One big problem with his plan, though, was knowing which of the tanks held oxygen and which held nitrogen, and also not knowing the precise moment when the air mixture would reach the correct ratio of methane and oxygen, and then how long it would take to reach the already burning lighter.
Complications. But a little luck and—
There was something else he hadn’t accounted for, either—the emergency light fixtures burning above the refuge shelter. Could they set off an explosion? Were they sealed correctly? It was a damn mine, so they should be.
But, what if they aren’t?
As he realized his potentially fatal mistake, he also saw the first flash of ignition, glowing blue in the distance. He spun and raced for the water, his strides covering more ground in less time than he’d ever covered in his entire life. When he reached the water, he dove in head first and ducked under the surface.
The blast compressed the water around him and drove him tumbling through the cave underwater like he’d caught a bad wave under the surf. He hit something, hard, and felt the breath rush out of him, but he somehow kept his mouth closed and did not inhale as he tumbled in the darkness.
As the violence stilled, he opened his eyes and couldn’t tell which way was up or down or to which direction he should swim to safety. He chanced it and swam where he thought he saw a light bobbing in the distance. His air-starved lungs burned, and he was already seeing yellow and purple spots. All he wanted to do was let go and breathe. But with every bit of will he had left in him, he found the courage not to. A second later, he saw more of the flashing yellow lights and purple-tinged shapes.
This time, he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He was going to die just as his wife had died, stuck inside a hole in the earth. A big part of him didn’t mind so much. Death was easy. He’d welcome it. He just wished he would have gone out with the bang and not drown like a rat.
He opened his mouth to breathe and—
Something bumped into him, startling him. In the faint glow from a mysterious light source—he saw a face. It was a ghostly face. The eyes were goggled and glazed, and the skin was torn like ragged cloth with deep furrows carved from it.
His first thought was that he’d blown Dr. Martinez up in the explosion. But he quickly realized it was only the burnt face of one of the zombie creatures. Most of the flesh on its skull hadn’t yet been torn or cooked away, and it left the thing looking like it was wearing some kind of evil mask with the lips pulled back and the teeth exposed.
Then those eyes shot fully open and turned redly satanic, and the thing then tried to bite him. He jolted away from it, and his head was suddenly free of the water as he touched the bottom and jerked upward. He gulped air in huge panicked breaths as he continued to kick away from the thing. He got a few feet away from it and found he could stand and walk instead of swim.
All around him the bodies of the former miners burned. Smoke was already filling the air. Sizzling fat and charred flesh kept the fires burning. The smoke hung thick in the air and made it difficult to see much more than a few feet in front of him. He lowered himself closer to the surface of the water and began to make his way through the ash and char to the shoreline.
His hand landed in something hot and wet and squishy. He yanked his arm back as if he’d been burned. What his fingers had landed in had been the body of one of the zombies. He raised his arm and flung away the sticky gore.
“Dr. Martinez!” he called out. His throat was raw from the gathering smoke. He coughed and choked and raised his arm to breathe through the shirt fabric.
He heard no response from her.
He called out again.
No one answered.
If he was going to find her, he was going to have a hell of a time doing it. The smoke was becoming so thick he could barely see in any direction more than a few feet.
He called out again.
Still nothing.
He saved his breath and crouched low, clicked on his flashlight, and moved in the direction he remembered seeing the shelter. It seemed to take forever, but he finally found it when he bumped headfirst into it and could see the side, so he felt his way around it to where he thought the door should be. Reaching up, he banged his fist against the metal three quick times, then three long, followed by three short—Morse code for SOS. He knew that Morgan would recognize the message, Gauge too.
But, nothing.
Where are you?
He slumped against the side of the door. They weren’t here. They had to have escaped. He shut his eyes.
A second later, he startled when he heard the sound of metal scraping. The door behind him began to unlatch. It creaked open a few inches.
“Jack?” came Morgan’s voice through the crack.
He grunted an affirmative, and the door opened wider, and he was sucked inside.
Laying there on the floor, he took shallow gasps and slowly began to regain his breath. He looked up and saw Gauge lying on one of the benches. The man’s entire side was covered in white gauze that was spotted with blood. He watched his friend and teammate’s chest rise and fall. Coughing, he choked and sputtered and spat until he could speak.
“How is he?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
Morgan shook her head solemnly as he watched her and pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled his way over to Gauge and grabbed him by the hand.
“What happened to him?”
“One of those stupid grenades of his came bouncing back and exploded a little too near. He’s got shrapnel stuck in his abdomen. I think he’s cut up pretty bad on the inside. He needs a doctor.”
Cutter nodded hesitantly, calculating how in the hell he was going to find a doctor in time to save the man if it came to that.
“She was with me,” he said.
“Who?” Morgan asked. “Who was with you? Dr. Martinez?”
“Yes, I found her and brought her along with me, but after that little BBQ, I lost her again. She could still be alive. I’ve got to go look.”
“We can’t go back out there. Those things—”
“Those things are all dead and crispy.” A big part of him resented having to do that to all those poor miners, but it was law of the jungle time, and he’d had to make a snap decision. He just hoped it had been the right one.
“Jack, I found it.” Morgan went to one side of the structure and pulled out a metal case. “It’s the artifact we were sent for.”
She opened it for him and showed him the thing he’d come so far to find. It was nothing special, really, just a long metal bar that seemed to shimmer a little as it caught the light. He reached out to touch it.
Morgan snatched it back and shut the lid. “Don’t touch it.”
“Yeah,” he said, coughing. “Almost forgot.”
He paced the inside of the chamber, looking for anything he could use to help him get back out there and find Dr. Martinez—an oxygen mask, or something.
“There’s nothing in here, Jack,” Morgan said. “We dropped everything and ran for it. We were lucky this place was here. Once I got Lumpy to calm down long enough to sit still, I found some supplies in that compartment—mostly medical supplies and food rations. But that was about it. A whole bunch of nothing otherwise. So what should we do? We’ve got to get him out of here.”
“Yeah. First, though, I gotta see if I can find out if the doctor is still alive,” he said while standing over Gauge. The big man grimaced and tried to sit up.
“He shouldn’t be doing that,” Morgan said.
Gauge winced, but managed to set his feet on the ground and attempt to stand. Cutter helped the man to his feet. Gauge made it, but had to lean heavily on Cutter.
“We don’t have a choice, Morgan. He either comes with us and we find her, or—”
“Or what?”
“We just got to find her, okay? And I can’t have him die either. So let’s get out of here go look.”
“Yes,” she finally said. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”
&n
bsp; “No, Morgan, let’s get the hell out of here.”
~43~
BIGGEST LOSS
Cutter was still soaking wet when he opened the door and surveyed the damage he’d wrought. Only one of the lights on top of the shelter remained lit, and it was covered in soot, so the entire area took on a sickly, yellowish cast. There were smoldering bodies as far as he could see into the darkness, and they probably stretched all the way out to the furthest walls.
He’d killed so many. Too damn many.
And, perhaps, he’d also killed the one woman who had given him what he had needed most, when he had needed it most—renewed hope. But that woman was dead. She had to be. So that hope was now lost. Still, he had to check. Just to be sure. Maybe she hadn’t been blown to bits. And if she had—?
“Wait here,” he said to Gauge and Morgan.
He raised his arm to breathe again through his damp sleeve to mask the godawful stink that filled the air. It didn’t do much good. He could still smell all those charred bodies. It was like he was trying to walk through the fires of a crematorium.
He’d left the doctor near the water, so he decided to look for her there first. He made it to the water’s edge and stood looking at a score of floating bodies and body parts that bobbed and guttered in the inky stillness. Small flames reflected on the water’s surface as they continued to consume the skin and fat of the zombies and send greasy tendrils of smoke spiraling to the ceiling of the mineshaft, and then creeping along the bumpy surface.
Flashlight held in front of him, he spotlighted the various bits of debris, searching for signs that reminded him of the doctor—a bit of clothing maybe, hair, something.
He saw no signs of her. Nothing. She was just—gone. What have I done? But what was one more soul on his troubled conscious? It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. She didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Life was a joke with a really bad punchline. If he somehow got out of this mess, he would go back to his boat, get wasted, find a hot young island girl willing to sleep with him for money, and just get the hell back to the life he had chosen for himself.
It wasn’t all that bad of a life.
Then when he stilled he heard something. He saw a ripple in the water and watched it with curiosity. The ripple became a shape. The shape took form. And soon that form broke the dark surface of the water and gasped for air.
It was her. She survived? How the hell? Shocked, he watched for a brief moment while the water streamed off her head, plastering her hair down against her scalp. Her eyes were wide and filled with surprise at seeing him as well. He almost dropped the flashlight, but quickly reoriented himself and waded into the water and grabbed her under the arm and helped her from the water. She fell on the shoreline on all fours and gasped for breath.
Squatting on his haunches, he waited for her, watching every breath she took and checking her over for any other injuries she might have suffered, but she appeared to have been virtually unscathed by the blast.
“You made it,” he said.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she said, still recovering. But she turned her head and smiled as best she could after she had said it.
He waited with her for a minute or so while she recovered further, then helped her to regain her feet.
“Glad you are still alive,” he said.
“No thanks to you.”
~44~
SPLIT DECISION
With Gauge hanging on and limping between him and Morgan, Cutter made his way back to the lifts that would return them to the surface. Dr. Martinez followed, carrying her small .38 in one hand, which as it had happened to have turned out, still had a few rounds left in it. But those few precious rounds along with a few precious more in Cutter’s Glock and Gauge’s Betty were all they had left between them for whatever zombie horde lay ahead. In her other hand, she carried the metal case containing the artifact.
The lights were burning dimly inside the main branch of the tunnel, which provided enough light to see by, but cast everything in a yellowish glow. There were scores of bodies strewn about on the floor. They weaved their way around them as they ascended the ramped path that would take them to the lifts. Many of the corpses were missing limbs or were so badly damaged that they had not risen like the others had, which made Cutter reconsider if those things could actually die from the catastrophic failures of their bodies, or if shooting them in the head was the only way to kill them. What he did know for certain was that shooting them in the head definitely would kill them, so given the chance—and from this point forward—he figured he would do his very best to incapacitate them instead of killing them. Maybe they could all be saved later if he did. He’d killed enough for one lifetime, maybe a hundred lifetimes.
As a young skull-full-of-mush teenager, he’d been trained to kill, but he’d also been told that too much killing led to a very dangerous and nasty place, one which few could ever fully recover from. And if someone grew too accustomed to killing, there was no real coming back from it. It wasn’t like the movies or a video game where the good guy would blow the hell out of all the bad guys and then smile and crack wise later. Life was too precious for the human spirit to not be affected by all the lives that were taken.
With Dr. Martinez leading the way, they continued up the mineshaft and surprisingly faced no opposition, a fact that made Cutter nervous but was also a blessing. When they finally made it to the lift, he supported Gauge’s weight while Morgan operated the controls. He glanced at Dr. Martinez and tried to smile, but he was certain he looked like some kind of crazy man on leave from the asylum. She did not smile back and glanced away quickly. Whatever they had shared down inside the shelter he was sure would not last once they surfaced and got the hell out of there.
It was a damn shame.
The lift came to a screeching halt, and Morgan threw the latch to open the steel cage in which they had ridden up to the surface.
Still, nothing came at them.
At the topmost level, there were even more bodies covering the floor. These had all been shot in the head, but Cutter was certain it hadn’t been anyone in his team that had done the damage. That meant someone else was inside the mine. Perhaps another team of soldiers. Good. Reinforcements. But then his stomach sank, and he felt a nasty tingle as his mind began to put the pieces together. He indicated toward the ceiling. It was covered with the explosives they had brought along with them. It looked to be all of them and was enough to bring the entire mountain down right on top of them.
Morgan glanced up. “Who did this?” was all she asked.
“Get back,” Cutter said.
Morgan had sensed it too, apparently. Together, they began to back away toward the lift.
Bright white lights clicked on in the distance. Cutter saw them and realized that his luck had just run out, and things were about to go from bad to worse.
“Mr. Cutter,” a voice said as a familiar man stepped into the light and was haloed by it.
~45~
DEALS
“John Wayland,” Cutter breathed at the man standing beside three others. The three men beside Wayland fanned out, keeping their weapons raised and locked on target, which happened to be Cutter at the moment.
“So good to see you all again,” Wayland said. “I trust that you have not had too difficult a time retrieving my prize for me?”
Cutter said nothing and resisted glancing at Dr. Martinez.
Wayland continued, “Seeing that you are all still alive surprises me, I must say. But the colonel and his men? Tsk, tsk, so sad.” He waved a pistol around in a lazy circle, and one of the men went to Dr. Martinez and held out a hand.
“Give him the case,” Wayland said.
She did not. Instead, she raised her gun and pointed it at Wayland.
“Oh, come now, Doctor,” Wayland said. He smiled in the dim light.
Cutter thought about his own Glock and how quickly he could get to it, but he had to keep Gauge propped up too, and t
he man weighed a ton. Then he stupidly remembered that Gauge still had Betty strapped across his chest. It would be faster to go for it, but he wasn’t exactly sure how many bullets Gauge had left in the gun. Nor was he entirely certain how many remained in his gun. Two? Three? He hadn’t paid close enough attention when he’d swapped the magazine with what he’d found on the guy. Big mistake. Probably not enough. He’d have to talk his way out of this one, or delay until a better opportunity presented itself.
“Give it to him,” Cutter said to Dr. Martinez. “Damn thing is not worth dying over.”
“Listen to the man,” Wayland said. “Drop your weapons and give me the case and no one has to get hurt. You have my word on that.”
Cutter knew the man’s word was worth about as much as the dirt under his own fingernails. As soon as Wayland removed the threat of her just chucking the case down the elevator shaft, they were all dead.
“This doesn’t have to end like it did last time,” Wayland said. “Remember, we lost everything thanks in no part to you.”
Cutter processed what Wayland had said for a second then turned to Dr. Martinez. “What does he mean by that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Really?” Wayland waved his gun around, letting it flop in his hand. “He doesn’t know?” The man chuckled and stepped closer.
“What?” Cutter wasn’t stupid. He had an idea of what they meant, but he wasn’t sure about the truth of it.
But if it were true—? Had she just been toying with him?
“Dr. Martinez,” Wayland continued, “was there when your wife died, Mr. Cutter. You may not have seen her. She had also gone for the device with me. In fact, I had argued with her that you could get to it first, or your wife could. We had but to wait for you to return with it. But she got greedy. She even tried to have you killed. Imagine that?”
“He’s lying,” she said.
Zombie Team Alpha Page 19