Chapter 42 #3
Ravik waited until she was three rungs up, then followed so close behind her that Severin might have told him to give her space if he hadn’t understood exactly why he was doing it.
Ravik’s body shielded her from below, his big hands ready in case she slipped.
Even furious, confused, and resistant to taking the cure, he would not stop protecting her.
Severin climbed last, watching behind them as he went.
The shaft was narrow and cold and the metal ladder was slick with condensation. Above them, Cassandra breathed hard but steadily, and Ravik murmured encouragement every few rungs. Beneath them, from somewhere deep inside the bunker, a new sound rose…
Screeching.
Severin felt the short hairs stand up at the back of his neck and all along his arms. The sound wasn’t caused by metal this time—it was made by mouths.
The Infected were inside.
He looked down into the darkness below and saw nothing, but he could hear them. Shuffling…scraping…the wet, hungry clicking that Visskous mouths made when the virus had taken them fully. The sound crawled up the shaft like fingers along his spine and made him shudder.
“Hurry,” he called softly.
“We’re hurrying,” Cassandra called back, sounding breathless. “Some of us have shorter legs.”
“Cassie climbs good,” Ravik rumbled.
“Thank you, big guy, but maybe compliment me later once we’re out of here.”
Despite himself, Severin smiled at the exchange. Then he glanced down again and saw that the first Infected face had appeared at the bottom of the shaft.
The Visskous he saw had once been a scientist’s assistant named Pellix, if Severin remembered correctly.
Now his mouth was smeared black-red, his white eyes rolled upward, and his long hands gripped the ladder with jerky, insectile movements.
Behind him, more pale shapes crowded into the lower hatch, hissing and clicking hungrily.
Severin drew his plasma pistol.
“Keep climbing,” he ordered. “I’m going to shoot but you two keep going.
Ravik looked down.
“Sev?”
“Keep climbing,” he repeated and squeezed the trigger.
The first shot lit the shaft blue-white and Pellix fell backward into the dark with a hiss, taking two others with him. The sound of bodies hitting bodies echoed below, followed by shrieks and frantic scraping as more Infected fought to climb over the fallen.
Severin fired again, then again, conserving power as much as he dared. He was doubtless going to need every charge he could save once they were out in the open above.
If they made it into the open.
“Severin!” Cassandra cried from above. “Are you okay? We’re almost at the top.”
“Open the grate,” he shouted back.
“It’s stuck!”
Severin bit the inside of his cheek—of course it was stuck. This bunker was going to be their tomb.
Then Ravik snarled,
“Move aside, Cassie.”
“I’m on a ladder, where exactly am I supposed to move?” she snapped.
“Just duck.”
Before Cassandra could object, Ravik climbed past her with terrifying ease, bracing himself on the narrow ladder and shoved one massive shoulder against the grate above.
Metal groaned. He shoved again, muscles bunching in his back, and the grate tore free with a shriek and banged against the ground outside.
Gray light poured down into the shaft.
Ravik hauled himself through then gave a hand to Cassandra, who scrambled out after him.
Severin fired one more shot into the rising mass of Infected, then climbed the last rungs as fast as he could. But a clawed hand caught his boot just as he reached the top.
“Fuck!” he gasped, as he was dragged back down into the darkness.
“Hang on—I’ve got you!”
Ravik grabbed Severin’s arm and pulled.
For a moment, Severin hung between the Infected below and Ravik above, the grip on his boot tightening as another white-eyed face surged up from the dark below.
Then Ravik roared and hauled him upward with one massive pull.
Severin kicked hard—felt lizard bones crack under his heel—and then he was out on cold stone with Ravik dragging him back from the opening.
Cassandra slammed the charge baton down onto the first hand that reached through the grate hole and blue energy cracked.
The Infected trying to claw its way up shrieked and fell.
“Nice work,” Ravik said, breathing hard.
Cassandra stared at the smoking baton in her hand.
“I think I’m going to throw up later, but thank you.”
“No time,” Severin said, rolling to his feet and grabbing the broken grate. With Ravik’s help, he shoved it back over the opening, then jammed two flash mines into the hinge gaps and activated the proximity triggers.
“That won’t hold it long,” Ravik said.
“No,” Severin agreed. “But it will punish the first ones through. Maybe the others will think twice before trying to come after us—if they still have any capacity for thought left.”
The three of them got clear of the grate and looked around.
They were in the maintenance ravine, just as Severin had thought.
It was a narrow cut between black stone ridges running under a sky the color of old bruises.
Far above, the crystalline spires of the city glimmered faintly through drifting mist. In the distance, barely visible through the haze, stood the communications tower—a tall, skeletal structure rising from the ridge like a broken needle.
It looked much farther than two kilometers.
Cassandra must have thought the same thing, because she stared at it and then at Severin.
“That’s where we’re going?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Through zombie country.”
“Yes.” He nodded again.
“With my arm glowing, Ravik only half-cured, and you carrying some kind of bite-delivered orgasm medicine in your fangs.”
Severin looked at her. When put that way, it did sound absurd. But there was no other way.
“Yes,” he said again, at last.
Cassandra nodded slowly.
“Great. Just checking.”
Ravik lifted his shock blade and rolled his shoulders.
“Come on—we need to fucking move.”
Severin studied him in the gray light. The Beast Kindred looked strong— almost fully himself—but there was a faint haze in his eyes and tension in his jaw.
Luckily, Cassandra was right beside him, her scent still stabilizing him.
Severin’s altered essence pulsed behind his fangs, demanding use, demanding delivery, demanding that he finish what he had started.
But Ravik still wouldn’t take the bite and even if he would, this wasn’t the place or the time. They need to be someplace safe—someplace where, even if his bite and the cure overpowered the ones he bit—they wouldn’t be helpless and vulnerable to the zombie hordes.
Severin swallowed his fear and frustration, forcing both down into the hard place where he kept everything he couldn’t afford to feel.
“All right,” he said. “We move fast, we stay quiet, and no one breaks formation.”
Ravik glanced at him.
“And no one gets left behind.”
The old words made Severin’s heart thud. It was something Ravik had said to him in half a dozen war zones, usually right before doing something reckless and heroic and deeply inconvenient.
“No one gets left behind,” Severin echoed.
Cassandra looked between them, her expression softening despite the fear in her eyes.
She seemed about to say something but just then a muffled explosion shook the grate behind them, followed by the shrieks of the Infected below.
Severin tightened his grip on his pulse pistol and started toward the communications tower with Cassandra between them and Ravik at her back. The bunker was lost, the cure was untested, and the argument they still needed to have hung between him and Ravik like a blade.
But for now, survival would have to come first.