Eradication: A Space Opera: Book Four of The Shadow Order

by Michael Robertson

  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?”

  “With 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.

  “That one must have belonged to a teenager,” Sparks said and pointed at one of the beds. A poster of a music band Seb had never heard of hung above it, a stack of books beside it.

  When Seb looked at the bed next to it, his heart sank. He looked across to see the others were staring at it too. Although the same size as the other single bed, it had a crayon drawing above it instead of a poster. Done by a child of six or seven years old, it had a stick-figure family, a rainbow, a bright sun, and a dog. All the things that child would never have in the mines, save the family.

  Seb sighed and swallowed against the lump in his throat. A stack of books lay next to the bed. They were the kind of books where the pages were made from card and they were filled with colourful pictures. The beginning of tears itched his eyes to look at them and he shook his head. “They didn’t deserve this.”

  Silence.

  To break the stillness if nothing else, Seb cleared his throat. “I’d say this room’s clear.”

  It took for him to look at the others before Sparks replied. She spoke with a warble in her voice. “Yep.”

  Many of the rooms looked the same. Some had bunk beds for what must have been single men and women. Some were family rooms like the first one they’d visited. Every one showed a snapshot of the lives that had been lived in the mines. A snapshot of the lives that had been lost.

  When they got to the last room in the corridor, SA tried to go in first, but Seb barged past her.

  Six single beds and a double, Seb laughed to see them. It felt good to relieve the tension. “Wow, the parents must have been busy in this one. Although, I suppose on those cold and lonely nights—which must have been every night in this place—what else could they do but make babies?”

  Seb looked at SA, only then realising it seemed like he’d addressed her directly. Heat smothered his face and he dropped his attention to the floor. “Um, I mean. Um, what I mean. Um …”

  But something cut Seb off. The smell had been there all along—rot, rancid meat. It hung faint in the air, but he definitely smelled it. He should have caught it sooner.

  A particularly messy room, Seb suddenly saw a pile of clothes in the corner shift. He raised his gun and looked down the barrel of it. The others did the same.

  It started as a groan and quickly turned into a snake-like hiss. Angry, it sounded like whatever made the noise could and would bite.

  Seb glanced at the others. They were all ready for this.

  Where he’d expected something larger, Seb jumped back to see a child spring from the dirty laundry. His world slipped into slow motion as the angry little thing threw the sheets clear of herself.

  Like the girl in the clip Moses had played them, she looked to be between about eight and ten years old. She had the blood-red glare of the other zombies and stretched her mouth wide as if releasing a silent scream. She then snapped her mouth shut, clamped her teeth, and hissed again as she focused on him.

  Just one zombie and the brightness of the room allowed Seb to feel calm enough to take her in for a moment. She had a damp lap at the front and was no doubt soiled at the back. The smell of waste stirred up with her movement.

  Seb still hadn’t pulled the trigger. It had been different when they’d been part of a crowd, but now he faced a little girl on her own. Now he’d seen what her life had been like, his finger froze. He couldn’t do it.

  To look at the girl’s cherub face—chubby with puppy fat—showed just how little she was. But she’d gone and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Life had been cruel to her and he couldn’t reverse that.

  The others remained frozen as if waiting for him to do something. A clenched jaw and Seb winced, but he still couldn’t pull the trigger.

  Then the girl sprang to life. She jumped over the bed between her and Seb and launched herself at him.

  Even in slow motion she moved fast. Seb yelled as he raised his gun, aimed it at her, and pulled the trigger. Although he closed his eyes, he listened to her take the shot and hit the floor.

  It took a few seconds before Seb opened his eyes again and saw the girl on her back. Dead. A hole sat in the centre of her face and she stared up at the ceiling with a listless gaze. A twisted look of horror had frozen her features.

  Silence hung in the air again before Seb said, “She didn’t deserve that.”

  Sparks let go of a heavy sigh. “None of them did.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Within a few seconds, silence swept through the family’s room as if the air had been sucked from it. Everywhere Seb looked, he saw reminders of the lives that had been lived down there. Toys, books, drawings … hell, he could almost hear their laughter … their cries. The beginning of tears itched his eyes, but he couldn’t get sentimental. Not now. He turned his attention away from the personal belongings in the room and looked down at the little girl’s corpse again.

  Although not easy, Seb found it easier to look at the dead child than anywhere else. At least the corpse didn’t have a narrative of what it once was. Just a dead body; he didn’t have to think about its past.

  The other Shadow Order members stood beside Seb, but he’d killed the girl. Their gesture of solidarity didn’t mean much to him at that moment. A fierce buzz ran through his hands from wanting to put them on the girl’s wound. His hands still hadn’t got the message. He couldn’t resurrect the dead.

  About five minutes had passed before Seb finally felt like he could look up again without crying; he glanced around the room and stopped on the parents’ bed. Unmade like most of the other beds, it suggested the grubs had attacked when a lot of the miners were sleeping.

  The mine couldn’t have been an easy place to raise six kids. Not that anywhere would be an easy place to raise six kids. Hopefully there had been enough grubs f
or them to all fall at the same time. It would have been awful if any of them had to watch loved ones get taken over like the girl in the clip Moses had shown them.

  As the narrative of the place grew again in Seb’s mind, he shook his head to try to shake it off. He still had to kill people. It wouldn’t help to understand who they were before the parasites attacked.

  Still no one spoke. Seb looked across at each of the others in turn, but none of them looked back at him, instead fixing their attention on the dead girl. The grub had to come out soon, so they had to wait. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to wait too much longer.

  Then Seb saw it. The slightest movement in her chubby cheeks as if she shifted her tongue around the inside of her mouth. A deep breath to settle his rampaging heart before he looked down the barrel of his gun at her. They’d never called him their leader, but when a tough decision or action needed to be made, it seemed that he had the broadest shoulders. Certainly no resentful looks from SA at that moment.

  A gentle parting of her puffy little lips and Seb shook as he watched on. The end of his gun wobbled. Hopefully he wouldn’t miss. The pointed tip of the grub’s little body—slick and glistening with what must have been bile like he’d seen with the others—poked from her mouth.

  Although he didn’t look up, Seb felt the attention of the others on him. It didn’t matter what he felt like doing, he had to do this.

  He pulled the trigger.

  A kick of recoil bucked through the gun and a rancid shot of rot and cauterised flesh filled the small room.

  Another hole in the poor girl’s innocent face.

  Seb stood up and turned his back on the tiny corpse. “Come on,” he said, the others finally looking at him. “Let’s get out of here.”

  From the response the others gave him, it seemed like Seb couldn’t have said it soon enough. Bruke led the way to the door.

  CHAPTER 23