Cutter turned toward her. “Were you there?”
“Of course she was,” Wayland said.
“Shut up!” Cutter held up a finger and did not look the man’s way. “Were you there?” he repeated as his entire world began to collapse around him.
“I was.” She shifted on her feet, closer. “I admit it. But we never made it into the mine. I had just arrived, and we were preparing to—”
“She lies so well, doesn’t she?” Wayland said. “She wants it all for herself. She always did. I was the one who argued with Moray about bringing you back for this assignment, Mr. Cutter. It was I who believed in you. I knew you could find it. When I was informed she would be involved as well, I made certain that you and your team were too. I figured that you would put everything together and realize who she really was and what her intentions actually were and shoot her yourself. But I guess I was wrong.”
“He’s lying,” Dr. Martinez said. “He wants it for himself. He knows what it can do.”
“Yes, she is right,” Wayland said mockingly. “I do want it for myself. And this time, I expect it not to be destroyed. So please, hand it over. Now.”
“Wait,” Cutter said. “Tell me what it is first. Why do you want it so much?”
“Why do I want it?” Wayland said. He twirled the end of his gun in smaller and smaller circles and finally pointed it at Cutter and stepped forward.
“Maybe I should just shoot you. But with all you have been through for me, you deserve an explanation. It is really quite simple, Mr. Cutter. I’ll make it easy and get right to the point. Human life has little value any longer. We have spread like locusts—like a disease…a plague. Human beings have become a common pestilence. The more we reproduce, the more we destroy. The more we destroy, the less remains to be consumed by those who actually deserve to live. It’s just the axiomatic truth of our times. Imagine a planet devoid of all but the smartest and most productive people, Mr. Cutter. Wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing?”
Cutter scoffed. “Been tried. And that doesn’t explain what the hell that thing can do. You’ll just create more of those zombie things, and they will come after you, eventually.”
“Ah, but you are wrong, Mr. Cutter. You’ve seen too many of those ghastly zombie movies. There has been too much useless fiction in your life, I suppose. No, zombies are not actually real, and neither are these creatures. Think of them more like automatons that desire to quickly infect others and then die—rot away, so to speak. That’s the fallacy presented by all those zombie stories. The creatures in them never just rot away into oblivion. The stories just go on and on. Silly and unscientific, if you ask me.” He stopped to take a breath. “If you had bothered to read your own wife’s writing on the subject, she had discovered this truth. Which is why she had gone after the device herself. She wished only to study it and ultimately destroy it so it could never be used by others ever again.”
That’s not exactly what she told me. She had wanted to retrieve it for study but not to destroy it. Had she ever meant to destroy it? It would have been so easy to have done so in the beginning when they had arrived in Ecuador. Drop the whole damn mountain on top of it and bury it forever. And if she had done that in the first place, she would still be alive.
“I do not believe you,” Cutter said. “You sound like some type of evil villain in one of those bad movies, going on and on about how much of a genius you are.”
Wayland chuckled. “Am I now?”
“Yeah. Think about it. Just pure melodrama. Now, Kahn? You saw Star Trek, right? The guy in that movie was a great villain. ‘From hell’s heart I stab at thee.’ See, great line. I get that. You are nothing but a two-bit hustler.”
Wayland raised his gun and aimed it at Cutter. He puffed out through his lips. “That was Melville, Mr. Cutter. Moby Dick.” He shook his head, stopped, and steadied his aim. “I suggest you choose your next wisecrack carefully, for it may be your last.”
“Well, how about a little honesty then?”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“You might want to check behind you.”
Wayland laughed heartily. “There’s nothing behind me, Mr. Cutter. Though, I appreciate the joke. Oldest trick in the book.”
Jackson Cutter shrugged a questioning apology. Wayland took one step forward and glanced over each shoulder. Then he frowned as if he half expected something to be there.
Cutter shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”
Wayland grinned wide. “I guess I could ask you to get on the elevator and go back into the mine, but I’m certain you know it would be a one-way trip. You see this?” He held up a small device about the size of a TV remote.
Cutter recognized the device.
Wayland made a show of hovering one finger over the button on the remote. “The explosives are on a time delay and set for five minutes. I could ask you to wait around for them to go off, but that would give you a chance to escape and would be too…Ian Fleming-like. So, I figure we’ll just shoot you and toss your bodies down the shaft before I trigger the explosives. They’ll be no wiggling out of this one.”
Cutter smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” Wayland asked. He suddenly seemed nervous and checked over his shoulders again.
“Nothing. Forget it. Want to make a deal?”
Wayland shook his head no. “It is far too late for that, I’m afraid.”
“So be it.”
Wayland spoke directly to Dr. Martinez. “Please, be a dear and hand it over. I am asking nicely, but I promise you that I won’t ask nicely again.”
“No,” she said.
“Kill her and take the case,” Wayland said to the man standing next to him.
The guy raised his rifle to fire, making the mistake of taking his aim off Cutter for a brief second. Cutter went for Betty, hoping he was right about it being loaded.
In one smooth motion, he let go of Gauge, grabbed Betty, drew, and fired when the barrel came in line with the man. The guy stumbled backward from the blow that hit him square in the chest, opening up a fist-sized hole there and causing him to stagger back on his heels. He glanced down, blinked, and then fell over dead on his back.
Cutter aimed at Wayland and squeezed the trigger once more.
Nothing happened.
Then he noticed the slide on the big Desert Eagle had locked open—out of ammunition. He still had his Glock and figured he still had at least one more shot left in it.
Maybe.
Before he could get to it, though, hot lead slammed into his right shoulder, and he jerked backward and dropped Betty on top of the crumpled forms of Morgan and Gauge, who had fallen when he’d gone for Gauge’s gun. Cutter dropped to his knees, and his hand shot to his injured shoulder. He grimaced in pain and tried to go for his Glock, but couldn’t reach it.
Wayland watched him for a second then aimed his gun at Dr. Martinez and held it steady. “Final chance, my dear. Come with me and I’ll save you from all this. I could use your expertise with what I have planned.”
“No,” she said.
Wayland fired again. The bullet struck Dr. Martinez, and she staggered forward. He fired again, and she fell to her knees, letting go of the case, and catching herself on her right hand. The metal case slid to a stop.
“Kill them,” Wayland ordered the man next to him. The guy raised one of the MP5Ks that Cutter had left behind and took aim.
But he was never able to cut loose with it because Wayland suddenly screamed out in pain.
The man with the submachine gun spun and jerked the trigger, blasting the writhing shape on the ground that had slithered up behind Wayland and had taken a bite out of his calf. Then another creature attacked the man with the gun. The guy bent backward, and the MP5K went wild, spraying bullets in all directions. Cutter dropped to his belly and reached left-handed for his Glock and dragged it out and prepared to shoot the writhing man dead, using what might be his last bullet.
The creature that had first bit
ten Wayland had him occupied. He tried to pull away from it as the man with MP5K let up on the trigger and fell sideways and took them both to the dirt. The zombie lunged and bit down on the guy’s throat. Blood sprayed from the wound like a busted hose, and the guy bucked in agony.
Wayland struggled to get his gun angled so he could fire at the creature, but he became caught up in the twisting and turning. Screaming in fear, he clawed at the dirt, pulling himself forward and away from the thing in panicked flight. His back arched and his arm outstretched and flailed, and the remote for the explosives he’d been holding flew from his hand.
Cutter drew a breath and started to pull himself to his feet along with Morgan and Gauge and race to stop the man. But John Wayland clawed his way forward by his fingernails and landed on the remote and collapsed there with his hand slapping on top of it. A small LED on the remote started blinking red.
If the guy had been telling the truth, they now had five minutes before the explosives went off. Cutter fixed the time in his mind and began the countdown. As he regained his feet, he saw movement coming from the other end of the tunnel, the end closest to the entrance, or the exit—closest to safety.
He hoped it was the cavalry, coming to rescue them.
Those faint hopes were quickly dashed. It was another, even larger group of those possessed miners, those zombie creatures—a whole damn gigantic horde of them.
~46~
IMPOSSIBLE ODDS
By Cutter’s estimation, most of the five minutes still remained before the explosives would go off. Based on the size of the horde, though, five minutes wasn’t going to be nearly enough. The new horde was quickly becoming a teeming mass of arms and legs and terrible snarling faces. But he knew a little more about them now. They were still humans, essentially. It was just that damn artifact or device or whatever the hell it was that held them in thrall. If he could destroy it, they might—
It was such an obvious, stupid answer. He should have tried it earlier. He cursed himself and prepared to retrieve the case from Dr. Martinez and destroy the thing once and for all.
He took a step and nearly dropped to the ground. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating. He flinched and hunched over.
It had been just in the nick of time.
One of the same zombies that attacked Wayland had scrambled its way across the gritty mineshaft floor and was trying to bite at Cutter’s ankle. He raised his booted foot and slammed it down hard on the thing’s head, causing it to still.
Rolling his shoulder to test it, he found it would still move relatively well—but it sure hurt like hell. Fortunately, the bullet had passed through flesh only, and while it had done considerable damage, it had not done enough to completely disable him. Gauge had somehow also regained his feet and was wobbling there unsteadily. Morgan was the only one that appeared relatively unscathed by the unfolding chaos of the past hour.
“Get that gun,” Cutter barked at her as he braced himself against Gauge to keep both of them vertical.
Morgan went for the gun without hesitation, scooping up the MP5K that had come to rest in front of the twin zombies. Cutter made his way over to Wayland’s corpse and snatched up the man’s pistol in his left hand. The gun turned out to be a relatively tiny .38 snub nose Chief’s Special revolver. That was it. That was all the firepower they had to get through the zombies and to the exit.
Not nearly enough.
“Can you shut off those explosives?” he asked Morgan while steadying Gauge’s large frame. Satisfied that the big man would remain vertical, he hurried to help Dr. Martinez regain her feet as well.
“Maybe,” she said after some consideration.
He glanced both directions, wondering if he should buy her time to disarm the explosives, or just tell them to get the hell out of Dodge. Since none of them could fire a weapon, it was all going to be up to her either way.
And, without delay, he made another decision and another plan, knowing it would probably be his last, but he trusted her completely to carry it out. He knew she would deliver.
Indicating toward the sub-machine gun, he said, “You’ll just have to clear us a path so we can get the hell out of here.”
She did not appear overly optimistic.
“That’s a heck of a lot of zombies, Jack. I’ve never fired one of these things before at anything other than paper.”
“You’re smart, Morgan. Figure it out. I trust you. Completely. Utterly. Without question. Got that?”
She nodded and picked up the MP5K and two extra magazines she found on the guy. She flipped the strap over her head and leveled the business end of the barrel at the approaching horde.
Cutter let her be and stumbled over to check on Dr. Martinez. She was injured and bleeding from where she’d been hit in the abdomen, but the damage did not appear immediately life-threatening.
“Stay with me, Doc,” he said. “I plan to get us all out of here. You and I haven’t even had our first date yet. It’d be a real shame to miss it.”
She smiled at him as he lifted her to her feet. It hurt like hell to move even a fraction of an inch, but he forced himself to continue. He was certain the agony was nearly unbearable for her as well. Bending over while supporting her weight, he swept up the metal case containing the artifact, and they both hurried back to join Morgan as quickly as they could amble the ten-yard distance.
“Two minutes, maybe three left,” he told Morgan, “so don’t be picky about target selection. Just clear us a path we can get through.” She obviously knew what he meant. When the timer expired, the entire mountain would come crashing down right on top of them and squish them like bugs on a windshield.
Dr. Martinez tripped, and all her weight fell on Cutter. His shoulder screamed in protest. She recovered, and he bent forward, gritting his teeth as he dragged her along beside him. He felt that the weight of the metal case was just a bit too much and almost let go of it because it was slowing them down.
“Don’t,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “We need to bring it back and study it. We need to prevent this from every happening again.”
Nodding his agreement, he held on to the case. He knew she was right. Just as his wife had been right. They needed to know more about it. He understood that now. He was certain his wife had the best of intentions for keeping the artifact, and that was what she had died for. If they figured out the secret to the thing, perhaps countless lives could be saved if another was ever uncovered.
Destroying it would be a mistake. A tragic mistake.
The pain in his shoulder was growing worse. He could barely support the weight of Dr. Martinez any longer. To his surprise, Gauge came alongside, also stumbling, and Cutter half-wondered if Gauge had become a zombie himself. He had not spoken a word in some time. Then the big man stumbled forward to stand beside Morgan. He started whispering to her, but the rising noise coming from the moaning zombies blocked out whatever he was saying. Cutter just couldn’t hear the conversation, but he was fairly certain what the big man was telling her. And, whatever it was, it had the desired effect. Morgan raised the tiny MP5K like she owned it. Her back stiffened, and she widened her stance and prepared to open fire. Cutter knew it was going to be loud, and without the earbuds in place, if he got too close to her, he’d go partially deaf for the next hour or so—if I manage to live that long.
Morgan opened up with a spray of hellfire. Lead belched from the barrel of the gun in rapid succession and tore into the heads of approaching zombies. Cutter could almost count the impacts as bullets knocked the zombies backward in a bloody spray that clouded the scene in a pink mist. Soon, he couldn’t tell which were incapacitated zombies and which still remained a threat.
Three seconds later, the gun stopped. It had fired the entire magazine. Morgan quickly inspected the gun, and then raised it and tried to fire.
Nothing.
Gauge yelled something at her, and she fumbled another full magazine out of her pocket, struggled with the release, and swapped the f
ull one with the empty one. She tried to fire again.
Nothing.
She checked the gun again as Gauge struggled to reach her. Right as he did, she figured out the issue and clicked the bolt forward and flicked the selector switch. Then she raised the gun and fired a single-shot, dropping the nearest zombie. She fired again, sweeping to the left. Another dead zombie. Another. Her selective firing was having the desired effect and working like a snowplow in a storm. She continued to advance and meet the enemy, putting lead in heads, and parting the horde right down the middle.
Then Cutter noticed something odd. The creatures were no longer coming at her directly. They were pushing each other aside to get to him. And it was then that he realized what they really wanted—the artifact. And that simple fact was something he knew he could use against them.
He pushed forward, pulling Dr. Martinez along beside him. He reached Gauge, and the big man looked at him with confusion.
Cutter mouthed, “Save her.”
Gauge’s eyes widened in surprise as he took the weight of Dr. Martinez against his own stumbling form and somehow, together, they were able to keep up with Morgan, who was clearing the way forward with single-shot head busters.
Scanning those remaining, Cutter realized that the host was too big to get through without significantly more firepower. If he continued with Morgan, Gauge, and Dr. Martinez, the entire horde would collapse around them as the things went for the artifact. And, as soon as Morgan ran out of ammunition, they would all be taken down, and turned into more of those things.
Stopping, Cutter fell back with the metal case containing the artifact in hand. He raised it and shook it mockingly at the horde as he retreated another step. He continued backing away on his heels, and the ocean of zombies spread out and closed off his only remaining path to safety.
But his final plan was working. The zombies were focusing on him, and that would let the others escape.
He kept backpedaling all the way to the top of the lift and stopped at the threshold of the elevator shaft. One glance up at the explosives strapped to the top of the metal girder assembly told him everything he needed to know. The detonators did not have any flashing lights or blinking LEDs. They just sat there, invisible timer ticking away.
Zombie Team Alpha Page 20