But there was a deadness in Lilah’s eyes, and Benny feared that the Lost Girl was already losing hope.
Nix said, “Wait, what about the soldiers? Where are they? Why aren’t they fighting back? All I saw were the guards who usually take care of the bridge . . . where are the rest of them? Where are the soldiers we just saw run in here?”
“That’s right,” said McReady. “There are two hundred men here. . . .”
“There are forty-eight soldiers here,” Joe said. “And thirteen members of the medical staff.”
“Did the others ship out?”
Joe’s eyes were bleak. “I wish.”
Distant gunfire and screams seemed to answer for him. He put his rifle stock to his shoulder and went quickly and quietly down the stairs. Benny looked at the others, saw the varying expressions in their eyes. Joe’s last two words had punched everyone in the gut.
One by one they followed him down the bloodstained stairs. They found two dead soldiers who were just starting to reanimate. Joe put them down with precise single shots to their heads.
Benny went last, and as he ghosted along behind the others, he thought about all the bad things Joe’s words could mean. And he wondered if, in all this madness, they would ever find Riot and Eve. Were they alive? Were they dead? Had the wild former reaper somehow managed to battle her way through the sea of killers to defend the little girl she treasured?
If anyone could, Benny knew that she would.
The steps went down, turned a corner, went down again, and then ended in a round chamber from which four corridors spiked off in different directions. Joe paused and they all stopped to listen. The most intense sounds of battle came from the left-hand corridor. There were indistinct sounds from the middle two, and only silence from the one on the right. But the lights were out in that tunnel, and the edge of the wall leading into it was smeared with black goo.
“Let me guess,” said Benny sourly, “that one’s the one we have to take, right?”
Joe gave him a tight grin. “What’s wrong, you want to live forever?”
“Not forever. Maybe another seventy years, though.”
“Let me know how that turns out for you.”
“Flashlight?” asked Nix.
Joe clicked on the small light that was mounted on his gun and dialed it up to its widest beam; but the light was small and the illumination didn’t reach very far into the gloom. No one else had a flashlight.
“Don’t bunch up,” said Joe. “I don’t want a sword up my backside.”
They entered the hallway, following the blue-white splash of Joe’s flashlight. Once more Benny took up the rear position. No need to cede that responsibility to Lilah anymore. He felt capable o
f defending them.
But as they went deeper and deeper, the light from the staircase landing faded and then vanished, leaving everything behind Benny as black as the pit.
Don’t be cocky, he told himself. And don’t be scared. Sight isn’t your only sense. Listen to what the darkness has to tell you.
It was one of Tom’s lessons filtered through his own personal understanding.
He let the others move ahead so the sounds of their footsteps and the rattle of their equipment faded. He listened to the darkness.
Everything behind was silent.
Silent.
Until it wasn’t.
He heard a sound.
Soft. Quick.
In darkness the sound of running is often defined by the panting breath of the runner as much as by the slap of feet on the ground.