“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 for 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
The four left the room and walked the short distance to the double doors leading to the next section of the complex. The doorway stood large enough to drive a tank through, the closed doors forming a tight seal against any gas leakage.
Sparks walked over to the panel where the keycard should go and brought up her
mini-computer.
“At least we’ve cleared out one section,” Seb said to SA and Bruke. “Two more to go and we can get out of here.”
When Seb saw SA looking at him, he looked back. From the way she stared at him, her deep and compassionate gaze looked like she wanted to tell him something. Maybe he’d misread it, but it felt like support of some sort. She understood what he’d just done with the little girl. That he’d done it so the others didn’t have to. Maybe she forgave him shoving in front of her the entire time.
SA stepped close to Seb as if about to reach out to him, but stopped when Sparks looked up from her computer. “There’s no gas leaks on the other side.”
A look at the graceful, yellow-skinned woman still a few metres from him, and Seb sighed at the missed opportunity. He turned to Sparks. The others might not have seen it, but he knew her well enough by now to recognise the relief on her face. None of them liked the thought of an explosion, but it went to the next level with Sparks. It kept her awake at night. He’d shared a room with her. He’d heard her night terrors. “So the third section’s sealed off?”
A shrug and Sparks said, “It would seem so. Either that, or there’s no gas coming through at all.”
As much as Seb wanted to look at SA again, he didn’t. The moment had passed and they needed to get on. “That would make our lives a lot easier.”
“Which makes me think it’s not true,” Sparks said. “When has anything gone well for us? Are you all ready?”
“Hang on.” Seb walked close to the large double doors, turned his blaster around and drove the butt of it against the steel barrier.
The deep thud boomed through the section they were in and the one beyond.
Bruke whined. “What are you doing?” The green-scaled creature shifted from side to side like he needed to pee.
Seb raised a finger in the air to indicate his friend should wait. And sure enough, the scream came from the other side. Deranged, twisted, and furious, it rushed towards them.
Bruke stepped back from the door moments before a series of thuds clattered into it. Each bang sent him back another pace.
“That’s what I’m doing,” Seb said with a raised voice so his retreating friend could hear him.
“Trying to get us killed?” Bruke said.
A shake of his head and Seb smiled. “No, I’m trying to flush them out. I’d much rather they were on the other side of that door, waiting for us, than spread throughout this next section and ready to give us a nasty surprise around every damn corner. We can deal with them in one go and be done with it.”
Bruke offered another whine in response, but he raised his blaster.
Seb looked at Sparks and then SA. “You both ready?”
As unflappable as ever, SA dipped a nod at Seb, holding him in her gaze for a second. Sparks sighed, shrugged, and said, “Yeah, I suppose so.”
Chapter 24
Although Sparks stood by the keycard reader with her card in her hand, Seb walked over and flicked his head behind him to indicate where she should go. He gripped his own keycard hanging around his neck as he said, “Get some distance with the others and shoot the zombies when they come through. I should be the one to stay close. Whoever opens this door won’t be able to get back to a shooting distance and will have to fight hand to hand. I can do that.”
Sparks assessed Seb with her magnified purple gaze, but she didn’t argue. Maybe she saw the futility of resisting him. He wouldn’t back down on this. He had the skills for close combat. Him and SA, and no way would he expect SA to do it, not after the wasp’s nest he’d just kicked.
The screams continued unrelenting on the other side of the doors. They banged against them as if they could beat them down. But no human could punch through the solid barrier, not even Seb with his metal-lined bones.
Seb had intended to get the creatures gathered on the other side of the door, but he’d not been able to comprehend the reality of it until now. He could cope with the rage on the other side, but as soon as he swiped his card through the reader, he’d be setting the mob on his friends.
He hoped they’d given themselves enough space to hold the rush of creatures back. Besides, he’d make sure none of them got through.
A shake ran through Seb’s hand when he lifted his card to the reader.
A moment’s pause to centre himself and Seb nodded, speaking for the benefit of the others. “Right. Three … two … one …”
Seb swiped the card. He watched the red light turn to green and the crack in the middle of the doors started to open. He backed away a couple of steps and raised his fists as the edges of his world blurred.
The second the flood of zombies appeared, Seb’s world slowed down. The monsters swarmed into the space, bringing the reek of rot and waste with them.
SA, Sparks, and Bruke lit the air up with green blasts and knives while Seb waited for the ones they didn’t hit to come through.
A widened stance, his fists clenched and raised, Seb had to wait a good few seconds before the first zombie got close enough to him.
A woman, maybe in her thirties, although hard to tell with the haggard expression of rage on her face. Seb punched her square on the nose, driving her back so hard her feet left the ground before she crashed down onto her back.
Shot after shot, knife after knife, the others held the swarm at bay. Despite the width of the narrow gap in the doorway, the zombies had all rushed forward as one, bottlenecking because of their desire to get at the quartet. It slowed them down enough to make them manageable, but the doors were opening wider with every passing second.
Two more broke free and rushed at Seb. Flailing arms and fury came at him. A man and a woman this time. No, he couldn’t think of them like that. People with families and lives. Those people had gone. Two monsters. Nothing more.
Seb ducked the swing from the first creature, jumped up, and knocked it back with an uppercut. It fell into the beast behind it and Seb saw a knife fly through the air and sink into the temple of each zombie. It turned them both limp.
A look at SA and Seb nodded his thanks to her. Another scream dragged his attention back to their attackers.
The monsters came in a steady stream at Seb, and although hard work, he managed to keep his pace, dropping them as quickly as they rushed forward.
Fuelled by adrenaline, Seb felt more charged with every punch. Moses might have been a vile creature, but the metal fists were a stroke of genius. He threw another heavy blow into the face of a monster, bones crunching when it fell back as if they’d turned to dust beneath its skin.
The gap in the door grew wider and more zombies flooded out. Where Seb had focused on dropping the ones closest to him, he didn’t notice the one who’d circled round and charged at him from his left. The first he knew of it came when it clattered into him, a sharp burn in his ribs as it drove the wind from his lungs.
Seb landed on his back, the creature on top of him. He fought for breath as he stared up at the vile monster and held it at arm’s length. Any trace of humanity had been driven from it. It glared at him through red eyes. The castanet click of its teeth snapped just centimetres from him, and it smothered him in a hot halitosis reek.
As Seb looked into the creature’s mouth, he momentarily lost the strength in his arms. Squirming deep in its throat like a lodged piece of food, he saw the tip of a grub as it writhed and twisted. When the zombie snapped its teeth even closer to Seb’s face, he yelled and lifted it away from him, his arms shaking beneath the weight of the thing.
Chapter 25
Seb pulled at the air with hungry gasps, but he couldn’t catch his breath. The zombie had hit him so hard he still hadn’t got his wind back. With the weight of the creature on top of him and the pain in his ribs, he started to lose his battle against the beast, his shaking arms giving way beneath its pressure.
Bites snapped closer to Seb’s face with the monster’s every lurch. The crack of teeth crashing together just missed Seb’s nose, all the worse for
him seeing it in slow motion. While yelling, he turned his head to the side and continued to push the creature away. He held it at bay but not a lot more.
When the beast screamed again, Seb’s arms buckled. He regained control just before the monster fell flat on top of him. Another click of gnashing teeth snapped between them.
A loud whack sounded out and the pressure lifted from Seb. He looked across to see Bruke standing over the thing from where he’d driven the butt of his gun into the side of its face. Bruke then spun his weapon around and shot it.
The blast snapped the zombie rigid for a second and then it fell limp. Seb continued to fight for breath as he stared up at his scaled friend. He dipped a nod at him and Bruke nodded back.
Seb sat up to see all the other creatures had been killed. It had taken no more than about fifteen seconds, although it felt like longer in slow motion. A pile of bodies filled the doorway.
Exhausted from the fight and still trying to catch his breath, Seb smiled at Bruke. “That was close.”
Glazed eyes and ragged breaths, Bruke looked on the verge of tears as he glanced between the zombie he’d just killed and Seb. “Are you okay?”
Despite his exhaustion, his arms aching from the strain and build-up of lactic acid, Seb laughed and nodded. “I am. Thank you.”
But Bruke didn’t look like he could pull himself back. He shook as much as Seb and a tear ran down his face. Although he nodded, he didn’t seem to have much else in him.
Once Seb had got to his feet, he looked at the sprawl of bodies on the ground. They formed a considerable mound for them to try to get over. About thirty in total, they all looked dead.
“Well done,” Seb said to the others as he walked over to the stinking pile and grabbed the closest corpse. “Although, I think the hardest part is yet to come. We need to stretch these things out in a line so we can take out every grub as they emerge.”
The Shadow Order - Books 1 - 8 + 120 Seconds (The complete series): A Space Opera Page 68