Juggernaut

Must have been hell. That final night when infected prisoners broke loose and ran riot. Troops mown down by terrified Russian overseers. Young men blowing their brains out, slitting their throats, hugging grenades, anything preferable to joining the mindless mutant legion.

Lucy jumped from the cab and surveyed the exterior of the locomotive. She searched for a battery compartment.

A big metal box on the rear footplate between buffers. Padlocked. She shot the lock and kicked open the lid. A big Exide 32-volt power cell. Four times the size of a standard car battery.

Faint crunch of shingle.

She jumped from the locomotive and crouched on the track. She peered beneath wagons. She glimpsed the legs of a red boiler suit.

Jabril knelt beneath Spektr and continued to wire yellow drums of formaldehyde and ethylene.

His companion had returned. A shambling figure in a red boiler suit. A crimson ghost shape glimpsed through opaque plastic. The figure circled the perimeter of the containment tent. Bloody handprints on polythene.

‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ murmured Jabril. ‘I’m so sorry. It will be over soon.’

Jabril recognised the tall, thin figure in the boiler suit. Corporal Haq.

Haq and his twin brother Abdul tried to flee the valley one night. They wanted to reach Fallujah, make sure their mother had survived the war.

They blacked their faces with boot polish and ran from the mine. They managed to evade Russian sentries at the head of the ravine and climb the moonlit valley walls.

Abdul triggered an anti-personnel mine halfway up the slope and was blown to flesh-scraps and blood-vapour. The blast drew searchlights and soldiers. They found Haq cradling his brother’s leg.

They dragged Haq back to the mine. They shaved his head and dressed him in a boiler suit. They sprayed a big nine on his back and pushed him into a holding pen.

Jabril brought him water.

‘Come to gloat?’ asked Haq.

Jabril passed a bottle of mineral water between the bars. Haq took a sip and threw the bottle to fellow prisoners cowering at the back of the freight container.

‘I’ll talk to Ignatiev. Do what I can.’

‘If you really wanted to help, you would pass me a gun.’

‘They will never let you escape.’

‘I don’t plan to escape.’

‘Just hold on. Let me argue your case.’

‘Listen to yourself. You are a major in the Mukhabarat. You should be the authority here. Not these foreigners.’

‘Our world has changed.’

‘You think it will be any different for you? Sooner or later, you will find yourself behind these bars.’

Jabril held up his hook.

‘They want young men, in good health.’

‘Then you will simply be executed.’

‘You think I don’t know what Ignatiev has in store? None of us will leave this place alive.’

Later that night Jabril visited the lime pit. A trench dug in the valley floor near the citadel. Stacked lime sacks. A mass grave.

The pit held a mound of eviscerated bodies caked in white powder. Strong stench of acid decay.

He shielded his mouth and nose with his sleeve.

Arms. Legs. Exposed ribcages. The eviscerated bodies twitched and stirred as they slowly dissolved into caustic lime slurry.

Lucy hit the pressel switch on her chest plate.

‘Mandy. I need you back here.’

Amanda jogged down the tunnel.

‘Babe?’

‘Over here,’ shouted Lucy.

Amanda climbed onto the rear plate of the freight locomotive.

‘Give me a hand with this thing,’ said Lucy.

They unscrewed terminals and struggled to lift the massive battery from its box compartment. They lowered it down to the track. They pulled on gloves, each grabbed a handle and carried the power cell down the tunnel, muscles straining.

‘Voss says there are infected guys running round the mine,’ said Amanda.

‘No wonder the fucks from the citadel didn’t follow us,’ said Lucy, panting with effort. ‘There’s something else in here. Something worse.’

‘We better find Jabril and warn him. He might get jumped.’

Jabril crept down a passageway lit by bulbs screwed to roof beams.

He stalked the figure in a red boiler suit. The suit had a big fifteen sprayed on the back. The revenant’s bald head was punctured by a crust of metallic tumours, like a rippled steel skull-cap.

The creature stopped. It sniffed the air.

It turned. It saw Jabril and snarled.

Jabril put a bullet between the creature’s eyes. Gun-roar echoed down the passageway.

The prisoner fell against the tunnel wall and slid to the ground.

Another creature watched from shadows at the end of the passageway. Jabril raised his pistol and took aim, hook-arm steadying the gun. A bald, emaciated mutant thing. Number nine sprayed on the breast of the boiler suit.

Haq.

Jabril hesitated, and lowered his pistol. The figure ducked out of sight.

The moment Jabril discovered the full extent of the Spektr project, he decided to destroy every piece of equipment in the valley. Obliterate it all.

Ignatiev often talked about Phase Three. He mentioned it to technician colleagues while Jabril was in earshot, disregarded his presence like he was a pet or a piece of equipment.

Jabril put it together:

Phase One. Locate Spektr and acquire virus.