Juggernaut

‘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.’

‘But they were dead. They were actually dead.’

‘I use terms like “virus”, “disease” and “pathogen”, because it is the only language I have to describe this entity. But this life form is more than a string of dumb RNA. This is a highly adaptive parasite. It uses each body as a chassis. A dumb host. The human cadaver is a shell it can hijack and pilot as it pursues its single, unshakable purpose: to spread and replicate. You saw what happened to your friend. Toon. He was dead. No pulse, no breath. But he came back.’

Amanda took off her Stetson and looked up at the stars.

‘Where do you think it came from?’

‘Maybe the Russians were experimenting with nanobots or gene manipulation. Recombinant DNA. Something that required zero gravity and the isolating vacuum of space. But I doubt it. The Soviet Union was a mess. Their submarines sank. Their nuclear reactors blew up. The population lived on turnips. Their army was large and secretive, but incapable of producing something of this level of sophistication.’

‘What then?’

‘The cosmonauts on that space station were drifting in a deep orbit far from Earth, way beyond commercial space lanes. Perhaps something found them, out there, alone in the dark. Something found its way aboard and made a home.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘This virus is a crystalline structure, like metal or glass. Some kind of amorphous alloy. It’s an entirely new order of life.’

‘The parasite is alien?’

‘I don’t know. But I hope you begin to understand what is at stake. This virus is the equal of humanity. It is so lethal, so efficient, it would spread across the globe in a matter of days. Infection escalating at an exponential rate. It would be unstoppable. Mankind doomed within hours of first contact.’

They entered the ravine. The moon shone high overhead. They walked along the track. Voss rode the quad. Motor noise echoed off high canyon walls.

A glint.