3
Maggie had forgotten about the hoverboard until she started running. She had stuffed it into her backpack before the trip through the pipe, though since the board was longer than the pack was tall, the top third of the board jutted from the pack’s top. Now, as she ran, this top third whapped against the back of her head with every step.
After she rounded the corner into the side-corridor lit by the emergency lights, she reached back and tore the board from the backpack. She tossed it on the floor in front of her, while behind her the sound of the Annihilator’s jetpack swelled from a growl to a roar as he shot around the corner.
She jumped onto the board and slammed one foot onto the elevation button to make it rise a foot above the floor and the other foot onto the forward acceleration button. The board shot forward so fast she almost toppled right off it.
“Damn it!” the Annihilator cried, not only because she was getting away but also because her possession of one of the hoverboards meant things looked bleak for Skippy and Oscar. The Marauders had lost too many good men to these dumbfucks already.
He raised his blaster and fired three times at Maggie as she sped away. She was smart enough to zigzag back and forth as she sped along, and all three shots wound up as scorch marks on the walls.
“Bitch! You can’t get away from me.” He gunned his jetpack and streaked after her.
Maggie kept her foot pressed on the forward accelerator until she was going so fast she had to squint to keep her eyes from drying out. She hoped she was as good at using the hoverboard as she thought she was, because if she collided with something at this speed they would have to pick her up with the Grottle’s shovel.
The corridor ended in a T-junction, and she swept around the corner and down the left arm of the T. Her turn was a little too wide, though, and the right edge of the board bumped against the far wall. The board wobbled, and for a moment Maggie thought that it would tilt far enough to send her tumbling right off. But then it steadied itself, just in time for her to swerve around an empty metal cart sitting in the middle of the corridor.
She continued zigzagging at random to ensure that the Annihilator couldn’t predict where she would be at any given moment. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t try; laser blasts streaked past her every few seconds. Luckily none hit her.
The chase took them down a long corridor littered with fallen ceiling tiles, then down a short hallway with a laundry room off it, then down another long corridor lined with offices. This last section had fully functioning fluorescent lights, and when she discovered how much easier it was to negotiate the often cluttered hallways when everything was brightly lit, she vowed to stick only to areas where the power was on.
As the chase progressed, Maggie was surprised to learn that when it came to banking around corners and dodging objects, she was far more maneuverable with the hoverboard than the Annihilator was with his jetpack. He had to slow down considerably more than she did to turn.
He had her beat on raw speed, though, quickly gaining on her whenever they traveled down a long, straight stretch. During one trip down a particularly long corridor, she heard the whine of his engines growing alarmingly loud, and she looked back just in time to see him not more than ten feet behind her, aiming his blaster at the broadest part of her back. She immediately swerved up and to the right until her hair brushed one of the light fixtures. The blast missed, but just barely; she felt its heat as it passed her left hand. Heart hammering, she upped her speed a notch, kept zigzagging, and swerved down the next side corridor she could find.
She no longer had any idea what section of the complex they were in. She wasn’t even sure how far they had traveled or how long the chase had lasted. Five minutes? Ten? Everything was a blur of fear and speed and danger underlain by the whir of her board and the drone of his jetpack.
At one point she heard a sound like the muffled roar of a crowd. Or she thought she did anyway. Before she could focus on it or even get a rough idea of which direction it was coming from, she had sped far past it. She recalled Adler’s reference to an arena and felt her guts squirm in helpless dread.
Not long after that, she turned left down a corridor and saw with a start that the corridor ended after about three hundred feet in a pair of doors that resembled the swinging doors to the kitchen but were thicker and had no windows. There were no side corridors in this stretch of hallway, and there was no way she could turn around and go back—the loudness of the Annihilator’s jetpack indicated he had already entered the corridor and was closing in fast. She didn’t even have time to slow down. All she could do was close her eyes and shield her face with her forearms and hope that the doors did indeed swing and that they weren’t locked or barred.
The board hit the doors with a loud, sharp bang. This was followed an instant later by a louder, sharper bang as the doors rebounded off the room’s inner walls.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself streaking down a wide aisle between dark, hulking machines that stretched away toward the concrete room’s far wall several hundred feet away. The lights were on in the room—rows of bright white globes suspended by cables from the ceiling—but the towering machines blocked much of that light, leaving everything dim and shadowy down here at floor-level.
She was halfway down the main aisle when she realized that she had seen no doors aside from the ones she had entered through. Panic began to fill her mind like murky water flooding the hold of a sinking ship. Was she trapped? Had she unwittingly fled right into a killing box?
It dawned on her that she hadn’t heard the doors bang open again. The Annihilator had been close enough behind her that he should have entered the room by now. She glanced over her shoulder.
The Annihilator stood just inside the doorway, watching her. Somehow she knew that behind the mask he was grinning.
The far wall was coming up fast. Time to turn. But she was going too fast to turn without tumbling right off the board. She had to slow down.
She decreased her speed, zigzagging all the while to make it harder for the Annihilator to hit her with his blaster. When she came to the gap between the last row of machines and the far wall, she banked to the right.
The moment she did, she heard a buzz she remembered hearing in Sweetwater, and her blood froze.
It was one of the Annihilator’s rockets. She pressed the board’s accelerator as hard as she could and hoped she would be able get out of the way in time.
Before she had gone ten feet the rocket exploded behind her, flinging her from the board. As she sailed through the air, flash-blind, ears ringing, skin and clothes torn by flying chips of concrete, she imagined that this was how a fly felt when someone swatted it.
She crashed to the ground, feeling a sudden, intense flare of pain in her right arm as she landed on it, then skidded along the floor, the concrete abrading rubbery curls of flesh from her face and arms. She came to rest halfway down the length of the machine she had been banking around.
For a moment she couldn’t move. Her whole body thrummed with the shock of the explosion. She couldn’t catch her breath. Pain radiated along her right arm like an electrical current.
Was the Annihilator coming? She didn’t know. She couldn’t see through the haze of smoke, and all she could hear was a steady staticky ringing. She had to assume he was, though.
She pushed herself to her feet and staggered to the far end of the machine. When she got there, she noticed the hoverboard lying in the corner where the rear wall met the side wall. She stumbled toward it, discovering as she got closer that it was only the bottom of the board’s metal covering. Where was the rest of it? It probably wouldn’t work anymore, but it was worth a shot.
As she hunted around for it, a flash of movement at the other end of the machine caught her eye, and she looked up, already knowing what she would see.
The Annihilator stood at the end of the main aisle, wrapped in the smoke that still unfurled from the hole he had blown in the wall, his wrist-blaster pointed ri
ght at her.
With a burst of energy she didn’t know she still had, she leaped to her left as he fired. The blast hit the wall, while she found herself crashing to the floor once again. This time, however, getting up was much easier. There was nothing like a madman aiming a laser blaster at you to get you motivated.
She ran on weak, wobbly legs down the aisle between the machines and the side wall, heading back toward the entrance. Which way would the Annihilator go? Would he follow her directly, or try to cut her off somewhere? She had no idea. And she couldn’t listen for him because her ears were still ringing.
Then she saw a metal door standing ajar about halfway down the side wall. Feeling a surge of hope, she changed course and made straight for it. The moment she did so, another laser blast sizzled straight through the spot she had just vacated, briefly casting her shadow onto the wall to her left.
Maggie ran, zigging and zagging and narrowly avoiding a series of laser blasts that the Annihilator fired as he raced after her. When she was about ten feet from the door, she veered toward the space between two machines on her right, hoping he would think her movement toward the door had been a feint and that her real goal was the main entrance.
It worked. As she spun around to head back toward the door, she saw out of the corner of her eye that the Annihilator had started to run toward the machines to intercept her and was now skidding to a clumsy halt. While he reversed direction with all the grace of a hippopotamus, she barreled through the open doorway and kicked the door shut behind her.
The door had a deadbolt, so she locked it, knowing full well it wouldn’t be much proof against someone with lasers and rockets at his disposal.
The room she had entered turned out to be a maintenance room. It was wider than it was deep, with steel shelving units lining the two long walls. The shelves were laden with tools, tarps, buckets, gloves, bits of wire, a can of paint…
Oh, please, let it not be empty, she thought as she hurried over to this latter item. Or dry.
Her hearing was improving. Behind her she faintly heard the doorknob rattle.
“You think this’ll stop me for long?” the Annihilator said, his voice muffled by both the door and the ringing in her ears. “I know there’s no way out of there. You are so fucked, girlie.”
“My name is not ‘girlie,’” she hissed through gritted teeth as she pulled the paint can from the shelf with the arm that wasn’t twanging with pain. The can was heavy, nearly full. She hadn’t prepared herself for the weight, and it started to slip from her grasp. She frantically re-grabbed its handle before it could fall, wincing as the thin band of metal dug into her fingers. Something shifted inside the can. She thought it might be liquid sloshing around, but the way things had been going, she figured she had better make sure before getting her hopes up.
Futilely trying to ignore the bangs and booms as the Annihilator kicked at the door—and the cracks and groans as the door began to give—she snatched a hammer from a nearby shelf to pry up the can’s lid. Her hands shook so much that at first she couldn’t get the claws under the edge of the lid. When she finally did, she yanked the lid up so hard it went flipping into the air, spraying droplets of white paint everywhere.
Still wet. Perfect.
She slid the hammer into her belt without even being aware she was doing it, then picked up the can and hurried toward the door.
The Annihilator nearly had it open. With each kick, the door shuddered inward several centimeters, and the area around the deadbolt was twisted like sun-warped plastic. It wouldn’t hold for more than one or two more kicks.
She was six feet from the door when it flew open and the Annihilator stepped into the room. Clutching the rim of the can with her good arm and supporting its bottom with her injured one, she cast the paint at him as he turned toward her. It splashed across his head and shoulders.
“Whafuck?” he said as he instinctively tried to wipe the paint off his lenses. All he did was smear it around.
Maggie charged forward and slammed the empty paint can into his helmet. It produced a satisfying clang. As she raised it to strike again, he swung his arm in a broad, blind arc. His fist struck her in the right breast and sent her staggering backward.
Lucky shot, she thought as she advanced again, trying to ignore the pain pulsing in her breast. The important thing was this: He was blind now unless he took his helmet off, which was what she was hoping he would do. Without his helmet he would be vulnerable.
He was too smart for that, though. Instead he said, “Tricky. Very tricky,” and then stood very still. She didn’t understand why until she moved a little and the can’s handle gave a faint creak. He immediately raised his blaster in the direction of the sound and fired.
His aim was off, and the blast streaked harmlessly past her. Before he could do anything else, she tossed the paint can to her right. Its handle rattled as it sailed through the air, and the Annihilator tracked the sound, firing shot after shot, riddling the can with holes.
When the can struck a shelf and clanged to the floor, he realized she had tricked him. He started to turn back toward her, but by then it was too late: While he had been blasting away at the empty paint can, Maggie had slipped the hammer from her belt, and now, clutching the handle in both hands, she swung it as hard as she could at his wrist-blaster.
The force of the impact juddered up her arms. A chunk of the blaster flew away and clattered beneath one of the metal shelves. The bulk of it remained attached, but now its front half was bent to the side at a forty-five degree angle.
Unaware of the extent of the damage, the Annihilator pointed the blaster at where he now knew she was and tried to fire it. The blaster made a faint hissing sound and quivered a little, but that was all.
“Oh, you cunt,” he said.
By then she had already brought the hammer up to strike him over the head. Unfortunately he guessed that was exactly what she would do, and raised the arm with the damaged blaster to shield his head. The moment the hammer struck his armored elbow, he punched at Maggie with his other hand and this time landed a solid blow to her stomach. She stumbled backward, slipped in the wet paint on the floor, and landed on her ass.
The Annihilator heard her fall and promptly swung one metal-booted foot at her. It swished past her right ear. Before he could pull his foot back, she kicked at the leg he was standing on, and since, unlike him, she could see clearly, she hit him square in the shin.
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have had much of an impact. His armor was thick enough to prevent a simple kick from hurting him, and her position was such that she was unable to put much force behind the blow. But he was off balance, with one leg in the air, and more importantly, he was standing in slick, wet paint, so Maggie’s blow sent his foot skidding out from under him. With a startled cry, he crashed face-down on the floor.
The moment he landed, Maggie darted forward and pounded his helmet with the hammer. She landed several solid blows, but they didn’t seem to have any effect, for as soon as he had recovered from the shock of falling, he punched at her again. His fist smashed into her right hip hard enough to make her scream and drop the hammer. He must have hit a nerve, because her entire right leg briefly flared with pain and then went tingly and half numb.
She pushed herself backward across the paint-streaked floor with her left foot. The Annihilator scrambled after her, periodically sweeping a hand through the air in front of him in hopes of nabbing her. She evaded him and continued scooting backward until her back thumped against something. She yipped and twisted around to see what it was. It turned out to be only one of the shelving units, but her surprise had stopped her long enough for the Annihilator to catch up to her. Before she knew what was happening, his hand seized her left ankle.
“Gotcha now, bitch,” he said.
She couldn’t break free, couldn’t even slip her foot out of her boot. His grip was too tight.
She grabbed the nearest shelf and tried to pull herself away from
him, her injured arm shrieking in pain. The whole shelving unit leaned forward, so she let go before it fell on her. She hadn’t realized the units were freestanding.
But that, she realized, could be her salvation. The shelving unit next to her, the one she had nearly brought down, ended at her ankle. At that point a separate unit extended on for about eight feet. And the Annihilator was right in front of that one.
The Annihilator rose to his knees, clearly preparing to stand up. Before he could do so, Maggie grabbed the edge of the shelving unit next to him with both hands, and pulled it away from the wall as hard as she could.
It started leaning immediately, and several items slid of the shelves and thumped on and around the Annihilator. A rusty vise the size of a raccoon rumbled off a shelf about halfway up and crashed onto the Annihilator’s jetpack, slamming him to the ground. He screamed. A moment later a motor only slightly smaller than the vise plummeted onto the back of his right knee, producing another, louder scream.
For a moment she didn’t think she would be able to pull the unit out far enough for it to fall, but she focused all her energy into one last tug, and with a brief screech of metal on concrete, it tilted forward a little more, hung in mid-air for what seemed like an unusually long time, then boomed down on the Annihilator.
As it fell, a large box full of cans of spray-paint that collectively must have weighed twenty pounds smashed onto her lower left leg. The pain was so bad she couldn’t even scream; she just hissed in enough air to fill a blimp.
When the pain receded enough for her to think coherently again, she saw that the Annihilator had let go of her leg and was squirming beneath the shelving unit and its spilled contents. He couldn’t find the leverage to push the unit off him.
“I’m gonna kill you, you fucking bitch!” he said.
Maggie tried to stand up, but both legs flared with pain the moment she put any weight on them. The leg the box of spray‑paint had fallen on hurt so badly she feared it was broken. It hurt far less to crawl on her hands and knees, so that’s what she did, making her way as quickly as she could down the side of the fallen unit, along the unit’s top, and toward the still-open doorway.
As she neared the door, she heard a crash behind her and looked back. The Annihilator had gotten halfway out from under the unit and removed his helmet, casting it aside as the useless lump of metal it had become.
He was a thin, rat-faced man, with lank black hair, a long lumpy nose that had obviously been broken many times, and virtually no chin whatsoever.
“You are so dead,” he said. Without the mechanical amplification of his helmet, his voice was reedy, almost girlish.
Maggie resumed her crawl. When she reached the doorway, the Annihilator let out a loud grunt. She looked back again, fearing he was on his feet and ready for revenge.
But no: Though he was all way the out from under the unit, he lay on his side clutching his right leg, his eyes squeezed shut, his lips peeled back from his gritted teeth. She realized he had tried to stand up, but the motor had injured his leg as badly as or worse than hers.
This development gave her a fresh burst of hope. Maybe she would make it through this after all.
She dragged her herself out the door and toward the nearest aisle between the machines. She kept hoping the pain in her legs would abate enough for her to be able to stand, but though it did let up, it was only a little bit.
When she was less than five feet from the mouth of the aisle, she heard the Annihilator say, “Say ‘goodnight,’ bitch.”
She looked back. He was on his hands and knees in the maintenance room doorway, his rat face made even more so by the sneering, toothy grin he was giving her.
He ducked his head so that the two remaining rockets in his jetpack were pointed right at her.
Her whole body went rigid with horror. Even her heart and lungs seemed to stop working. She had forgotten about the rockets.
There was a click from the jetpack, and she flinched, expecting a rocket to come streaking toward her. But none did. Instead the jetpack kept clicking like a clock.
And then she saw why: The side of the pack had been dented enough to prevent the rockets from leaving their tubes. It must have happened when the vise fell.
“What the fuck?” said the Annihilator, twisting his head around to look at the jetpack.
As he did so, the pack began shaking, and the clicks grew faster and faster until they blended together into a rattle. The rockets started to glow red-hot.
“Oh, you bitch!” cried the Annihilator. “You fucking—”
The pack exploded with a nova-bright flash and a flesh‑pummeling boom that left Maggie temporarily blind and deaf for the second time in ten minutes.
When the glare died down and she could see again, she saw that there wasn’t much to see. Where the Annihilator had lain a moment ago, there was now a smoking hole in the floor surrounded by bits of twisted metal and charred lumps that reminded her unpleasantly of the pig she had seen roasting on the spit in Asparagus Sam’s kitchen.
“That was for Bob,” she told the Annihilator’s remains.
She rested with her back against the machine for a few minutes, then devoured what little food and water she had left and tried to stand again. This time she was able to do it without falling down. Apparently nothing was broken after all.
Grimacing with every step, she hobbled out of the room and back into the maze of corridors.