44

He fired the flare gun into the first one and it lodged somewhere near its hip, burning the joint of the leg away but not quick enough for it to fall before reaching him. He turned and ran.

At first he was heading back to the central circle, but no, he realized, there was only one exit there, that was a trap. He swerved and headed down through the cell-lined hallway, only realizing after he’d started that he’d gone the wrong way, toward the creatures that he’d seen walking there earlier. He glanced back over his shoulder but it was too late to correct himself: the others were already nearly upon him.

He sped up, running as fast and as silently as he could. There they were, three of them, up ahead, and he waited to fire on them until he was almost upon them and knew they had heard him. He faded right and they gravitated toward him and he fired the pistol at the one closest to him, trying to take out a limb or a leg, but failing. He fired the flare gun again, and struck one of them in the face, the head suddenly blooming into a ball of fire. And then quickly he veered left, rubbed up against the cells and rushed around them. One of them managed to strike him with his bonelike scimitar, but it was a glancing blow, strong enough to numb his arm and make him drop his flare gun but not enough to cut through his suit. And then he was past them and running farther along the curving hall, hoping he wouldn’t run in to more of them.

“I’m still alive and running,” he said into the receiver, already mostly out of breath. “Maybe you can hear me, maybe you can’t. But if you can, for god’s sake, don’t shut the damn door.”

He kept running, even though his lungs were burning. How much oxygen was left in the suit? The creatures behind him weren’t quite gaining on him, but they also weren’t losing much ground. If he slowed, eventually they would catch him. And then they would either kill him or make him into one of them.

But he couldn’t go far enough ahead of them to make them lose interest in him. They had to keep following him, he had to draw them all away from the door while he circled all the way around and back to it.

And then a terrible thought hit him. What if the corridor didn’t go around in a circle after all? What if he was soon going to hit a dead end?

He tried not to think about it, tried just to keep running as long as he could, but the panic made him unable to judge how far he had run. Was he halfway yet? More? How much of his strength should he hold in reserve so he would be able to finish?

He slackened his pace a little and one of them almost caught him. He sped up and then saw it, up ahead: the door. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” he yelled into the receiver. “Get ready to close it!” And then he ran all out and as fast as he could. He yelled “Now!” when he was still a little way away, fifteen or twenty feet or so, and was horrified by how quickly the doors started to close. Would he make it? He gave a last burst of speed and threw himself at them and through them, sliding the last of the way in and watching the door close behind him, crushing one of the creatures as it did so and keeping the rest outside.