Juggernaut

‘If anything happens, don’t leave me here,’ said Toon. ‘Not this shithole country. Get me back to the world.’

Lucy put her hand on the rope-lashed poncho.

‘I’ll miss you, pal.’

Toon’s body moved. His back arched like he was stretching in his sleep.

‘Hey,’ shouted Lucy. ‘Hey, he’s alive.’

She unsheathed her knife and sawed through rope.

Amanda and Voss came running.

Lucy pulled the poncho aside.

‘Fuck.’

She scrambled away from the twitching mess that used to be her friend.

They could see pulped brain tissue through the jagged hole in Toon’s skull. Silver wires threaded through his brain like fine hair.

‘When was he infected?’ asked Voss. ‘Was it Huang? Did Toon touch his neck?’

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.