If the climb back up were half the height, then maybe Seb would have gone for it. Even then he would have questioned it. If he tried now, the zombies would catch him, drag him back and rip him to shreds. He had just one choice: stay and fight.
The next light flickered for a second and then blinked out too.
The scream of the zombies joined the rush of their heavy footsteps. Shrill and with a tittering staccato, the screamers sounded bat-shit crazy.
“Sparks!” Seb called again as he watched another light ping off. “What’s happening?”
Before Sparks responded to him, every light in the tunnel failed.
The zombies screamed louder than before, invigorated by gaining an even greater advantage. They continued to come forward in a stampede.
Where Seb had smelled soil and the odour added to the gas, he now smelled the rotten reek he’d inhaled in the hangar. Festering meat, cloying and rancid.
He now felt the vibration of their feet through the damp ground.
It seemed as ineffective now as it had done the first time he did it. Still, Seb looked up at the three distant faces again and shouted, “Sparks! I need you to do something.”
Chapter 18
The gun shook as Seb wrapped it in a tight grip, aimed down the dark tunnel, and clamped his finger on the trigger. It didn’t matter that his world now moved in slow motion, the zombies were lightning, closing the space between them much quicker than he could repel their attack.
Green blaster fire lit up the tunnel, creating a strobe effect as every blast came to life and then died against the chest, lap, leg, arm, or whatever part of a zombie it hit. Some of the creatures fell away from Seb’s blasts, their arms clipped, their heads blown off. Although, only some and nowhere near enough.
The green strobes of light were a poor substitute for poor lighting; however, they did show the wave of zombies getting closer with every second. They showed him that he couldn’t beat them on his own.
The smell of gas had completely vanished. It had been replaced with the reek of rotten meat, halitosis, and the curdled stench of milk.
Seb glanced down at the top of his shaking gun. The green light had turned orange already. “Shit!” Maybe the others could hear him over the noise, maybe not. He had to try. “I’m about to overheat. Help me out down here.”
A green blast crashed into the ground in front of Seb at the entrance to the tunnel. He jumped back from it. When he looked up, he saw Bruke with his gun in his hand. He quickened his retreat until his back pressed against the metal ladder rungs in the far wall. From the square of light from the hangar above, he’d see the zombies the second they entered it, so he stood as far on the other side of it as he could.
Another green blast splashed down at the tunnel’s entrance. It didn’t hit anything, but at least it helped Seb see better. The bright glow showed him the wave of creatures about to burst from the darkness.
One of Sparks’ glow sticks landed where the others had shot. A small help. Very small. But Seb could tell how close the zombies were because the ground shook with their thundering onrush.
Several more glow sticks lit up in the mouth of the tunnel just as Seb’s gun failed.
After he’d discarded his weapon, Seb raised his metal fists, screamed back at the first zombie to leave the darkness of the tunnel, and threw a punch into the centre of its face.
Steel connected with weak bone and Seb felt his hand sink into the creature’s nose. For the briefest moment, he saw the human it used to be and the slightest tug of reluctance threatened to grind him to a halt. But when another one came at him, he punched it like he had the first. It fell away—out cold at least, probably dead.
Two more came at Seb as green blasts rained down from above.
Seb dropped them both. The others continued to miss. They’d have to do better if he was to get out of there.
One after the other, Seb dropped the beasts as they rushed him, switching his mind off to what they used to be. They were monsters now and nothing more. They needed to be eradicated for the safety of others.
Maybe fifteen of them, maybe more, they all had the weak bone structure of a human, and all went down to his punches.
Were it not for the glow sticks and the flash of blaster fire from above, Seb wouldn’t have been able to see them as early as he did. His team might not have hit the mark with every shot, but at least the green splashes of light at the mouth of the tunnel had some use.
Because Seb had stepped back so far, he had nowhere else to go. The thick rungs of the ladder pressed into him, and the creatures still rushed forwards. He yelled and continued to throw punches. For every zombie he dropped, two more replaced them.
Sweat ran down Seb’s face, but he didn’t stop to wipe it off. Wide mouths yelled at him and he punched them shut. Red eyes fixed on him and he knocked them away. Flailing arms reached for him and he drove them back, each attack drawing slightly closer than the one before it.
Chapter 19
One thing about the world moving in slow motion was it dragged out every painful second of what were often very painful experiences. Maybe the battle hadn’t lasted for hours, but for Seb, living it through his slowed-down perspective had made it feel like it had. Although, without it, he would be dead instead of the pile of zombies in front of him.
Other than the sound of his own exhausted breaths running away from him into the darkness, Seb couldn’t hear anything else. He stood with his gun and watched for movement. As much as he’d wanted to leave his weapon on the ground because it had betrayed him twice now, it had cooled down and he needed something to shoot the parasites with when they emerged.
The air reeked of the curdled stench of the creatures, and up to forty bodies lay dead at Seb’s feet. Forty bodies of what were once people. Forty bodies that would soon give up the parasites inside them.
Seb’s eyes stung from not blinking as he watched the corpses. The ones outside the hangar had taken at least five minutes, but he couldn’t rely on these taking as long to show their ugly little faces. Until he knew every grub had been eradicated, he had to remain vigilant.
Despite looking at a sea of human corpses, Seb had to think of them as monsters. He wouldn’t complete the mission if he didn’t.
The lights were still out in the dark tunnel. Maybe more zombies would rush from down there. From what Seb had seen, they didn’t do stealth. Hopefully that would continue and he’d hear them coming from a mile away.
The sound of the others climbed down the metal rungs towards Seb. They moved quickly, clearly anticipating the emergence of the grubs too.
After a glance up at his teammates, Seb returned his attention to the corpses and the mouth of the pitch-black tunnel.
Although Seb had recovered his breath, he still sweated heavily. He wiped his arm across his forehead to stem the flow and help ease the sting in his tired eyes.
SA reached the bottom first, and then Bruke. Sparks, with her small legs, had only made it about halfway by the time the other two stepped off the ladders.
“Are you okay?” Bruke asked, looking Seb up and down as if a scan of his body would answer his question.
Seb shrugged and felt the attention of SA on him as if she’d also asked the same thing. At least she didn’t stare contempt at him at that moment.
Bruke nodded at Seb’s weapon. “Your gun overheated again?”
“Yeah, stupid things,” Seb said. Thank god for his fists. He opened and closed them several times. Everything else felt tired, but his fists still felt brand new. Cold, but brand new. He smiled. “It was much easier with my hands. No overheating here.”
Both SA and Bruke looked down at the corpses at the same time. “No grubs yet?”
A shrug and Seb offered, “Not yet. The waiting’s the worst part. I just want to deal with them and move on.”
When Sparks finally got to the bottom of the ladders, she stared down into the darkness and gasped. “How did you fight in this?”
“Wit
h great difficulty,” Seb said, his attention still on the bodies. “We could do with the lights back on in case there are more zombies down there.”
Sparks looked at the bodies before she moved away. Seb watched her light up a wall with the torch on her computer. It illuminated what looked to be an electrical box of some sort.
It took no more than a minute of her fiddling before the place lit up again. Although, the poor attempt at lighting would hardly qualify as lit up; it looked like it had before the electricity went out.
“I’m guessing the vibrations made by the creatures running up the tunnel tripped some faulty wiring somewhere. Hopefully it’ll stay on now.”
“Hopefully?”
“It’s all I’ve got, Seb.”
Even in the short time it had been dark for, Seb had forgotten just how far the tunnel stretched. He looked down the line of weak lights all the way to the farthest one. Maybe he should be grateful for what his blaster gave him. A shorter corridor with no projectile weapon, and he might not have been standing there at that moment.
The extra light helped Seb see the dead better; there were probably close to fifty of them. His heart rate increased to look at what he’d come up against. “I’m not sure I would have been as willing to fight if I’d seen just how many of them there were.”
Before anyone could respond, the flash of one of SA’s blades flew past Seb. It embedded in the mouth of one of the corpses.
Seb’s world flipped back into slow motion.
Even though he’d seen it happen before, a shudder rolled through Seb to watch the grubs emerge from the bodies of the corpses. Although fast when free of their hosts, they looked to be struggling to get out. Slick and shining with what must be bile or some other internal fluid, they poked out through the lips of the cadavers.
A hard stamp on the head of the closest corpse and Seb crushed both the grub and woman’s face beneath his boot heel. The pop of the small creature filled the air with the acrid stench of rot, a much more potent smell than the zombies had given off.
The others around Seb trained their blasters on the corpses. A second later, the small space lit up with a flurry of shots at the emergence of the grubs.
Chapter 20
By the time they’d killed every grub, the air hung heavy with the rotten stench of the vulgar little creatures. So rich, Seb heaved several times as he walked through the fallen bodies, the tight pinch he held on his nose doing little to prevent the reek from getting through.
Bruke had taken it upon himself to move the corpses to the side when they knew they’d definitely killed the parasites in them. It left a small group of five far down the tunnel, which Seb, SA, and Sparks shot full of holes.
“I think we got them all,” Seb said, his arms aching from his gun’s recoil. He led the way in, leaving the bodies behind, and moved far enough down the tunnel to get clear of their acrid stench.
The smell of the agent they added to the gas replaced the reek. The memory of the grub’s tang still remained with Seb, but to put the pile of bodies behind them allowed him to relax ever so slightly. Despite what the people had turned into, they were humans at one time and he could only bear the pain of looking at them for so long.
Although Seb had travelled farther down the tunnel than he’d been able to see from the bottom of the ladder rungs, it still stretched away from him into a seemingly never-ending darkness. The light bulbs worked, but they were still utterly ineffective at giving him any sense of perspective. God knew how far they had to venture before they reached the first section of the mining complex.
Seb waited for the others to catch up to him, and when they were all together, Sparks produced her small computer. The bright screen lit up the gloom. An image of a map dominated the device and she used her long index finger to point while she spoke. “This is where we are now. It’s hard to tell when you look down the tunnel, but we’re not very far from the living quarters. I don’t think the state of this walkway is a fair reflection of what the dorms are like. I expect them to be more habitable, but we’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right,” Seb said as he looked around him at the bare soil and weak light bulbs. “The parasites would have done them a favour if this is how they were expected to live.”
The looks from the others made Seb recoil. Probably not the most sensitive comment he’d made, but sometimes humour worked best. After all, he had just murdered about fifty people. If he didn’t laugh … well … “Come on,” he said and moved on.
“Moses was correct when he said this place has been divided into sections,” Sparks said as they walked. “I still can’t get any gas readings down here, so my guess is—if not all of the sections—that this one at least is sealed off from the rest of the place.”
“So there could be more zombies down there?” Seb said. “Locked in the other sections, I mean.”
A look at Seb and Sparks nodded. “I think we need to assume there could be zombies anywhere down here. But, to your question specifically, yes, I’d be very surprised if we don’t get rushed when we try to access the next section.”
Not that she’d just told him anything he didn’t know, but Seb’s heart still sank to think of another fight like the one they’d just had. Although, at least he wouldn’t be on his own this time. “So what’s in the next two areas?”
“This is where the people sleep,” Sparks said, showing Seb her computer as they walked. She then pointed at the next section on the map. “This is the recreational area, the canteen, the sports hall, the games room.” Her voice dropped when she pointed at the final section. “And this is the mine.”
“No guns down there,” Seb said.
“No guns, and maybe the biggest concentration of those grub things too.” When Sparks looked up, the shine from her computer’s screen cast disturbing shadows on her face, her eyes sunken by the appearance of thick bags beneath them.
Seb looked away down the tunnel and pulled a deep breath in. “One section at a time. That’s all we should focus on for now.”
Silence met Seb’s comment.
While they’d been talking and looking at Sparks’ computer, they’d slowed down to an almost halt. Reluctance had clearly taken hold of them. “Right,” Seb said, clapping his hands and sending the sharp crack of it away from him down the tunnel. “I suppose we’d best pick up the pace, then, eh?” He looked at the others and they all nodded. None of them with any enthusiasm—yet maybe to expect any reached a bit too far. Before he lost all of his motivation, he strode off down the tunnel, his gun raised, his heart pounding.
Chapter 21
When they reached the next set of doors, it took all of Seb’s will not to suggest they turn around. They could go back to the hangar, get a ship, and get the hell out of there. In reality, he knew they couldn’t get away with it. There was no way they were getting off Carstic until they’d done what they’d been sent to do.
Sparks stepped forward and Seb grabbed her left shoulder, halting her progress.
A hard stare like she wanted to shoot him, she then shrugged him off. “Just trust me, yeah?”
Another look at the doors in front of them, down to his purple-eyed friend, and back at the doors, and Seb sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He let go of her and raised his gun, watching the doors down the barrel of it.
When Sparks got close to the doors, they slid open, a bright glare of light spilling out of them.
Seb pulled his head away from his gun and looked at her. “Huh?”
It took for Sparks to point a long finger above the doors for Seb to see it. A small plastic box with a pinprick of a red light on it. “It’s a sensor.”
Seb didn’t respond.
“If the zombies, as you call them, got anywhere near these doors, they would have opened for them. Now, we can’t be complacent because there might be some stragglers through here, but these aren’t the doors to the next section.”
Sparks stepped through the double doors and Seb sped up to follow
her with the other two beside him.
“Wow,” Bruke said when they’d all entered the place. “I wasn’t expecting it to look like this.”
A white floor, white walls, and a white ceiling. Strip lighting ran the length of the long corridor all the way to the double doors at the end. A chill in the air sent a shudder through Seb. “Sure, it’s cold, but compared to that tunnel we just came down, it actually looks habitable.”
Sparks pointed to the doors at the end. “They’re the doors we need to worry about.”
After he’d looked at them for a moment, Seb looked at the other doors running down one side of the illuminated corridor. Ten to fifteen of them, they were clearly the rooms the miners stayed in. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get this section cleared and move on. The sooner we get off this planet, the better.”
The change from the exposed earth to the hard white floor made walking much easier. For the first few steps, Seb lifted his feet a little bit too high because he expected the ground to cling on to the soles of his shoes.
When they were close to the first door, Seb ruffled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Bleach,” Sparks said.
“What for?” Bruke asked.
“Just a guess,” Sparks said, “but I’d assume they kept it disinfected down here to keep viruses and bugs out.”
Seb snorted an ironic laugh. “Not that it worked.”
The others looked at him and he shrugged. “Well, it didn’t.”
When they got to the first room, Seb used the keycard Sparks had given him in the hangar to swipe through the reader and open the door. It slid across with a whoosh.
As he entered the room, Seb pressed the stock of his gun into his shoulder.
A small space, the lights left no surprises like the shadowy tunnel had. It had three beds in it: one double and two singles. The singles were on one side of the room, the double on the other. All three beds were unmade.
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 67
