The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [67]
Pushing frantically past his fellows, the man who had first questioned Riddick scrambled around him toward safety. “Flee now, talk later! The cull is on!”
Lowering his gaze, the Guv turned to Riddick. Without saying so, he had apparently come to a decision regarding the new prisoner. “Just don’t let the howlers catch you out. Find an empty cell, a crevice, anything. Make sure it’s solid—you can’t believe how strong the bastards are. If they think they can get at you, they’ll try to bite their way in right through the rock. And if you’re confronted, do not—do not— make eye contact. Play deaf and dumb and you might get away with it.” He started off in the opposite direction. “Or you might get to be lunch.”
Above, more guards were descending via the lift. One hound was giving its handler added trouble. Snarling and hissing, it snapped at the guard’s maulstick but was finally jabbed into compliance. Its ear tag identified it as #5, but the nameplate it wore was considerably more evocative: Thrash.
Circling the prison singly and in pairs, hellhounds did their work, making sure level after level was clear of prisoners. To their disappointment, it usually was. The slam on Crematoria had no need of elaborate scan and check systems, no need for guards to inspect every cell and hiding place individually. The hellhound pack did it for them. Furthermore, the pack could not suffer from systems failure, or electronic breakdown, or a power outage. Should any of those events take place, either as a result of an escape attempt or naturally occurring breakdown, all prison administration had to do to secure the entire complex was release the hellhounds and let them run free.
Years earlier, a trio of prisoners had tried just that. They had succeeded in shutting down all electronics in the hope of reaching the landing hangar and overpowering the crew of the regular supply ship. They were found in the transport tunnel, barely ten meters from the prison access station, with half a dozen snarling hellhounds on top of them. By the time the handlers managed to pull the pack off the would-be escapees, there was nothing left but a pile of bones, cracked and broken to extract the marrow.
That was the one and only time anyone had tried such a stunt.
Continuing on their patrol, multiple animals leaped gaps between tiers that no human could manage without mechanical aid. One brute, hungrier and more hopeful than its fellows, disdained the ramps in favor of sliding down the solidified lava fall. Its claws left grooves in the rock.
The overall effect was one of controlled panic, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. Stumbling over one another, shoving fellow prisoners out of the way, grim-faced convicts scrambled to find cells with doors that closed tight. Caught out far from their chosen abodes, one group resorted to grabbing a dehinged door off the ground and frantically propping it into place, wedging it tight with rocks and whatever other materials they could find.
Loping along one of the lower levels toward her own residence, Kyra found herself cut off. Ignoring the ramps, one of the hounds had come down a service chute. Half crazed with longing for the taste of human flesh they might be, but they weren’t stupid. Repetition prompted learning. One day she would not be surprised to see members of the pack using the lift in an attempt to beat unlucky prisoners to their cells.
Spotting her, the hellhound lengthened its already impressive stride, then leaped. Instead of trying to dodge the animal, she accelerated straight toward it. At the last possible instant she dropped, sliding feetfirst beneath it, and was up and running on the other side before the creature hit the ground. It turned within its own body length, but by that time she was on a rope and rappelling her way to the bottom of the cavern.
One group of guards was methodically patrolling the upper tiers, whistling menacingly as they walked. The second group made its way downward via the central lift. A couple of them carried powerful spotlights. These were used