Page 98 of The Hero Within
It was drier here, near the top, with the sluice gates below them. Mist clung in the air. Johnny nudged Eden up one more rung. Her hands shook with the effort.
"Lean on me," he offered, crawling up behind her legs.
Step by step they reached the top. Arik helped haul her over the lip, where she collapsed on the ground in a panting heap. They were in another tunnel that branched off toward the city. Lincoln hauled himself over the edge behind them.
Eden groaned. "You might have to go on... without me."
He could just make out Arik pressing a finger to his lips up ahead.
"Easy now, darlin'," Johnny whispered, stroking her hair as he squatted beside her. His thighs ached too. "We're getting closer to the surface. Got to keep your voice down."
The other two wargs vanished into the darkness, and despite the fact he and Arik were getting along like two cats trapped in a burlap sack together, he was actually grateful they were there.
Gave him the grace to look after Eden, rather than worrying about what was out there in the dark.
Eden sat with her head bent, her entire body trembling, and her forehead resting on his thigh. She didn't look like she could move.
"You got any more water?" she asked. "I've got a headache."
He put his pack aside and handed over his flask. "Not long now, angel. Night's falling, which means we can get some rest."
"Where?"
"That's what Arik's seeing to."
She slumped against him after she'd drunk her fill. Johnny rubbed her shoulder. A part of him didn't like seeing her in so much pain, but he was helpless to do anything about it. Just had to keep telling himself all she needed was rest.
Footsteps sloshed in the tunnel. Johnny sighed in relief as he turned his head. "It's about damned time—"
He broke off abruptly as a shadow loomed in the mouth of the tunnel, clad in an array of high-tech body armor. A tall figure with a shaved head, and warg-silver eyes that shone in the faint moonlight. Every inch of him looked hard and well-fed, and his boots gleamed in a way no Wastelander's ever had.
Oh, shit.
"Who the hell are you?" demanded the stranger.
Shoving Eden behind him, Johnny reached for the knife at his belt and threw it in one smooth move toward the stranger's throat. "Stay behind me, Eden!"
The stranger flung up a defensive hand, the knife glancing off the black gauntlet on his arms. He pressed his fingertips to some sort of earpiece, and Johnny suddenly realized he couldn't let the bastard alert his friends.
Driving to his feet, he started sprinting.
Johnny slammedinto the other warg, and Eden went down on her knees as the rope between them jerked. She wrenched forward, scrabbling to grab something as she was hauled across the floor after them.
"Arik!" she screamed.
The two wargs tumbled over each other, Johnny getting the upper hand and slamming the soldier’s head into the concrete. A pair of claws slashed up and jammed into Johnny's side as the stranger bucked beneath him, and he went flying over the stranger's head.
Eden grabbed the rope hooked from her harness to Johnny's and jerked it up sharply just as the stranger made to leap over it. He went flying forward, thrown off balance, and Johnny managed to get to his feet, black spatters of what she suspected was blood splashed across his jeans.
They slammed together.
Over and over, wrestling and punching. In the dim moonlight, she could barely make out who was who. She saw her shotgun strapped to her pack, and scrambled over the floor toward it, jerking it free and—
Freezing.
Arik had cautioned them over and over against making any loud noise. The dam would be lightly patrolled, but all it would take would be one mistake to have the entire Confederacy raining down on them.
The rope around her waist jerked.
