Star Road Page 36

  She grimaced and nodded. Her eyes were as filmed as the cloud created by the machine.

  Then Jordan positioned the handgun close to the infected arm, above the elbow where the skin was untouched so far.

  And he pulled the trigger.

  The shiny, silvery flakes swarming over Sinjira’s lower arm blew away. Blood sprayed out of the wound.

  Ivan quickly pulled off his jacket.

  Jordan had dropped his gun.

  Together they each took an end of the jacket and wrapped it tightly around the bloody stump.

  Rodriguez had stopped running, Ruth was leaning against him, gasping.

  Sinjira screamed, her feet kicking wildly.

  Then Rodriguez said, in a cold, clinical voice, “These look like nano-trites. But if they are, they’re way beyond anything we’ve developed.”

  “You’ve seen these?”

  “Not exactly. They appear to be more alive than mere machine, but—”

  Ivan looked at him blankly

  The scientist shaking, his face bathed in sweat as whatever he was saying faded away, the possible scientific explanation incomprehensible to Ivan.

  Sounds more like magic than science, he thought, but at a certain level, how can anyone tell them apart?

  He helped Jordan pull the makeshift tourniquet tighter.

  Then Jordan scooped Sinjira up in his arms, settled her, and was ready to move.

  As they started walking, Rodriguez was still near-babbling.

  “Like nano-machines, those things on her. But I have no idea what that thing surrounding your brother was. It’s like nothing, nothing I’ve ever—’

  Rodriguez looked at Ruth, clearly approaching full hysteria.

  “Okay, Doc. Let’s just calm down and get the hell out of here. All right? We’ll talk later.”

  With a quick nod, Rodriguez stopped jabbering.

  Ivan led the way, getting them to move as fast as they could, now reaching the place where the legion of dead bodies were sprawled on the floor. The cave exit was still a long way off.

  Then he heard a voice, bellowing from behind them, echoing and amplified in the vast reaches of the cavern.

  Kyros.

  “There’s no escape, Ivan!”

  Why not? Ivan wondered.

  They could work their way through the traps, now that they knew how they worked, so why couldn’t they get away from Kyros, who didn’t even appear to be hurrying to catch up with them?

  Why such confidence? It was as if he knew a secret... had another surprise in store for them.

  Then Ivan heard a sound.

  The vines above them were stirring.

  The low, throbbing hum quickly blended into a high-pitched buzz. The gentle swaying of the vines quickly changed into the wild lashing of loose lines ... like an old-time sailing ship’s rigging, whipping around in a storm.

  They reached down ... down to the vast field littered with the dead bodies locked in their eternal struggle.

  Or so one would have thought.

  Ivan looked up ahead, then back the way they had come, and then ahead again.

  The way out was still so far away.

  “No escape...”

  And then, to his horror, Ivan saw what Kyros meant.

  ~ * ~

  43

  THEY RISE

  Ivan’s first thought was that the vines lashing overhead were about to reach down and attack them, wrap around them, and kill them.

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  As the vines swayed and snapped back and forth, they shot down spiky protrusions on long threads that emerged from inside the stalks.

  But instead of attacking them, the thorns broke loose and showered down onto the field of corpses on this silent alien battleground.

  They rained down onto the species, known and unrecognizable.

  Ivan and his crew were moving as fast as they could, but Sinjira kept slowing Jordan down as they dodged through the spiky thorns that continued to fall down onto the corpses.

  And as the thorns fell, they erupted like thousands of metallic larval sacs bursting open while a dark ooze spilled out, filling the room with a nauseating smell.

  The ooze looked like the same miniscule black nano-machines that had swept over and around Kyros.

  Within seconds, they covered the alien bodies, seeping into the desiccated, fossilized skin and rotting innards, painting the exposed organs and bones.

  And then the bodies began to move, stirring, at first like dry leaves being swept up by a powerful wind.

  “Come on! Keep moving!” Ivan said, but he realized his voice had been too low; the horror of what he was seeing so immense.

  So now he shouted, his yell filling the cavern.

  “Keep! Moving!”

  But what could they do with Jordan, Sinjira, even Ruth stumbling and falling as they ran?

  Annie turned and looked back at them as she ran, seeing the same horror show unfolding in the cavern.

  The bodies were no longer dry leaves vibrating in an icy autumn wind ...

  Now, they were rising, pulling up a knee here, raising an arm or a head there ... even, Christ, when half the skull was missing or had a massive hole in it from whatever had destroyed the once-living brain.

  These dead beings were moving—unnaturally alive—whether by science or magic, it didn’t matter.

  A dozen or more staggered to their feet as more and more spiky thorns fell all around, each hit causing another body to be quickly covered by the blackish “nano-trites” that animated them.

  At the far end of the cavern, Ivan saw his brother, still surrounded by the luminescent cloud.

  He strode toward them with a slow, steady pace, following in the wake of this unnatural army. He was heading straight toward Ivan, relentlessly.

  Kyros more alien, more machine now than human.

  And he was the master, the controller of all of this.

  Looking ahead, he saw Jordan stop and put Sinjira down for a moment.

  Without missing a beat, Jordan slung his gun over his shoulder so he could still hold it and shoot when he had to.

  Once again, he picked up Sinjira, scooping her up and carrying her like a baby as he tried to pick up his pace to elude this undead army.

  By now, scores if not hundreds of them were rising up, but Ivan wasn’t about to stand there and count them.

  Whatever their conflicts with one another had been before, they were gone now ... vanished as they moved toward Ivan, Annie, Jordan, Rodriguez, and Ruth.

  Ruth walked beside Jordan, holding Sinjira’s dangling hand.

  Ivan thought: As slow as they move now... once we hit the traps, they’ll catch us.

  He came up beside Jordan, now also flanked by Annie.

  And for a few stomach-turning seconds, amid the rising of corpses, no one said anything.

  ~ * ~

  “Run,” Ivan finally said, his voice hard with command. “As best you can!”

  And then he turned and started firing, spraying massive pulse blasts at this army of the alien undead.

  Some shots blew off what remained of heads and other body parts. Some shots seared into their chests and abdomens and blasted off arms and leg.

  It made no difference.

  They simply continued moving forward, crawling and writhing on the ground, making better progress than they did walking upright.

  If a body was split in two, both halves continued their grim movement forward.

  “I hate to say it, but it looks fucking hopeless,” Ivan said.

  Which is when Sinjira opened her pain-glazed eyes. Mere slits. Hazy, as if she had been sleeping or was drugged.

  She raised her gaze to a dark corner of the cavern—a narrow opening that led off to one side, seemingly back into the mountain itself.

  “That way,” she said, her voice no more than a croak.

  Jordan, struggling to carry her, ign
ored what she said.

  But Ivan heard the urgency in her voice and said, “What do you mean?”

  He looked at Ruth, who was also following the conversation. They were approaching the bottom of the mathematical steps, which they could navigate, now knowing the secret, assuming the pattern hadn’t changed.

  But they were moving so slowly, the undead army would be all over them, tearing at them before they were halfway up.

  And would they infect them with the same nano-machines, turning them into ... who knew what?

  Maybe, Ivan thought, that’s when we turn against each other like they did, in a mad and ultimately futile struggle to survive. Even death wouldn’t be a release.

  “Trust me,” Sinjira said. “They’re already ... inside me. I know. Go that way.”

  Jordan was simply soldiering on, carrying Sinjira and intent on only one thing—getting out of this cave.

  Ivan tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Jordan.”

  Ruth was still looking at him, fear written all over her face, but also something else ... Determination.

  Then louder: “Jordan. Stop! She said—”

  Sinjira could barely raise her head.

  “I can feel another way out. A hidden passage. Over there.”

  Another slight nod.

  “Our only chance, gunner,” Ivan said.

  Jordan was clearly torn. For him, forward was the only option. Always.

  Not back, and certainly not deeper into the darkness.

  “I—”

  Sinjira was barely able to speak.

  “I can feel it.”

  Then a nod, as the gunner turned.

  Annie looked to Rodriguez, who had run ahead, toward the stairs, no doubt thinking if he was out front, he’d be safe.

  Maybe he’d be the only one they wouldn’t get.

  “Rodriguez, no. This way!” Ivan shouted, but Rodriguez froze.

  The army of undead was only meters away.

  Their animated body parts and old bones made a clunky carousel of sound, and the stench in the air was nauseating.

  Rodriguez didn’t move.

  His choice, Ivan thought.

  But then, finally Rodriguez took a step back toward them.

  Jordan was already clambering up to the side toward the dark opening Sinjira had indicated.

  Except as Ivan followed, with Annie a few paces behind, he had to wonder at her words. “They’re already inside me.”

  The nano-machines?

  Could they also lead her in the wrong direction?

  Could what they were about to do actually seal their fate by luring them into a dead end where there was only one way this battle could end?

  We’re about to find out, Ivan thought, resigned.

  Jordan and Sinjira disappeared into the narrow opening.

  Ivan looked at Ruth, Annie, and Rodriguez.

  His expression said it all: It’s anybody’s guess.

  And they followed them into the darkness.

  ~ * ~

  44

  A HUMAN SACRIFICE

  Ivan looked back at the others following him into the tunnel, scrambling in the dark. The way ahead sloped steeply upward, the path littered with massive boulders with sharp jagged edges. Only weak flecks of the blue light here.

  Just enough light so they could see the handholds ... and where to step.

  This could be a way out, he thought, but it feels like a trap.

  Jordan, laboring with Sinjira in his arms, still turned and tried to get off a few blasts, but her dead weight was having an impact on him. Wearing him down.

  And the way everyone clustered together as they moved as fast as they could through the tunnel made getting clear shots at the advancing horde almost impossible.

  They needed time to regroup.

  Ivan could see only one thing to do as the army of undead followed them.

  “Jordan—”

  The gunner looked at him.

  “Give me two grenades.”

  Jordan smiled thinly.

  “Hero time?”

  Ivan said the next words as if it was so clear, so obvious.

  “If we don’t stop them here, we’re all dead.”

  Jordan let Sinjira slip down to the ground. She looked totally exhausted, her face marked with the intense pain.

  “My grenades,” Jordan said, “my job.”

  “We don’t have time to discuss this.”

  Annie joined them but remained silent, other than breathing hard, letting the two of them argue over who was about to die.

  Then a small voice from the ground spoke.

  “Jordan ...”

  Stopping them cold.

  Sinjira held up the stump of her arm.

  Even in the dim light, they all could see the shiny flakes of the nanomachines spreading past the tourniquet and up to her shoulder.

  ~ * ~

  No one said a word.

  The next voice was hers.

  “Doc,” she said. “Hit me with a stim.”

  Rodriguez fumbled in his backpack, but Jordan got between them.

  “There’s no way in hell you’re going to—”

  “Hit me ... with ... a god... damn... stim!”

  By this time, Rodriguez had fished a small packet from his backpack.

  He looked from Annie to Ivan to Jordan and then to Sinjira. Her face was set in a rictus of pain.

  “Do it!” she said between clenched teeth.

  Ivan watched Rodriguez rip the package open and take out a needle.

  Annie looked down the slope and said, “They’re almost here. We have to—”

  Staring at Rodriguez, Ivan nodded, and Jordan, seething with fury, stepped aside.

  Rodriguez leaned down and prepared to inject Sinjira in her good arm, but with a heavy effort, she shook her head and then tilted it to one side, exposing her neck.

  A bulging vein caught the scant light.

  “Here,” she said. “It’ll hit quicker.”

  A moment’s hesitation.

  “Just fucking do it!”

  Then Rodriguez touched the vein with the tip of the needle. As everyone watched, the auto-plunger shot the stimulant into her bloodstream.

  All the while, Jordan was shaking his head.

  His eyes glazed.

  Just then, the first of the shambling army of zombies turned the corner and witnessed a scene that would have appeared—if they had any thoughts at all—to be the group of humans waiting to die.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan watched Annie move closer to the undead, mowing down the first row, sending their revived body parts flying.

  Thankfully at this range and when totally shattered by the pulse blasts those body parts stopped moving.

  Maybe they have to be close to those vines, he thought.

  A faint trace of hope as he turned to Sinjira who—amazingly—was standing up.

  She looked at Ivan and Jordan, then at her arm and the discoloration creeping up past her shoulder now.

  “Give me the grenades,” she said to Jordan.

  He shook his head.

  “Hell no. You’ll die.”

  Ivan had figured out something that must not have dawned on Jordan yet.

  Sinjira knew it was already too late.

  She pulled the chip from the node in her head, the stim giving her the strength to stand, to move.

  To Ivan: “Take this. I got it all.”

  Annie, down below, shouted, “There’s more coming!”

  “All of it?” Ivan said, astounded. Did she mean—?

  Sinjira struggled to talk. She probably had only seconds left of coherent conversation, but it was clear what she was thinking.