Zombie Team Alpha (19 page)

The mine ahead of him opened up into a large cavernous space. At the far end, he could see movement around a shelter that was similar to the one he and Dr. Martinez had been trapped inside. The grim concept of leaving one behind only to get trapped inside another was not lost on him. As he wiped his mouth again, he chuckled to himself. His luck had been running right along the border between bad and good. It could tilt either way in the next few minutes. He just held out hope that it would tilt the right way.

“You okay?” he whispered to Dr. Martinez as he stood.

She remained seated and continued to regain her breath as she opened her backpack and withdrew her tablet computer. Amazingly, it still worked. Cutter’s voice had sounded odd, so he pulled one of the earbuds out, shook it and put it back in. It let out a loud squeal, so he yanked them both out and tossed them. The water had ruined them, which was a bit of bad luck to go with all the good.

“What now?” she asked.

“They are trapped in there, right? And we have no weapons, no way to—”

He stopped himself. He was now breathing harder than he should have to, as if he couldn’t catch his breath. For a brief half second, he thought it was all the smoking he’d done over the past year and the recent extended stay underwater, but he realized what it really was that was causing him to be so out of breath and light headed.

Or hoped so.

He could be wrong. It could be that what he’d noticed was the blackdamp, and the crazy thing he planned to do next was not going to work at all.

~42~

THROUGH FIRE AND FLAMES

Cutter almost smiled as he thought through his plan. Almost, because his luck might not hold out much longer. He could end up blowing himself straight to hell if he was wrong.

But at least it will be spectacular.

With the flashlight he’d pulled from his Glock, he searched for a shelf that was high enough on which to set the lighter he’d taken from Colonel Suvorov. He was certain that the colonel would be pleased with the use he planned to put it to. He found an outcropping of rock about shoulder height, which he guessed should be perfect for what he had in mind.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Martinez asked.

“Go back to the water,” he said. “Get ready to get back in and underwater quickly because things are about to get a little hot in here.”

“You can’t possibly be serious,” she said, taking notice of what he was doing. “You’ll blow us up.”

“I’m hoping not to,” he replied, “but I see little choice. We are stuck here otherwise.”

Shaking her head, she turned and went to the water. She did not appear convinced, but she waded out until she was chest deep in the water, and then turned to face him and waited.

Cutter had learned a little of the dangers of methane gas and what firedamp actually was. It was quite a bit different from the oxygen-starved blackdamp. He could sense the lighter than air methane floating near the ceiling, but he wasn’t certain it was there since methane in its pure form was colorless and odorless and not at all like what natural gas piped into homes smelled like. But, he wasn’t at all sure the concentration was high enough to cause an explosion. That occurred only when a certain saturation level was achieved—
or when pure oxygen is added to boost the reaction in a hell of a hurry.

When he saw that Dr. Martinez was far enough away, he flicked the lighter open and shut his eyes, half-expecting things to go boom when he spun the wheel to spark the flint.

All he heard was the scrape.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the flame had caught and was burning dimly. The mixture wasn’t right yet. But it would be soon.

He stretched and reached up to set the lighter closer to the top of the mineshaft’s relatively low ceiling where he was. His shoulder shook from the pain, but he ignored it and reached even higher before setting the lighter on a rock outcropping and leaving it burning.

Then he pulled out his Glock. He raised the gun and took aim at the tanks strapped to the side of the refuge shelter. It was a long shot, bordering on 100-yards or so, the length of a football field. At that distance, his aim had to be perfect. The tanks were bound together, so he had a nice wide target and could miss one and perhaps hit the one next to it and his plan would still work. He only had to account for the bullet drop, which at 100-yards was about a foot.
Easy peasy.
He would aim just a little high to make sure and then let the bullet drop onto the target. That left him plenty of room for error.

Plenty.

He checked once more on Dr. Martinez, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. As the near eardrum-busting report died away, the first shot rang true. He saw the tank begin to spew out a mist of pure gas. It looked like steam as the pressure difference froze the gas in the air.

One big problem with his plan, though, was knowing which of the tanks held oxygen and which held nitrogen, and also not knowing the precise moment when the air mixture would reach the correct ratio of methane and oxygen, and then how long it would take to reach the already burning lighter.

Complications.
But a little luck and—

There was something else he hadn’t accounted for, either—the emergency light fixtures burning above the refuge shelter. Could they set off an explosion? Were they sealed correctly? It was a damn mine, so they should be.

But, what if they aren’t?

As he realized his potentially fatal mistake, he also saw the first flash of ignition, glowing blue in the distance. He spun and raced for the water, his strides covering more ground in less time than he’d ever covered in his entire life. When he reached the water, he dove in head first and ducked under the surface.

The blast compressed the water around him and drove him tumbling through the cave underwater like he’d caught a bad wave under the surf. He hit something, hard, and felt the breath rush out of him, but he somehow kept his mouth closed and did not inhale as he tumbled in the darkness.

As the violence stilled, he opened his eyes and couldn’t tell which way was up or down or to which direction he should swim to safety. He chanced it and swam where he thought he saw a light bobbing in the distance. His air-starved lungs burned, and he was already seeing yellow and purple spots. All he wanted to do was let go and breathe. But with every bit of will he had left in him, he found the courage not to. A second later, he saw more of the flashing yellow lights and purple-tinged shapes.

This time, he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He was going to die just as his wife had died, stuck inside a hole in the earth. A big part of him didn’t mind so much. Death was easy. He’d welcome it. He just wished he would have gone out with the bang and not drown like a rat.

He opened his mouth to breathe and—

Something bumped into him, startling him. In the faint glow from a mysterious light source—he saw a face. It was a ghostly face. The eyes were goggled and glazed, and the skin was torn like ragged cloth with deep furrows carved from it.

His first thought was that he’d blown Dr. Martinez up in the explosion. But he quickly realized it was only the burnt face of one of the zombie creatures. Most of the flesh on its skull hadn’t yet been torn or cooked away, and it left the thing looking like it was wearing some kind of evil mask with the lips pulled back and the teeth exposed.

Then those eyes shot fully open and turned redly satanic, and the thing then tried to bite him. He jolted away from it, and his head was suddenly free of the water as he touched the bottom and jerked upward. He gulped air in huge panicked breaths as he continued to kick away from the thing. He got a few feet away from it and found he could stand and walk instead of swim.

All around him the bodies of the former miners burned. Smoke was already filling the air. Sizzling fat and charred flesh kept the fires burning. The smoke hung thick in the air and made it difficult to see much more than a few feet in front of him. He lowered himself closer to the surface of the water and began to make his way through the ash and char to the shoreline.

His hand landed in something hot and wet and squishy. He yanked his arm back as if he’d been burned. What his fingers had landed in had been the body of one of the zombies. He raised his arm and flung away the sticky gore.

“Dr. Martinez!” he called out. His throat was raw from the gathering smoke. He coughed and choked and raised his arm to breathe through the shirt fabric.

He heard no response from her.

He called out again.

No one answered.

If he was going to find her, he was going to have a hell of a time doing it. The smoke was becoming so thick he could barely see in any direction more than a few feet.

He called out again.

Still nothing.

He saved his breath and crouched low, clicked on his flashlight, and moved in the direction he remembered seeing the shelter. It seemed to take forever, but he finally found it when he bumped headfirst into it and could see the side, so he felt his way around it to where he thought the door should be. Reaching up, he banged his fist against the metal three quick times, then three long, followed by three short—Morse code for SOS. He knew that Morgan would recognize the message, Gauge too.

But, nothing.

Where are you?

He slumped against the side of the door. They weren’t here. They had to have escaped. He shut his eyes.

A second later, he startled when he heard the sound of metal scraping. The door behind him began to unlatch. It creaked open a few inches.

“Jack?” came Morgan’s voice through the crack.

He grunted an affirmative, and the door opened wider, and he was sucked inside.

Laying there on the floor, he took shallow gasps and slowly began to regain his breath. He looked up and saw Gauge lying on one of the benches. The man’s entire side was covered in white gauze that was spotted with blood. He watched his friend and teammate’s chest rise and fall. Coughing, he choked and sputtered and spat until he could speak.

“How is he?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Morgan shook her head solemnly as he watched her and pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled his way over to Gauge and grabbed him by the hand.

“What happened to him?”

“One of those stupid grenades of his came bouncing back and exploded a little too near. He’s got shrapnel stuck in his abdomen. I think he’s cut up pretty bad on the inside. He needs a doctor.”

Cutter nodded hesitantly, calculating how in the hell he was going to find a doctor in time to save the man if it came to that.

“She was with me,” he said.

“Who?” Morgan asked. “Who was with you? Dr. Martinez?”

“Yes, I found her and brought her along with me, but after that little BBQ, I lost her again. She could still be alive. I’ve got to go look.”

“We can’t go back out there. Those things—”

“Those things are all dead and crispy.” A big part of him resented having to do that to all those poor miners, but it was law of the jungle time, and he’d had to make a snap decision. He just hoped it had been the right one.

“Jack, I found it.” Morgan went to one side of the structure and pulled out a metal case. “It’s the artifact we were sent for.”

She opened it for him and showed him the thing he’d come so far to find. It was nothing special, really, just a long metal bar that seemed to shimmer a little as it caught the light. He reached out to touch it.

Morgan snatched it back and shut the lid. “Don’t touch it.”

“Yeah,” he said, coughing. “Almost forgot.”

He paced the inside of the chamber, looking for anything he could use to help him get back out there and find Dr. Martinez—an oxygen mask, or something.

“There’s nothing in here, Jack,” Morgan said. “We dropped everything and ran for it. We were lucky this place was here. Once I got Lumpy to calm down long enough to sit still, I found some supplies in that compartment—mostly medical supplies and food rations. But that was about it. A whole bunch of nothing otherwise. So what should we do? We’ve got to get him out of here.”

“Yeah. First, though, I gotta see if I can find out if the doctor is still alive,” he said while standing over Gauge. The big man grimaced and tried to sit up.

“He shouldn’t be doing that,” Morgan said.

Gauge winced, but managed to set his feet on the ground and attempt to stand. Cutter helped the man to his feet. Gauge made it, but had to lean heavily on Cutter.

“We don’t have a choice, Morgan. He either comes with us and we find her, or—”

“Or what?”

“We just got to find her, okay? And I can’t have him die either. So let’s get out of here go look.”

“Yes,” she finally said. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”

“No, Morgan, let’s get the
hell
out of here.”

~43~

BIGGEST LOSS

Cutter was still soaking wet when he opened the door and surveyed the damage he’d wrought. Only one of the lights on top of the shelter remained lit, and it was covered in soot, so the entire area took on a sickly, yellowish cast. There were smoldering bodies as far as he could see into the darkness, and they probably stretched all the way out to the furthest walls.

He’d killed so many.
Too damn many.

And, perhaps, he’d also killed the one woman who had given him what he had needed most, when he had needed it most—renewed hope. But that woman was dead. She had to be. So that hope was now lost. Still, he had to check. Just to be sure. Maybe she hadn’t been blown to bits.
And if she had—?

“Wait here,” he said to Gauge and Morgan.

He raised his arm to breathe again through his damp sleeve to mask the godawful stink that filled the air. It didn’t do much good. He could still smell all those charred bodies. It was like he was trying to walk through the fires of a crematorium.

He’d left the doctor near the water, so he decided to look for her there first. He made it to the water’s edge and stood looking at a score of floating bodies and body parts that bobbed and guttered in the inky stillness. Small flames reflected on the water’s surface as they continued to consume the skin and fat of the zombies and send greasy tendrils of smoke spiraling to the ceiling of the mineshaft, and then creeping along the bumpy surface.

Flashlight held in front of him, he spotlighted the various bits of debris, searching for signs that reminded him of the doctor—a bit of clothing maybe, hair, something.

He saw no signs of her.
Nothing.
She was just—gone.
What have I done?
But what was one more soul on his troubled conscious? It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. She didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered. Life was a joke with a really bad punchline.
If he somehow got out of this mess, he would go back to his boat, get wasted, find a hot young island girl willing to sleep with him for money, and just get the hell back to the life he had chosen for himself.

It wasn’t all that bad of a life.

Then when he stilled he heard something. He saw a ripple in the water and watched it with curiosity. The ripple became a shape. The shape took form. And soon that form broke the dark surface of the water and gasped for air.

It was her.
She survived?
How the hell?
Shocked, he watched for a brief moment while the water streamed off her head, plastering her hair down against her scalp. Her eyes were wide and filled with surprise at seeing him as well. He almost dropped the flashlight, but quickly reoriented himself and waded into the water and grabbed her under the arm and helped her from the water. She fell on the shoreline on all fours and gasped for breath.

Squatting on his haunches, he waited for her, watching every breath she took and checking her over for any other injuries she might have suffered, but she appeared to have been virtually unscathed by the blast.

“You made it,” he said.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she said, still recovering. But she turned her head and smiled as best she could after she had said it.

He waited with her for a minute or so while she recovered further, then helped her to regain her feet.

“Glad you are still alive,” he said.

“No thanks to you.”