Dan Simmons - Hardcase

He kept crawling.

Just above the control tower and—despite the shadows—Kurtz began doubting just how invisible he was < here. Everything felt exposed and tenuous.

The roof of Doc's control shack was flat and black. The catwalk below looked thin and shaky, and the three catwalks below that were obviously impossibly distant. The only good thing Kurtz could find to think about his present position was that it provided a good vantage point. Nothing moved in the cold, empty space, but much of his field of vision—and fire, if he had been carrying a better pistol or a rifle—was blocked by limerock heaps and hidden by shadows.

Kurtz lay on his side to give his elbows a rest and found that he could feel his heart pounding. Close up, the steel cables he had seen from far away looked even thinner and less substantial man they had from a distance. Each cable was thinner man his little finger, almost certainly was saw-toothed with steel burrs and razor-sharp loose strands, and was attached to the outside of the lower catwalk, making it difficult for him to see how he could even swing over the handrail down there without exposing himself for lethal lengths of time.

I'm wearing gloves , he thought. He flexed his fingers in the thin leather and almost laughed out loud at the thought of the cheap gloves protecting him from steel burrs.

Well, it was either start crawling back toward the wall or do something.

Kurtz thumbed the hammer down, secured the pistol tight in his waistband, swung over the catwalk, grabbed the cable, felt his heart leap into his throat, and then started down as quickly as he could, swaying, using his shoes and hands as brakes, going down hand over hand rather than running the risk of sliding. The control room was thirty feet below and ten feet to his right. There was nothing beneath him except for empty air and cold stone sixty feet down.

Kurtz reached the lower layer of catwalks, swung, missed his first try, and then swung again. He dropped onto the wider catwalk. It swayed, but not as violently as the higher one had.

Not resting for a second, Kurtz loped to the intersection of the three walkways, swung over the side to the man ladder, ignored the rungs, and slid down the outside rails in pure U.S. Navy fashion.

He hit the lowest catwalk hard, illuminated now by the glow through the dirty control-room windows just fifteen feet away. Kurtz rolled, crouched, and moved in a fast duckwalk to the wall of the control room.

Panting, he moved fast, kicking the unlocked door open and throwing himself into the room.

Doc's going to laugh his ass off , was his final thought before hitting and rolling.

Doc was beyond laughing. The old man was lying in front of the padlocked supply closet. There were at least four large-caliber entry wounds visible: three on his chest and one in his throat. Doc had bled out, and the pool of blood had covered a third of the floor space. Kurtz swung his little.38 left, right, and left again, but other than the corpse and him, the control room was empty.

Kurtz duckwalked closer to Doc's body, keeping his head below the level of the windows, ignoring the blood on his shoes and knees. The padlock to the back room was still secure.

Pistol still covering the doorway, Kurtz patted down Doc's old leather jacket and his bloody trousers.

No keys. Doc kept the padlock keys on a large ring with his other security-guard keys. The key ring was gone.

Kurtz crawled over and checked the desk drawers and even the low filing cabinets, but the keys were gone.

He considered shooting off the padlock, but even as he weighed the pros and cons, he heard footsteps on the floor below. One man. Running.

Shit! Kurtz reached up and turned off the single desk lamp. His eyes adapted quickly, and soon the rectangles of windows and doors seemed very bright. There was no more sound.

Kurtz grabbed Doc by his jacket collar and dragged the old man across the smeared floor. His old acquaintance felt very, very light, and Kurtz wondered idly if it was a result of having bled out.

I'm sorry, Doc , he thought and wrestled the old man to his knees and then upright in the open doorway, using his left arm around the body while he kept to the side of the door, peering around the door frame.

The first bullet hit Doc high in the chest again. The second took off the top of the old man's skull just at the hairline.

Kurtz let the body drop, raised the.38, and squeezed off three shots toward the point of muzzle flash at a bank of machinery about fifty feet away. Bullets whined off steel. Kurtz threw himself back just as four more shots blew out the window on his right and slammed against the open door to his left.

One gun firing , thought Kurtz. Probably 9mm semi-auto .

He knew that did not mean that there was only one shooter down there. He doubted if he could be so lucky.

Three more shots, very close together. One came in the open door, ricocheted off the steel ceiling, and struck sparks on the floor and two walls before embedding itself in the desk.

A couple of seconds of silence as the shooter slapped in a new magazine. Kurtz used the intermission to reload the three bullets he'd fired. His spent brass rolled into the black pool of blood behind him and stopped rolling.

Five more shots from below in immediate succession, the loud 9mm blast echoing. Four of the slugs ricocheted around Kurtz's small place. One of the ricochets slammed into Doc's upturned face with the sound of a hammer striking a melon. Another ripped the shoulder padding on Kurtz's topcoat.

This is not a good place , he thought. The shots were still coming from the heap of girders and dismantled machinery to the right of the control tower. It was quite possible—even probable—that a second and third shooter were waiting somewhere to his left, like duck hunters in a blind. But Kurtz had little choice.

Swinging into the doorway, he fired all five shots toward the darkness to his right. The shooter returned fire—four more shots—the last two ripping the air where Kurtz had stood only a second earlier.

He ran in the opposite direction along the catwalk, shaking the spent brass out of the.38's cylinder and trying to reload as he ran. He dropped a bullet, fumbled out another. Five in. He snapped the cylinder shut even as he ran full tilt.

Footsteps pounding below him. The shooter had run from cover and was running under the control room, firing as he went. A flashlight beam played along the catwalk. Sparks leaped and bullets whined ahead of and behind Kurtz. Could it be just the one shooter?

I couldn't be that lucky.

Kurtz knew that he could never make the extra hundred feet or so to the wall without being hit. Even if he could, he would be an easy target as he crawled down the ladder.

Kurtz had no intention of running all the way to the wall. Grabbing a suspension cable with his left hand, clinging tight to the.38 with his right, Kurtz swung up and over the handrail and dropped.

It was still a bone-smashing thirty feet to the mill floor, but Kurtz had jumped above the first pile of limerock he had reached, and the heap was at least fifteen feet high. Kurtz hit on the side away from the shooter—smashing into the sharp rock and rolling in a cascade of cinders and stones—but the slope helped break his fall without breaking his neck.

Kurtz rolled out in a landslide of black stone and was on his feet running again before the shooter came around the heap.

Two shots from behind, but Kurtz was already running full speed around the third pile. He slid to a stop and dropped prone, bracing the short-barreled revolver with his left hand clamping his right wrist.