His internal clock told him he had less than a minute remaining in his life. This was where he would make his final stand. Here he would die just as his wife had died, buried under millions of tons of rock. He’d die like Colonel Suvorov had died, only without a final cigarette. He was neither frightened by the prospect of death, nor overly saddened by where he might end up. Sharon had died so needlessly. At least he would die for a purpose. Maybe he’d even get to see her again.
And that was good. I’m a lucky man. He had the opportunity now to do one final good deed before he had to account for all his sins. While that might not completely square him with the man upstairs, it might be just enough to squeeze him past St. Peter.
In his mind, his score was settled—paid in full.
He glanced down the elevator shaft and then back at the approaching zombies and grinned broadly. As they closed in on him, he opened the case and let the artifact fall out of the padded interior.
He watched it fall away.
The silvery bar caught the light coming from the spotlight above and glinted all the colors of the rainbow as it went tumbling down into the abyss.
~47~
MINDLESS ZOMBIES
Cutter ignored the artifact falling away and turned back to watch the zombies as they grew closer. That minute that was left to him was taking far longer than he would have it wished it to.
I’m ready. Jesus, make up my dyin’ bed.
With an icy realization, he knew that the zombies would reach him before the explosives ever went off. But it would all be over soon enough. Even if they turned him into one of those things, the explosion would vaporize him, and the entire mountain would collapse and bury him and all of those terrible things along with him.
Resurrection, my ass.
The timer in his head told him he had thirty seconds remaining as the first of the zombies grew close enough to smell. They did not stink, per say, they mostly smelled of damp earth. Cutter held up his hands, palms first, with the insane idea that he would be able to stop them with the gesture, but they did not stop. They did not even slow.
But then they—
The eyes that had held such satanic evil before suddenly cleared and arms dropped to sides and mouths closed, and confusion broke out among the horde. It was as if the creatures had suddenly become human again. Some fell to their knees, some simply collapsed into heaps on the ground. A few raised their hands to their heads and broke out in wild screams. But most just stood there blinking as their eyes returned to normal.
One of the former zombies, what looked to be a stooping old man, led the way forward and stopped in front of Cutter. The old man stooped over in front of him grabbed him by the wrist and raised his left hand in the air. The man twisted the open palm back and forth as if he were examining it.
Cutter blinked back at the old miner in confusion. Then the man let go and Cutter’s hand dropped to his side.
Twenty seconds, flashed in his mind.
Cutter realized then that he still had a chance to escape. With an increasing pace, he began pushing his way through the confused mass, moving faster and faster, using shoulders of the former zombies to push his way through their midst.
He stopped at the other side and spun around.
“Come on!” he shouted to the former zombies, who were merely teeming people now lost in the wheels of confusion. “Come on! Let’s all get the hell out of here!”
But in a moment of dread, he realized that none of them spoke English. He started waving his arms, trying to get them to follow him, racking his brain to remember anything Colonel Suvorov had said to his men that got them to move.
He started jumping up and down and waving. None of the men were moving to follow him, nor were they paying him any attention whatsoever. They were too lost in surprise, staring at the backs of their hands, or their neighbors, jaws going slack.
He whistled and waved at them once more with both arms to come with him, ignoring the shooting pains coming from his battered body.
None followed.
He shouted and waved at them again, moving steadily backward on his feet toward the exit.
Nothing?
“Come on!” he yelled again.
Fifteen seconds.
With renewed vigor, he waved one final time.
A couple of the miners started in his direction.
“Da!” he shouted, remembering the one word he did know in Russian.
More began to follow him, but they were moving so slowly. Too slowly.
“Da!” he shouted again, trying to wave his arms. The joyful feeling that he was about to save them all kept the pain at bay.
They started moving faster, and he noticed something new as well. Their eyes were no longer normal. They had changed back to that same red satanic gaze they had before, and their lips had once again drawn back to expose their stained teeth.
The horde continued to move faster and faster toward him, and he spun on his heel and ran his hardest, no longer looking at what chased after him. All he could see was the door ahead that led out of the mine and into the light.
He ran with everything he had left in him. His heart raced, and his lungs were laboring to expand well beyond normal capacity. Life-giving blood pumped to every muscle and cell of his tortured body. He pushed harder, wanting nothing more than to escape before the explosion went off.
He wanted to live.
Five seconds.
He sprinted for the steel double doors just ahead. He heard the zombie horde gaining on him from behind. They were moving as fast as he was now. He was not going to be fast enough. He just didn’t have it in him.
Four seconds.
The distance was just too great. He redoubled his efforts and a burst of pain shot through every corner of his body like he’d been struck by lightning.
Three seconds.
He wished again and again that he had never smoked, never drank, had taken better care of himself.
Two seconds.
The doorway was in sight. Morgan was standing there with the MP5K submachine gun, waving him through with one arm and getting ready to cover his retreat. They had made it. He would too. She backed away when he neared and propped open the door for him with her foot, leaving it wide open and ready.
One second—
He flung himself at the doorway like Superman taking flight—and flew through the threshold and smacked into the ground on the other side, skidding and painfully scraping away the skin on his hands and arms. He came to a stop and covered his head with his hands and clamped his eyes shut and anticipated the explosion.
Then—nothing.
Morgan grabbed him by the back of the shirt and yanked him away from the doorway he had flown through. It wouldn’t close fully because his foot was somehow blocking it. He scrambled on his hands and knees away from the shadow of the entryway and into the dawning sunlight of the day.
Was I wrong? Were the timers even set? Was Wayland full of shit? He had just started to stand and brush the grit from his palms when the concussive wave from the explosion hit him like a sledgehammer from behind and flattened him against the concrete pathway leading to the mine entrance.
The massive initial explosion and secondary explosions of the collapsing mountain kept him flat on his stomach. He stayed low and pulled himself forward to be closer to Morgan and Gauge. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Dr. Martinez. She was also flat on her stomach. She was not moving. He tried to reach her but was hit with a heat that pressed against his back as flames pushed open the metal doors into the mine and an angry fireball roared out the doorway.
He remained on his belly for a few more seconds to recover as the world calmed around him. Then he rolled over. The earth still rumbled under him, but the bright sunlight warmed his face in a different kind of way from the flames, and the steam of his labored breathing created clouds of mist above him.
With what little he had left in him, he went to check on Dr. Martinez. When he got close to her, she tu
rned her head and moaned something. He put a hand on her back and leaned nearer. His hearing was just about shot and would be for days. He waited for her to say something, but she just continued to groan.
Dull popping noises caused him to turn. He fell onto his backside and rubbed his face. His shoulder still hurt like hell, but all that fear juice pumping through his system had numbed away enough of the pain to make it tolerable.
Then he noticed all the soldiers and blinked away the confusion. At the doorway to what remained of the mine were soldiers. A whole squad? Probably twenty or more. They had pried opened the newly warped steel door he had come through and were tossing in bulky backpacks. Another line of soldiers stood about twenty feet off from the door. They were shooting anything that came through the threshold. Only a few of the remaining creatures actually tried to escape.
Cutter blinked a few more times. His eyes were not yet adjusted to the brightness of the day, but when his vision cleared, there was a man standing before him. The guy was blurred by the glare of the sun, but he recognized the man.
It was Anton Moray, the same guy who was paying them four-million dollars to retrieve the artifact. Moray said something, but Cutter could not understand him. The man repeated what he said, and Cutter watched the guy’s lips move, but still could not quite make out what was being said.
“What?” Cutter said as he shook his head and stuck a finger in his ear to clear it. Everything sounded as if he were underwater.
Moray stepped closer and asked with the harsh tone of insistence, “Where is it?”
“It’s gone,” Cutter said. He might have even shouted it.
The man sucked in his lips and nodded. He appeared accustomed to absorbing and processing bad news without overreacting. He signaled to one of the soldiers, and the entire squad backed away from the entrance and another set of explosions went off.
Cutter covered his head and turned away. All those people. Those men. Those former miners. They were all innocents, really. He had seen them come back from the dead or undead or whatever the hell they had become. He was certain it had happened when the artifact had hit the bottom of the shaft and been destroyed. But the effects had only been temporary. Something seemed to have resumed control of those men again. And the one old guy who let me go after looking at my hand? What was that all about? Cutter had no idea, but he thanked the guy nonetheless. It was all so senseless. The killing. Too much death. He wondered if he had just kept the thing, maybe someone could have found a way to save all those people.
Too late now.
Morgan came over and helped him to his feet and stood next to him.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Cutter,” Moray said, still standing before him.
Cutter blinked and turned his left ear toward the man. It was working slightly better than his right. “Why?”
“I hired Mr. Wayland to oversee this operation. He failed me in so many ways. Once completed, he was expected to pay you and your team enough of a bonus that you would remain silent on what you had found here. I’m afraid I misunderstood his actual intentions. I am most disappointed in myself for allowing this to happen. So, if there is anything I can do for you, Mr. Cutter—anything at all—you have but to ask it of me.”
Anton Moray thrust out his hand, and hesitantly, Cutter offered his. The man had a firm grip and a steely look to his eyes, and in that brief window of time, Cutter realized down to his core that he could work for the man again and forgive him as well—even if the guy did look like a chimpanzee in a suit.
Moray didn’t linger. He spun and barked orders to the men around him, leaving Cutter standing beside Morgan Crow. Still a bit stunned by everything, he let her walk him over to where Gauge and Dr. Martinez were being looked after by a medic. The woman working on Dr. Martinez took one look at him and pointed to the grassy patch of dirt next to Gauge. The poor woman appeared as if she were handling far more than she had signed up for.
Cutter put his hand on his injured shoulder. The pain was returning in waves, and he winced to absorb it, but he did not cry out, nor would he. While he’d failed to retrieve the artifact, he realized he would have had to sacrifice something far more important to him to have kept it.
He glanced over at Dr. Martinez. Something in the back of his mind had him wondering all along what her game had been and whether or not she would betray him in the end. It probably would have been the expected thing, but he was sure glad she hadn’t.
He glanced up at Morgan.
She asked him in what seemed almost a whisper, “So after all that, what do we call ourselves? I don’t think we are a salvage and recovery team any longer. Maybe we call ourselves something cool like Zombie Team Alpha? Hashtag-ZTA maybe?”
“Yeah,” Cutter replied, yawning and working his jaw back and forth, “I like that.”
~48~
SPETSNAZ TOUGH (EPILOGUE)
Yuri Stakhanov had known all along that he was a dead man walking. There was little left of the real him, and he had known it too well.
Death will be a welcome change. It won’t be long. But to the man with the white-gold ring—?
It had taken everything inside of what remained of Yuri to keep from killing the brave man. It had been the shine of the ring, that faint glimmer of hope. It had reminded him of the one thing in his life that had mattered to him before he had begun his descent into hell—his beloved chocolate and the silver wrapper that had contained it.
And that same man had destroyed one of the Ancient Ones. Yuri admired the man with the ring for that. He wished he could have struck such a blow. Sadly, he’d only been able to resist the presence in his mind for a short period of time. He’d only been able to hold it back for a few moments due to his military experience. It had been difficult to do, but Yuri was tough.
Spetsnaz tough.
The alien mind inside of his head had screamed out when its mother had been destroyed. But the entity inside him had not given him more than a few moments of peace before it had smothered his own mind again with its desires. If anything, after he had let the man go, the alien mind had only redoubled its efforts to control him and kill the man who had destroyed one of the Ancient Ones. The alien inside of him still wanted to survive, and so he could not die either, much as he may have wished it to happen.
It had ultimately won the battle.
Everything he’d experienced over the past few days had been so horrible. He’d been present for it all. Every bit of pain had been amplified to torturous levels, and there was nothing he could do to resist it. He was not even allowed the brief respite of unconsciousness or sleep that such pain usually brought to most men. All he could do was watch the world through his own eyes as he did terrible things to others—terrible, terrible, unspeakable things.
All he wished for now was to die and be free of the pain. But he was not about to die. Not yet. Like his mind had been, his body was Spetsnaz tough as well. It had not broken as the bodies of many of his former co-laborers had. He knew that his own back was severed and pressed out of place along the spine, and his legs were nothing more than meat sacks containing shattered bones, and his left arm was dislocated and twisted grotesquely. Yet, his body persisted.
It survived.
His body had one good arm remaining, and with it, he scraped at the dirt in front of him as he clawed himself forward, centimeter by centimeter, all throughout the night.
When he had tried to fight the invading presence, that presence had stolen something from him. Something most precious that he’d been trying desperately to hide from it. Now the thing in his mind knew where his village was located and where his wife and family lived.
It was not too far away. In fact, Yuri could already see his home in the distance.
THE END
Read on for a free sample of The Last Blade Of Grass: A Zombie Novel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve R. Yeager is a part-time author who lives in Northern California with his wife, two kids, and a pair of crazy dogs. He h
as worked as a corporate software engineer for over 25 years and now spends much of spare time reading, writing, playing guitar, and shooting bows.
Chapter one
The Journey Home
June
Be careful what you wish for. I always knew the saying had meaning, but never imagined my wishes for a global re-start would be caused by zombies. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say I never imagined it. I was a big fan of zombie books and movies before the world fell apart. What I mean is that I am a realist and a skeptic, so while thoughts of zombies once were entertaining, I knew the odds of some type of disease taking hold that could be considered a zombie illness was extremely remote.
To humanity’s good fortune, the zombie-like infected population is like the old school movies in the way they move. They creep up on you slowly and silently, only sometimes giving themselves away with a raspy breath or a scraping shoe. Their shuffling pace is nothing faster than a regular walk. This slow movement has helped those groups of survivors such as us overcome the sheer volume of actual infected people that are out there.
Another fortunate thing for us is the infected aren’t actually the risen or walking dead. It’s just a disease, an infection that was spread intentionally, but with the unintentional consequences of turning the population into zombie like cannibals. But that’s not so important right now.
Based on what we have been able to learn from other survivors around the world with Ham radios, it seems that like here, most of the human population in urban centers became infected in the first week of the diseases’ arrival.
The primary reason for the high level of infection was an inability of people to effectively defend themselves against the diseased. The only way to fight back without fear of infection is using firearms from a distance, because any physical interaction with a diseased person exposes you to the infected blood or saliva.
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