Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [133]
You find a weakness in your enemy’s defenses and you attack it there, her mother had told her repeatedly.
Its eyes, she thought suddenly. Its eyes look vulnerable. But she couldn’t be certain without testing her theory, and if she was wrong, she was probably dead.
She tried to move and couldn’t. She could feel herself shaking she was so afraid.
But the centipede was gathering itself for a rush at Cheney, who lay thrashing against the far wall, still struggling to rise, his dark coat matted with blood, and there was no time left to be afraid. Sparrow slid sideways down the opposite wall, away from Owl and Squirrel, trying not to draw attention to herself. She noticed how the insect’s armor folded back on itself from one section to the next, forming a series of overlapping plates. The plates were designed to protect it from a frontal attack. But if she could get behind it or even to one side of it, she might be able to jam the prod between the plates and get up into the soft inner parts of the creature. It didn’t seem nearly enough, but it was all she could think to do.
She was not big and strong like her mother. She was not skilled or experienced. She was only thirteen years old. But she was her mother’s daughter, and she had vowed to make her mother proud.
She took a deep breath and charged the centipede from just behind its head, both hands gripping the insulated handle, her index finger locked down hard against the charge trigger. The centipede saw her coming and wheeled toward her, the gaps in its armor where she hoped to attack scissoring shut. The terrible jaws opened, and its feelers reached out like tentacles. She jabbed the prod at its head in desperation, trying to strike the eyes, but the feelers knocked her blows aside. Even so, the prod had a measurable effect, and the insect’s huge body shivered as the electrical charge jolted it. Sparrow struck at it again and again, but she couldn’t find an opening between the armored plates and was finally knocked aside by one of the skittering legs, her arms and face cut and bleeding.
Instantly, the centipede came after her, and she knew she was dead.
But suddenly Cheney was there, back on his feet and attacking from the other side, lunging wildly at the vulnerable legs, ripping and snarling as if gone completely mad. The attack caught the centipede by surprise, and it curled back on itself, jaws snapping at this new attacker. As it did so, it spread wide the plates on Sparrow’s side. Seeing her chance, she scrambled to her feet and rushed in with the prod and jammed it deep into the opening just behind the head, the prod on full power, the trigger locked down. The centipede jerked as if it had been slapped by a giant hand, and Sparrow could see flashes of electricity spurting from inside the plates and could smell something terrible burning. Cheney was down again, his strength gone, his back toward the wall. But the centipede had no time for Cheney. It had lost all interest in anything but ridding itself of the prod, which was lodged now between its body sections.
Sparrow didn’t wait. As the creature thrashed across the floor, fighting to dislodge the prod, she snatched up the spare that had been resting against the wall next to Owl, powered it on, and charged in again. It was a more dangerous effort this time, the centipede’s body twisting and jerking wildly, its nervous system gone out of control. One wrong step and she would be pinned beneath it. But she would not be turned back now. She ignored the blows she took from the spiky legs, ignored the blood in her eyes and the pain that racked her body, and found an opening midway back in the spiky body where she buried the prod all the way up to her hands between the plates. The centipede reacted at once, writhing in agony all the way back across the