Ralf Koehler managed to get his Luger in his hand before Susan turned a full spinning back-kick that ended with the boniest part of her heel about six inches into his ribs. The kid slammed against the wall. He struggled to right himself. He aimed the pistol down the corridor.
Charley stepped in past the gun and went for the rich field of nerve endings at the base of Koehler’s jaw—bap, bap, bap. She’d seen kittens expend more effort pawing at a ball of twine. Ralf went down. His eyes rolled up into his forehead.
Charley watched him a moment as if he might still have something left. He glanced back just once.
“How you doing, Red?”
She squatted down on Florian’s prone body. She kneaded her shoulders back into some kind of shape and fought off the inky spots that were crowding her peripheral vision. “I’ve been better,” she said.
“I knew you were in here somewhere. Kriene’s offices are here. I’ve been riding up and down this elevator for the last forty-five minutes, trying to find out what floor they had you on.”
“What about the summoning of Azathoth?”
“It goes on in thirty minutes. We’ve got to move.”
She needed a moment to realize what he was saying. “You risked the whole world to come after me?”
“Sometimes the world has to wait, doesn’t it.”
“You can’t be risking the whole world for one person. What if . . .”
She looked up at him. Somehow, they found themselves in one of those awkward moments of close physical proximity. His cheek muscle was jumping again. He’s got to be doing that on purpose.
She thought she should say something. “You can’t be risking the whole world like that,” she said quietly. Which was not to say she wasn’t flattered.
The lights faltered again. Now the forced air went down as well. The scents of diesel oil and burning wood filtered through the room.
She took Florian Mueller’s big old size-twelve boots, and one other thing as well—
Each soldier on the base had been issued a couple of hand grenades, to aid in their negotiations with Azathoth’s attendant entities.
Ralf and Florian still had their full complement of two each. Susan plucked them from their belts. The world being what it is, a girl never knows when she’s going to need a hand grenade.
Chapter Thirteen
FROM THE METAL CATWALK, Susan and Charley could overlook the whole of the Vergeltungswerkes.
The sky to the west was bone white. It rippled a little as Susan watched, the ripples coalescing around a misshapen black point where Sirius had recently been.
Shrieve raised his hand to it. “Azathoth’s Highway,” he guessed. “That must be the cosmic fracture zone we’ve heard so much about.”
Black as it was, Susan had to squint to look at it straight on. Something in it glared as brilliant and hurtful as the noon sun.
At first she wondered if it was growing larger. Then she wondered if it grew larger because it was coming their way, very fast. It occurred to her that this was the reason all the smaller monsters had cleared out. Even they were afraid of what was coming.
“Thirty minutes.” Shrieve rubbed the back of his head. “We’ve got problems.”
They would never make it to the Summoning Tower in thirty minutes. Probably not in ten days. The plant had been transformed since last she had seen it.
Between the catwalk and the Summoning Tower was an impenetrable crush of twisted iron. Fires from burst-open fuel lines licked at the belly of low-rolling clouds. The flames came up through a nearby train trestle, swirled furiously around the burst-open boiler of a small freight engine. Two charred bodies hung over the side of the cab.
The immense skyline that had blocked the ocean from here had been flattened in the last two hours, as if something huge had rolled over it. Now she could see all the way down to the harbor. The two U-boats anchored there had been upended by some cataclysmic force.
The same force had rolled over the air base across the road. The seven ME-262s standing on the tarmac had been wadded up like moths in an angry palm. They burned furiously from ignited jet fuel.
Susan felt a prickle of self-awareness at the nape of her neck, as if she were on display.
She turned fast. Azathoth’s attendant entities were nowhere to be seen. Nothing remained above her but the moon and stars. Yet she felt no relief at this. Under the influence of Kriene’s spell, the moon itself held a voyeuristic aspect. The stars possessed awareness. Some were malignant. Some held indifferent curiosity. None were undiscerning.
“Let’s get out of here.” Shrieve pointed to a stair leading into the gloom below. Susan concurred. Though she knew they weren’t going to make it to the Tower, she felt exposed on this bridge, under this bright, strange sky.