Return to Dark Earth

by Anna Hackett

  He wedged his hands against the zombie’s chest and fought to keep it away from him. It gnashed its gruesome teeth furiously. Its eyes looked soulless in its bald head that was covered by that ugly, mottled skin.

  Nik spotted his laser pistol beside him. He had one chance to get this right. He moved one hand and snatched at the pistol. The zombie was already pushing forward, its gaze on his throat. Nik jammed the pistol into the creature’s face and fired. Even with part of its face gone, it was still trying to get at him, moaning and snarling.

  A sword slashed down and the creature’s head rolled away.

  He looked up. “You should have gotten out!”

  Nera extended a hand. “You’re welcome.”

  “You were right near the exit.” Anger poured through him. “Why didn’t you get to safety?”

  She just raised a brow. “We need to keep moving.”

  “Phoenix? Darc?” Galen’s voice came across the static-filled comm line. “We’re all out. Where are you two?”

  Dammit. Nik eyed the distance to the entrance, and the mass of zombies busy chewing on the agents they’d managed to kill. “We’re on the other side of the lobby, we’ll—”

  “No time.” Nera pushed Nik and pointed. Another mob of zombies was loping in from a different corridor.

  Completely cutting them off from the front door.

  Shit. His chest tightened. Now they had nowhere to go.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nera looked around. “We need to climb. Up there.” She pointed.

  Nik spotted the mezzanine display level that ringed the lobby. “What if they can climb?”

  But Nera was already pressing a small button on the wrist of her gloves. After New York, they’d both traded their regular gloves in for these upgraded versions the security team used. She pressed a hand to the wall and then climbed upward like a spider.

  She glanced back at him. “If you have a better idea, I’m open to it. After we put a little distance between us and them.”

  He pressed the button to activate his nano-gloves. The tech in them let them adhere to the wall like old Earth geckos. He shot a final glance at the converging zombies, and climbed.

  He reached the ledge a moment after Nera did and pulled himself over. He looked down at the lobby.

  The zombies couldn’t climb. They could jump, and a few of them were slamming themselves against the walls, trying to reach Nik and Nera. But the ledge was too high.

  “They don’t have enough coordination,” Nera said.

  Nik touched his ear. “Galen? Avril? We’ve reached a safe location on a high ledge in the lobby. But there are too many zombies. We can’t make it out.”

  Galen cursed. “Dammit. Okay, hold on for now.” He sounded a little out of breath, and Nik guessed he and the others were running back to the ship.

  “How long until we reach radiation exposure?” Nik asked Nera.

  Nera stared at her timepiece. “Twenty-five minutes.”

  He closed his eyes. There was no way they’d make it back in time. “Gunn. That asshole made sure the zombies herded me right across the damn lobby.”

  “Really?”

  That low, lethal voice raised the hairs on his neck. Nik opened his eyes. “You can’t kill him. And you should have gotten out when you had the chance.”

  “Shut up, Niklas.”

  He sucked in a breath. Then he reached out and grabbed her hand. “Hell of a second date.”

  She made a small choked sound that might have been a laugh.

  Galen’s voice was back on the line. “Okay, Phoenix. We can’t mount a rescue. The streets are teeming with those things. The sun’s setting and it looks like they come out at night.”

  “We don’t have much time left before we need the radiation meds.”

  “Yeah. I have a plan. I’m going to send a drone in to you guys carrying enough meds to get through to sunrise.”

  They looked at each other. “But each injection loses potency, right?” Nik said. “If we’re still exposed, the antidote won’t work.”

  “The antidote won’t work as well as it would on the ship, yes. But the radiation levels are lower here, so that helps. Not gonna lie, you guys are going to be feeling the effects come morning. It’s the best option we have right now. Sit tight.”

  And trust Galen to save them. Nik rubbed his brow. Maybe his brothers were right about this mission. He wasn’t going to make it out alive.

  ***

  Nera pulled food rations from her backpack. “Kerala Curry or Vegetarian Pizza?”

  “Both taste like crap, right?” Niklas said.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. The curry. I don’t know how you can call something pizza when it comes in a tube.”

  They munched on their replicated food in a silence that was occasionally punctuated by the footsteps of the milling creatures below, and the odd low moan.

  Here they were, trapped, and likely to die before sunrise of radiation poisoning or zombie attack, and all she could think about was the man by her side. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He turned his head, his face just shadows in the growing darkness. “Me, too.”

  The ledge was quite spacious, several meters wide and it ringed the entire lobby. Farther down she saw a large statue, and several more directly across from them. She figured if the situation wasn’t quite so dire, Niklas would have enjoyed studying them.

  She heard the drone before she saw it, a faint buzzing sound, like an annoying insect. It flew in through the front door and then zoomed up, out of zombie reach. It hung in front of them for a few seconds, its multiple rotors spinning. Then it headed toward them.

  “Phoenix and Darc, the attached pouch contains the necessary meds. There are also some rations.”

  It was Agent Ryant’s stern voice coming from the drone’s speakers. Nera was still a bit surprised the man hadn’t written them off as a lost cause.

  “Got it.” Niklas detached the bag. “See you in the morning…hopefully.”

  “Stay where you are, and we’ll come as soon as we can. We’ve also included a temporary emergency shelter. It’s the small silver box. Just press the controls to activate it. It will provide some limited protection from the radiation.” A pause. “It’ll be a tight fit, but the drone couldn’t carry two.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Niklas said.

  Nera watched Niklas fish the shelter out of the bag. It was a small box no bigger than his palm, but she knew with one press of the controls, it would open into a clear protective dome. She’d spent an uncomfortable few hours in one during a poison rainstorm on Digila V.

  “Good luck,” Agent Ryant said.

  The drone whizzed away, this time rising upward. It maneuvered through a small hole in the dome and disappeared.

  Niklas pressed the control on the box and set it on the floor. A clear, flexible bubble appeared. Big enough for one person and pretty damn tight for two.

  “I’ll go first.” He climbed in and sat.

  Nera ducked inside, the door sealing behind her with a hiss. “Cozy.” She settled beside him, putting her boots up on the curve of the shelter’s dome.

  “Well, now it’s just you and me,” Niklas said.

  She studied his rugged face. There was no panic, no sheen of perspiration, no nerves. Just calm, steady Niklas. Most people she knew would be having a panic attack by now. “Us and several hundred flesh-hungry zombies.”

  “Yes, well…they aren’t the politest of companions, are they?”

  With a smile, she looked up through the enviro shelter and the dome, and saw that night had fallen and the stars were coming out. Then she looked down at the stirring mass of monsters.

  “So you think they’re people who lived on Earth?”

  “Not these ones,” he answered. “The original humans would have been irradiated, then over the years they bred, somehow. Evolved—or devolved, may be a better description—in their own way. That’s what these poor creatures are.”


  Nera shuddered. “If I get bitten, kill me.”

  He turned to look at her. “No. I couldn’t do it.”

  She blinked. “You’d condemn me to that?”

  “No. I’d contain you, and work until I had a cure to turn you back.”

  Something warm bloomed in her chest. She leaned over and pressed her mouth to his.

  He made a noise, his arms wrapping around her. He took control, kissing her in that all-consuming way that made every nerve ending light up.

  He pulled back, breathing heavily. “This isn’t really what I had in mind when I fantasized about seducing you.”

  “I don’t need silk sheets and simulated candlelight.” She’d had that once. Silk sheets still made her shudder.

  “But you deserve more than dust, an enviro shelter, and irradiated zombies.”

  She stared at his face. They might not make it out. What if she lost him, before she’d ever had him? Emotions swirled inside her, messy and chaotic. Everything she’d avoided her entire life.

  Maybe she should give him what he really seemed to want from her. Now, her heart thumped so hard she was sure it was twisted into a knot. She stared blindly at the mass of moving shadows below. Was she really going to bare her soul to him? A soul far uglier than the zombies beneath them?

  “I was born on Luvanoi. A moon of Klavinoi.”

  He stilled and was so quiet she couldn’t even hear him breathing.

  “All the moons and planets in the system pay tribute to the Klavinoi overlords every year.” She swallowed. “A tribute in slaves. My looks became apparent when I was very young and I was earmarked as a tribute.”

  “How old were you when they took you?” His voice sounded rusty.

  “I was eight.”

  She sat quietly for a moment. The memories had been dulled by time. In the early years, she’d tried a great many things to dull them, eradicate them, or replace them…until she’d learned that she had to just learn to live with them. They didn’t hurt so much anymore, but they weren’t pretty.

  “My mother cried when they took me. But really, I’d been gone to them from the day I was tribute-marked. I think my father thought of me as just an extra mouth to feed. I was taken to the harems of Vina, Klavinoi’s capital city. I was beautified, trained, educated. The sex slaves of Klavinoi are the most skilled in the galaxy.” She looked at him now, trying to see his face in the shadows. She sensed the tension in him, and finally, he muttered a curse.

  “It doesn’t matter how beautiful and pretty they make it, it’s barbaric. All slavery is. No one can ever belong to someone else.” His hands grabbed hers. “Unless they choose to give themselves. And even then, that isn’t slavery. And no one—no one—has the right to turn a child into a sexual toy.”

  “It’s not just about the sexual acts. The most skilled are trained in everything—dancing, combat, household skills. You’re a bed partner, a valet, a bodyguard.”

  “Slaves in every sense.”

  “Yes. You give them everything.” And they took your individuality, your soul.

  “Was your…master kind?” Nik’s words sounded like broken glass.

  “I had a master and a mistress.” She shot him a thin smile. “They weren’t the cruelest of all slave masters, but they weren’t kind either.” Oh, no, they’d had a sadistic streak a mile wide. And they’d demanded obedience in everything.

  Nera stared at the zombies. They weren’t free, either. They were slaves to the desires that drove them. They had no choice, and for so long, she’d had no choice either.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to go into the details.” She’d been used, shared, expected to service guests with a smile, endure pain. “My duties were varied and they included acting as bodyguard to my master and mistress. To protect their lives with my own.” Even now, the thought burned her. She had taken a laser for them once. “Nothing like having a beautiful slave who can suck cock and fight off an assassin at the same time.”

  Niklas slammed his fist into the enviro-shelter wall. The clear dome wobbled under the impact.

  She stared at him and swallowed. No one had ever been angry on her behalf before. “Niklas, I’m not telling this to upset you—”

  “I want to go back and smash my fists into their faces. I want to kill them.”

  Such vehemence from a man who, beneath the toughness, was really a scholar at heart. “Well, you can’t. I beat you to it.” She drew in a breath. “There was a party.” Guests. So many cruel guests who’d pinched, slapped, used and hurt. She’d been sixteen then, bleeding from various places and so lost. She’d not made a single choice for herself in years, and had not had a chance to discover herself. “By then, I’d started taking drugs to…dull everything.” Her mistress had fed her and the other slaves the stuff. They’d liked her docile, obedient. “But during that party, I watched my mistress and master join in the abuse of another guest’s slave. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I’d seen it a hundred times before.” And suffered it herself. “But that night, the girl slit her wrists with a piece of jewelry.” So much blood. The girl had been sleeping beside Nera in the harem. All that red that soaked into Nera’s nightgown. She still saw it in her dreams. “She was eleven.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Something ignited inside me. A desire, a burn. For freedom. For myself and for that girl.”

  Nik made a sound and a shaft of moonlight illuminated his face. Her stomach clenched. His face was contorted, his hands in tight fists. She reached over and placed one hand over his fist and cupped his strong face with the other. “I got out. During a combat display to show off my skills the next morning, I beheaded them both with my sword.” And ran through a few of the other more sadistic guests. Her memories were a little blurred by the drugs, but she remembered the strange sense of horror and freedom she’d felt.

  “I ran. I stole a ship.” She took a deep breath. “And I went home to Luvanoi.”

  “Your family. They helped you.”

  His tone made her think he’d guessed the truth.

  “They were horrified. I’d shamed them. I was no better than a criminal and I’d put them at risk by going back to them. They looked at me like I was a stranger who’d trekked dirt across their floor.”

  Niklas cursed and hit the wall again.

  She pressed her body into his. “I left. I survived. Please, put away the pity and anger.” She lifted her chin. “I don’t want it.”

  He gripped her jaw, his blue eyes glittering. “I don’t pity you. I’d never pity you. When I look at you, I see—”

  She licked her lips. “Yes?”

  “Strength. You are so damned strong, Nera.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Finish your story.”

  “I changed my name. I got clean.” She still remembered the shivers and horrible pain of the drug withdrawal. “I was good at fighting, so I worked some freelance merc jobs for a while.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wasn’t very good at taking orders.”

  “What a surprise.” There was a faint trace of humor in his voice. She thought his tense muscles might have relaxed, just a little.

  “I was good at sneaking and stealing, too. I bounced around between a few different quadrants. For the first time in my life, I had choices to make, and I had no idea what I wanted to do.” She gave a little laugh. “Then one day I was sitting in the Institute’s museum on Beneer.”

  “The Museum of Cultural Heritage.”

  “Right. I was hungry for culture, to learn about different planets and their histories. I heard a couple of curators talking about the ‘damned Phoenix brothers’ and some crazy treasure hunt you’d just pulled off. They also mentioned how many e-creds you’d made.” She smiled. “They were cursing the three of you, but at the same time, I could tell they admired you as well. I think they were a little jealous.”

  “Maybe,” he murmured.

  “I decided to give treasure hunting a try.” And she’d finally found something she liked, something that was her choice from start
to finish.

  He cupped her cheek. “I’m glad you visited that museum.”

  “Despite everything I’ve stolen from you? Or how many times I’ve hurt you or your brothers?”

  He leaned closer. “Yes. If we got hurt, it encouraged us to be faster, better. And every time you stole a hunt out from under us, it made us plan better.” He nipped her lips. “God, I want you, Nera. All of you.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Oh, that wonderful taste of his. She could spend hours and hours kissing him.

  Desire ignited, scorching hot. She climbed into his lap, straddling him. He pulled her closer, groaning into her mouth. His hands slid under her ass, his fingers kneading her cheeks through her fitted armor.

  Then he pulled back and pressed his face against her neck. His hot breath panted onto her skin. “I’m not making love to you here.”

  She nipped his ear. Hard enough to hurt and make him growl. “How about fucking me, then?”

  “No. When I’m finally inside you, I want a damned bed. And some privacy, and hours—lots of hours to do everything I want to you.”

  Her breath hitched. “Niklas, please.”

  “I will not make love to you with a pack of crazed zombies below us, trying to work out how to get up here and eat us.”

  She huffed out a breath. “I knew you were conservative, but…”

  He shook her. “Behave.”

  “Okay, no sex.” Damn, that pained her. She was primed, every cell in her body yearning for him.

  “Besides, I want to give you some time. I want to make sure you’re ready.”

  She pushed against his chest. “Phoenix, is that your blundering male way of asking me if I have any hangups over sex?”

  He glowered at her. “I’m being considerate.”

  She snorted. “You’re playing the macho protective alpha.” She was not going to tell him that a part of her liked it. “I did have some issues. I’ve worked them out over the years.” She lowered her voice. “I really, really want you inside me.”