The four left the room and walked the short distance to the double doors leading to the next section of the complex. The doorway stood large enough to drive a tank through, the closed doors forming a tight seal against any gas leakage.
Sparks walked over to the panel where the keycard should go and brought up her mini-computer.
“At least we’ve cleared out one section,” Seb said to SA and Bruke. “Two more to go and we can get out of here.”
When Seb saw SA looking at him, he looked back. From the way she stared at him, her deep and compassionate gaze looked like she wanted to tell him something. Maybe he’d misread it, but it felt like support of some sort. She understood what he’d just done with the little girl. That he’d done it so the others didn’t have to. Maybe she forgave him shoving in front of her the entire time.
SA stepped close to Seb as if about to reach out to him, but stopped when Sparks looked up from her computer. “There’s no gas leaks on the other side.”
A look at the graceful, yellow-skinned woman still a few metres from him, and Seb sighed at the missed opportunity. He turned to Sparks. The others might not have seen it, but he knew her well enough by now to recognise the relief on her face. None of them liked the thought of an explosion, but it went to the next level with Sparks. It kept her awake at night. He’d shared a room with her. He’d heard her night terrors. “So the third section’s sealed off?”
A shrug and Sparks said, “It would seem so. Either that, or there’s no gas coming through at all.”
As much as Seb wanted to look at SA again, he didn’t. The moment had passed and they needed to get on. “That would make our lives a lot easier.”
“Which makes me think it’s not true,” Sparks said. “When has anything gone well for us? Are you all ready?”
“Hang on.” Seb walked close to the large double doors, turned his blaster around and drove the butt of it against the steel barrier.
The deep thud boomed through the section they were in and the one beyond.
Bruke whined. “What are you doing?” The green-scaled creature shifted from side to side like he needed to pee.
Seb raised a finger in the air to indicate his friend should wait. And sure enough, the scream came from the other side. Deranged, twisted, and furious, it rushed towards them.
Bruke stepped back from the door moments before a series of thuds clattered into it. Each bang sent him back another pace.
“That’s what I’m doing,” Seb said with a raised voice so his retreating friend could hear him.
“Trying to get us killed?” Bruke said.
A shake of his head and Seb smiled. “No, I’m trying to flush them out. I’d much rather they were on the other side of that door, waiting for us, than spread throughout this next section and ready to give us a nasty surprise around every damn corner. We can deal with them in one go and be done with it.”
Bruke offered another whine in response, but he raised his blaster.
Seb looked at Sparks and then SA. “You both ready?”
As unflappable as ever, SA dipped a nod at Seb, holding him in her gaze for a second. Sparks sighed, shrugged, and said, “Yeah, I suppose so.”
CHAPTER 24
Although Sparks stood by the keycard reader with her card in her hand, Seb walked over and flicked his head behind him to indicate where she should go. He gripped his own keycard hanging around his neck as he said, “Get some distance with the others and shoot the zombies when they come through. I should be the one to stay close. Whoever opens this door won’t be able to get back to a shooting distance and will have to fight hand to hand. I can do that.”
Sparks assessed Seb with her magnified purple gaze, but she didn’t argue. Maybe she saw the futility of resisting him. He wouldn’t back down on this. He had the skills for close combat. Him and SA, and no way would he expect SA to do it, not after the wasp’s nest he’d just kicked.
The screams continued unrelenting on the other side of the doors. They banged against them as if they could beat them down. But no human could punch through the solid barrier, not even Seb with his metal-lined bones.
Seb had intended to get the creatures gathered on the other side of the door, but he’d not been able to comprehend the reality of it until now. He could cope with the rage on the other side, but as soon as he swiped his card through the reader, he’d be setting the mob on his friends.
He hoped they’d given themselves enough space to hold the rush of creatures back. Besides, he’d make sure none of them got through.
A shake ran through Seb’s hand when he lifted his card to the reader.
A moment’s pause to centre himself and Seb nodded, speaking for the benefit of the others. “Right. Three … two … one …”
Seb swiped the card. He watched the red light turn to green and the crack in the middle of the doors started to open. He backed away a couple of steps and raised his fists as the edges of his world blurred.
The second the flood of zombies appeared, Seb’s world slowed down. The monsters swarmed into the space, bringing the reek of rot and waste with them.
SA, Sparks, and Bruke lit the air up with green blasts and knives while Seb waited for the ones they didn’t hit to come through.
A widened stance, his fists clenched and raised, Seb had to wait a good few seconds before the first zombie got close enough to him.
A woman, maybe in her thirties, although hard to tell with the haggard expression of rage on her face. Seb punched her square on the nose, driving her back so hard her feet left the ground before she crashed down onto her back.
Shot after shot, knife after knife, the others held the swarm at bay. Despite the width of the narrow gap in the doorway, the zombies had all rushed forward as one, bottlenecking because of their desire to get at the quartet. It slowed them down enough to make them manageable, but the doors were opening wider with every passing second.
Two more broke free and rushed at Seb. Flailing arms and fury came at him. A man and a woman this time. No, he couldn’t think of them like that. People with families and lives. Those people had gone. Two monsters. Nothing more.
Seb ducked the swing from the first creature, jumped up, and knocked it back with an uppercut. It fell into the beast behind it and Seb saw a knife fly through the air and sink into the temple of each zombie. It turned them both limp.
A look at SA and Seb nodded his thanks to her. Another scream dragged his attention back to their attackers.
The monsters came in a steady stream at Seb, and although hard work, he managed to keep his pace, dropping them as quickly as they rushed forward.
Fuelled by adrenaline, Seb felt more charged with every punch. Moses might have been a vile creature, but the metal fists were a stroke of genius. He threw another heavy blow into the face of a monster, bones crunching when it fell back as if they’d turned to dust beneath its skin.
The gap in the door grew wider and more zombies flooded out. Where Seb had focused on dropping the ones closest to him, he didn’t notice the one who’d circled round and charged at him from his left. The first he knew of it came when it clattered into him, a sharp burn in his ribs as it drove the wind from his lungs.
Seb landed on his back, the creature on top of him. He fought for breath as he stared up at the vile monster and held it at arm’s length. Any trace of humanity had been driven from it. It glared at him through red eyes. The castanet click of its teeth snapped just centimetres from him, and it smothered him in a hot halitosis reek.
As Seb looked into the creature’s mouth, he momentarily lost the strength in his arms. Squirming deep in its throat like a lodged piece of food, he saw the tip of a grub as it writhed and twisted. When the zombie snapped its teeth even closer to Seb’s face, he yelled and lifted it away from him, his arms shaking beneath the weight of the thing.
CHAPTER 25
Seb pulled at the air with hungry gasps, but he couldn’t catch his breath. The zombie had hit him so hard he still hadn’t got his wind back. With the
weight of the creature on top of him and the pain in his ribs, he started to lose his battle against the beast, his shaking arms giving way beneath its pressure.
Bites snapped closer to Seb’s face with the monster’s every lurch. The crack of teeth crashing together just missed Seb’s nose, all the worse for him seeing it in slow motion. While yelling, he turned his head to the side and continued to push the creature away. He held it at bay but not a lot more.
When the beast screamed again, Seb’s arms buckled. He regained control just before the monster fell flat on top of him. Another click of gnashing teeth snapped between them.
A loud whack sounded out and the pressure lifted from Seb. He looked across to see Bruke standing over the thing from where he’d driven the butt of his gun into the side of its face. Bruke then spun his weapon around and shot it.
The blast snapped the zombie rigid for a second and then it fell limp. Seb continued to fight for breath as he stared up at his scaled friend. He dipped a nod at him and Bruke nodded back.
Seb sat up to see all the other creatures had been killed. It had taken no more than about fifteen seconds, although it felt like longer in slow motion. A pile of bodies filled the doorway.
Exhausted from the fight and still trying to catch his breath, Seb smiled at Bruke. “That was close.”
Glazed eyes and ragged breaths, Bruke looked on the verge of tears as he glanced between the zombie he’d just killed and Seb. “Are you okay?”
Despite his exhaustion, his arms aching from the strain and build-up of lactic acid, Seb laughed and nodded. “I am. Thank you.”
But Bruke didn’t look like he could pull himself back. He shook as much as Seb and a tear ran down his face. Although he nodded, he didn’t seem to have much else in him.
Once Seb had got to his feet, he looked at the sprawl of bodies on the ground. They formed a considerable mound for them to try to get over. About thirty in total, they all looked dead.
“Well done,” Seb said to the others as he walked over to the stinking pile and grabbed the closest corpse. “Although, I think the hardest part is yet to come. We need to stretch these things out in a line so we can take out every grub as they emerge.”
The others looked far from pleased with Seb’s suggestion, but they didn’t argue. And why would they? They’d all seen what happened when the grubs crawled out of their hosts. They all knew they had a few minutes to get better prepared than they were at present.
Where the corridor had been stark whiteness and bleached clean, Seb tarnished it by dragging a line of blood behind the first corpse. A massacre had occurred and the shock red against the white highlighted the fact.
On his trip back to the pile in the doorway, Bruke and SA passed him with their own dead zombies. Sparks didn’t help. Too small to be useful at that moment, the others didn’t need to discuss it to accept her talents lay elsewhere.
CHAPTER 26
The bodies stretched out in a long line down the corridor. The previous white floor ran slick with their blood. It had coated the bottom of Seb’s boots, deep crimson footprints running a trail where he’d walked.
“We need to take a section each,” Seb said once he’d counted how many there were. “Forty-two bodies in total.” More than he’d initially thought. “You each take ten and I’ll take twelve. Make sure you kill enough grubs for the amount of bodies you have.”
The middle seemed like the most dangerous place to stand, so Seb took one of the middle sections. SA took the other. Where she’d normally use her knives, she had one of Sparks’ blasters again. It made sense to shoot the things. No point in wasting knives on them when they were so close.
Only a few more seconds passed before the first blast. Bruke had done it, and although Seb stood quite far away from him on the other side of SA, he still ruffled his nose against the rotten smell of the dead parasite.
The cheek of a woman by Seb’s foot bulged with the strange squirming movement of one of the grubs. No matter how many times he’d witnessed it, he couldn’t help but cringe at what looked like reanimation.
Seb shot the woman and the thick reek told him he’d hit the grub.
“Remember to count the parasites,” Seb reminded the others. “We need to make sure there’s one for every corpse here.”
Sparks shot next. Then SA. Bruke fired again. Two, three. Seb ripped off several more shots. Five in total. No idea how many the others had left, he had seven more to go.
CHAPTER 27
“Are we good?” Seb said as he looked up and down the line of dead bodies, the white floor red and glistening with their spilled blood. The now familiar buzz ran through his hands to look at all the corpses. So many lives lost because of the rancid-smelling little grubs. If he needed a motivation to eradicate the disgusting things, it lay on the ground at his feet. Once families, friends, and lovers, they’d now all gone to waste.
When Seb looked to Bruke for his confirmation, the large scaled creature gave him a thumbs-up, but kept his green face staring down at the dead.
A deep sigh and SA nodded.
Sparks had already pulled out her small computer, clearly working out what they had to do next. She nodded while staring at the screen. “Yep.”
“Right,” Seb said and turned towards the next section of the complex. “Let’s go.”
Seb entered the next corridor then stopped; it looked similar to the one they’d just come from. Just as illuminated as the last, it stretched away from them and had a set of double doors at the end. Although it ran as long as the previous corridor, it only had three rooms down one side of it.
Before Seb could say anything, Sparks stepped up next to him, her computer still resting on her long palm. She looked down at her screen before pointing at the first room. “That over there’s the canteen. That’s the sports hall. That’s the games room.”
Bruke and SA walked up behind Seb and Sparks. Before they got too close, Seb moved off in the direction of the first door—the door to the canteen.
The canteen had a card reader like most other rooms. With a swipe of his card, the red light turned green before the door slid open. When Seb checked the others behind him, SA stepped forwards as if to show she wanted to go in first.
Seb blocked her way. When she scowled and snapped a sharp shrug at him, he said, “Let me go in first.”
“SA can handle herself,” Sparks said.
Another scowl from SA to back up Sparks’ comment, but Seb ignored them and walked through the door. There could be something waiting in there, and although she’d deal with it, it could still go wrong. He’d already lost Gurt. He wouldn’t let SA go too.
The canteen stretched away from them. Silent and vast, it had the same white floor and walls as the rest of the complex. Rows of white tables ran across the place. Most of the tables had plates on them, some were empty, but many still had stale food on them. The air had the slight funk of decomposition to it. Souring vegetables and gravy. Like a moist compost heap.
“It looks like a ghost ship,” Bruke said in a low voice, the hiss of his whisper running away from him.
“I remember hearing rumours about a huge passenger ship called the Faradis,” Sparks said in an equally quiet voice. “It came close to a space station, but they couldn’t get any response when they radioed through. After a few days, they sent a platoon out to board it. It looked like this apparently. As if the crew had just … vanished.”
Bruke gasped, the sound running across the still canteen. He then whispered again, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Sparks said, “but apparently the food was still warm and the coffee still hot.”
A chill threatened to twist through Seb, but he shrugged it off. He couldn’t get dragged into nonsensical ghost stories. He whispered, “Probably some kind of time/space anomaly.”
“That only took the ship’s crew?” Sparks said. “And took them a moment before the platoon entered?”
Seb shrugged, and before Sparks could say anything else,
he walked to the closest meal. When he pressed his finger against the food, he could feel the group collectively hold their breath. Still keeping his voice low, he hissed, “It’s still warm.”
Bruke whined and stepped back towards the door. Sparks stared at Seb with wide open eyes. SA still looked pissed off with him. Ghosts didn’t scare her.
“And the coffee,” Seb whispered while picking up a mug, “is still hot.”
A louder whine and Bruke shook his head.
“Bloody hell,” Seb said as he looked from Sparks to Bruke, still keeping his voice low. “You two are so gullible. You shouldn’t be worrying about ghosts in this place. We know why the canteen looks like this; it’s because of those bloody parasites. There’s no mystery here.”
“That’s not funny,” Bruke said, his bottom lip poking out.
A wry smile and Seb shrugged. “Not for you maybe.” Then before Bruke could start a whispered argument, he added, “The food’s cold like it’s been this way for several days, maybe longer, which is what we expect, right?”
Bruke dropped his tense shoulders with a hard exhale.
“Come on,” Seb said as he turned his back on the group and delved deeper into the canteen.
Even Bruke managed to move quietly as Seb led the way through the place, the butt of his gun pressed into his shoulder while he walked. He’d have taken ghosts over the parasites any day. Ghosts wouldn’t bore into his skin and turn him into a madman.
Afraid to blink because the grubs were so hard to spot, Seb’s eyes stung as he looked around the room. The infected people weren’t the problem. They could see and hear them from a mile away. The grubs, on the other hand, could spring from anywhere.
Because Seb had put so much of his focus on scanning the room, he’d failed to look down. When he stepped on a shard of plate on the floor, the loud crack of breaking porcelain popped through the quiet space like a firecracker.
Eradication: A Space Opera: Book Four of The Shadow Order Page 9