41 - 9 - Resists Suction

Back down the tunnel. Left turn, left again. Onto the platform of a subway station. The light was dim and reddish.
Suddenly . . .

Massive suction!

I was being pulled toward the rails by an intense, all-consuming suction! I had to fight against it!

I ran for the exit, but I was barely moving forward. Like that horrible nightmare where your legs feel like fifty-pound weights. Or you're running through water.

I looked down at the rails ten feet below. They were covered in a dirt-packed ooze, seething and twisting with Taxxons!

It was a living stream of Taxxons. Traveling, legs pulled in. Being sucked like lugers along an underground highway, red eyes jiggling as they flew past.

This was Taxxon Mass Transit.

And I was six feet from being sucked in with them!

"Ahh!"

THWAP! thaap!

THWAP!

Two Taxxons rolled out of the suction stream. Lumbered onto the platform! Mouths full of razor-sharp teeth snapped for me. Hundreds of clawed feet powered toward me.

Noooo!

I grabbed for a bench and pulled myself closer to it, fighting the intense suction. Then past it. I grabbed for the trash can bolted to the floor, pulled myself past. Column! Bench! Sign! Trash can!

I looked over my shoulder. The Taxxons were struggling against the suction, too, but they were bigger and they knew something I didn't. They had dropped to the floor and were slinking along. Racing like salamanders.

Bench! Column! Column! Pull!

They would overtake me.

Gate!

I flung it open. The exit stairs! I strained. I reached.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"

Something cut into my leg. I twisted. Jammed a fist into an airbag chest. Slammed the gate on gaping jaws and a probing tongue.

Then I clambered toward daylight. Up, up, up. Sweating. Gasping. Leg nearly crippled with pain. Head throbbing from running into the turnstile.

The street! The pavement! Gasping breath after breath of fresh air, I collapsed.
Rolled onto my back. And froze.