Juggernaut

A couple of flatbed freight wagons. He pulled bundles of tarpaulin aside. Rotted planks. Chains. Yellowed al-Ba’ath newsprint. A heavy, rusted wrench.

Voss hefted the wrench.

He became aware of a distant figure in the periphery of his vision. A man stood at the end of the tunnel, back-lit by cavern arc lights. Hunched, simian. He was staring at Voss.

Voss stood back from the wagon to get a clear view. He glimpsed a red boiler suit as the figure ducked into shadow.

‘Gaunt? Gaunt, is that you?’ His voice echoed and died.

Voss walked deeper into the tunnel, boots crunching on shingle. He crouched and peered beneath a row of ore hoppers. He glimpsed bloody, bare feet and the legs of a tattered red boiler suit.

An infected soldier.

‘Here I am, you raghead fuck. You want meat, come get it.’

He glimpsed a horribly distorted face watching him from behind a wagon. Flaking flesh. Strange, tumorous eruptions.

‘Come on. What are you waiting for?’

The face ducked out of sight. Sound of clumsy, running feet.

Voss threw down the wrench, drew his sidearm and ran between ore trucks in pursuit.

Jabril entered Lab One. He wriggled his hand into a surgical glove, and tugged at the latex cuff with his teeth.

He took a gas mask from a wall hook and pulled it on.

He unlatched the refrigerator. A cascade of nitrogen fog. Storage jars. Body parts held in sub-zero stasis.

He propped the door open. He wrenched the power cable from the back of the freezer. The temperature read-out blanked. Cooling fans slowed and died.

He dumped the suitcase on the necropsy table.

He stroked the mirrored metal. He contemplated the wrist and ankle straps, the drain hole at the foot of the table to help sluice blood.

He had supervised the murder of forty men. Stood outside the lab units and relished muffled screams as the men were strapped down and forcibly injected.

He was both horrified and aroused by the memory.

The freezer storage jars were already starting to defrost. Water dripped and pooled on the plate floor of the lab.

He slapped explosive against the side of the freezer and wired det cable.

Jabril mashed a nub of explosive onto the roof panel above the table. He pressed a blasting cap into the putty and strung detonator wire.

He stepped through the doorway into Lab Two.

Cultivation equipment laid out on steel counters. A bio-weapon production line. Microscopes. Centrifuges. Fermentation reactors.

Glass crunched beneath the leather soles of his Oxford brogues. Broken flasks. Culture dishes.

The growth chamber. Legs, spines and lungs suspended in frosted vats. Each body part floated in a thick serum of amino acids and bovine placental tissue. Metallic tendrils erupted from flesh and bone as if reaching out, seeking a fresh host to invade.

Jabril slapped explosive against the glass. Submerged body parts shivered and twitched.

He wired detonators.

Lab four.

He crouched, span wing nuts and flipped latches. He opened the steel sarcophagus. Konstantin, laid out like Tutankhamen, arms folded across his chest.

Jabril moulded a fist-sized nub of C4, wired a blasting cab, and wedged the explosive between the dead astronaut’s fingers.

He left the lab units and crossed the cavern.

The bio-dome. Spektr, under arc lights.

A stack of chemical drums. Skull stickers streaked with corrosion. Jabril rolled yellow drums of peptone, ethylene and paraformaldehyde, and stacked them beneath Spektr.

He tore nubs of plastic explosive and mashed them onto each drum lid with the heel of his palm. He took a fresh reel of cable from the case and ran det cord.

A flicker of movement. A figure outside the opaque plastic of the containment dome.

A red boiler suit brushed against polythene. Jabril crouched behind the drums and drew his pistol. He watched the blurred figure stumble the perimeter of the containment dome, hands sliding and squeaking across taut plastic.

He heard the echo of dragging footfalls as the figure shuffled down a passage, away from the cavern.

Jabril slowly climbed to his feet and continued to rig the bomb.

Subject Nine

Lucy walked deep into the tunnel. She passed a row of flatbed cars and ore hoppers.

She found a small locomotive. A small diesel engine hitched to mine wagons, paintwork streaked with corrosion.

The engine cowling had been removed, and the motor stripped for parts.

Maybe the starter battery was still in place. Maybe it still held a charge.

She ran a quick circuit of the locomotive, rifle raised. All clear.

She climbed the ladder and pulled open the cab door. Trashed controls. Smashed dials and frayed cable.

Another mummified corpse. An engineer in a boiler suit. He was crouched prostrate, face to the floor like he was kneeling in prayer.

She prodded the dead man with the barrel of her rifle. The desiccated cadaver toppled over. The yellow wooden handle of a screwdriver wedged in his eye socket. The guy had knelt on the plate floor of the cab, positioned the screwdriver, then drove his head down onto the spike.