Adam Baker - Juggernaut

Flames reached Bad Moon and it too started to burn.

One week earlier. Koell’s hotel suite.

Gaunt drained his whisky tumbler, held it out for fresh ice and a refill.

‘I had a long and constructive chat with Doctor Ignatiev,’ said Koell. ‘He ran the Spektr project. I was the bagman, provided finance and logistic support. But Doctor Ignatiev and his crew were onsite calling the shots.

‘Bio-Medical Unit 403. Ex-Vektor. Ex-Biopreperat. Fifteenth Directorate of the Soviet Army. They were based in an asylum. A mansion by the Moskva. Used to be owned by the Smirnoff vodka family. Got seized and turned into a sanatorium during the revolution.

‘Ignatiev and his men had a basement lab during the eighties. Military project. The psycho-pharmacology of violence. They researched hypnosis, shock treatment, psycho-surgery, any means of exerting behavioural control. They’d get mental patients, dribblers, real headbangers. People sectioned for impulsive aggression. They would get them amped on speed and psychotropic drugs. Shoot them full of Phenobarbital then put them in a room together. Set cameras running while they tore each other apart. They were trying to create super-soldiers. Killing machines.

‘We scooped Ignatiev and his boys from Moscow, years back. Now they work for us.

‘Ignatiev oversaw the construction of the Spektr research laboratory. He used the phosphate mine tunnels. A logical choice. Safe from surveillance. Safe from sandstorms and extreme temperature fluctuation. That is where the virus flask is likely to be found. If it cannot be located at the citadel, if it isn’t hidden in the crypt, you will find it in the lab.’

Gaunt shouldered his backpack. He picked his way through the citadel ruins. Courtyards and pillared avenues lit infernal red by the burning choppers.

A rising wind. Moonlight and flickering flame dimmed by swirling vortices of sand.

He drew his pistol. He checked darkened doorways. Nothing.

No sign of Lucy.

Gaunt hurried towards the guard towers that flanked the citadel entrance.

He reached the monumental propylaea gateway.

He paused as he passed between the two great towers.

He knelt. He brushed the ground with the loop-string of his compass. The string snagged an obstruction.

He crouched on his hands and knees. He switched on his Maglite. A strand of monofilament, thinner than a human hair. He traced the wisp of thread to a rock pile at the base of a guard tower. He gently lifted fist-sized lumps of rubble aside. Filament tied to the pin of a trip-flare.

Gaunt flicked open his knife and cut the wire.

He checked his map. He checked his compass. He aimed to strike north across the valley floor to the abandoned mine.

‘ Watch your back. Those mine tunnels are likely to be crawling with infected soldiers. Could be hundreds of them down there. ’

A last glance at the citadel ruins. Domes and arches. Broken walls and toppled pillars. The ancient necropolis lit by rippling flame-light.

He headed out into the valley and was lost in swirling sand.

Voss lit a cigar. He blew a smoke ring. He could see the fuel fire from the temple entrance. The chopper airframes cooking in kerosene. A baleful red glow in the distance, a crimson smudge glimpsed through the sandstorm haze.

An approaching silhouette. He stepped back and raised his shotgun.

Muffled voice:

‘It’s me.’

Lucy climbed over the quad bike. She took off her goggles. She pulled the shemagh from her face. She shook sand from her coat.

She sipped from her canteen, swilled and spat.

‘Mandy?’

‘Still out there,’ said Voss. ‘She’ll be all right. What’s the deal with the choppers?’

‘I burned them. Didn’t want to leave anything Gaunt might find useful. The fuel tanks should blow any second. Thousand pounds of aviation fuel. Should be quite a bang.’

‘Guess that’s the last we’ll hear from the guy.’

‘He’ll die out there among the ruins. Get ripped apart. Or go mad with thirst. Eat a bullet, if he has any sense. Fuck him.’

‘When do you want to move out?

‘Get your shit together. Anything you can carry on your back. We’ll take turns riding the quad until it runs out of gas.’

‘Want to wait for sunrise?’

‘No. Soon as the wind starts to ease up, we should get going.’

Lucy tried her radio.

‘Mandy, do you copy?’

No response.

‘Atmospherics,’ said Voss. ‘The sandstorm. She’ll be back soon.’

Lucy sat by the fire. She ripped Toon’s Eldridge Cleaver paperback in half and threw it into the flames. She warmed her hands as paper curled and blackened.

‘How about it, Jabril? Looks like we are walking home. Want to tag along?’

‘No. The journey is hell.’

‘You’re sure? You want us to leave you behind?’

‘Endless dunes. Nightmare heat. It drove me near insane. Wild hallucinations. I ate sand. I clawed my eyes. I screamed at God. I couldn’t endure that torment a second time. I would rather die.’

‘But you made it. You survived.’

‘No. I died out there in that desert. It broke me.’

A sharp flash of light outside the temple, like a lightning strike. The darkness beyond the doorway lit by a wash of liquid fireball light.

A deep boom. A tremor ran through the temple floor. Campfire wood crumbled to ash, releasing a last puff of flame. Embers spiralled upward like fireflies.

‘There go the choppers,’ said Voss.

Amanda crouched beneath low vaulted archways. The flare in her hand fizzed and spat red fire. It filled the catacombs with a fine smoke haze and the stink of cordite.

She was deep within the crypt.

She found herself picking her way through a carpet of emaciated bodies.

Republican Guard. Olive uniforms shredded and burned by heavily calibre rounds. They’d been dead a long while. Fractured bones protruded from taut skin. No flies or maggots to consume their flesh. They had dried like jerky.

Broken bodies. Twisted, skeletal limbs. Rictus screams. Death-camp horror.

A tremor ran through the ancient edifice. A deep rumble. The vaulted ceiling shook. She heard the crack and grind of shifting stones. Trickles of dust from the brickwork above her head.

Amanda hit the transmit button on her chest rig.

‘Lucy? What the fuck was that?’

No response.

‘Lucy, can you hear me?’

Dead channel static. The signal from her TASC unit too weak to penetrate thick granite.

She unhooked the earpiece.

She continued her exploration of the vaulted catacombs. She ducked low. She raised the burning flare and squinted into deep shadow.

Clay pots jumbled with bone and funerary offerings.

Row upon row of squat pillars receding into gloom.

She examined the gargantuan cylindrical blocks that propped the roof. A sinister cosmology. Constellations and planetary movements. Celestial calendars plotting every equinox and eclipse.

Hieroglyphs etched into stonework. Serpentine, hybrid creatures. Phantasmagoric ranks of sculpted monsters that had stared into the subterranean dark, faces locked in a blank-eyed snarl, since the dawn of humanity.

Amanda reached out and touched granite cobra fangs. She shivered.

‘Gaunt?’ she shouted. Her voice echoed harsh, metallic. ‘Gaunt, you down here?’

She listened for movement. At first she could hear nothing but the hiss of the burning flare, and the constant whine of battle tinnitus.

She became aware of a rasping, scratching sound. Something dragging itself over the granite slabs of the crypt floor.

A grinning abomination crawled out of the darkness. A wizened, mummified soldier, hauling useless legs.

It reached for her, tongue lolling like a strip of dried leather.