Eradication: A Space Opera: Book Four of The Shadow Order Page 7

  “What about zombies?” Seb said.

  The other three looked 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 The doors that had covered the hatch weren’t visible anymore from where they’d withdrawn into the rocks.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 a
nd let me handle this on my own.”

  A whine rode Bruke’s words. “There’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!”

  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 minut
es, 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?”