Enemies & Allies (24 page)

T
HE TWISTED FOREST OUTSIDE THE GULAG PROVIDED
plenty of places to hide as they made their way back to the Batplane.

Dragging Superman in a fireman’s carry away from the gulag’s perimeter fences, Batman plunged into the sharp-edged shadows, seeking refuge among the twisted trunks and black branches. The searchlights couldn’t find them here.

Darkness, shadows, and fear had always been his advantages. Now he had to call upon his skills more than ever.

Gunshots and sirens rang out behind them. He had hoped some of Superman’s strength would return as they put more distance between themselves and the quarry, but the meteorite’s taint also permeated the forest. Now it seemed to ooze up from the ground wherever they stepped.

Get to the cycle…to the plane—away from here and out of Siberia.

“How much farther?” Superman sounded a little stronger. “We aren’t going to…walk home?”

“Leave it to me. I have it all planned.”

“You…said that before.”

“I meant it.”

Taking advantage of the tumult they had left behind, the rest of the sleeping gulag prisoners seized their chance to break out of their barracks and run loose, tearing down fences. All those diversions would keep the guards busy, but the casualties would be horrific. Given all the gunfire behind them, dozens, if not hundreds, of slaves must already have been dead.

More worrisome, though, were the crashing, ferocious noises that came from the stunted forest behind them. Something else was pursuing them, something large. Something
hunting
them.

Superman raised his head and forced himself to stand on his own. “I’ll try to walk.”

“Right now we need to run.”

They both saw movement between the skeletal branches—huge forms, each one swollen to twice the size of an average man, with pulsing veins standing out against translucent skin. These twisted beings might once have been gulag slaves…humans succumbing to prolonged exposure to meteorite radiation. Seeing their targets, the beasts lunged forward.

Time to fight. He wasn’t sure he had enough large-scale and small-scale weapons, diversions, and tricks left in his utility belt. He would have to be resourceful. As always.

Three of the five horrific mutants wore grayish gulag outfits; the other two clung to tattered Soviet military uniforms. One of the mutant officers, like a territorial animal howling in rage, grasped the twisted trunk of the nearest withered pine, snapping it in two; the broken tree’s sap bled green.

“Keep…running,” Superman said.

Focus on the mission. Escape. No need to battle these monsters.

Batman snatched a flash grenade from his utility built and threw it toward the five beast-men. He shielded his eyes with a dark gauntlet, and a supernova-bright flash seared the night air. In the dancing afterimage, the trees looked like a Gothic woodcut of horrors. Unnatural knots and burls in the trunks looked like screaming faces. The branches thrashed and writhed in agony, as if burned by the flash.

He and Superman kept running, picking up speed. The mutants followed.

It seemed unlikely that the tools and weapons remaining in his utility belt could take care of these beasts. He had a new grappling hook, a large Batarang, and seven of the tiny Bat-shuriken, though considering the mass and bulk of the monsters, he doubted the paralytic sedative would be strong enough. There were several more items, but he would have to improvise. He might need to use everything in their effort to get away. Withdrawing elastic wires and tiny weighted bolos, he quickly devised trip cords between trees. One of the lumbering beast-men smashed into them, tangled himself, and uprooted a tree, unable to snap the high-tensile-strength cord.

Growing gradually stronger, Superman pushed himself forward, sweat running down his brow. Another chemical grenade dispersed burning pepper smoke that curled outward to sting their pursuers’ eyes.

Guessing that they must be close, Batman activated a gauntlet switch—a remote operation system that could summon the cycle. Out there, the engine would be turning over, powering up, the guidance system homing in on his signal.

But the creatures were upon them now. He and Superman would have to fight them hand-to-hand.

The two former Soviet officers were the first to attack. Superman pounded his fists against the monsters, but their bodies were impregnated with the very contamination that had weakened him in the first place, rendering his blows ineffectual. With one desperate punch, he drew blood—emerald blood—the exposure to which nearly drove him to his knees.

But he wasn’t the only one who could fight. Batman called upon jujitsu, tae kwon do, karate, and techniques from a dozen other schools of combat so obscure that few Westerners had ever heard of them. He struck and struck again, hand blows, full kicks, flying body slams.

These monsters, not trained in subtlety, relied on sheer brute force. A hammer-blow to his cowl sent him reeling, and he could barely see straight. Despite the armor and bulletproof fibers of his suit, he felt his ribs crack when one of their opponents landed another locomotive punch. He staggered backward.

From a packet inside his left armored glove he released a cloud of potent anesthetic mist…which did nothing more than surprise his attacker.

He spun about on a boot toe and went after the nearest monster with a leaping kick, driving a hard heel into its jaw and causing it to stagger back. His reinforced gauntlets added power to each punch as he struck and struck once more. He easily ducked a sluggish roundhouse punch, then pounded the beast’s hairy solar plexus. His skills were the only close-range weapons he had left. His full attack was barely enough to make the monsters pause.

But a pause was all he needed.

The automated cycle roared in from among the trees, following the locator device in his armor. Calling to Superman, he dove for the cycle and threw himself on top of it. “Here! Behind me!”

The barely stunned mutant creatures loped toward them, but Batman had the controls now and could see through the night scope. After Superman collapsed onto the cycle behind him, he accelerated hard, increasing his available engine power by switching off the stealth mode. They roared away, the heightened sound of the engine louder than the mutants as they rapidly left the creatures behind.

A
FTER RETRIEVING HIS WHIP, GENERAL CERIDOV STOOD
surveying the massacre. The fences were torn down, and the prisoners had run amok. Seventeen of his incompetent guards were dead—killed not by Superman or that other costumed intruder but by the pathetic gulag slaves themselves! He would not be reporting that detail to Moscow.

In frustration, Ceridov cracked his whip in the air, but not many prisoners remained alive for him to strike. Under the harsh searchlights, the general did not like what he saw. He had a lot of cleaning up to do, and he would need to request an entirely new complement of political prisoners from Party headquarters. Much had to be accounted for.

And unless he recaptured Superman, he would never convince Lex Luthor to provide a superior power reactor to replace the faulty one that had served the Ariguska gulag for years.

When the five lumbering mutants returned empty-handed but still demanded the mythical cure he had promised, that was the last straw. Though their bodies were enlarged and their muscles had grown into lumpish tumors, their brains seemed to have atrophied. The disgraced Soviet generals glowered at him; the three former gulag slaves, now stronger than motorized construction machines, carried a confused violence about them. Apparently in some dim corner of their primitive brains, they expected that Ceridov would still take care of them.

Seeing the monsters approach, Ceridov called for his surviving guards to stand with him, holding their Kalashnikovs ready. The mutants might have been stupid and ugly, but he doubted they would try anything. “I told you to capture two people! Where are they?”

The five creatures clenched their fists and stirred, looking uneasily at the armed guards. An unmistakable glint of vicious hunger shone from behind their eerily green eyes.

Ceridov doubted they’d be articulate enough to explain what had happened, but he didn’t want to hear their excuses anyway. He lashed out with his whip, specifically targeting Endovik. The whip’s end sliced a deep cut that oozed green blood.

The second lash failed to touch any skin. Endovik caught the end of the whip in his massive fist and yanked so hard that he nearly dislocated Ceridov’s shoulder. The monster seized the braided whip in both hands and shredded it. Dubrov lunged, and the other mutants roared as they attacked.

The gulag guards had already seen many of their comrades slain by rebellious prisoners, and they did not hesitate to open fire now, peppering the mutants with bullets. But the five creatures brushed the gunfire aside as though the bullets were no more than biting blackflies.

Leaving the guards, Ceridov ran. He blocked out the screaming and yelling behind him, as well as the sickening ripping sounds that followed.

He ran into his headquarters building and threw the wooden door shut, slamming the bolts home. Inside the fenced and isolated gulag, he had never needed a particularly sturdy lock, but within moments the creatures began pounding on not only the door but the thick log walls themselves. The tongue-and-groove paneling with its unsettling wood-grain patterns rattled loose from the walls.

The door splintered and flew inward like a hailstorm of kindling. One of the thick walls was literally torn apart as huge hands ripped the logs away. Part of the building collapsed, crushing the potbellied stove in the corner.

Ceridov dove for the lone window on the opposite side as the mutants pushed in after him. Tarred rags had been stuffed around the sill to prevent drafts. Now the general used his broad shoulder to smash the glass. The window was barely large enough for him to squeeze through, but he did, and he fell onto the dirt and a patch of hard snow outside.

Behind him, a roaring Dubrov jammed his massive head and shoulder through the window, but his body was too large to fit. Jagged shards of glass tore his flesh as he squirmed, finally splintering the logs and smashing the window opening wider.

Ceridov was already running across the compound. The soldiers’ barracks and the prisoners’ quarters were even flimsier constructions than his headquarters, offering no viable shelter. The reactor control room and the containment building, on the other hand…he would find shelter there. Those were the sturdiest structures in the gulag.

When he heard the growling snarls behind him—and no further gunshots because all the guards were dead—Ceridov put on additional speed. His right arm was numb from when the monster had torn the whip out of his hand, and he couldn’t tell if any bones were broken. At the moment, shock and adrenaline kept him from feeling pain. He flung open the steel door of the reactor building and slammed it behind him. He hoped the lock would hold.

The control room held a set of gray metal stations, each with a cathode-ray tube displaying black and white images from the adjacent reactor room. A constellation of dials, gauges, and black Bakelite knobs covered the walls. The needles showed that the reactor was operating at maximum level, but so far nothing had edged into the red.

The Soviets had once been so proud of this program. In June 1954, the “Peaceful Atom” facility in Omsk had been the world’s first nuclear plant to generate electricity—another example of Soviet technological superiority. Many more of the graphite-moderated power reactors had been built across the Soviet Union. This one was much smaller, an experimental design that not only powered the gulag but provided many radioactive isotopes for Soviet nuclear research.

Now he hoped it would offer him the protection he needed.

The blows against the steel door were like artillery shells fired from a destroyer. The massively overgrown fists continued to pound, and the door started to buckle.

Ceridov began to wonder whether the control room might be a trap rather than a shelter. He had no way out other than through the large bulkhead door into the reactor chamber itself. And with the reactor running so high, the radiation levels inside would be lethal.

Bolts popped from the steel door’s hinges, and a huge blunt-fingered hand pushed its way through, bending the door further.

At the control bank, he tried to shut down the reactor but quickly realized that it would take too long. The fuel rods were all in place. It was a water-cooled reactor, filled with boiling liquid that pumped out high-pressure steam. Graphite moderators surrounded the rods, and thick, hot pipes circulated the steam through turbines. Even the heavy lead shielding would not be sufficient to protect him.

With sick fatalism, Ceridov decided that the mutants would be more immediately lethal than the radiation. He ran to the hatch and activated the emergency releases. His throat was dry. He was panting too hard to think. Fortunately, the gulag’s engineers had not bothered to install safety systems or protective interlocks.

The monsters smashed through the main door just as Ceridov opened the bulkhead. Shoulder to massive shoulder, Endovik and Dubrov charged into the control room, their bestial lips drawn back to expose teeth ready to rip out Ceridov’s throat. Very little remained of their once proudly worn military uniforms.

Ceridov stumbled into the reactor chamber and swung the heavy bulkhead door shut behind him. Barely a second after the deep clang, he heard the creatures pounding at the thick barrier.

The air inside the reactor chamber had a sizzling humidity filled with crackling steam. Ceridov staggered backward, trying desperately to recall if there was a second exit. He knew the radiation was all around him, ripping into his cells, poisoning him. But if he could move quickly enough…

With a concerted effort, the mutated creatures tore the bulkhead door off its hinges and hurled it into the reactor chamber. The thick metal rectangle smashed into the nest of coolant pipes, shattering them. Geysers of steam erupted from pipe breaches, and reactor fluid levels began to drop as boiling water rushed out of the containment vessel.

Dubrov and Endovik reveled in the chaos, splashing through the water that swirled furiously around their ankles, not even feeling the heat. The mutated gulag slaves threw themselves into the destruction with primeval relish.

Automatic warning alarms began to sound, along with evacuation sirens. In the control room, all the gauges must have been well into the red, but the five mutants didn’t seem to care. They knocked loose pressure control wheels, smashed lights, waded forward into the thickening radioactive steam.

“Cer-i-dovvvvv!” one of the disgraced generals yelled.

Fleeing deeper into the deadly maze, the Soviet general burned his hand on a hot metal surface. Inside the containment tubes, coolant fuel bubbled and churned until the transparent observation windows blew out, spraying contaminated water everywhere.

A lattice of pipes was uprooted and thrown aside, and Endovik stood there, his glowing green eyes rolling and crazed. Seeing his prey, he yowled, and the other mutants came running. Their skin seemed to be rotting now, burned and scabbed, beginning to fall off.

General Ceridov scrambled for a way to get back out. The monsters had torn off the vault door. If he could just retreat outside, he could run past the fences, hide in the twisted forest.

Bathed in radiation, he knew he was already dead, being cooked from the inside out. But letting these mutants tear him limb from limb seemed the worst possible way to die.

Ceridov could barely see through the steam and flashing red lights as the monsters advanced toward him. Dubrov approached from the other side.

Spitting curses and shouting, Ceridov ran toward them. Dubrov and Endovik, grinning horribly, closed in to intercept him.