Leviathan(75)

Silence.

Frank staggered. “Get ready!”

A runaway freight train hit the vault, and what remained of the foundation surrendered to the force, the door bending outward from the top just as Chesterton reached Barley and roughly grabbed the lieutenant by the arm, dragging him to his feet.

Barley wildly hurled the remaining detonators pell-mell onto the dynamite and was instantly running with Chesterton across the cavern. They covered a hundred yards when an even more powerful impact struck the door and in a painful rending of metal and earth the vault was defeated, falling like a wall into the Command Center.

A sonic boom sounded in the cavern, dust rising. And although neither Chesterton nor Barley turned to look back, Connor knew from their expressions that they sensed death behind them, close and closing.

“Get out of here!” Chesterton screamed as he neared, waving his hands. “We're gonna blow it! We're gonna blow it!”

Leviathan stood in the open tunnel and for the first time Connor truly saw it.

Rising almost sixteen feet high on its hind legs, the Dragon advanced into the cavern, standing like a bear, the thick body muscular and heavily armored, reptilian in aspect but beyond that, older than that. Its forelegs were long and bat-like and ended in claws that gleamed like black bowie knives. And its thick, green-black armor covered its entire form, the scales large and tight, bending easily with its movements and completely unscarred by the earlier combat. The neck was long, tapering to a wicked head that opened sharply, unhinging jaws as white and layered as a shark's.

Leviathan's dragon-eyes, green and glowing, scanned the cavern for the briefest moment before centering on them and focusing with malevolent, hateful intelligence.

Connor saw the thick, powerful tail whip around, almost fifteen feet of it, to smash into the wall. The tail's tapered end easily sliced off a section of steel plating and the Dragon lowered its head, unleashing a deafening roar that thundered across the expanse of the cavern, crashing over them with physical force.

At the roar Chesterton spun violently toward the Dragon, running backward and wildly firing his rifle as if the beast were on top of him. Then the Army colonel spun back again, his face vivid with fear, screaming and waving frantically. “Get out of here you fools! Barley! Blow it!”

Barley ignored the order and grabbed Chesterton's shoulder, dragging the colonel toward the door. Then with a shriek Leviathan raised its head to unleash a wide, waving stream of liquid fire that blazed upward at the ceiling, blasting the dome of the cavern into a cloud of flame, igniting the stone, raining ...

Enraged and ignoring the holocaust, Barley turned, screaming, “Get out of here, Connor!”

Connor obeyed instantly, throwing himself low under the door and leaping beyond it, breathless and off balance. He couldn't find his stance in the chaos, the fear, and the confusion, and stumbled away. But concerned for Chesterton and Barley, he managed to cast a wild glance back to see the colonel shoved through the narrow space beneath the door, thrown by two powerful hands that handled him as easily as they would handle a child.

Dazed, Chesterton staggered up with a painful cry and fell to the side. His arm was on fire, and he had lost his M-16. Understanding instantly what was about to happen, Connor angrily threw his rifle to the side and reached out, grabbing Chesterton to jerk him away from the door.

Then Connor heard rifle fire and a defiant human cry on the other side of the vault, challenged by a bestial roar that trembled the earth. And to Connor's amazement, Barley was rolling beneath the door, leaping effectively clear to aim a small black box at the gap.

He frantically pressed a button.

Connor felt a blinding sharp roar fill his head as a shock wave blasted a path beneath the half-raised vault and then there was only white flame, liquid fire, and pain that continued in a volcanic eruption to bring down the light and the darkness together.

* * *





Chapter 18



Connor thought for a moment that he was dead, but adrenaline and fear brought him back to hateful life. Then he felt something approaching, something ... monstrous.

A shattering impact struck the vault door beside them.

Instantly a handful of survivors moaned, rolled, staggered noisily to their feet. Connor blinked at the dim emergency lights, and then he realized that the shock wave had ruptured the power lines in this end of the tunnel. Reorienting with a violent effort, he felt himself for wounds, found none. He felt for Chesterton and found the colonel lying to his side. Fired by strength and fear, Connor shook him hard. Heard someone shouting.

It was Barley, bellowing.

“Connor!”

“Yeah!”

“Get Colonel Chesterton! I'm going ahead to open the vault at the far end of this passageway! We've got to get some distance on this thing! Get everybody that's still alive and follow me! You got it?”