Shadow of the Tomb Raider--Path of the Apocalypse

by S. D. Perry

  He studied the walls of the overhead passage. He couldn’t get through here, not without a rope. The climb was impossible, a bottleneck about fifteen meters up. Unless Croft could hang like a bat, she wasn’t going to come this way either. A dead end.

  “But if her friends have gotten loose, we may need to rethink our exit strategy.”

  Sergei wasn’t wrong, although the idea that those two men had miraculously taken out half the team was too fantastic to invest in. Far more likely that the radios had finally crapped out.

  “Do a recon, try to get a visual,” Harper said. “Then come back. Maintain radio silence until you hear from me unless you’ve got something to report. We’re going to have to come back up through the maze to get out, we may need a relay.” They had rope. He’d much rather climb than have to go back through those tunnels… But the maze hadn’t been all that difficult. Unnerving, maybe—the dark and the dreadful lizards and the stink—but not difficult.

  “Copy, yes, sir,” Sergei said, almost eagerly.

  Harper moved back to the passage he’d taken in, turning off his light, listening for movement. Croft might not know that the climb was impossible, she would come looking… Unless Mitchell had killed her already.

  He imagined Croft bleeding, crawling through the dark, convinced that her salvation was in front of her. She would lurch out in front of him begging for her life and he would shoot her down, and leave her to the lizards.

  And then maybe have Sergei bring that rope in, after all. He didn’t want to walk back through the creeping, whispering chambers. God only knew what diseases were breeding down here. And what if his batteries died? They hadn’t packed for an extended trip. Hux had been carrying spares but Hux was gone.

  Killed by Croft.

  His anger kept him warm, kept him breathing. He waited, willing Croft to him, praying that he was to be the instrument of her death.

  * * *

  Mitchell took off west, leaving a small trail of blood behind. Not a mortal injury—Lara was sure she’d only grazed her—but between that and the hole in her throat, she was out of the hunt, at least for the moment. Lara considered following, finishing the madwoman off—for who else but a psychopath would keep trying to stab her when they had a gun? But she was likely only minutes from the climb, and might have a clear shot at the exit.

  Except for whoever else it was that you heard walking through. She pulled a new bowstring from her pack as she hurriedly crept down a western-veering passage, stopping at an alcove long enough to repair the broken weapon and her gear. She pulled the string over one end of the bow and put the other end in its grooves, then stepped through, holding the bow fast with her feet, curving it against her body and pushing it forward to hook the string at the top. The belt took a minute longer; she made four cuts through the leather, two on each side, and patched it together with carabiners. It hung lower than she liked but was good enough. Blood oozed from where the knife had sliced into her belly, but the cut wasn’t deep. She taped it anyway, wondering if Mitchell would come after her again.

  Of course she’ll come after you. She’s a killer with a thing for knives and that was her second try. Trinity was an organization of psychopaths with funding. Dressing it up with devotion to some grand end result didn’t negate who they were, at their core.

  People who kill indiscriminately? Who can shrug off the deaths they cause, rationalize killing their enemies?

  She had a sudden vivid flash of that child clinging to the cross on top of the church, reaching for her, framed by the rushing water in the streets below. The look on that small face.

  Don’t do this. Concentrate.

  Lara stepped out of the alcove and started forward again. She hit a dead end at the next branch and had to backtrack, but the second opening she tried carried her north. The narrow passage went up, a gentle, steady incline, but the tunnel was winding and uneven. She had to crouch or crawl for most of it, and was starting to think of going back when she saw the end of the passage ahead of her, by the shaded light of the LED—the passage narrowed to a slot that opened up at the top, wide enough for her to climb out but barely. She put out her light and edged toward the opening.

  It was quiet, but she got the sense that the opening on the other side of the hole was a big one—the press and quality of the air, the faint roar of echoing space.

  Please let this be it. She’d come far enough, she was sure, to have reached the end of the maze. But was someone guarding it? She didn’t hear anything but wasn’t sure that she would, unless the watcher was quite close or actively moving.

  Throw something.

  Lara reached for her belt, for one of her grease pencils— and then grabbed a flare instead, pulling the cap off. If there was someone in the chamber, she’d get a clear shot at them. If there wasn’t, she’d be able to cover herself getting to whatever was next.

  Lara struck the flare and tossed it.

  Two shots blasted. The shooter was less than three meters down and close enough that she might have hit him with the burning stick.

  The gun’s echoes faded and she heard movement, fast steps—and then two more shots were fired at the rocks in front of her, chips raining over her shoulders. A second later, another shot fired, the round off to her right a few meters—and then another shot, hitting above her position and farther east.

  They must be aiming at openings in the wall. The lone shooter didn’t know where the flare had come from, but clearly, there were several options.

  There were a few more quick steps. The shooter ducked into a passage beneath her and stopped. The hiss of the flare echoed at her but the gunman had gone still.

  Lara raised her bow up into the opening, following it with a quick look when no one shot at it, taking in the glowing red well before ducking back down. If it was the climb she was looking for—and she feared that it was—she was out of luck. The walls of the passage overhead sloped inward, a long stretch that she wouldn’t be able to climb without spikes.

  Past that, though? What if you can go in higher?

  There were other openings from the maze, the shooter had been firing at them. She could climb to a higher passage, stay close to the well, and see if she could get past the tricky part. She didn’t want to go back into the maze, not this close to the way out.

  The walls flickered red. The man below her held still but she imagined she could feel his tension. He didn’t know if she was perched on the wall, waiting for him to stick his head out, or if he could safely take a shot. He was stuck.

  There was a passage close overhead, only a few meters up. It was bracketed by deep cracks, easy holds.

  Lara stood, pointing the Remington toward the ground at the bottom of the chamber, watching the hissing red shadows closely as she slid out of the crevice. The flare had landed in a mud slick, but sputtered on. She stepped onto the lip of the passage and wedged her left hand into one of the cracks, keeping the gun trained on the opening below, pushing upward.

  She had to glance away long enough to find her next step—and the shooter seemed to know it. She saw a narrow flash of dark, furious eyes behind the barrel of a Glock, and then two rounds were fired, both high. Lara fired back at him, missing him by centimeters as the man ducked into his tunnel.

  Lara charged up the rock, firing again just before she reached the ledge of the next opening. She threw herself in. Another two rounds from the Glock smacked into the rocks over her head, useless, echoes from both weapons crashing through the tall chamber, lapping at her ringing ears.

  There was a single passage south. Unless she wanted to try for another ledge, this was the next step.

  “You can’t get out!” the man called up, his voice tight with barely contained fury and a note of glee. “There’s nowhere to run!”

  Lara didn’t bother correcting him—he was certainly wrong on the second count—but she had to wonder at his rage. As though he hated her, personally. She’d killed two of his teammates, but they’d been trying to murder her. Did
he not expect her to fight for her life? Did he think his derision was going to dishearten her? She was worried about Jonah, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop the disasters she’d triggered, she was in a desperate hurry to look at her pictures and figure out how to get ahead of Trinity, and part of her own mind had become a kind of maze itself, of doubt, guilt, worry, and there were wells everywhere she turned. The arrogance of the man’s taunt meant less than nothing to her.

  Fine, unless he gets on your tail. He wants you dead. Badly. She could still see his fiery eyes. Rasputin came to mind, and the name stuck in her head. He had the black eyes of a man burning inside, a man with a mission—but for all that, only a man.

  Lara left Rasputin behind in the flickering red chamber and moved on, back into the maze.

  * * *

  Harper didn’t hear Croft leave but knew when she was gone, sensing that he was alone again. The flare sputtered and hissed, lighting the cavern with hellish shadows.

  He was infuriated that she’d just walked up the wall in front of him. He’d only seen her for a blink but the way she’d looked down at him, her jaw firm, her eyes narrowed and unafraid as she fired… Who was this girl, to treat him so dismissively? She should be terrified. She should be pleading for her life!

  He’d assumed that she would take the only tunnel leading to the climb, but in fact, it was the only tunnel that the dig team had marked as coming from the maze, and when did site mappers put in more effort than was strictly necessary? Their intel was incomplete. And how could he have expected that she would squirm through the rocks like some cave lizard, or crawl up the walls?

  Another failure. Did you underestimate her again, or have you only overestimated your own skills, and the skills of your team?

  Unacceptable and wrong—this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The impotence of his rage beat at him, turned him back into the maze. She was above him but not far; there had to be a way up that he could use. He turned on his headlamp and ran, the light flashing over the walls, the ceiling.

  He found a wide crack on the eastern wall that ran into another opening, a tunnel or a room. He slid in, his heart pounding. He would find her and end this, now.

  He stepped into another tunnel and saw an opening practically in front of him, one that sloped gently upward. He hurried in, listening for her footsteps. The ground became rockier as he went; he clambered the final few meters over rounded slopes of smooth rock. His knee and ankle protested but the pain wasn’t enough to slow him down.

  Harper came out in a low, rocky tunnel. At the end of it to his left, perhaps fifteen meters away, the light from the flare flickered. There was another western passage between him and the open chamber he’d left behind, and he hurried toward it eagerly. He couldn’t get lost this close to the climb and she couldn’t be far above him, not now.

  He reached the opening, and saw that it was only a divot in the rock.

  He turned, grip tight on the Glock, looking for another passage that he could use. The tunnel ran off past several openings on both sides before vanishing into darkness. He wasn’t even sure which one he’d come through—

  Behind him, the red light died. The mud had finally won.

  Harper started down the tunnel, dimming his lamp. No matter. If he had to search every crack, every room, crawl down every passage, he was going to find her, he was going to wipe that dismissive look off of her face.

  * * *

  Sergei worked out his plans on the way back to the opening. This was it, the last time he was going to make this fucking walk. Harper and Mitchell didn’t need his help climbing out. If Sergei lost his status for disobeying orders, that would be too bad, but he wasn’t going back in.

  He heard more shots from inside the maze, blasts that rolled over him through the long tunnel and sent new flurries of bats winging past—Harper’s Glock, he thought, and Croft’s gun. How many shots would it take to kill that woman? Harper had misjudged the situation, thinking that Croft was on the run. It seemed to Sergei that she’d stayed ahead of them pretty easily so far.

  Sergei dodged the bats and hurried on, every miserable second confirming his decision. If the Dozen were all accounted for, he would station himself at the entrance and wait. If that was not the case, he’d bargain his way out, at least to a position where he could take the offensive.

  He finally got close enough to the entrance to see the shapes of trees ahead, dappled in pale blue starlight. He couldn’t see the sinkhole’s opening from the cave’s entrance but there was no chance he wasn’t close enough.

  “Reddy, come in.”

  No answer, and was he really expecting one? This shitshow of a night just went on and on.

  “If anyone’s listening, identify yourself,” Sergei said. “We’ve got Croft. Unless you want us to put a bullet in her skull, you’ll answer.”

  There was a brief pause, and then a calm voice spoke in his ear, low and even.

  “Let me talk to her.”

  Fuck.

  “We’re holding her inside,” Sergei said. He flipped the safety on the XD and stuck it into his collar at the back of his neck. It wasn’t stable and it pulled at the fabric, the front of the shirt tight against his throat, but he only needed it to hold for a few minutes.

  “Right,” the man said. “So, bring her out, we can talk.”

  “Jonah, right?” Sergei asked. “Who’s left up there? Maybe we can work out some kind of trade.”

  “That sounds good,” Jonah said. “Bring her out, we’ll trade.”

  Sergei changed tack, readying himself. Jonah definitely had the advantage, the higher ground, but he wasn’t prepared for Sergei’s expertise with the XD.

  “Okay, fine. I don’t know where she is, I don’t know where anybody is. Just let me out of this place, there’s things in here. I surrender, okay? You can tie me up, I don’t give a shit, I just want out.”

  There was a long silence and Sergei waited. Jonah had to believe him, because he was telling the absolute truth. Not about surrendering, but the rest of it.

  Sparks of burning red rained down from the top of the cenote, far above, landing among the trees in front of him. Four, five flares.

  “Walk out where I can see you,” Jonah said. “Hands up. Move wrong and I’ll shoot.”

  Sergei took a breath and stepped out of the tunnel and into the dark, the regular, normal dark of heavy shade at night, the smell of green life. He turned off his headlamp and walked slowly toward the drop point, angling to keep the XD hidden as he moved into view from the opening high above. He put his hands on top of his head.

  “I’m unarmed,” Sergei said, as sincerely as he could. “I lost my gun in there, please don’t shoot.”

  He looked up at the wide circle of stars, searching for movement, shapes against the night sky, but there was nothing. No lights up there, only the pale stars and a moon he couldn’t see.

  “I’m unarmed,” he repeated, moving through the wavering shadows toward the first of the flares, bitter smoke rising through the red light. He saw a dark silhouette bob up for a second on the east side of the hole—and then a flashlight snapped on, a powerful one, the beam making him squint. He slid his hands to the back of his head.

  “Far enough. Turn around.”

  He couldn’t see the man behind the light but it was a clear target—and he saw a second shape, the head and shoulders of another, peering over the side.

  Now!

  Sergei grabbed the XD and fired, twice, the first shot shattering the light, the second knocking down the second man, two perfect shots. Triumph swelled his heart as he dove for the nearest cover, a clutch of palms not two meters ahead—

  —and white heat blasted through his back and his side, between the thick pads of his vest, tearing into his guts. A second shot was mostly deflected off his chest armor, but the third seared into his thigh, the hearty blasts of a shotgun echoing through the open chamber. Pain exploded through him, muscle and bone torn apart. Blood jetted out of his leg, spra
ying wildly.

  Sergei crashed to the ground, understanding immediately that he was dead as his blood fountained down over him. Within seconds the pain was fading, the dreadful heat turning to ice, freezing him, like he was back under the ground.

  “Are you okay?” Jonah asked, and for a beat Sergei thought he was talking to him and was confused, his thoughts firing strangely, but then someone else answered, breathlessly, the words unclear. The second man.

  Why would he be talking to you? You tried and you lost. Your two perfect shots were useless. Now you’re going to die, you’re never going to eat another meal or have another drink or make love to another beautiful woman. It’s all over.

  With the last of his rapidly draining strength, Sergei managed to roll onto his back.

  At least I’m out of that fucking cave, he thought, staring up at the stars until they winked out.

  * * *

  Jonah had been lying on the ground with the flashlight out over the drop and the shotgun propped across his arm. He let go of the light even as the Russian fired—

  —and then Miguel was on his back, and Jonah was firing, and Miguel squeezed his eyes tight and didn’t move until Jonah asked him if he was okay.

  Jonah reached and offered his hand to Miguel. Miguel let himself be pulled to his feet, trying to catch his breath. The bullet had knocked him down like a punch, but hadn’t gone through the hot, bulky vest. He couldn’t believe it.

  Miguel staggered when he got to his feet, touching his chest. Right over his heart. If he hadn’t been wearing the Kevlar, he would be dead.

  “I thought you were going to stay back,” Jonah said, turning off his microphone.

  “He said he was unarmed,” Miguel said, realizing how stupid that sounded even as it came out of his mouth, but Jonah only nodded.

  “Trinity’s not an honest group, on the whole,” he said. He leaned forward to look over the rim of the drop again. Miguel risked a glance. He could see the Russian lying face up at the bottom, light from the flares bathing him in red. His expression was strangely peaceful for someone shot full of holes. The blood from his wounds only oozed, black liquid in the strange light.