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They moved quickly up the maze of ramps, and had just reached the lab with its macabre collection of human experimentation, when a familiar roar reached up from the depths.
“Well....” Tam looked like she was about to say something else, something obscene, but then shook her head. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“One thing at a time,” Bones said in a mocking falsetto. “Guess what just became our new ‘one thing’?”
“We can stop him,” Maddock said, with more confidence than he felt. “Let’s get as close to the exit as we can. If we have to, we’ll blow the ramps. Trap him down here.”
“Is that even possible?” Tam asked. “Those crossbow bolts pack a punch, but this place looks pretty solid.”
“We have to try,” Maddock replied, “If anyone has a better suggestion, speak up now.”
No one did.
They were almost up the first of two ramps when the next roar came. Only, it wasn’t muted from the tons of alien metal and stone surrounding them, it was loud and clear, coming from right below their position. Making it to the top, they turned and watched as the beast formerly known as Max stepped into view.
The berserker was built like Sorensen and had the same gray, wolf hair covering most of his body. Max’s deformed face was also clear as day, his eyes crimson and full of hate.
And he held Gungnir.
“Well, crap,” Bones grumbled, shouldering his crossbow.
Maddock did the same, and they both loosed bolts simultaneously. The stubby arrows hit home and detonated on impact, blasting the beast off his feet.
But when the smoke cleared, they could see him still gripping the spear, and already rising, shaking off the effects of what should have been a devastating injury.
Then Maddock noticed something else as well. Gungnir was enveloped in what looked like a pulsating corona of black energy, and with each shadow flash, Max seemed to get bigger and stronger.
“Gungnir is giving him a boost,” Maddock shouted. “We need to get it away from him.”
“I like the concept,” Bones said, nocking another bolt. “Just not too clear on the method of execution.”
Max roared and stomped his foot, causing the entire platform to shake. Debris began raining down around them, which gave Maddock an idea. “Aim in front of him,” he shouted. “And as soon as you fire, turn and run like hell.”
Bones did not question the unusual strategy but loosed his bolt into the floor just ahead of Max. For his part, Maddock fired up, into the bottom of the platform above them. The simultaneous explosions rocked the platform, fracturing the floor on which they stood, while dumping tons of rock directly onto Max’s head. It wouldn’t slow him down for long, but it just might give them time to come up with a more permanent solution.
And like a lightning bolt, inspiration struck.
“Just got a crazy idea.” Maddock shouted as they ran.
“I can do crazy,” Bones said, reloading on the run.
“We need to head for the longships.” He pulled the bloody handkerchief from his pocket. “Maybe they still work.”
Bones grin indicated that he approved of that level of crazy, but the moment of elation was short-lived. As they neared the top of the ramp, a massive tremor shook them off their feet. The stone erupted right in front of them, showering them with debris. Maddock blinked the dust away and saw, protruding from the center of a newly created blast crater, a black spear tip, pulsating with shadowy energy. The stone around the crater was cracked and falling away in chunks. Gungnir had accomplished what the crossbow bolts could not—it was bringing down the ramp, and unfortunately Maddock and his friends were on the wrong side of the collapse.
“Run for it!” He shouted.
His warning was unnecessary. Bones and Tam were already moving, heading for the still mostly intact edge of the ramp to their right. Maddock chose the closer, and riskier, route on the left, leaping across the widening fissure. He imagined the ramp crumbling away beneath his feet, and wondered if he would find himself running across the broken pieces as they fell or simply pedaling the air like a character in a cartoon.
But he made it, reaching the next platform where he turned to see how the others were faring. Bones had made it past the crater and was almost to the platform, but Tam was not so lucky.
Just as she passed the crater, the quivering spear tip was yanked back, setting off another tremor that crumbled the ground beneath her, causing her to fall into the crater. Through the gaping hole, Maddock could see the spear, still upthrust, and in the hands of the berserker standing on the ramp below, staring up at Tam, eager to catch her on its point.
As Tam clawed at the edge of the crater, trying to find something to hold onto, Maddock dove for the edge of the pit. He reached out as far as he dared and snagged her coat sleeve, but he knew immediately that he didn’t have a good enough hold to pull her back up.
“Bones! A little help!”
Even before he got the words out, Bones was there beside him, using his slightly longer reach to get a better grip on Tam’s wrist, which in turn allowed Maddock to improve his hold. Together they pulled, drawing her back to safety, but even as they did, the ramp continued to crumble away beneath them, their combined weight hastening the collapse. Every six inches they gained was lost as the floor beneath Tam fell away, dropping her back into the hole. Below her dangling feet, Max circled and growled like a hungry lion waiting for his prey to fall into his jaws.
But despite the appearance of fighting a losing battle, they were making progress, inching up the slope to find solid ground—relatively speaking—and as soon as they knew it, they hauled Tam to safety with one coordinated mighty heave.
They backpedaled up the slope, dragging her the entire way until they reached the platform where they collapsed as one, falling into one another.
For a second, the three of them just lay there, breathing heavily. Bones began to laugh but stopped as the platform shook again, and the floor beneath him opened as the black point of Gungnir was thrust up through it, missing a much-prized part of his anatomy by mere inches.
They all scrambled back, crab-walking away as the floor around the impact point began crumbling. When they were on relatively solid footing, an extremely pissed-off Bones ran back to the edge of the new fissure and fired his crossbow into it.
There was another explosion and a screech. Bones turned and, as if in response to an unasked question, said, “Because I felt like it!”
Another growl vibrated the air around them, and then, with a loud crunch, a pair of clawed hands appeared at the edge of the newly created hole. Max had jumped at least twenty vertical feet to snag the inner opening of the landing.
“Get to the hangar bay” Maddock shouted, and then shouldered his crossbow and fired.
The bolt detonated right next to Max’s thick hand, fragmenting the floor and dropping Max back down, but Maddock knew the berserker would just try again, so instead of reloading and shooting another bolt, he turned and ran after the others, sprinting to the ramp back up to the bay where they had found the longships. Behind them, a series of scrapes and grunts confirmed that Max would soon be joining them.
“If you guys can keep him occupied,” Maddock said, “I’ll make a run for the hangar bay!”
Bones nodded even as he reloaded. Tam just took aim and let fly, but to everyone’s astonishment and dismay, Max knocked the bolt out of the air with Gungnir. The missile did not detonate on contact with the spearpoint, but instead exploded harmlessly against the wall.
“Well... Crap,” Maddock muttered, and then turned and ran.
Behind him, Bones and Tam continued their assault without letup, taking turns firing and reloading, but Max swatted the arrows aside, deflecting them as easily as a tennis pro knocking back balls from a machine.
But while he was doing that, his forward movement slowed. He was advancing a step or two for each bolt they fired, but they were backing up the ramp, matching his pace. Unfortunately, their supply of arrows wouldn’t last forever.
As he left the battle behind, Maddock knew that, no matter how much damage they did to him, Max would keep coming. It was up to him to find a permanent solution.
If there was one.