“She’d wait for us,” Holden said. “Don’t you think she’d wait for us?”
“Almost for sure,” Miller’s death-self said, not particularly caring if it was a lie. He thought about it for a long moment, then turned to face Holden again. “Hey. Just so you know it? I’m not exactly at my best right now.”
“Okay.”
“All right.”
The glowing orange lockdown lights on the tube station across the level clicked to green. Miller sat forward, interested. His back felt sticky, but it was probably just sweat. Other people had noticed the change too. Like a current in a water tank, the attention of the nearby crowds shifted from the mercenaries blocking the way to the port to the brushed-steel doors of the tube station.
The doors opened, and the first zombies appeared. Men and women, their eyes glassy and their muscles slack, stumbled out through the open doors. Miller had seen a documentary feed about hemorrhagic fevers as part of his training on Ceres Station. Their movements were the same: listless, driven, autonomic. Like rabid dogs whose minds had already been given over to their disease.
“Hey,” Miller said, his hand on Holden’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s happening.”
An older man in a pair of emergency services scrubs approached the shambling newcomers. His hands were out before him, as if he could corral them by simple force of will. The first zombie in the pack turned empty eyes toward him and vomited up a spray of very familiar brown goo.
“Look,” Holden said.
“I saw.”
“No, look!”
All down the casino level, tube station lights were going off lockdown. Doors were opening. The people were pulsing toward the open tubes and the implicit, empty promise of escape, and away from the dead men and women walking out from them.
“Vomit zombies,” Miller said.
“From the rad shelters,” Holden said. “The thing, the organism. It goes faster in radiation, right? That’s why what’s-her-name was so freaky about the lights and the vac suit.”
“Her name’s Julie. And yeah. Those incubators were for this. Right here,” Miller said, and sighed. He thought about standing up. “Well. We may not die of radiation poisoning after all.”
“Why not just pump that shit into the air?” Holden asked.
“Anaerobic, remember?” Miller said. “Too much oxygen kills ’em.”
The vomit-covered emergency medicine guy was still trying to treat the shambling zombies like they were patients. Like they were still humans. There were smears of the brown goo on people’s clothes, on the walls. The tube doors opened again, and Miller saw half a dozen people dodge into a tube car coated in brown. The mob churned, unsure what to do, the group mind stretched past its breaking point.
A riot cop jumped forward and started spraying down the zombies with gunfire. The entrance and exit wounds spilled out fine loops of black filament, and the zombies went down. Miller chuckled even before he knew what was funny. Holden looked at him.
“They didn’t know,” Miller said. “The bully boys in riot gear? They aren’t gonna get pulled out. Meat for the machine, just like the rest of us.”
Holden made a small approving sound. Miller nodded, but something was niggling at the back of his mind. The thugs from Ceres in their stolen armor were being sacrificed. That didn’t mean everyone was. He leaned forward.
The archway leading to the port was still manned. Mercenary fighters in formation, guns at the ready. If anything, they looked more disciplined now than they had before. Miller watched as the guy in the back with extra insignia on his armor barked into a mic.
Miller had thought hope was dead. He’d thought all his chances had been played, and then, like a bitch, it all hauled itself up out of the grave.
“Get up,” Miller said.
“What?”
“Get up. They’re going to pull back.”
“Who?”
Miller nodded at the mercenaries.
“They knew,” he said. “Look at them. They aren’t freaking out. They aren’t confused. They were waiting for this.”
“And you think that means they’ll fall back?”
“They aren’t going to be hanging out. Stand up.”
Almost as if he’d been giving the order to himself, Miller groaned and creaked to his feet. His knees and spine ached badly. The click in his lung was getting worse. His belly made a soft, complicated noise that would have been concerning under different circumstances. As soon as he started moving, he could feel how far the damage had gone, his skin not yet in pain but in the soft presentiment of it, like the gap between a serious burn and the blisters that followed. If he lived, it was going to hurt.
If he lived, everything was going to hurt.
His death-self tugged at him. The sense of release, of relief, of rest felt like something precious being lost. Even while the chattering, busy, machinelike mind kept grinding, grinding, grinding forward, the soft, bruised center of Miller’s soul urged him to pause, sit back down, let the problems go away.
“What are we looking for?” Holden said. He’d stood up. A blood vessel in the man’s left eye had given way, the white of the sclera turning a bright, meaty red.
What are we looking for? the death-self echoed.
“They’re going to fall back,” Miller said, answering the first question. “We follow. Just outside the range so whoever’s going last doesn’t feel like he has to shoot us.”
“Isn’t everyone going to do the same thing? I mean, once they’re gone, isn’t everyone in this place going to head in for the port?”
“I expect so,” Miller said. “So let’s try to slip in ahead of the rush. Look. There.”
It wasn’t much. Just a change in the mercenaries’ stance, a shift in their collective center of gravity. Miller coughed. It hurt more than it should have.
What are we looking for? his death-self asked again, its voice more insistent. An answer? Justice? Another chance for the universe to kick us in the balls? What is through that archway that there isn’t a faster, cleaner, less painful version of in the barrel of our gun?
The mercenary captain took a casual step back and strode down the exterior corridor and out of sight. Where he had been, Julie Mao sat, watching him go. She looked at Miller. She waved him on.
“Not yet,” he said.
“When?” Holden said, his voice surprising Miller. Julie in his head flickered out, and he was back in the real world.
“It’s coming,” Miller said.
He should warn the guy. It was only fair. You got into a bad place, and at the very least, you owed your partner the courtesy of letting him know. Miller cleared his throat. That hurt too.
It’s possible I may start hallucinating or become suicidal. You might have to shoot me.
Holden glanced over at him. The pachinko machines lit them blue and green and shrieked in artificial delight.
“What?” Holden said.
“Nothing. Getting my balance,” Miller said.
Behind them, a woman shouted. Miller glanced back to see her pushing a vomit zombie away, a slick of brown goo already covering the live woman. At the archway, the mercenaries quietly stepped back and started down the corridor.
“Come on,” Miller said.
He and Holden walked toward the archway, Miller pulling his hat on. Loud voices, screams, the low, liquid sound of people being violently ill. The air scrubbers were failing, the air taking on a deep, pungent odor like beef broth and acid. Miller felt like there was a stone in his shoe, but he was almost certain if he looked, there would be only a point of redness where his skin was starting break down.
No one shot at them. No one told them to stop.
At the archway, Miller led Holden against the wall, then ducked his head around the corner. A quarter second was all it took to know the long, wide corridor was empty. The mercs were done here and leaving Eros to its fate. The window was open. The way was clear.
Last chance, he thought, and he meant both the last
chance to live and the last one to die.
“Miller?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It looks good. Come on. Before everyone gets the idea.”
Chapter Thirty-One: Holden
Something was moving in Holden’s gut. He ignored it and kept his eyes on Miller’s back. The lanky detective barreled down the corridor toward the port, stopping occasionally at junctions to peek around the corner and look for trouble. Miller had become a machine. All Holden could do was try to keep up.
Always the same distance ahead were the mercenaries who’d been guarding the exit from the casino. When they moved, Miller moved. When they slowed down, he slowed. They were clearing a path to the port, but if they thought that any of the citizens were getting too close, they’d probably open fire. They were definitely shooting anyone they ran into along the way. They’d already shot two people who’d run at them. Both had been vomiting brown goo. Where the hell did those vomit zombies come from so fast?
“Where the hell did those vomit zombies come from so fast?” he said to Miller’s back.
The detective shrugged with his left hand, his right still clutching his pistol.
“I don’t think enough of that crap came out of Julie to infect the whole station,” he replied without slowing down. “I’m guessing they were the first batch. The ones they incubated to get enough goo to infect the shelters with.”
That made sense. And when the controlled portion of the experiment went to shit, you just turned them loose on the populace. By the time people figured out what was going on, half of them were infected already. Then it was just a matter of time.
They paused briefly at a corridor intersection, watching as the leader of the merc group stopped a hundred meters ahead and talked on his radio for a minute. Holden was gasping and trying to catch his breath when the group started up again, and Miller moved to follow. He reached out and grabbed the detective’s belt and let Miller drag him along. Where did the skinny Belter keep this reserve of energy?
The detective stopped. His expression was blank.
“They’re arguing,” Miller said.
“Huh?”
“The leader of that group and some of the men. Arguing about something,” Miller replied.
“So?” Holden asked, then coughed something wet into his hand. He wiped it off on the back of his pants, not looking to see if it was blood. Please don’t let it be blood.
Miller shrugged with his hand again.
“I don’t think everyone’s on the same team here,” he said.
The merc group turned down another corridor, and Miller followed, yanking Holden along behind him. These were the outer levels, filled with warehouse space and ship repair and resupply depots. They didn’t see a lot of foot traffic at the best of times. Now the corridor echoed like a mausoleum with their footsteps. Up ahead, the merc group turned again, and before Miller and Holden could reach the junction, a lone figure wandered into view.
He didn’t appear to be armed, so Miller moved toward him cautiously, impatiently reaching behind himself and pulling Holden’s hand off his belt. Once he was free, Miller held up his left hand in an unmistakably cop-like gesture.
“This is a dangerous place to be wandering around, sir,” he said.
The man was now less than fifteen meters ahead of them and began moving toward them at a lurch. He was dressed for a party in a cheap tuxedo with a frilly shirt and sparkly red bow tie. He was wearing one shiny black shoe, the other foot covered with only a red sock. Brown vomit trickled from the corners of his mouth and stained the front of his white shirt.
“Shit,” Miller said, and brought up his gun.
Holden grabbed his arm and yanked it back down.
“He’s innocent in this,” Holden said, the sight of the injured and infected man making his eyes burn. “He’s innocent.”
“He’s still coming,” Miller said.
“So walk faster,” Holden said. “And if you shoot anyone else and I haven’t given you permission to, you don’t get a ride on my ship. Got me?”
“Trust me,” Miller said. “Dying is the best thing that could happen to that guy today. You’re not doing him any favors.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” Holden replied, his tone edging into real anger.
Miller started to reply, but Holden held up one hand and cut him off.
“You want on the Roci? I’m the boss, then. No questions, no bullshit.”
Miller’s smirk turned into a smile. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Our mercs are getting ahead of us.” He pointed down the corridor.
Miller nodded and moved off again at his steady, machinelike pace. Holden didn’t turn around, but he could hear the man Miller had almost shot crying in the corridor behind him for a long time. To cover up the sound, which probably existed only in his head once they’d made a couple more turns in the corridor, he began humming the theme to Misko and Marisko again.
Mother Elise, who’d been the one to stay home with him when he was very young, had always brought him something to eat while he watched, and then sat by him with her hand on his head, playing with his hair. She’d laughed at the dinosaur antics even harder than he had. One Halloween she’d made him a big pink hat to wear so that he could be the evil Count Mungo. Why had that guy been trying to capture the dinosaurs, anyway? It had never really been clear. Maybe he just liked dinosaurs. One time he’d used a shrink ray and-
Holden slammed into Miller’s back. The detective had stopped suddenly and now moved quickly to one side of the corridor, crouching low to keep himself in the shadows. Holden followed suit. About thirty meters ahead, the mercenary group had gotten much bigger and had split into two factions.
“Yep,” Miller said. “Whole lot of people having really bad days today.”
Holden nodded and wiped something wet off his face. It was blood. He didn’t think he’d hit Miller’s back hard enough to bloody his nose, and he had a suspicion it wasn’t going to stop on its own. Mucous membranes getting fragile. Wasn’t that part of radiation burning? He tore strips off his shirt and stuffed them up his nostrils while he watched the scene at the end of the corridor.
There were two clear groups, and they did seem to be engaged in some sort of heated argument. Normally, that would have been fine. Holden didn’t care about the social lives of mercenaries. But these mercenaries numbered by this time close to a hundred, were heavily armed, and blocked the corridor that led to his ship. That made their argument worth watching.
“Not everyone from Protogen left, I think,” Miller said quietly, pointing at one of the two groups. “Those guys on the right don’t look like the home team.”
Holden looked at the group and nodded. They were definitely the more professional-looking soldiers. Their armor fit well. The other group looked like it was largely made up of guys dressed in police riot gear, with only a few men in combat armor.
“Want to guess what the argument is about?” Miller asked.
“Hey, can we have a ride too?” Holden said mockingly with a Ceres accent. “Uh, no, we need you guys to stay here and, uh, keep an eye on things, which we promise will be totally safe and absolutely not involve you turning into vomit zombies.”
He actually got a chuckle from Miller and then the corridor erupted in a barrage of gunfire. Both sides of the discussion were firing automatic weapons at each other from point-blank range. The noise was deafening. Men screamed and flew apart, spraying the corridor and each other with blood and body parts. Holden dropped flat to the floor but continued watching the firefight.
After the initial barrage, the survivors from both groups began falling back in opposite directions, still firing as they moved. The floor at the corridor junction was littered with bodies. Holden estimated that twenty or more men had died in that first second of the fight. The sounds of gunfire grew more distant as the two groups fired at each other down the corridor.
In the middle of the junction, one of the bodies on the floor suddenly stirred and raised its h
ead. Even before the wounded man could get to his feet, a bullet hole appeared in the middle of his face shield and he dropped back to the floor with limp finality.
“Where’s your ship?” Miller asked.
“The lift is at the end of this corridor,” Holden replied.
Miller spat what looked like bloody phlegm on the floor.
“And the corridor that crosses it is now a war zone, with armed camps sniping at each other from both sides,” he said. “I guess we could try just running through it.”
“Is there another option?” Holden asked.
Miller looked at his terminal.
“We’re fifty-three minutes past the deadline Naomi set,” he said. “How much more time do you want to waste?”
“Look, I was never particularly good at math,” Holden said. “But I’d guess there are as many as forty guys in either direction down that other corridor. A corridor which is a good three, maybe three and a half meters wide. Which means that we give eighty guys three meters worth of shots at us. Even dumb luck means we get hit a lot and then die. Let’s think of a plan B.”
As if to underline his argument, another fusillade broke out in the cross corridor, gouging chunks out of the rubbery wall insulation and chewing up the bodies lying on the floor.
“They’re still withdrawing,” Miller said. “Those shots came from farther away. I guess we can just wait them out. I mean, if we can.”
The rags Holden had stuffed up his nose hadn’t stopped the bleeding; they had just dammed it up. He could feel a steady trickle down the back of his throat that made his stomach heave with nausea. Miller was right. They were getting down to the last of their ability to wait anyone out at this point.
“Goddamn, I wish we could call and see if Naomi is even there,” Holden said, looking at the flashing Network Not Available on his terminal.
“Shhh,” Miller whispered, putting one finger on his lips. He pointed back down the corridor in the direction they’d come, and now Holden could hear heavy footsteps approaching.
“Late guests to the party,” Miller said, and Holden nodded. The two men swiveled around, pointing their guns down the corridor and waiting.
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