Zombie Team Alpha (20 page)

~44~

SPLIT DECISION

With Gauge hanging on and limping between him and Morgan, Cutter made his way back to the lifts that would return them to the surface. Dr. Martinez followed, carrying her small .38 in one hand, which as it had happened to have turned out, still had a few rounds left in it. But those few precious rounds along with a few precious more in Cutter’s Glock and Gauge’s Betty were all they had left between them for whatever zombie horde lay ahead. In her other hand, she carried the metal case containing the artifact.

The lights were burning dimly inside the main branch of the tunnel, which provided enough light to see by, but cast everything in a yellowish glow. There were scores of bodies strewn about on the floor. They weaved their way around them as they ascended the ramped path that would take them to the lifts. Many of the corpses were missing limbs or were so badly damaged that they had not risen like the others had, which made Cutter reconsider if those things could actually die from the catastrophic failures of their bodies, or if shooting them in the head was the only way to kill them. What he did know for certain was that shooting them in the head definitely would kill them, so given the chance—and from this point forward—he figured he would do his very best to incapacitate them instead of killing them. Maybe they could all be saved later if he did. He’d killed enough for one lifetime, maybe a hundred lifetimes.

As a young skull-full-of-mush teenager, he’d been trained to kill, but he’d also been told that too much killing led to a very dangerous and nasty place, one which few could ever fully recover from. And if someone grew too accustomed to killing, there was no real coming back from it. It wasn’t like the movies or a video game where the good guy would blow the hell out of all the bad guys and then smile and crack wise later. Life was too precious for the human spirit to not be affected by all the lives that were taken.

With Dr. Martinez leading the way, they continued up the mineshaft and surprisingly faced no opposition, a fact that made Cutter nervous but was also a blessing. When they finally made it to the lift, he supported Gauge’s weight while Morgan operated the controls. He glanced at Dr. Martinez and tried to smile, but he was certain he looked like some kind of crazy man on leave from the asylum. She did not smile back and glanced away quickly. Whatever they had shared down inside the shelter he was sure would not last once they surfaced and got the hell out of there.

It was a damn shame.

The lift came to a screeching halt, and Morgan threw the latch to open the steel cage in which they had ridden up to the surface.

Still, nothing came at them.

At the topmost level, there were even more bodies covering the floor. These had all been shot in the head, but Cutter was certain it hadn’t been anyone in his team that had done the damage. That meant someone else was inside the mine. Perhaps another team of soldiers.
Good
.
Reinforcements.
But then his stomach sank, and he felt a nasty tingle as his mind began to put the pieces together. He indicated toward the ceiling. It was covered with the explosives they had brought along with them. It looked to be all of them and was enough to bring the entire mountain down right on top of them.

Morgan glanced up. “Who did this?” was all she asked.

“Get back,” Cutter said.

Morgan had sensed it too, apparently. Together, they began to back away toward the lift.

Bright white lights clicked on in the distance. Cutter saw them and realized that his luck had just run out, and things were about to go from bad to worse.

“Mr. Cutter,” a voice said as a familiar man stepped into the light and was haloed by it.

~45~

DEALS

“John Wayland,” Cutter breathed at the man standing beside three others. The three men beside Wayland fanned out, keeping their weapons raised and locked on target, which happened to be Cutter at the moment.

“So good to see you all again,” Wayland said. “I trust that you have not had too difficult a time retrieving my prize for me?”

Cutter said nothing and resisted glancing at Dr. Martinez.

Wayland continued, “Seeing that you are all still alive surprises me, I must say. But the colonel and his men? Tsk, tsk, so sad.” He waved a pistol around in a lazy circle, and one of the men went to Dr. Martinez and held out a hand.

“Give him the case,” Wayland said.

She did not. Instead, she raised her gun and pointed it at Wayland.

“Oh, come now, Doctor,” Wayland said. He smiled in the dim light.

Cutter thought about his own Glock and how quickly he could get to it, but he had to keep Gauge propped up too, and the man weighed a ton. Then he stupidly remembered that Gauge still had Betty strapped across his chest. It would be faster to go for it, but he wasn’t exactly sure how many bullets Gauge had left in the gun. Nor was he entirely certain how many remained in his gun.
Two? Three?
He hadn’t paid close enough attention when he’d swapped the magazine with what he’d found on the guy.
Big mistake.
Probably not enough.
He’d have to talk his way out of this one, or delay until a better opportunity presented itself.

“Give it to him,” Cutter said to Dr. Martinez. “Damn thing is not worth dying over.”

“Listen to the man,” Wayland said. “Drop your weapons and give me the case and no one has to get hurt. You have my word on that.”

Cutter knew the man’s word was worth about as much as the dirt under his own fingernails. As soon as Wayland removed the threat of her just chucking the case down the elevator shaft, they were all dead.

“This doesn’t have to end like it did last time,” Wayland said. “Remember, we lost everything thanks in no part to you.”

Cutter processed what Wayland had said for a second then turned to Dr. Martinez. “What does he mean by that?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Really?” Wayland waved his gun around, letting it flop in his hand. “He doesn’t know?” The man chuckled and stepped closer.

“What?” Cutter wasn’t stupid. He had an idea of what they meant, but he wasn’t sure about the truth of it.

But if it were true—? Had she just been toying with him?

“Dr. Martinez,” Wayland continued, “was there when your wife died, Mr. Cutter. You may not have seen her. She had also gone for the device with me. In fact, I had argued with her that you could get to it first, or your wife could. We had but to wait for you to return with it. But she got greedy. She even tried to have you killed. Imagine that?”

“He’s lying,” she said.

Cutter turned toward her. “Were you there?”

“Of course she was,” Wayland said.

“Shut up!” Cutter held up a finger and did not look the man’s way. “Were you there?” he repeated as his entire world began to collapse around him.

“I was.” She shifted on her feet, closer. “I admit it. But we never made it into the mine. I had just arrived, and we were preparing to—”

“She lies so well, doesn’t she?” Wayland said. “She wants it all for herself. She always did. I was the one who argued with Moray about bringing you back for this assignment, Mr. Cutter. It was I who believed in you. I knew you could find it. When I was informed she would be involved as well, I made certain that you and your team were too. I figured that you would put everything together and realize who she really was and what her intentions actually were and shoot her yourself. But I guess I was wrong.”

“He’s lying,” Dr. Martinez said. “He wants it for himself. He knows what it can do.”

“Yes, she is right,” Wayland said mockingly. “I do want it for myself. And this time, I expect it not to be destroyed. So please, hand it over.
Now.
”

“Wait,” Cutter said. “Tell me what it is first. Why do you want it so much?”

“Why do I want it?” Wayland said. He twirled the end of his gun in smaller and smaller circles and finally pointed it at Cutter and stepped forward.

“Maybe I should just shoot you. But with all you have been through for me, you deserve an explanation. It is really quite simple, Mr. Cutter. I’ll make it easy and get right to the point. Human life has little value any longer. We have spread like locusts—like a disease…a plague. Human beings have become a common pestilence. The more we reproduce, the more we destroy. The more we destroy, the less remains to be consumed by those who actually deserve to live. It’s just the axiomatic truth of our times. Imagine a planet devoid of all but the smartest and most productive people, Mr. Cutter. Wouldn’t that be a wondrous thing?”

Cutter scoffed. “Been tried. And that doesn’t explain what the hell that thing can do. You’ll just create more of those zombie things, and they will come after you, eventually.”

“Ah, but you are wrong, Mr. Cutter. You’ve seen too many of those ghastly zombie movies. There has been too much useless fiction in your life, I suppose. No, zombies are not actually real, and neither are these creatures. Think of them more like automatons that desire to quickly infect others and then die—rot away, so to speak. That’s the fallacy presented by all those zombie stories. The creatures in them never just rot away into oblivion. The stories just go on and on. Silly and unscientific, if you ask me.” He stopped to take a breath. “If you had bothered to read your own wife’s writing on the subject, she had discovered this truth. Which is why she had gone after the device herself. She wished only to study it and ultimately destroy it so it could never be used by others ever again.”

That’s not exactly what she told me
. She had wanted to retrieve it for study but not to destroy it.
Had she ever meant to destroy it?
It would have been so easy to have done so in the beginning when they had arrived in Ecuador.
Drop the whole damn mountain on top of it and bury it forever.
And if she had done that in the first place, she would still be alive.

“I do not believe you,” Cutter said. “You sound like some type of evil villain in one of those bad movies, going on and on about how much of a genius you are.”

Wayland chuckled. “Am I now?”

“Yeah. Think about it. Just pure melodrama. Now, Kahn? You saw Star Trek, right? The guy in that movie was a great villain. ‘From hell’s heart I stab at thee.’ See, great line. I get that. You are nothing but a two-bit hustler.”

Wayland raised his gun and aimed it at Cutter. He puffed out through his lips. “That was Melville, Mr. Cutter. Moby Dick.” He shook his head, stopped, and steadied his aim. “I suggest you choose your next wisecrack carefully, for it may be your last.”

“Well, how about a little honesty then?”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You might want to check behind you.”

Wayland laughed heartily. “There’s nothing behind me, Mr. Cutter. Though, I appreciate the joke. Oldest trick in the book.”

Jackson Cutter shrugged a questioning apology. Wayland took one step forward and glanced over each shoulder. Then he frowned as if he half expected something to be there.

Cutter shrugged. “Guess I was wrong.”

Wayland grinned wide. “I guess I could ask you to get on the elevator and go back into the mine, but I’m certain you know it would be a one-way trip. You see this?” He held up a small device about the size of a TV remote.

Cutter recognized the device. 

Wayland made a show of hovering one finger over the button on the remote. “The explosives are on a time delay and set for five minutes. I could ask you to wait around for them to go off, but that would give you a chance to escape and would be too…Ian Fleming-like. So, I figure we’ll just shoot you and toss your bodies down the shaft before I trigger the explosives. They’ll be no wiggling out of this one.”

Cutter smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” Wayland asked. He suddenly seemed nervous and checked over his shoulders again.

“Nothing. Forget it. Want to make a deal?”

Wayland shook his head no. “It is far too late for that, I’m afraid.”

“So be it.”

Wayland spoke directly to Dr. Martinez. “Please, be a dear and hand it over. I am asking nicely, but I promise you that I won’t ask nicely again.”

“No,” she said.

“Kill her and take the case,” Wayland said to the man standing next to him.

The guy raised his rifle to fire, making the mistake of taking his aim off Cutter for a brief second. Cutter went for Betty, hoping he was right about it being loaded.

In one smooth motion, he let go of Gauge, grabbed Betty, drew, and fired when the barrel came in line with the man. The guy stumbled backward from the blow that hit him square in the chest, opening up a fist-sized hole there and causing him to stagger back on his heels. He glanced down, blinked, and then fell over dead on his back.

Cutter aimed at Wayland and squeezed the trigger once more.

Nothing happened.

Then he noticed the slide on the big Desert Eagle had locked open—out of ammunition. He still had his Glock and figured he still had at least one more shot left in it.

Maybe.

Before he could get to it, though, hot lead slammed into his right shoulder, and he jerked backward and dropped Betty on top of the crumpled forms of Morgan and Gauge, who had fallen when he’d gone for Gauge’s gun. Cutter dropped to his knees, and his hand shot to his injured shoulder. He grimaced in pain and tried to go for his Glock, but couldn’t reach it.

Wayland watched him for a second then aimed his gun at Dr. Martinez and held it steady. “Final chance, my dear. Come with me and I’ll save you from all this. I could use your expertise with what I have planned.”

“No,” she said.

Wayland fired again. The bullet struck Dr. Martinez, and she staggered forward. He fired again, and she fell to her knees, letting go of the case, and catching herself on her right hand. The metal case slid to a stop.

“Kill them,” Wayland ordered the man next to him. The guy raised one of the MP5Ks that Cutter had left behind and took aim.

But he was never able to cut loose with it because Wayland suddenly screamed out in pain.

The man with the submachine gun spun and jerked the trigger, blasting the writhing shape on the ground that had slithered up behind Wayland and had taken a bite out of his calf. Then another creature attacked the man with the gun. The guy bent backward, and the MP5K went wild, spraying bullets in all directions. Cutter dropped to his belly and reached left-handed for his Glock and dragged it out and prepared to shoot the writhing man dead, using what might be his last bullet.

The creature that had first bitten Wayland had him occupied. He tried to pull away from it as the man with MP5K let up on the trigger and fell sideways and took them both to the dirt. The zombie lunged and bit down on the guy’s throat. Blood sprayed from the wound like a busted hose, and the guy bucked in agony.

Wayland struggled to get his gun angled so he could fire at the creature, but he became caught up in the twisting and turning. Screaming in fear, he clawed at the dirt, pulling himself forward and away from the thing in panicked flight. His back arched and his arm outstretched and flailed, and the remote for the explosives he’d been holding flew from his hand.

Cutter drew a breath and started to pull himself to his feet along with Morgan and Gauge and race to stop the man. But John Wayland clawed his way forward by his fingernails and landed on the remote and collapsed there with his hand slapping on top of it. A small LED on the remote started blinking red.

If the guy had been telling the truth, they now had five minutes before the explosives went off. Cutter fixed the time in his mind and began the countdown. As he regained his feet, he saw movement coming from the other end of the tunnel, the end closest to the entrance, or the exit—
closest to safety.

He hoped it was the cavalry, coming to rescue them.

Those faint hopes were quickly dashed. It was another, even larger group of those possessed miners, those zombie creatures—
a whole damn gigantic horde of them.