Nothing happened.
Silence.
Frank was beside him, sweating, breathing heavily as Connor stared down the wide, twisting passageway.
“Why isn't it on top of us?” Connor whispered.
Frank shook his head, quiet. “It's probably feeding on the soldiers who died when the roof came down. Because of its enhanced metabolism, Leviathan has to eat about a thousand pounds of meat every two hours. I think we might have another minute.”
Connor backed carefully to the ladder. “When it comes down the tunnel will it come fast or will it come slow and careful?”
“It’ll come slow,” Frank answered. He wiped a blackened arm over his brow, smearing even more soot over his sweating face. “Because of what we just did to it, it'll be looking for another ambush. It's always learning. It'll probably be looking for explosives.”
“What else would it look for?”
“Heat signatures in the dark.”
Connor began climbing the ladder. “Good.”
In a moment he was at the top. He quietly opened an intermediate breaker box. Like most of the circuit connecting points, the box was crammed with lines of varying power. Connor found a line of 10,000 volts. He studied it a minute, calculating. “No, not enough,” he whispered. “Not enough to put you down for the count ...”
He continued to search until he came across it—a line of over 100,000 volts. It was as thick as his thumb. Connor knew it was a primary feed line from the power plant. He began loosening the brackets as he looked down, observing Chesterton's upturned face.
He spoke slowly, distinctly. “Chesterton, raise the vault all the way and tell your men to remove a section of the walkway right in front of the door. Then have them remove another section on the far side of the cavern.” Connor leaned down. “Tell them to put as much fiberglass and wood under the legs of the middle section as possible so that the steel is not touching the ground! I'm going to electrify the middle section, and I'm gonna use that thing behind us to ground out the current.”
Chesterton's eyes blazed. “Let me get this straight! You need the middle section of walkway insulated from the ground so when that thing steps on the steel, the current's going to go through it and into the ground?” His relief was wild. “Do you think that will kill it?”
“I don't know,” Connor replied. “There's no way to know how much resistance that thing has to a current.”
“What do you mean?” Chesterton staggered.
Connor grunted as he twisted the brackets holding the wire. “That thing weighs almost six tons, Chesterton. I don't know how much current it'll take to kill it!”
“But that much will hurt it, right?”
“Hurt it, yeah, but I don't know if it'll be enough to kill it. This stuff is complicated.” Chesterton nodded and ducked under the doorway, giving tense instructions to Barley. Instantly there were shuffling sounds echoing in the cavern, the tunnel.
Working feverishly, shaking sweat from his face, Connor managed to break the sturdy ceramic brackets that held the high-voltage line in place. Because the line was heavily insulated, he grabbed the rubber coating with his hand.
Then, careful to hold the bare copper ending far from anything that could ground it out, Connor pulled the cable from the wall. It was backbreaking labor because he was forced to pull with one hand and yet in thirty seconds, powered by pure fear, he had hauled out thirty feet of excess line.
Still holding the end of the line by the insulation, Connor rapidly descended the ladder. As he hit the ground, cautiously holding the insulated section of 100,000-volt line in his fist, Connor saw that Chesterton had come back under the vault and stopped dead in place, white and trembling, staring with wide eyes down the passageway.
Connor whirled, glaring to see the gigantic Dragon shadow that blackened a close section of the darkened tunnel. The godlike image stood carefully outside the light.
Angry eyes glowed.
A growl vibrated the passageway.
* * *
“What was that?” Beth asked, staring at the wall of the Housing Cavern. The shock wave had trembled the entire structure, more than twenty rooms, even breaking a lighting fixture loose from the ceiling.
The guard, Private Thompson, held his rifle close. “I don't know, ma'am,” he said carefully, staring at the wall beside her. “It sounded like some kind of explosion.”
“What kind of explosion?”
“I'm not in demolition, Mrs. Connor, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say it sounded like dynamite.”
“Like someone was dynamiting one of those vaults?”
Thompson nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Maybe. I don't know what else it could have been. But it was pretty deep in the cavern. A few miles maybe. Or maybe more.”