Winter Cove

by Skye Knizley

  She shot another in the face with her M4 and it clicked empty. She dropped it, there were no more mags and she didn’t have time to search for one. Instead, she switched the pistol to her right hand and kept firing.

  “You are next,” Darling rumbled.

  River glanced at him. “I’m last, get out of here, Darling.”

  “You are next,” Darling repeated.

  With firm hands he grabbed her arms and all but threw her into the vent. A reflexive scream escaped her lips, she hadn’t expected to be treated like a lawn dart. She caught herself with her legs and looked down. Darling had resumed firing into the horde still spilling through the doorway.

  “Get up here, Darling, that’s an order!”

  “There is not time, Hunter, and I am not much of a climber. Someone has to cover the door while you finish the job,” Darling said over the radio.

  “Dammit, there are no heroes on this gig!”

  River lowered herself as far as she dared and offered her hand. “Come on, you big bastard!”

  Darling’s MG4 spun dry and he cast it aside. For a moment River felt certain he was going to reach for her hand and she readied her legs to take his bulk. Instead, he drew the machete from his belt and waded into the horde.

  “It has been an honor, Sergeant Hunter. Remember me to my sister, that I did not die the dishonored man I was.”

  It was the last thing she heard him say.

  ***

  The vent was dark and choked with the dust and cobwebs of the ages, but it was safe from the undead and gave River a few moments to breathe. She pulled herself into the horizontal tunnel and lay there, gasping. When she could, she started crawling by the light of her pistol. Somewhere ahead, she knew, Rylee, Morse and Scales were waiting for her. The millions of tons of stone around her blocked the radio, but she knew they’d made it to safety.

  River continued pulling herself forward, one hand in front of the other. The darkness was all-consuming, it felt as if the weight of the pyramid was crushing her. Her hands began to shake and she balled them into fists, fighting against the fear and panic that threatened to shut her down. This wasn’t Afghanistan, this wasn’t the caves.

  “No, it’s a fucking ancient pyramid on an island off the coast of Maine, because that shit makes sense,” she muttered.

  The sound of her voice echoing in the confined space snapped her back to reality. She forced her hands to stop shaking and resumed her crawl. A few minutes later she could hear Rylee on the radio.

  “Babe? Honey are you there? Hello?”

  “I’m here,” River said. Her voice sounded frightened, even to her.

  “Just a few more feet, lover. I can see your light,” Rylee said.

  River lowered her head and kept crawling. Soon, the lights of the others came into view, framed beyond a square of darkness that was just a shade lighter than everything else. She reached into that abyss and warm hands grabbed hers and pulled her out.

  Rylee hugged her tight. “I thought we’d lost you.”

  “No. We lost Darling. He held the door so we could get out,” River said.

  Morse kicked the wall and screamed, “Fuck!”

  He kicked it again and again, then spun on his heel. “I told you! I told you, we’re all going to fucking die down here!”

  River let go and grabbed Morse by the collar. “Enough! Chill out, Morse!”

  Morse stopped screaming and sank to the floor, his head in his hands. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Nobody does, Morse. We’re all in strung out shape, we’re all scared, but I need you. The world outside needs you. You keep your shit together until the job is done,” River said.

  Morse stood and took off his helmet off so he could run a hand through hair that glistened with sweat. “Right…right, boss. We do the job. So what’s our next move?”

  They were in a small five-sided chamber with a single metal door in one wall. There were alcoves here, similar to those above, surrounded with red-glowing runes. A skeleton stood in each alcove, its clothing nothing but silken tatters that clung to the bones like fungus.

  “We get out of here and find the real doorway. Scales, do you have any clue where that might be?” River asked.

  Scales chewed the stub of an old cigar he’d pulled out of his shirt pocket. “The doorway required mass amounts of power and a lot of equipment I’ve never seen…wait…”

  He paced a few steps away then spun. “I’m a monkey’s uncle, I should have seen it before!”

  “Do you want to enlighten us, monkeyboy?” Rylee asked.

  “Two weeks ago, the hospital was put on a skeleton staff for three days while all new equipment was brought in,” he said.

  Rylee elbowed River. “Told you that stuff was high tech.”

  “I and Carver had security detail, we were the only ones on duty. Late one night, Lindquist and his team brought in a bunch of covered equipment. I didn’t see what it was, but it makes sense. The hospital is the only place in town with its own generators,” Scales continued.

  River nodded. “That makes sense and explains why the patients were the first to be infected.”

  “So we get out of here, get to the hospital and shut it all down, right? That sounds like a plan to me,” Morse said.

  “Me too,” Rylee said. Her jaw fell open and she stared at Morse. “Holy shit, did I just agree with you?”

  “I won’t let it go to my head,” Morse said, deadpan.

  “Now we just have to get out of here,” Scales said. He tapped on the door with the barrel of his gun. “It’s too thick to cut and I don’t see any handle or lock.”

  The runes beside the door looked familiar to River, who began touching them with the tips of her fingers. After the third one, the door slid aside. Beyond was another dark corridor covered in dust and debris, with no sign of the infected or parasites.

  “Rylee, is this on the map?” Morse asked.

  There was the sound of Rylee tapping the computer, then, “Yes. Riv, head out and turn left. There should be a staircase that leads to the first sub level. From there it looks like we can get to the main doors.”

  River led the way, down a corridor not much wider than a man’s shoulders and into an intersection. A series of runes glowed to life as she approached and the strange luminescence rose inside the stone, like fish rising to the surface to feed. She touched the runes and looked the way Rylee indicated, then the other. Both looked the same.

  Scales joined her. “What’s wrong?”

  “This way,” River said. She started off in the opposite direction, her pistol held ready.

  “Babes? The map says this way,” Rylee said.

  River looked back. “I know. But we need to go this way. Trust me.”

  She couldn’t explain how she knew, she just knew. The fastest way out was deeper into the heart of the complex, not back. At the next intersection, the runes again began to glow and she turned right.

  “Hunter, are you sure about this?” Scales asked after a while. “I have no idea where we are.”

  River stopped and laid a hand on the wall. The whispers rose soft in her ears and she nodded. “Yes, I know where we are.”

  Rylee gripped her arm just above the elbow. “River? You don’t sound right, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, Rye. I just know we should go this way. I can almost read the runes, they’re like a street map,” River said.

  “Almost doesn’t sound good, babes. That amulet is in your head, how do you know it isn’t misleading us?”

  “Because I know,” River said.

  She pulled free and started walking again. Behind her, Rylee said, “Cryptic much?”

  River ignored her. They were running out of time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The chamber ahead was pitch black, so dark the flashlight Rive
r carried was almost useless. There was nothing for it to reflect off, no roof, no walls, just a floor that seemed to absorb the light, to devour it like some unearthly monster.

  “This is lovely, you brought us to the ass end of nowhere,” Morse muttered.

  “Not exactly,” River said.

  She moved to the wall and let her hands move of their own accord. They pressed sections of the wall that looked just like every other, yet each illuminated under her fingers with a swirl of light. Without warning, paths in the floor lit up with a green glow and the distant ceiling turned a comforting shade of lavender.

  The room was big, but not as big as it seemed in the dark. Octagonal slabs stuck out of the floor in various places, like desks or consoles, and there were windows, after a fashion, in the far wall. They hadn’t been visible due to the black sky outside.

  “Hunter, how do you know all this?” Scales asked.

  River rubbed her temples. “I don’t know, I just do and believe me it is no picnic.”

  Her head felt like the gnomes that had been picking her brain had been replaced by men with hammers.

  Scales looked down at her. “Is there another way out?”

  River waved at the far wall. Thinking hurt too much. “Yes, stairs in that wall.”

  “Come on, lover, you need to sit,” Rylee said.

  River let her guide her to a seat, where she closed her eyes and stared at nothing. Rylee’s gentle fingers massaged her neck, easing the pain threatening to make her vomit. Now she knew how a floppy disk felt, her skull was being stuffed with information she didn’t want.

  “There’s nothing here,” Scales said. “It’s just a wall.”

  River kissed Rylee in thanks and joined Scales. Her fingers danced over the wall and it slid aside. Snow fell out of the gap, blown by a bitter wind. It was accompanied by the sound of the helicopter circling overhead and the pilot’s voice calling for them on the radio.

  “Okay, I for one am going to buy you a whole case of beer,” Morse said. The little rat-faced man’s smile brighten the room.

  “Scales, get everyone aboard, I have to do something,” River said.

  Scales moved to comply while she sat at one of the slabs and began touching sections, which lit up at her touch and changed colors as she worked.

  “What are you doing?” Rylee asked.

  “Locking the doors so nobody but me or someone like me can get back in. This place is a trove of technology that people like Sentynil shouldn’t have access to, not to mention the few hundred parasites and infected wandering the lower levels,” River replied.

  “People like you? I don’t like the sound of that,” Rylee said.

  “Come on, Mrs. Hunter!” Scales called.

  River finished her work. No matter what happened, she wasn’t letting Sentynil back into the pyramid. She took Rylee’s hand and ran for the exit.

  “I just mean someone who can read the runes and activate them,” River said as they ran. “Most people can’t.”

  She followed Scales up the stairs and onto the plateau at the top of the pyramid. From the ground it looked as if the top of the pyramid had been damaged or cut off, however that was not the case. Rather, it was designed that way, though the purpose remained a mystery. The pilot had taken advantage, however, and landed right in the middle of the open space. Morse was already seated in the doorway, a cigarette in his hand.

  Above them, the storm raged, far worse than anything River had ever seen. The green lightning was almost continuous and interspersed with flashes of hellish red. The snow fell in small flakes so hard they made River’s face hurt where they hit, mixed with ice sharp enough to draw blood.

  River waited until Rylee and Scales were aboard before stepping up beside Morse, who offered her his hand.

  “I was wrong about you, boss,” he said when she was seated.

  River didn’t answer. Her eyes were on the pyramid below. She knew, if she survived what still lay ahead, she would have to come back. There was incredible power beneath that stone, power no one in this age was responsible enough to control.

  “Where to, Hunter?” the pilot asked.

  River closed her eyes. “The hospital, same drill as here, if it is clear you can drop us on the roof and stay on station.”

  “Affirmative. We’re low on gas, if I have to return to base it will be at least an hour roundtrip,” the pilot said.

  “Do what you have to, just keep me informed,” River said. “I don’t want to get left down there with the ghouls.”

  “I hear that. Hang on to your guts, the air around here is rough.”

  River opened her eyes and the helicopter leapt into the air and peeled away from the pyramid at a sharp angle that took them down its side and low over the compound, where what must have been more than a hundred infected were marking toward the pyramid.

  Morse spat at them. “Jesus, what a mess. What are they doing down there?”

  “They were sent after us,” River said.

  “By what?”

  “I think ‘by who’ is probably a better question,” River said.

  She gripped a boarding strap and pulled herself to her feet. Rylee was slumped in one of the canvas seats. Her eyes were closed and she looked pale. River sat beside her and held her hand.

  “Are you okay, my love?”

  Rylee opened her eyes, which were hooded and drawn. “I’m worried about you. That amulet thing is doing something to you, we should ditch it. We can find some other way to fight those things.”

  River touched the stone with her finger. She didn’t even remember putting it back around her neck.

  “We will when this is over,” she said.

  Rylee sat up. “No! We should do it now, before it’s too late, before you lose yourself in that thing!”

  “I’m still me, Rye. Yes, it is doing something, I know things I didn’t and don’t want to. But it has also saved our lives and the lives of others, I can’t just toss it away, not yet,” River said.

  “Saving people is meaningless if I lose my River in the process!” Rylee yelled.

  River placed a gentle hand on Rylee’s cheek and ran her thumb over lips she used to dream about kissing. “I’m still me, and when this is over I will still be me. I promise.”

  She leaned in to kiss Rylee and was thrown to the deck as the helicopter bucked and spun. She grabbed the leg of the seat and held on, trying to catch her bearings. She saw Morse fall screaming from the door into uncertain blackness, and then the helicopter hit the ground with enough force that her grip was loosened from the seat and she slid into the opposite bulkhead and then the roof, where she lay still.

  ***

  It was the sting of ice on her face that brought reality crashing back. The sting, the cold and the sweet scent of aviation fuel. She struggled to sit up and found she was still lying on the ceiling. It felt as if the helicopter had rolled and was lying upside down in the snow.

  “Rylee? Scales?” she called.

  Rylee coughed somewhere nearby. “I really hate you right now. Can we have a vacation where we don’t fall, crash, get shot at or otherwise face death? Boring would be awesome, right now.”

  River crawled toward Rylee’s voice and found her more or less where’s she’d been no more than five minutes before, lying on the seats.

  “Are you okay? Can you move?”

  Rylee coughed again. “I swallowed my last gummy bear, otherwise I’m peachy.”

  River helped her to sit up. “Scales? Cheech? Someone report!”

  A beam of light shone through the cabin. “I’m here. Cheech is dead, impaled by a tree branch. What about Morse?” Scales asked.

  River ran a hand through her hair. It was sweaty and matted to her head even in the freezing temperatures. “He fell out during the crash. We were only fifty feet up, but the way he fell? I don’t
know.”

  “If he’s alive, he can’t be far away. We should find him,” Rylee said.

  Scales shook his head and began sorting through the equipment bins. “We don’t have time. This is getting worse, if projections are right, it isn’t going to stop until this island is a little slice of hell on Earth.”

  “I’m not leaving him behind,” River said.

  She loaded a fresh bag with supplies, including grenades, ammunition and an undamaged M4. Rylee was right beside her, though her choices leaned more toward first aid and less violent accessories.

  “We have orders, Sergeant,” Scales said.

  “Yeah, and look where that got us? We marched right into a trap. Either your boss is being manipulated or he’s part of what is happening around us,” River said. “Now we do this my way. Grab your gear and let’s go find Morse.”

  Outside, the snow was still falling worse than anything she’d ever experienced. The wind, near hurricane force, tore at her clothes and chilled her straight through. It was so dark if there hadn’t been lightning reflecting off the snow, she would have been effectively blind.

  Even so, finding Morse was not as hard as she thought it would be. They found him, or what was left of him, inside a circle of hungry infected. They tore at his soft flesh and broken bones with gusto. Blood poured down their faces and dripped from their chins like children with their favorite ice cream, a sight that made River’s stomach rebel. She swallowed it down and nodded at the others. As one, they executed the infected. There was no other way to describe it. The trio unloaded their weapons into the mob, reloaded and repeated the performance until nothing was left standing.

  When it was done, River stood over Morse’s corpse. From the amount of blood and defensive wounds on his hands it looked as if he’d survived the fall, only to have his injuries attract a nearby pack. His eyes stared accusingly, blaming River for his death.

  “I’m sorry, Morse. You deserved better,” she said.

  She put a single bullet through his forehead, just to be sure, and walked away.