Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

She zipped herself up and said to Karp, "We've got to get him out of here. He'll bleed to death. Do you think you can-" She stopped because just then the dog snarled, half a brick spun by her ear and shattered against the sewer wall, and the mole people attacked. There were about fifteen of them, armed with bricks and lengths of sharpened rebar and pieces of steel pipe. Marlene shouted, "Sweetie! Ocideti!" which is "Kill!" in Sicilian, the mastiff's command language, an order never before received but one he knew well how to handle. The dog charged.

The Kel-lights made good clubs, except that after a couple of solid hits the bulbs went out, and they fought in virtual darkness, lit only by the dying fires reflected off the curved ceiling. Karp was in his homeplate stance, batting two-handed, wailing away, smashing faces and limbs, and all the time possessed by a sense of unreality: this is not really happening. Lucy was on his right, covering his right, covering his back. Marlene was on his left, standing over Dugan, striking at anything that came within range. Somewhere out in front the dog was doing good work, its progress indicated by shrieks of pain. The attack was uncoordinated-the attackers were not soldiers-but there were far too many of them. Karp felt something smash against the side of his knee, and he went down. A ragged, blood-spattered man stood over him with a weapon raised over his head. Karp found he could see remarkable detail, as in slow-mo in the telecast of a sporting event. The man who was going to kill him had chosen a piece of rebar about three feet long with a lump of concrete on the end of it.

There was something strange about the light now, and Karp could see more detail. The man's face, he was missing two teeth. He wondered if this was an effect of incipient death, or whether he was already dying. Karp tried to kick at the man to throw off his aim, and marvelously his attacker staggered back and disappeared. Karp's ears had been ringing since the bomb blast, but thought he could make out a series of flat explosions. More hallucinations? He lifted himself up on his elbows. No, someone was holding a flashlight and shooting at the shapes in its beam. He saw men fall, and flee, until there were no more. The echo of running feet died away.

The man with the flashlight came closer and shone his light onto Karp, who shielded his eyes with his hand. The light fell onto a corpse at Karp's feet: the man with the rebar club. A familiar voice said, "How about that shooting? You gonna indict me for that one, too?"

"Cooley," said Karp.

"Yeah, Cooley. What a fucking mess! Where's Canman?"

Karp was silent.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Karp! He's the fucking slasher. Where is he?"

Marlene stepped into the light and pointed. "He's up there, in that side tunnel. We've got a man badly hurt here. He needs medical attention."

"Oh, Jesus!" cried Cooley after a brief inspection of the wounded priest. "You fucking people! Look, can the two of you get him out?"

"No," replied Marlene. "We'd never get him through that crack we all came down. Someone has to go out to the surface and get help-paramedics, lights, stretchers… Cooley, where's your partner?"

"Somewhere else, I don't know-I'm down here alone."

"Alone? But… I… there was another man following us."

"Lady, I don't know what you're talking about," said Cooley. "I came down here by myself."

Karp shot to his feet, his knee on fire, his heart leaping. "Where's Lucy?"

Cooley shone his light around, cursing. She was gone.

Lucy woke in pain. Her head hurt, and she couldn't remember anything after hearing the first explosion and running down the tunnel. Canman, and he was throwing bombs at… she remembered the men, the mole men. She opened her eyes. There was light, reflected off brick, electric light, dim with moving shadows. Someone was tugging hard at her coverall, and every time he did it, her head bounced against brick and a rocket of pain went through her head. She tried to sit up, but a weight was pressing her down. She felt air on her arms. A man was kneeling over her, pulling her coverall off. She could smell his stink, like the monkey house at the zoo, or maybe it was coming from the other man kneeling on her shoulders. The coverall was down to her waist. The word rape popped at length into her head. She started involuntarily and squirmed and kicked so that the man who was yanking her boots off fell over with a loud curse. The man kneeling on her punched her in the mouth. She blacked out again, and when she came to, her T-shirt had been ripped off, and one of the men was pulling down her jeans.

Lucy's hand moved over the ground, feeling for a loose brick, some weapon, but found nothing that would do. It hardly mattered. Given her mother's trade, she knew a lot about rape, about violence generally, and she understood that it was hopeless, that a thin, unarmed girl, however clever, could not keep two average-sized men from doing whatever they wanted to with her body.

Her jeans were off. She felt a tug at her waist, heard a rip, and she was naked. The man stood up and dropped his pants, then dropped the other pair he had under that. Lucy closed her eyes and started to pray. She didn't pray for rescue, but properly for the strength not to despair and to survive with her spirit intact, and if they were going to kill her afterward, for God's mercy and the forgiveness of sins. And she also prayed for the souls of the men.

He was kneeling now, and she felt her legs jerked roughly apart. She knew it was going to hurt terribly. The man gave a peculiar bubbling cry, and Lucy felt drops of hot liquid fall on her thighs and belly. She knew what that was; her skin crawled.

Then a shout, a sudden violent movement, a yell. She felt a heavy weight fall across her lower legs, and suddenly the man was no longer kneeling on her shoulders. She opened her eyes. The man who had just been about to rape her was flopping about like a landed fish, gurgling and clutching his throat. The gush of blood pouring past his hand looked black in the dimness. He arched his back once, collapsed, and lay still. There were noises behind her, grunting, gasping, the sound of feet on loose stones. Men, fighting. She could see the moving shadows of their struggle cast onto the ceiling by the glow of the flashlight lying there near the corpse. She rolled onto her knees and crawled until she found her coverall and clumsily dragged it on, willing her shaking hands to behave. She found a boot, put it on, hopped around to find the other one, stumbled, fell.

A cry of pain from the darkness, and she also heard a little pattering sound as of droplets falling on something hard, and then the soft thump of a body falling. She snatched up the flashlight and was not entirely surprised when David Grale walked into its beam.

Cooley said, "I better go look for her. One of you should stay with Father Dugan, and the other one should go back and get help. I got a radio, but it won't work here."

"I'm coming with you," said Karp and Marlene, almost as one.

Cooley knelt and pulled a Smith Airweight.38 from an ankle holster. "Whoever's gonna stay should take this. But there's no point in anyone coming with me to look. It'll just mean another person I got to watch out for."

"Butch, you should go for help," said Marlene. "I'll take the gun and stay with Mike."

Karp rose to his full height and said in a loud voice, articulating every syllable, "I am not leaving this fucking tunnel without my daughter. Let's go, Cooley!"

With that he walked off in the direction in which the mole people had retreated. Cooley gave Marlene the.38 and stalked off after Karp.

She sat down next to the priest, checked his tourniquet, examined his face. He was pale and clammy. "Mike, how do you feel?"

"Not that great. I'm cold."