Uthorrad, Inner City

 

Another tremor caused the door leading from the stairwell into the facility’s ground floor to rattle in its frame.
    “Behind me, Doc,” the sergeant said, and the dark-haired man and the corporal traded positions, the younger man reaching for the door’s handle.
“Wait,” the sergeant said. He hitched his duffel higher on his shoulder, and brought his long-arm into ready position, the barrel at eye level.
    Another rumble sent a shiver through the building.
    “Should the aftershocks be so close?” the dark-haired man asked.
    “Those aren’t aftershocks,” the sergeant said, and flexed two fingers off the trigger’s guard. “Stay behind me. Move when I move.” He wagged one, then the other, and when they returned to their standby-positions on the weapon’s grip, the corporal leaned on the door’s handle, wrenching it open towards himself.
    The sergeant swept the room outside once and walked with a strange bow-legged gait into the next room, the long barrel not wavering in the least as the man moved.
    The dark-haired man did his best, the materials in the office storage box clutched in his hands rattling and thumping against the sides of the container as he tried to mimic the sergeant’s movements.
    The corporal eased the door closed, then followed behind, standing closer to upright, but his own long-arm rifle at shoulder-height, sweeping the opposite direction of that of his sergeant.
    The next tremor was followed by a distant, but audible rumbling.
    “That wasn’t a quake,” the dark-hared man gasped. “That was an explosion!”
    “That didn’t sound like artillery.” The corporal swallowed, audibly.
    “Likely a small force of beast men managed to make it in before the shield-doors closed,” the sergeant muttered, almost to himself. He eased around a corner, and then kept the wall at his back as he scanned beyond the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
    In the distance, another dull roar. A smudge of orange-yellow light lit buildings a good way off.
    “Are those theirs?”
    “Theirs. Ours. Doesn’t much matter, so long as we keep them nice and distant.”
    “What if they—”
    “You drive in to this place?”
    The dark-haired man swallowed his question. “Drive? No, no. I take the lev, like just about everybody who—”
    “How many stops?”
    “Do you suppose the lev is even running?”
    “How many stops, Doc?”
    “Right. Probably not.” He hurried on before the sergeant’s sigh turned into another repetition. “Seven. No… eight. Five on the outer, and then a transfer to the—”
    “They couldn’t billet you any closer?”
    “I’ve been told the view from my accommodations is one of the better ones in the inner city. The walking park and pond is….”
    “The park? So… Northwest quadrant?”
    Was that a thin thread of hope in the sergeant’s voice?
    “If the northeast garrison can keep those beasties busy," he mused, "we might just make it unnoticed.”
    The dark-haired man frowned. “You mean we’re going to go back to my quarters. On foot?”
    The sergeant grunted. “We need someplace safe to hole up. At least until the sun comes up.”
    "If I'd known I was going to have visitors, I would have cleaned up a bit this morning."