Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘So what do we do?’

‘We take it to the mine. There are explosives. High-yield demolition charges. Enough to incinerate the pathogen and simultaneously bury it beneath a million tons of rock.’

What about the soldiers, out there among the ruins? Each one of them is incubating this parasite.’

‘The soldiers are slowly dying. A few months from now they will be dust and bone. Military scientists may visit the valley, but they will find nothing to harvest.’

Jabril took the cylinder from her hand and held it up.

‘This is the prize. The virus in its refined, weaponised form. More powerful, more devastating, than a hydrogen bomb. That is why it must be destroyed.’

‘All right. Let’s go.’

They loaded the missile case onto the back of the quad bike. Voss straddled the bike and gunned the engine.

They secured sand goggles, chambered their weapons and headed into the storm.

They emerged from the temple, observed with sardonic detachment by the titanic twin colossi that flanked the entrance.

Voss drove slowly down the processional avenue towards the gates of the citadel. Lucy, Amanda and Jabril jogged by his side. The head-beam of the bike lit driving dust particles.

Night-wind. A gusting sandstorm.

Slack, desiccated figures loomed out of the megalithic ruins. Lucy and Amanda stopped, shouldered their rifles and delivered efficient headshots. They stood over the fallen men, boots planted on their skulls, and delivered second point-blank kill-shots.

They ran through the citadel precincts.

Hands reached from the swirling storm and wrestled Jabril to the ground. A skeletal revenant crouched over the fallen man and tried to rip out his throat. Jabril struggled to fend off snapping jaws.

Lucy shot the soldier in the chest. He reeled like he took a gut punch. He fell. He tried to sit. She jammed the gun barrel beneath his chin. Burst of gristle and bone.

Lucy helped Jabril to his feet.

Movement all around them. Prowling silhouettes. A wraith army.

‘Let’s go,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ll be all right as long as we keep moving.’

‘Hold on.’

Amanda pointed into the darkness.

‘Thought I saw someone, standing watch.’

She took a couple of steps forward.

A momentary lull in the storm. A distant figure stood among broken columns. They glimpsed coyote fatigues.

‘Is it Gaunt?’ asked Lucy.

‘I think it’s Huang,’ said Amanda.

Lucy pulled Amanda by the arm.

‘We better go.’

They continued down the processional avenue. They were dimly aware, by the monstrous shadows looming above them, that they were approaching the twin guard towers of the temple entrance.

‘Wait.’

Amanda shouldered her rifle, took a Maglite from her pocket and checked the ground.

A wisp of monofilament.

‘The trip flare. It’s been cut.’

‘Gaunt?’

‘Who else?’

Voss revved the Yamaha quad. He swerved around pillar rubble lying across the entranceway, and drove through the massive propylon gateway.

They left smooth flagstones and headed across the rough terrain of the valley floor. The bike kicked up sand and grit. It lurched over the rock-strewn, lunar waste.

‘Least we are leaving those fuckers behind,’ said Lucy.

‘No,’ said Jabril. ‘They will follow us. We can outrun them for a while. But they will keep coming. They won’t deviate. They won’t rest. If we hurry, we can buy time.’

They jogged. It had been a long time since basic training. Lucy settled her breathing. She found her own pace.

Jabril puffed and panted. Each inhalation sucked a mouthful of sandstorm. He spat dust.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Want to ride the bike?’

‘No.’

‘What is this? Some kind of victory lap? You want to feel the blood pumping one last time?’

‘Something like that.’

‘The wind is dropping,’ said Amanda.

‘Fuckin’ A,’ said Voss.

‘I don’t know how those infected soldiers track their prey,’ said Jabril. ‘Maybe it is smell. Maybe it is some sixth sense. But they will come after us fast and strong once the storm has cleared. We need to get you aboard the locomotive and out of here.’

Camp wreckage. Collapsed pup tents. Canvas cots.

‘This was your bivouac?’ asked Lucy. ‘You and the Republican Guard?’

‘For a while. Then the men moved into the mine tunnels. The passageways were cool and free of dust. They left the tents standing.’

Amanda snagged tent fabric with the barrel of her rifle and pulled it from the sand. Ragged scorch holes.

‘Looks like fucking Swiss cheese.’

‘What happened that night?’ asked Lucy.

‘A long story.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘We kept infected men penned in a freight container deep within the mine. They broke free. It was night. Most Republican Guard were in the tunnels. Either asleep, or carousing in one of the side-gallery recreation halls. They drink, smoked hashish, jeered American action movies. Next thing they knew, the creatures were among them, ripping and tearing. It was chaos.

‘Our Russian overseers, Ignatiev’s thugs, initiated a prearranged plan. Maybe Ignatiev gave the eradication order. Maybe they acted on their own initiative.

‘They ran from the mine. They took heavy machine guns from a truck and stationed them at the head of the ravine, near the old tented camp.

‘Men fled down the narrow ravine, thinking it was a route to safety. They ran into a firing squad.

‘Soldiers begged for their lives. Gun positions cut them down with a stream of heavy.50 calibre bullets.

‘It was a bloodbath. Streaking tracer rounds. Broken bodies.

‘Many of the Russians were overwhelmed. Weight of numbers. They swung their machine guns left and right, scythed panicking troops, but were overrun by injured and desperate men. Some of Ignatiev’s goons were beaten to death with bare fists.

‘Hand-to-hand combat. Knives and rocks. I was spared. I crawled over a carpet of bodies. I crawled between the burning trucks of the convoy. I was smeared in blood and soot. I was lucky. It was night, it was chaos. I escaped the ravine and climbed the valley wall.

‘I turned and watched from high crags. Moonlit slaughter. Screams and moans.

‘Some of the men escaped the carnage and reached vehicles parked in front of the citadel. Ignatiev’s goons followed them. They strafed the convoy and threw grenades. A succession of fuel fires incinerated trucks and sedans.

‘The surviving Russians walked among bodies, pistols drawn, and executed wounded men.’

Lucy kicked scattered mess tins. She raked through sand and unearthed a fistful of cartridge cases. She dug. She found a boot. Half-buried razor wire.

‘How many men died? In total?’

‘Nearly two hundred.’

‘But they were shot,’ said Lucy. ‘They weren’t bitten. They weren’t infected. Ignatiev and his men gunned them down.’

‘Any pathologist will tell you human limbs respond to electrical stimuli many hours after the heart has stopped beating. The central nervous system retains a residual charge. Some of these soldiers, perhaps the majority, were bitten, scratched and infected before they died. The pathogen got to work. Even after they were clinically dead, after respiration had ceased and brain activity dropped to near zero, their cadavers provided a rich environment for this strange disease to replicate and spread. As long as the medulla oblongata wasn’t destroyed, as long as the central cortex of the brain remained viable, the bodies could still provide a vehicle for infection. Bodies lay buried in sand, curled in burned-out cars, dumped in piles beneath the temple. But the pathogen continued to spread through still-warm flesh.’