, remembering the days of tabbing up Pen y Fan in full kit. This was harder, and from his laboured breathing, the CO2 content in the air was higher than he would have liked, but slackening off wasn’t an option, not with predators likely to be following them up the steps any minute, and those fuckers could bounce around like rubber balls in a squash court when they wanted.
The steps rose and turned. Ryan ran and didn’t look back. Becker was covering his arse, that was all he needed to know. The steps were regular, which made life easier, but he had no idea how much further they had to go or how long they could keep up this game of cat and mouse.
The sudden blast from Becker’s shotgun told him that one of the bastard things had just got too close for comfort. He spared a quick glance over his shoulder and saw one of the predators dropping down onto the steps. It twitched once and then was still. Becker, a look of grim determination on his face, just kept running and Ryan did the same.
As he powered upwards, the pressure in his ear drums started to increase, and Ryan was conscious of a high-pitched ringing noise in his ears that he’d put down at first to the after-effects of the shotgun blast, but sound steadily intensified to the point of pain.
“Jesus!” Becker exclaimed. “What’s that fucking noise?”
“Someone doesn’t want them getting out of the tunnels,” Ryan gasped, pushing on, even though his head was a mass of screaming agony and it felt like someone was poking red hot needles through his ear drums and into his brain.
They should have expected something like this. Without some form of defence, there would be nothing to stop the creatures over-running the fortress, and if the tunnels were to be a viable means of escape there would also need to be a way of clearing a path. His guess was that they were getting close to some sort of permanent installation to keep the predators at bay and there might well be repeater stations in the tunnels, possibly in the dug-out caves that they hadn’t stopped to investigate. Claudia Brown’s intel on the enemy base was clearly patchy but, in her defence, he doubted many people had ventured into this death trap and lived to tell the tale.
Ryan gritted his teeth against the pain and kept moving. He was getting dizzy now and it was becoming harder to keep up the pace. All he wanted to do was crawl into a ball and stuff his fingers in his ears in an attempt to keep out the noise. His only consolation was that it must have been playing hell with the predators’ echolocation systems.
The only question was whether he and Becker could hold out long enough to find their way out of the fucking tunnels.
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no subject
Date: 2020-10-17 06:58 pm (UTC)Okay, this is getting seriously tense!
*g* I'm sure I speak for Becker and Ryan when I add FFS, what next?!?!?
Loved the descriptiveness of their flight in the tunnels, and the way you bring the predators to life. Becker and Ryan do seem to be getting along pretty well, though!
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Date: 2020-10-17 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-10-18 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-19 09:36 am (UTC)But nice team work.
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Date: 2020-10-19 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-12-27 07:44 am (UTC)You’re really putting them through the ringer!
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Date: 2020-12-27 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-30 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-30 06:50 pm (UTC)