by Sean Ellis
Montero and the others began moving, twitching at first, then sat upright and got to their feet. Their faces were expressionless, eyes staring forward without seeming to focus, but as one they turned purposefully toward the metal tunnel and began running.
Unlike the zombies of Hollywood motion pictures, these living dead men did not shuffle along gracelessly in mindless pursuit of the living. Instead, they moved with an almost cat-like grace, darting heedless of peril into the corridor. Twisting and diving through the air, they passed through the tunnel and beyond the traps with supernatural ease.
Tarrant allowed a smile of satisfaction to stretch his own reanimated flesh. “Now she has someone to keep her company in this awful place.”
Lightning flashed again in the killing tunnel, knocking one of the resurrected Odessa soldiers out of mid-air. Mira raised her head, knowing without seeing that her ordeal was far from over, and caught a brief glimpse of the approaching foes in the instant before they burst from the tunnel.
She moved as if to flee, but pulled back from the feint, charging instead toward the pack. No longer motivated by human reasoning ability, the zombies were not easily fooled. Hell-bent on adding her to their ranks, they did not attempt to form strategies for snaring her with the least amount of effort. They simply threw themselves at her with rabid ferocity. For all their supernatural energy, however, they still had the bodies and mass of men.
Mira crouched, coiling for a serpentine strike in the instant before the revivified Montero pounced. As soon as he committed to the lunge, she side-stepped, assaulting him with feet and fists as he flew helplessly past. When he recovered from the thwarted attack, spinning around to pounce once more, Mira had his gun.
The captured machine pistol in Mira’s hands bucked frenetically as a torrent of nine-mil spewed from its barrel and chewed into the undead neo-Nazi. Blood and flesh exploded from exit wounds as Montero staggered back, but the bullets seemed to have no real effect on their target.
Montero’s troops were likewise uncowed by the assault and charged toward her with single-minded voracity. Mira swung the MP5 to meet this new front, fully aware that Montero was already regaining his footing on her flank. The kinetic energy from the bullet impacts caused some of them to falter, but the rest surged forward, heedless of injury. A moment later, the machine pistol stopped bucking, as the bolt slid home on an empty firing chamber.
Her short-lived defensive plan had served its diversionary purpose; it had given her time to think. She knew she could not hope to overpower these reanimated cadavers as she had Mann’s desiccated remains. Worse, she was wounded, perhaps gravely so, and it was only a matter of time before blood loss led to fatigue and eventually unconsciousness.
But beyond these immediate concerns, there was a greater issue that she could not simply push into the background: Aimes—the original grave robber Tarrant—had control of the complete Trinity and intended to use it for an act of incomprehensible evil. His delusions of vengeance, fed by the god-like powers of the joined relic, had led him to sever all ties with humanity. It was not unreasonable to imagine him rending the very planet. Mira knew she had to escape, not simply to preserve her own life, but perhaps every life on earth.
She threw the spent gun at the head of the nearest attacker and then dove under his grasp. Bowling into the midst of the zombie pack, she gained an instant in which they confusedly reversed and stumbled over one another in their haste to seize her. She used that moment well, crossing the laboratory to the first tunnel trap.
The dismembered remains of two victims lay at the far end of the steel corridor. The trap had remained sprung, not resetting because of the lingering weight on the pressure sensitive floor. The blunt edge of several sets of spring-loaded knives presented a grid-like obstacle, though less daunting than the tunnel leading from the Trinity vault. Mira raced into the corridor, diving and rolling through the blades like an expert gymnast, but the Odessa troops were still close on her heels.
As she passed the hunks of flesh and cloth—all that remained of the ill-fated Bolivians that had chased her and DiLorenzo—she reached down and snagged a discarded gun from the floor. It was an old .357 Magnum, slightly discolored and pitted with corrosion, but packing a full load of bright brass shells. She hefted the weighty firearm, not even noticing that the hand which had gripped it previously was still moving on the metal floor, and dived through the final set of blades.
She tucked her head down and landed in a forward roll that brought her to her feet in a low crouch, with the Magnum extended in a two-hand grip before her. Despite her expectation that some of her enemies would be alive and waiting in the cavern alongside the underground river, she was momentarily dumbfounded by what she saw.
Two men, one dressed in a stained, white linen suit and the other in the rough garments of a laborer, stood in mute disbelief over three motionless forms in dark fatigues. It took a moment for Mira to realize that the latter group were Odessa soldiers, snuffed out by Aimes in the same act that had slain Montero. The two Bolivians took advantage of that brief lapse in her vigilance to raise their weapons against her, but before a shot could be fired, the three dead men suddenly began moving.
“Madre de Dios,” gasped the man in the suit. If the invocation was sufficient to expiate a lifetime of criminal activity, then Rafael Delacortes went straight to heaven a moment later. The three dead soldiers fell upon the cocaine baron and his hireling, beating them savagely and twisting their heads almost completely around, before tossing lifeless bodies aside to concentrate on their true foe. At the same instant, Montero and the rest of his group broke from the tunnel like a pack of wolves, rushing to attack Mira from behind.
Mira snapped off three quick shots with the Magnum, each a perfect head shot that knocked down the three most recently awakened members of the undead army. Though the back of each man’s head had exploded like an overripe melon, they were back on their feet before Mira could take even a step. At the same time, the two slain Bolivians began to stir, rising to join the ranks despite shattered limbs and torn muscles that left their heads hanging like pendants against their torsos.
For the first time in a long time, Mira felt the icy stare of the Grim Reaper. She wasted no further effort battling the unvanquishable foes, but instead turned toward the staircase landing off to her left. Two more corpses, victims of the earlier gun battle, were stirring to life as she hurtled past. She reached the stairway in a few bounding strides, but even as she began ascending, surging up three treads at a time, she knew that the worst was yet to come. High above her, the sound of old bones scraping on stone signaled the return of the fortress’ original guardians.
As the last of Turner’s mercenaries hauled himself out of the old elevator shaft, Rachel Aimes turned toward her adopted father. If his return from the underworld had created a minor rift between them, then his current status had transformed it into a chasm. To say that he was no longer human was a ridiculous oversimplification. Still, there was something to be said for backing the winning team.
Tarrant stood with his back to the group of hired soldiers, impassively gazing at the road ahead. The enslaved New York City policeman, whose role in the drama Rachel barely grasped, hung a few steps away as if impaled on an invisible fishhook. As soon as the last man was up, Tarrant started forward again without a word.
The loosely organized party moved at a jog along the upper promenade above the parade ground, quickly finding the stairway that led up to the turbine access tunnel and the geyser exhaust vent. None of the mercenaries had paid attention during the initial hasty descent, and all were now relying upon Tarrant to lead them out. He did not disappoint. Like a drop of mercury following the course of least resistance, he seemed to flow up the narrow tunnel, rising effortlessly on the fixed rope left behind by Mira Raiden and hastening up the steep passageway.
“Look at that old guy go,” remarked one of the hirelings, not completely comprehending their leader’s supernatural enhancements.
Mira had only reached the next level of the redoubt before discovering the enormity of the odds stacked against her. It was impossible to discern a single human shape in the mass of reanimated remains that was spilling from the corridor into the stairwell. Though the staccato steps of Montero and his pack were still audible over the din, perhaps only a hundred steps below but closing fast, she turned back. She had gone only a few paces when the swarm engulfed her.
Because they were little more than bones held together with brittle strands of mummified sinew, the individual members of the undead army had little potential to cause injury. Despite being outweighed and outmuscled however, the mindless corpses crowded together like the sea, flooding down the steps intent on literally drowning Mira beneath a combined mass of dust and bones. Skeletal fingers tugged at her hair and clothing, but were unable to seize firm hold. She fought the vanguard of the swarm with well-placed kicks and punches, never slowing in her descent, but it wasn’t enough. Her legs were swept from beneath her and she tumbled down the carved stone steps.
Suddenly, none of that mattered.
Unable to contain the swollen mass of super-heated water vapor, the steel containment chamber and the surrounding cavern burst apart along a dozen different fracture points. Observers as far away as Ouros saw the side of the mountain explode skyward in a gray column of steam and dust. The rock face Mira and the others had climbed to access the steam vent was completely gone, blasted into pebbles and chunks of dirt that were either blown into the sky or swept down the mountain in the subsequent mud flow.
At the controls of the old Viet Nam era Huey helicopter, Rachel Aimes felt the cataclysm as a wave of thermal turbulence, requiring her deft touch to avoid a loss of control. Already more than a quarter-mile away from the zone of destruction, Rachel and her cohorts were hardly inconvenienced by the destruction of the mountain and the hidden Nazi fortress inside.
Mira was not so fortunate.
The entire cavern lurched violently, pitching her away from the chattering horde, down more steps. She barely felt the bruising impact, however. Her senses were attuned to the unceasing vibrations in the steps and walls. Though she didn’t know exactly what had happened, she knew that the tremor was only a harbinger of what was to come. Even the threat of relentless undead monsters paled alongside the very immediate reality that she might be forever entombed beneath the collapsing mountain. Beating off a renewed assault, she struggled to her feet and hastened downward.
An abrupt wind chased down the stairwell, a hot breeze that carried a noise like thunder. She beat her way past Montero and the Odessa zombies, spurred onward by a growing realization of what was beginning to happen.
The groaning and pitching of the cavern continued, redoubling in intensity. Weakened by a honeycomb of human excavations, the peak began to collapse inward. As the weight of debris accumulated to critical mass on the uppermost levels hewed out by Mann’s slave laborers, the floor gave way, triggering a chain reaction of destruction. Withal however, the annihilation of the Nazi redoubt was insignificant when measured alongside what was occurring deep beneath the mountain.
The explosive release in the bowels of the earth had forever altered the geyser. Displaced by tons of debris, the tributary of the underground river that had supplied water to the geothermal phenomenon no longer flowed through to its original destination. Instead, the full volume of the subterranean torrent was diverted into the main channel, increasing its volume by nearly seventy-five percent. The hydraulic force of so much water in the already weakened caverns hastened the total destruction of the cave network.
Mira hit the landing at the base of the stairwell in a controlled headlong plunge. She could feel the effects of injury and fatigue slowing her reflexes and clouding her judgment. Every step was a battle, both with the risen dead and her own human frailty. She struggled onward, acutely aware that the underground river was now in the grip of a flash flood. Behind her, a similar roar of water thundered down the stairwell, heralding the approach of a second deluge.
With the last of her reserves, she broke from the grip of a dozen animated corpses in varying states of decay, and sprinted toward the precipice above the river. Her destination swayed wildly, high above the surging waters, snapping back and forth with every tremor. She scrambled up the wooden platform and without hesitation leapt out over the raging torrent.
Her outstretched fingers snared a handrail on the sliding door to the tram vehicle. Even as she closed both fists around the smooth metal, she felt the car lurch away, as if trying to escape from her grasp.
The first wave of zombies plunged, lemming-like, from the platform and were swept away by the flood. But as the car swung back toward the platform, those who followed learned from the mistake of their predecessors. Mira felt the subtle impact of loose bones and old flesh striking her body and falling away, or impacting the metal and glass exterior before tumbling to the same fate. In the corner of her eye, she saw Montero and the other neo-Nazis striding through the sea of walking mummies, eager to take their turn.
Pulling up slightly, she lifted her left hand to the simple latch bolt securing the door and pushed it open. As the cable swayed back toward the platform, she swung her left foot up into the car, then pulled herself inside the antique conveyance. Even before she landed, some of the squirming zombies joined her inside, tearing at her with shriveled fingers.
Mira ignored them momentarily, focusing instead on turning off the flow. Bracing her back against the floor of the car, she pushed the door closed with an abrupt kick. As the sliding panel slammed shut, it cleaved a yellowed skull in two.
As the zombie mass was unable to immediately reinforce its numbers, Mira quickly gained the upper hand, tearing arms and legs from bony torsos and scattering teeth and skulls with deft kicks. However, while the shattered remains on the floor fell still, the briefly restored force of life departed, the outside of the tram grew thick with the undead. Like maggots on meat, zombies swarmed over the car, shutting out the dim light with their wasted bodies and the tattered remnants of prison clothing and Wehrmacht uniforms.
Over the noise of bones scraping on glass, she could hear the pounding of boots on the roof of the car, likely Montero and his men adding their superior strength and dexterity to the attack. Yet, there was nothing more she could do. Dropping to the floor in exhaustion, she waited for the inevitable.
What she could not see was the sudden rush of muddy water that exploded from the stairwell, driving ahead of it enormous chunks of rock as effortlessly as matchwood. In the blink of an eye, the dead returned to their previous condition, smashed into oblivion by the collision. The surge caught the tramcar an instant later, ripping it from its cable like rotten fruit from the vine, and tossed it into the turbulent flow.
Mira was hurled mercilessly about the interior space, barely able to discern which way was up. One of the windows exploded inward, struck by a piece of debris in the flood or perhaps a low hanging rock in the river tunnel, but surprisingly little water crept in. For some time the unguided vessel surged through uncontrollable spins and plunges before the ferocity of the flood diminished. The tram somehow stayed upright, riding the current like a gondola.
Mira barely noticed.
As soon as the sensation of constant upheaval relented, she settled onto the sloshing floor and fished a flare from her pack. The sudden light hurt her eyes and offered little help in illuminating the area beyond the small car. Outside, there was only darkness and the awareness of swift motion. It mattered little; she was no longer in control of her destiny.
The last radiant sliver of the setting sun vanished below the horizon, turning the green water of the Pacific Ocean almost black. In the azure twilight that followed, only the silhouette of cresting waves could be distinguished on the dark surface. There was no one to notice the strange shape, like a
n enormous beer can crumpled and cast aside by a slovenly giant, that breached the surface off the Chilean coast.
It would be nearly twelve hours before the object, caught in the tailings of the El Niño current as it pushed northward, would drift into the tidal zone to be thrown up onto a rocky beach in the first light of dawn. Nestled inside the battered tramcar, Mira slept on, oblivious to the fact of her own survival.
FOURTEEN
It was raining in the Sherpa village of Namche Bazaar. To be more precise, it was raining heavily on the entire Indian subcontinent. The vestiges of a late season monsoon had pushed up against the barrier of the Himalayas and stopped, dumping torrential rains on the mountain nations of Nepal and Bhutan and most of Eastern India. Mira had seen nothing but rain for two days. She unconsciously tugged the heavy coat of yak wool closer about her shoulders as she stared through the streaked window into the stormy night.
Only four days had passed since the debacle in Bolivia. It had taken the better part of the first two days just to escape the remote section of Chile where she had washed up following a hellish ride through the underground river and the subsequent disgorging from the belly of the sea. The tram gondola had retained enough air to remain buoyant and burst immediately toward the surface.
Thirty-six hours after washing up on the beach, she boarded a chartered floatplane to Santiago. There, she changed to a commercial carrier bound for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, connecting to Miami, Florida, then New York, then London. An Indian Air flight destined for Calcutta was her next connection, after which she had to rely once more on smaller chartered aircraft to reach her ultimate goal in timely fashion. Somewhere between New Delhi and Katmandu, the rain had started.