Adam Baker - Juggernaut

The granite lid rasped across the flagstones and settled over the crypt aperture with a dull thud.

They could hear the muffled slap and scratch of hands scrabbling at the flagstone lid from below.

‘Jesus,’ said Lucy. ‘How many of those fuckers are down there?’

‘They can’t lift that thing, can they?’ asked Voss.

The lid trembled and shifted.

‘Oh fuck.’

Lucy and Amanda threw themselves onto the slab and held it down. It began to rise, despite their combined bodyweight.

‘Get me something to pin this damn thing,’ shouted Lucy.

Voss looked around. He grabbed boxes of gold stacked beside the truck and piled them onto the slab.

Lucy drew her pistol, reached around the slab and fired blind down into the crypt. She shot the magazine dry.

More boxes. Accumulating weight slowly forced the slab downward. A snarling, squirming skull-face crushed flat. Bone-crackle and pulped brain. Fingers sliced through. The lid settled in place.

A distant shout from Jabril:

‘Over here.’

Three Republic Guards lumbered towards Jabril as he lay bound and helpless. He kicked the dead campfire, scattered charred sticks in a feeble attempt to trip the shambling creatures.

Amanda dropped to one knee and shouldered her rifle.

Gunshot. A soldier reeled like he took a blow to the face. He fell forward, a smoking void in the back of his head.

She worked the bolt.

Gunshot. Second soldier shot through his open mouth. He choked and toppled backwards into the extinct campfire.

Voss fired his shotgun. The blast slammed into the third soldier’s belly like a heavy gut punch and sent him skidding across the flagstone floor.

Voss walked towards the prone soldier. He racked the shotgun slide. He spat tobacco.

The soldier struggled to sit up. Entrails slid from his belly wound in gelatinous knots. Voss shot him in the face.

Lucy flicked open her knife and cut Jabril free.

‘No more fucking around,’ she said. ‘It’s time we got the hell out of here.’

The creature that used to be Huang prowled through the desolate precincts of the necropolis. He couldn’t see the main temple building, but he could smell it up ahead. Heartbeats like an earth tremor. Lucy and her crew. Their blood, sweat and fear.

He stumbled through rubble-strewn courtyards. He scrambled across tumbled masonry. Skin torn by jagged stone. Bleeding hands, bleeding knees. He felt no pain. He was drawn inexorably towards the sweet scent of fresh meat.

Jabril’s battalion. They squirmed from every dark doorway and crevice like agitated ants pouring from a nest. Clawing hands and snapping skeletal faces. They emerged from shadows into the swirling dust storm.

Huang walked alongside infected soldiers. Tattered uniforms. Taut, cankerous flesh. Brief moonlight revealed the stumbling, shambling horde as they groped through the megalithic ruins towards the temple entrance. A wraith army.

Distant gunfire.

He crossed a pillared avenue.

The sudden whine and slap of bullets hitting granite. Tracer rounds streaked out of the dust storm. Soldiers toppled and fell dead.

Huang grabbed the soldier next to him. He used him as a shield. Shotgun hits like sledgehammer blows.

Huang threw the smouldering, headless body aside, and took cover behind a pillar. He pressed his face against the stone. Residual instinct. Conditioned response. A faint memory of Ranger school summoned by a crippled, cockroach brain.

Soldiers cut down around him. Clean headshots. Shattered skulls.

Bodies toppled and slumped.

Huang crept closer to the temple entrance. A slithering, belly crawl. He could see light shafting from the interior. A weak glow through swirling dust.

Silhouettes. Three figures crouched behind a quad bike.

Steady gunfire. Bodies littered the causeway in front of the temple entrance, lay sprawled at the feet of the great stone colossi that flanked the doorway. Uniforms shot to smouldering rags. Bloody exit wounds.

Huang inched closer. One of the figures wore a hat. A big straw Stetson. A girl. The faint echo of emotion, an unrequited yearning.

More gunfire. Soldiers span and fell. Dumb, lumbering targets. No pain. No fear. Limbs shot away. Skulls smashed. No screams. Just the grunt of impact, the gurgling sigh of a dying breath.

Voss took a pouch of Red Man from his pocket and folded a wad of tobacco into his mouth.

He slotted fresh double-nought shells into the breech of his shotgun. He racked the slide.

More figures stumbling out of the storm. He took calm, careful aim. He let them get close before decapitating each soldier with a jet of buckshot.

Bodies piled up. Advancing soldiers stumbled over dead comrades. Voss spat tobacco, took aim and cut them down.

‘They walk right into it,’ he said. ‘No sense. No fear. They line up to get cut down.’

‘They are insects,’ said Jabril. ‘Lobotomised. Individually they don’t count for much. But they mass. And they are relentless. There are hundreds of them, and they will keep coming until you have used up every bullet and have nothing to throw at them but rocks. They won’t quit. They won’t retreat. They have a single, all-consuming purpose. To tear into your flesh.’

Amanda leant her rifle across the saddle of the quad bike. The ruins beyond the temple boosted luminescent green by her nightscope. Pale pillars and jagged walls. Bodies sprawled on flagstones.

More soldiers shambled out of the darkness. Dust furled round them like smoke. Living cadavers. Slack, desiccated faces. Stench carried on the wind. The reek of decomposition.

She lined up kill-shots, soft entry points, reticules centred on jet-black eyes.

Gunshot. Skull-burst.

She worked the bolt.

Gunshot. Shattered jaw.

The magazine ran dry. She slapped a fresh clip of .308 into the receiver. She folded a fresh stick of gum into her mouth.

‘Enemy left. Bunch massing by that archway,’ she said.

‘Save your ammo,’ said Voss. ‘Let me deal with it.’

Voss set aside his smoking shotgun. He slung the strap of the SAW over his shoulder and locked a fresh belt of ammunition into the receiver.

‘Give me some light.’

Amanda threw cyalumes into the darkness beyond the temple entrance. The scattered sticks glowed ectoplasmic blue.

Six soldiers lumbering out of the dust storm into the pool of strange, chemical light.

Voss braced his legs, gripped the heavy machine gun and shot from the hip. Jack-hammer roar. Muzzle-flame. Two hundred rounds per minute. Cartridge cases cascaded from the weapon, chimed and skittered across the flagstones. His arms trembled as he fought to control the machine gun.

The soldiers were torn open. Legs scythed at the knee. Arms torn from their sockets. Smashed ribs. Fractured spines. They were thrown backwards by the impact of heavy calibre rounds.

Two of the soldiers tried to struggle to their feet. Their olive uniforms were bullet-scorched and burning. A fresh sweep of the gun. Heads smashed open. Skull shards. Pulped brain tissue. They fell dead and twitching.

Lucy ignored the muzzle-roar and gun smoke. She shook out daypacks and grabbed stuff they would need for their journey across the desert.

She decanted mineral water into canteens and Camelbaks. She ripped open MRE pouches. She tossed plastic meal pots. She kept dried fruit.

She divided the remaining ammunition. She checked her pockets, made sure she had her map and compass.

‘Everybody suit up,’ she said. ‘We’ll lay suppressing fire with the SAW, then make a break for it. You too, Jabril. You’re coming with us. No argument. I’m going to get you home.’

She offered Jabril a pistol.

He smiled and shook his head.

‘I’ll make a deal with you all.’