by Jack Heath
Ash's eyes widened until the lids hurt. What the hell?
Then she looked down. And stumbled backwards, stifling a scream.
The miners were strewn all over the floor of the tunnel. Most had exit wounds in their backs. The rest had imploded heads. Ash could smell the blood, rank and coppery.
Someone had opened fire from outside the mouth of the tunnel. At first Ash imagined a psychopath with a machine gun, sweeping it from side to side with his finger on the trigger, possibly cackling maniacally – and then she realised that the accuracy was too good for that. Almost every shot seemed to have hit someone in the head or the heart.
A sniper? No, too slow – a sniper wouldn't have been able to hit them all before they realised they were under attack and started running.
Then what on Earth had happened here?
'Psst!'
Ash jumped. Jennings, the woman who'd been drilling, was crouched against the wall in the darkness. Her hand was covering a thigh wound – blood bubbled up between her fingers. Her face was white.
'Run!' she hissed at Ash.
And then her head snapped sideways, a half-second before the sound of the gunshot reached Ash's ears.
She clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream. Her mind was whirling. A sniper couldn't do this, she realised. But a dozen snipers could.
And even as Ash had this thought, she heard them. Boots thumping, ammo belts jingling. Sprinting towards the tunnel from outside.
Her paralysis broke and she ran, heart in her mouth, back down into the darkness towards the cavern...
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