The frozen panic that had occupied Bruke lifted. He pulled his shoulders back and straightened his spine. After a curt nod at Seb, he said, “Shouldn’t we be asking where the worm came from?”
Why hadn’t Seb thought about it? When he turned around and looked at the dead miners, he saw the cheek of one of the kids bulge. It looked like he’d come back to life and moved his tongue. The tip of a grub then appeared through his pursed lips. Before it could get any farther out, Seb shot the kid in the face. He didn’t need to tell the others what to do. When he looked, SA and Sparks had raised their weapons again and stared down at the sea of corpses.
Another deep breath, another woeful attempt to stifle his anxiety, and Seb looked down the barrel of his gun, waiting for the rush of parasites.
Chapter 13
Sparks ripped off the next shot, burning a hole in the cheek of a fallen man.
Seb then grabbed the kid he’d blasted and dragged it away from the pile of bodies. “We need to move these ones aside so we know which ones still have parasites in them.”
A green blast hit the face of a woman next to Seb. SA had shot her, so he dragged the woman away too. Were Sparks not so small, she might have been able to move the man she’d shot, but because she couldn’t, he moved that one next.
While the other three shot the grubs, Seb took on the job of moving all the corpses. They couldn’t leave until all the parasites had gone. The bugs might not have been able to survive Carstic’s radiation, but they couldn’t rely on that.
Shot after shot, the faces of each miner snapped from the blasts.
After she’d dispatched three in quick succession, Seb moved past SA and dragged all three bodies away.
Even Bruke found his aim, blasting the dead miners’ cheeks whenever he saw movement.
Chapter 14
By the time they’d killed all the grubs, sweat poured from Seb. But he had to let it be, his suit preventing him from doing anything about it. His arms ached from the effort of dragging all the corpses aside. His hands still buzzed from the need he’d had to heal every one of them, even though the power to heal the dead had eluded him thus far.
Regardless of his fatigue, Seb walked into the massive hangar first. Not that he had any illusions of being an alpha male; those men always reminded him of primitive humans. The reek of their testosterone hung so thick around them it left an aftertaste on his tongue. But he wanted to put himself in the firing line first. The others seemed to defer to him as their leader, so he felt he should be the one taking the risks. He couldn’t let anyone else die the way Gurt had, even if it did mean SA staring at him like she wanted to knock him out. A born leader, she clearly hadn’t been shoved back often.
The echo of Seb’s footsteps came back at him as he walked through the hangar. A huge warehouse of a space, it had brushed metal walls. Being dark grey, they must have had the lead lining Moses had talked about. The floor that stretched through the space was the same red rock as outside. Wherever the radiation came from, it couldn’t have been the ground. It must have been airborne.
A large collection of vehicles were scattered around the space. Mostly ships and shuttles, but there were a few tanks too.
It made Seb dizzy to look up at the high ceiling. It stood a little taller than the huge double doors. Now he’d seen the inside of the space, he had no doubt the place could accommodate large passenger shuttles with plenty of room to spare.
Still only a fraction of the way in, Seb stopped. Bruke and SA walked up next to him and also stopped. They waited for Sparks, who went to the keypad to close the double doors.
Several quick taps and the large barriers started to close with a deep whirring noise, the acoustics in the hangar accentuating the baritone sound.
“At least they were right about there being plenty of ships,” Seb said to SA and Bruke while taking in the vehicles available to them again. “We should be able to fly out of here when we’re done.”
Having only taken a cursory glance before, Seb now zoned in on a large black tank parked over to one side. Something about the vehicle fascinated him. As big as the shuttle they’d flown in on, it had huge chunky tyres instead of tracks. They looked rugged enough to chew into the red rock. The design, with the slight wedge shape to its front and wide spoiler on the back, looked like it was a vehicle built for speed.
At the other end of the hangar, Seb saw another large set of double doors. Although this time, the doors were built into the ground.
“I’m guessing that’s where we’re going,” Seb said with a nod of his head. “Into the earth.”
“A mine’s not going to be in any other place, is it?” Sparks said, her voice echoing from where she called over to him.
Bruke didn’t speak. Instead, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Clearly anxious, but not as anxious as before.
The sunlight finally vanished, cut off by the closing of the huge hangar doors. A swirling rush of air buffeted the black fabric of Seb’s suit and wobbled him where he stood. It didn’t seem to bother SA. Bruke, on the other hand, spun around as if the elements were attacking him.
When the wind had died down, Seb saw Sparks look up above the hangar doors. He looked too and saw a large red light turn green. The radiation had been pulled out of the area. It had to be airborne like he’d thought.
As if to double-check, Sparks held her computer up, nodded, and said, “It’s fine to take your suits off.”
And not a moment too soon. Seb slapped the button on the left side of his head. His visor pulled away from his face and let in a fresh rush of air. It ran into his suit and cooled his hot skin.
Then the stench hit Seb as a wave of waste and rot. The parasite obviously curdled its host. It smelled like it turned them into festering bags of meat. Liver left to rot in the sun.
Seb heaved while he wiped the sweat from his face. When he’d recovered a little, he looked across at the others to see varying degrees of twisted disgust. “If it smells like this up here, what do you think it’s like in the mines?”
The others looked at Seb, and Sparks spoke. “I think it’s best we don’t think about it.”
Despite the reek, Seb still felt happier out of his suit than in it. He slithered free of the thick fabric, his surroundings brighter now he didn’t have to look through the yellow tint of his visor.
Seb walked to the tank in the centre of the hangar and tossed his suit on top. The others copied him, although he had to help Sparks throw hers over the tall vehicle. When he smirked at her, she threw him a hand gesture that must have been an insult where she came from.
Another wipe of his brow did little to stem the flow of sweat. Seb pinched the front of his shirt and fanned it to help circulate the air. It brought him a little relief.
Bruke and Sparks looked as hot as Seb felt. SA, on the other hand, stood as a picture of cool serenity, as always. She looked around the space, her wide bioluminescent eyes taking it in.
“Right,” Sparks said. “I don’t know about you lot, but I want to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.”
She didn’t wait for a response, instead walking over to the cellar doors leading down into the mines. And maybe the best way to deal with it; after all, they needed to get the job done. The more they thought on it, the more ominous the tunnels below the ground would seem.
The doors lay flush with the ground, and the keypad controls for them were on the wall next to them. Sparks looked at several keycards hanging from a hook. She took four and handed them out. Each had a lanyard, so they all dropped them around their necks like medals.
“These should make it easier to get through the closed-off sections,” Sparks said. She then turned to the screen and hit a couple of taps against it. The green glow of it lit up her purple eyes and bounced off her glasses. “It looks fine down there. No gas leaks, and if there’s no radiation up here, there won’t be any down there.”
“What about zombies?” Seb said.
The other three l
ooked at him, but none of them spoke.
The ring of blades called out next to Seb and he turned to see SA had pulled out two of her seemingly endless supply of knives. They glinted under the hangar’s strip lighting and she stared down at the double doors.
Although his second choice to his fists, Seb’s gun gave him range, so he gripped the weapon tight and watched Bruke do the same. As he stared at the doors too, he listened hard. No sounds of infected humans on the other side. Maybe they’d cleared most of them out already. He laughed to himself. Yeah right, like it would be that easy.
“You ready?” Sparks said, her finger hovering near the panel to open the door.
Seb nodded, as did the other two. As ready as they could be.
Sparks pressed a button and the whir of the door’s mechanism called out through the hangar.
Chapter 15
“There aren’t any zombies down there,” Seb said as he peered into the dark pit.
“None we can see, you mean,” Sparks shot back.
A look down into the gloom and Seb shrugged. “I was trying to be optimistic.”
The hatch had opened wide enough to reveal the large square tunnel in the ground. Each of the walls spread about five metres wide. The doors that had covered the hatch weren’t visible anymore from where they’d withdrawn into the rocks. A ladder as wide as each wall ran down them to the bottom. At least, what Seb judged to be the bottom. It was hard to be sure when he looked down into the murky depths of the hole.
Before anyone said anything else, a slight crack sounded out. Seb looked at Sparks to see her break a bright glow stick and drop it into the pit.
It seemed to take forever, the small strip of light spinning as it fell. The stick eventually stopped with a bounce at the bottom about fifty metres down. It lit up as a blue glow in the centre of the darkness. The shadows surrounding it looked utterly impenetrable.
Seb pointed down. “Did anyone else see that?”
Bruke didn’t respond, looking from Seb to where he pointed and back to Seb again.
“What?” Sparks said.
“I thought I saw something move down there.”
“You probably did.”
“Well, that’s helpful.”
“Come on, Seb, we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought we’d completed our mission already. When is it ever that easy?”
What could he say to that? “Okay,” Seb said, moving close to the edge of the hole. His stomach lifted to imagine the drop. “One of us needs to go down there.”
Bruke stepped back a pace.
“If one of us goes,” Seb said, “they can draw out whatever’s waiting for us; then the others can shoot from up here. We’re in a much more offensive position. It would be a shame to sacrifice that by all of us going down there together.”
“So we’ll use the person who goes down as bait?” Sparks said, one of her eyebrows raised.
Bruke moved back another step and shook his head. “I’m not going.”
As Seb stared down into the hole, he watched the glow stick slowly die. The darkness appeared to overpower the blue light, snuffing out its spirit. Before Seb could say anything, Sparks returned to the control panel. After several taps, some lights flickered on down below.
Seb relaxed his taut frame. Everything looked better when lit up. The hole smelled of damp earth and gas, although only the faintest whiff of gas. “Is it safe down there for blasters, Sparks?”
Sparks ruffled her nose as she sniffed the air. “It does smell, doesn’t it? Although, ruthane should be odourless. We could well be smelling the stuff they put into it so you know there’s a leak.”
After sitting down on the ground, Sparks let her legs hang down into the hole and leaned her computer into the space as far as she could reach. When she pulled it back out again, she stared at the screen for a second and nodded. “Yep, just as I thought, the smell is the agent they put into it to tell us there’s gas down there. It’s fine.”
“You sure?” Seb asked.
“Would I be risking it if I wasn’t?”
Seb accepted her point with a nod.
SA stepped towards the edge of the hole as if to go down there and Seb grabbed her arm. When she turned to him, she levelled the same rage she’d stared at him since they’d landed on the planet. He bowed at her. “I have massive respect for you volunteering, but I need to do this. I can’t expect anyone else to go down.”
She cocked her eyebrow and put her hand on her hip.
“Please,” Seb said. “Let me do this.” He couldn’t let anyone else die.
The two stared at one another for a few seconds before SA stepped away from the hole. Although she’d accepted it, she looked far from pleased about it.
“Thank you,” Seb said.
Too much more thought and he wouldn’t go down there, so Seb climbed backwards onto the ladder, dropping a foot down onto the top rung first before lowering himself into the hole. The large bars attached to the wall were rough, cold, and speckled with rust.
A quick glance down into the pit behind him again and Seb’s world spun. He stopped his descent and gripped on tight while he closed his eyes.
It took a few seconds, but he calmed down, his balance returning. It would be better if he didn’t look.
Not a hard climb, but with a river of adrenaline rushing through him, Seb shook from the effort of his descent. One rung at a time, he climbed down into the poorly lit pit. Hopefully, if they had anything to fight down there, the others would hit them and not him when they shot into the hole. Whatever happened, he couldn’t have let anyone else climb down. It had to be him.
Chapter 16
The air might have got cooler the farther Seb descended into the mine, but that didn’t stop his body turning slick with sweat. A continued rush of adrenaline seemed to force every drop of moisture from him, and his lungs tightened with his panic. He gasped as he climbed.
Thankfully he’d been able to shed the radiation suit up above. If he’d had to make the descent in that thing, he wouldn’t have coped.
Seb stepped off the bottom rung and fought to regulate his breaths. The smell of gas gave way to the damp reek of soil. Humidity hung so thick in the cold air, he couldn’t be sure where his sweat ended and where it began.
Despite Sparks fixing the lights down in the mine, they didn’t do the best job of illuminating the place. The picture Moses had painted of a modern facility stood a great distance away from the reality of where Seb found himself.
A tunnel, so basic that the walls were exposed soil, ran away from him. Loose wires linked single light bulbs, which hung from the ceiling by cords. The place looked like it belonged in the last century.
Just one bulb dangled down about every ten metres. They gave off a glowing splash, casting a circle of illumination on the muddy ground. Seb saw more shadow than he did light stretching away from him down the long tunnel.
The zombies could be anywhere. Although, despite his poor visibility, Seb could still hear well enough. At that moment, he couldn’t hear anything other than the pound of his own pulse.
A look back up to the top of the hole and Seb saw the faces of his three friends staring down at him. They seemed impossibly high. Much too high for him to reach should he need a quick getaway.
As he looked at the three expectant stares, Seb shrugged. “It seems okay down here.”
“You can’t see any of them?” Sparks asked, her high-pitched voice echoing through the tunnel. If there were any down there, the sounds of their conversation would no doubt rouse them.
“I can’t see much of anything down here. But from what I can make out, it looks to be clear.”
“Shall we come down?” Bruke asked.
A shake of his head and Seb drew a deep breath. He spoke on the exhale as he said, “No.”
Bruke looked confused, so Seb elaborated. “I think you should just wait up there for the entire time and let me handle this on my own.”
A whine rode Bruke’s words. “Ther
e’s no need to be sarcastic.”
“You know what, Bruke, sometimes there is. And when your standing fifty metres from safety in a dark mine that could be crawling with zombies, I would say this is one of those times.”
Before Bruke could say anything else, Seb heard a sound from the darkness far down the tunnel. At least, he thought he did.
“What is it?” Sparks asked, her voice hissing through the space.
“Can you shut up?” Seb said.
For a second, Seb’s pulse beat louder than the approaching sound. Maybe he’d imagined it. But then it came again, a wet slapping sound of feet against the damp ground. Lots of feet. And they were moving fast.
Chapter 17
The shadow at the end of the tunnel sat so dark Seb couldn’t tell whether he saw movement within it or not. Sure, the lights ran a long way back, but unless something passed directly beneath them, they’d be hidden in the blackness.
When the sound got louder, Seb looked up at his friends. “Can you hear that?”
“Yep,” Bruke said, his voice shaking.
After just a few seconds, the sound swirled through the tunnel. It rushed at Seb like a tsunami. He’d be drowning in it before he knew it, yet he still couldn’t see anything.
Seb squinted to try to see better, his gaze fixed on the farthest splash of light. He raised his blaster to his shoulder, closed one eye, and peered down the barrel of it.
The shadows at the end of the tunnel seemed to shift with the onrush of something. The inky void made it look like the darkness itself had come to life.
Seb held his breath, his pounding heart rocking his entire body. He squeezed the trigger, ready to let rip.
Any second and Seb would see them.
Then the farthest light went out as if the power had failed.
“Sparks!” Seb shouted, his attention on where the light had been only a second ago. “The lights are going out down here. Help!”
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 66
