A Hole in the Sky Read Free Page A

all around as Varick merged with Broadway. A short time later the party turned left onto Chambers, where they passed a building that appeared to have been pulverized by a giant foot. Then it was time to stop and check their back trail. The lack of visibility cut both ways. If the Chimera couldn’t see the humans, the reverse was true as well.
    “Okay,” Lucy said, as she used a boot to scrape some snow aside. “See that manhole cover? If one of you big, strong men would be kind enough to lift it up I would appreciate it. You’ll have to remove your packs in order to drop through, however.”
    It took the better part of ten minutes to lift the cover out of the way, send two men down the steel ladder, and drop the packs through the hole. Then, once the rest of the party was safely belowground, it was Mason’s job to ease the metal lid back into position. With that accomplished, it was time to gear up again.
    Lucy was holding a flare. The light threw black shadows up onto curved walls. “We’re in a storm drain,” she informed them as the men shouldered their packs. “We use them to get around. The stinks know that, so they send hunter-killer teams down to look for us, but they pay a high price for doing so. Keep your eyes peeled and remember, pipes come in from every direction.”
    “And if we get into a fight, be careful where you aim,” Kawecki added. “We have enough problems without shooting each other.”
    Like the rest of the team, Voss was armed with two primary weapons. Given the situation, he thought it best to exchange the M5A2 carbine for a cut-down Rossmore stored in the scabbard strapped to his pack. With the shotgun at the ready he followed Lucy, Lang, and Kawecki out of the collector manifold and into a large pipe. They had to walk bent over, which not only wasuncomfortable but would make it damned hard to fight if attacked.
    Lucy led them through a series of left- and right-hand turns. Voss tried to memorize the route but soon gave up. It was too damned complicated.
    A short time later, the team arrived at a point where explosives had been used to open a side passageway. The tunnel was about ten feet long. Heavy beams had been used to shore up the passageway, but the work had obviously been carried out by amateurs, so Voss had no desire to linger. Lucy directed the team into a subway tunnel. “We’re close,” she promised. “Now stay together. I wouldn’t want to lose anyone.”
    It was good advice, and Voss was careful to keep the interval between Kawecki and himself short as they followed a set of rusting tracks past a train and the empty platform beyond. Voss had been to New York on at least a dozen occasions back before the war. He wondered if he had stood at that very station, his mind focused on an upcoming meeting, blissfully unaware of what the future had in store.
    Suddenly Voss’s thoughts were jerked back to the present as Alvarez yelled a warning: “Drones!” Each of the beetle-shaped machines was equipped with a headlight, and the beams crisscrossed each other as a loud thrumming noise sounded and a swarm of at least twenty Drones swept in to attack the humans.
    Alvarez put a burst of projectiles into the lead machine and it exploded. The resulting flash of light strobed the tunnel as the rest of the team opened fire. The noise generated by automatic weapons and shotguns blended with the percussive boom of exploding Drones to produce a hellish cacophony of sound.
    Voss saw a bright light angling down at him, fired the Rossmore, and heard a metallic clang as the slugs struck.Instead of exploding, the badly damaged Drone kept coming, and crashed into his chest!
    The impact put Voss on his ass, and electricity crackled around the machine as it struggled to lift off. The Drone was about five feet off the ground and wobbling badly when Voss sat up. He fired the shotgun and felt a series of pinpricks as the machine exploded and small pieces of shrapnel hit him.
    “Nice one, Mr.