Adam Baker - Juggernaut

Lucy crouched and examined the gently stirring body.

‘Don’t get too close,’ said Amanda.

‘It’s more than a disease. It’s some kind of parasite. It’s woven through his whole nervous system. I don’t think it’s realised Toon is dead yet.’

Voss gently pulled Lucy aside. He racked his shotgun slide.

‘Sorry, bro.’

He vaporised Toon’s head. The blast echoed round the vaulted hall, dying like thunder.

He walked back to the temple entrance, shotgun over his shoulder.

‘Are you beginning to understand?’ shouted Jabril, his voice echoing through the vast temple. ‘This thing. This virus. It must be exterminated. It must never leave this valley.’

Lucy and Amanda pulled on leather gloves and rewrapped Toon’s headless body. They lashed rope.

‘Christ,’ muttered Amanda. ‘This shit is going to haunt my dreams.’

Fine silver tendrils protruded from the vertebrae stump of Toon’s neck. The tendrils slowly flexed and coiled, as if testing the air.

‘Some nasty, nasty shit.’

‘Never seen anything like it,’ said Lucy.

‘Poor fuck,’ said Amanda. ‘He deserved better. Way better. Promise me. If anything happens, if I get infected, finish me off. Do it quick and clean. I don’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to end up like Huang. I don’t want to walk around with weird shit growing out of my body. You’ve got to promise me.’

‘Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to it.’

They folded canvas over the smoking stump of Toon’s neck.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Amanda. ‘I don’t want to spend another hour in this place.’

‘We’ll pack our stuff and start walking at first light.’

They tied rope round Toon’s shrouded feet and hauled him through the temple.

Huang was conscious. He struggled to sit upright, clumsy like he was drunk.

‘ Via con Dios , buddy,’ he shouted as he saw Toon’s body hauled across flagstones. ‘Be seeing you soon.’

Voss unblocked the temple doorway. He rolled the quad bike and trailer aside.

He watched as Toon was dragged past. He crossed himself.

Lucy paused. She nodded towards Huang.

‘He’s sinking fast. Tie him up, you hear?’

‘Yeah,’ sighed Voss. ‘Yeah, I’m on it.’

Lucy and Amanda dragged Toon from the temple.

Lucy swung the barrel light of her assault rifle left and right, surveyed the sinister shadows of the citadel precincts. A steady night-wind moaned through the ancient ruins.

‘This way.’

They hauled Toon’s corpse through the moonlit necropolis. They dragged him past a colonnade of broken pillars.

‘Here.’

A rubble-strewn courtyard. They lay Toon’s shrouded body on flagstones.

Lucy hefted chunks of granite rubble and piled them on top of Toon’s poncho until he was hidden beneath a cairn of jagged rocks.

Amanda kept watch. She paced the courtyard, kept a three-sixty scan of tumbled walls and dark doorways.

Lucy clapped stone dust from her hands. She wiped sweat from her face. Her skin steamed in the cold night air.

She placed Toon’s dog tags on top of the cairn.

‘We should go,’ said Amanda.

Lucy crouched and laid a hand on the pile of stones.

‘We’ll come back for you, brother. We won’t leave you out here. One day we’ll come back and take you home.’

Voss found a coil of rope among the clutter of equipment in the quad trailer. He cut two long lengths.

He turned round. Huang was standing directly behind him.

Voss gripped his knife.

Huang stared at him a long while. His face was slack. Lips parted in a semi-snarl. A blank, dead-eyed stare like a shark.

He snapped awake.

‘Going to tie me up?’ he drawled, thoughts coming slow.

‘Maybe.’

‘Funny thing,’ mumbled Huang. ‘Sometimes I’m me, sometimes I’m something else.’

‘Yeah?’

‘This disease. It has its own thoughts, its own agenda.’

‘Like what?’

‘A lust for flesh. It wants to break out of here. This valley. It wants to reach the world.’

‘I wish there was something I could do for you, kid.’

‘Leave. You, Lucy, Mandy. Start walking, as soon as the sun breaks the horizon. Get the fuck out of here before it’s too late.’

Huang unscrewed the cap of his canteen. He took a swig.

‘Best if no one else drinks from this.’

He poured the remaining water onto the flagstone floor. He tossed the metal bottle into shadows.

Huang reached in his pocket.

‘I want you to have this.’

He gave Voss a big folding knife.

‘That’s a damn good knife. Gerber. Strong.’

He pulled the Glock from his drop holster. He thumbed cartridges from the magazine. He gave Voss a fistful of bullets.

‘Think you might need these more than me.’

Huang kept one round for himself. He held it up.

‘True what they say. There’s a bullet out there with your name on it. And here she is. The bullet that is going to kill me.’

He slotted the cartridge into the magazine. Loaded. Chambered.

‘Small-town kid,’ said Huang. ‘Never thought I would find myself this far from home, dying under foreign skies. Fuck it. It’s been a blast.’

Voss nodded.

‘See you around,’ said Huang.

‘Take it easy, man.’

Huang walked out of the temple and was swallowed by night.

Lucy found Voss sitting by the campfire. The flames were dying. Nothing left to burn.

‘Where’s Huang?’

‘Taking a long, long walk.’

Lucy nodded.

They sat round the fire a while.

‘He’ll be back,’ said Jabril.

‘He took a gun,’ said Voss.

‘He won’t use it. Too far gone. The disease has the upper hand. He’ll be back for you all.’

‘You brought us here, you fuck,’ said Voss. ‘Lured us to this damned hell-hole. Toon. Huang. They’d be alive right now. We’d be propping the bar in the Riv, sipping a beer. Ought to slit your belly open.’

Voss lit a cigarette. He threw the pack to Lucy. She lit. She took a drag. She put the cigarette between Jabril’s lips.

‘All right. Tell me more about Spektr.’

Lucy sat cross-legged. She field-stripped her assault rifle and cleaned the barrel with solvent. She fed a brass bore-punch into the barrel with sharp twists.

Jabril continued his story.

We continued to excavate the Spektr craft.

We tried to hold back the dunes with beams and boards. Two men were almost killed when props broke and they were engulfed by sand. We had to jump in the hole and dig them free with our hands. We dragged them to the surface spitting dirt and whooping for air.

Our men were farm boys with rifles. I forestalled further desertions by giving the men whisky and a fistful of gold each day. Rings, bracelets. There was nowhere to store their treasure so they wore jewellery as they dug. They looked absurd. They looked like pirates.

We cleared enough sand to loop heavy canvas slings beneath the craft. One at the tail, one at the nose. We coordinated both cranes by radio. The vehicle was slowly lifted from its grave, streaming sand.

The crane-trucks began a two-mile journey across the desert to the railroad line. The wrecked spacecraft hung suspended on a canvas cradle between them.

It took a day. We tried to steer the trucks towards firm ground, slowly weaved between the dunes. But the trucks sank every few feet. We had to dig with spades and ramp them free with planks. We crawled a few yards every hour.

We finally reached the railroad track late afternoon. Twin ribbons of steel snaking from the horizon. I powered up the radio. Koell said a locomotive would be with us by nightfall.

An hour later we glimpsed the gleam of a distant headlamp on the far horizon like an evening star. Faint blast of an air-horn. A locomotive pulling long, flatbed wagons.