Zombie Team Alpha
~1~
Yuri Stakhanov limped along the mineshaft, occasionally ducking to avoid the thick timbers supporting the massive weight of the mountain above him. Years in various deep-shaft mines had left him with a permanent bend to his back and a hitch to his step. No longer could he stand as tall as he once had when he’d been a proud member of Spetsnaz—Russia’s Special Forces. He’d been a soldier then and battled the fanatics in Afghanistan, but an incompetent fool of an officer and a lost temper had seen him banished from his beloved outfit forever. Now, his daily labors went into supporting his wife and extended family the only way he knew how—by digging deep into the earth for the elusive gold buried beneath.
After stopping to mop hot sweat from his brow, he resumed his shuffling gait, ever wheezing, ever coughing. The dim lamp on his helmet cast a narrow beam into the gloom, barely lighting the way ahead. In one hand, he held a small metal tin containing his mid-shift meal and, like all his mid-shift meals, had arrived by train earlier in the day. It had been made by his dutiful wife and was one small concession the company allowed to keep him connected to home.
He stopped again, this time to cough into his fist and spit out what came up, and when the fit subsided, he bent forward and rested his hands on his knees for a moment to let the pain in his swollen joints subside. As he straightened, he checked the aging Vostok watch on his wrist and grimaced. He had only twenty-five minutes left to eat his meal before he would need to return to work.
Far too little time.
Yuri lived a hard life, but he was no complainer, nor was he bitter over the typical injustices of life. He was approaching fifty and would soon leave deep-shaft mining to the young. He would become a pensioner, able to sit on his front porch, drink vodka, and smoke the smooth cigarettes of the American imperialists, who, much to his small pleasures, had their own troubles with the fanatics in Afghanistan.
With fingers calloused by years of hard labor, he unlatched the small metal tin that protected his meager meal from the rats and probed inside, searching for the buried treasure he knew was there.
“Ah,” he said when he found it, nodding to himself proudly as he sat down on an outcropping of rock. His prize was a single piece of dark chocolate that his wife had wrapped in foil along with a sliver of ice meant to keep the chocolate cool so deep in the hot mine where the temperatures could reach 40 Celsius or higher.
With care, he balanced the tiny treasure on a jutting rock beside him and dug for more treats, but there were none to be found. What he did find were twin slices of a crusty brown bread and a link of pork sausage spiced with sage. They were not the delicious meatballs his wife often made and that he had hoped for, but it would do. Yes, it would do. All too often, she’d packed pickled cabbage. He hated pickled cabbage. It tasted too much like wet newspaper.
He chewed the bread slowly and deliberately while listening to the distant echoes of the pneumatic drills pounding away at the rock face. The drills never stopped, except when work had to be halted to blast with explosives. The sounds they made told him much about what progress was being achieved. By listening carefully, he could fathom the hardness of the stone into which they bored, and minutes ago, their pitch had shifted higher, informing Yuri that the bits had penetrated the thin vertical ore deposit and would soon need to be repositioned to alter the course downward and ever deeper into the earth. Which meant that the next few hours were going to be even more challenging.
Letting go of a weary breath, he glanced down the shaft the way he had come, knowing the minutes he had left before returning to work were ticking away fast and becoming even more precious.
He picked up the link of sausage and bit into it, watching as a light bobbed out of the gloom toward him. Despite the glare, he knew from the familiar movements of the headlamp that it was his crew mate, Petrov. The man was ten years his junior and already showing signs he would not make it as a miner much longer. Few ever survived long enough to become pensioners like Yuri, and Petrov was not nearly so tough. He was never a soldier. He was never Spetsnaz. The man had gone to an institute to learn how to mine.
An institute,
Yuri had often thought,
to learn how to mine? To stand behind a drill and to not let go? How difficult was that? A brainless
chudovishe
could do the same job.
Yuri shifted slightly to let Petrov sit next to him. The man let out a chest-rattling wheeze as he came to rest. Yuri kept a close watch on the man and caught where Petrov was staring—at the shiny piece of dark chocolate wrapped in foil. He casually scooted it out of the man’s reach. While he enjoyed Petrov’s company well enough, he did not trust the man with his beloved chocolate.
“Six days,” Petrov stated proudly, which meant the following day would be a rest day spent back in the village and away from the mine. He then glanced both directions and drew out an aluminum flask from a pocket on his mud-stained overalls. He raised the flask in salute and stole a drink.
Yuri said nothing.
The man offered the flask, but Yuri refused to touch it. To drink while in the mine was a suspendable offense, which Yuri could not afford right now, even though the
svolochi
who ran the mine often would glance the other way when the men drank. The courage that came from a bottle was often of use to those who worked the mines—as long as production did not suffer and the strict quotas were met.
Another bobbing headlamp appeared out of the darkness. Petrov turned away from it and slipped the silver flask into his pocket, stood, and pressed himself against the far wall.
The new man who arrived, Daynov, held his hand out to block the glare of Petrov’s helmet lamp as he came to a stop. Daynov was the youngest in Yuri’s work crew. The kid was often brash but always respectful of his elders, so Yuri took special care to make sure Daynov knew how to remain alive and counseled him not to expend himself too greatly or too quickly. Yuri had often warned the young man to stay away from mining.
Find another profession,
he had often said,
you were never Spetsnaz. You are not tough like me.
It was an argument they’d frequently had.
Daynov waved away the light dismissively, but not before Yuri had seen the glint of something metallic in the man’s hands.
“Six days,” Petrov boasted again as Daynov came fully into the cone of light from Yuri’s own headlamp. Daynov was twisting the metal object he held between his fingers, causing it to shimmer in the light. Yuri could not immediately tell what it was. It sparkled, but it was not gold nor silver nor tin nor platinum. And when exposed to the light, it gave off a shimmering iridescent gleam of reds and blues and greens. Faint, ghostly patterns shifted along its edges, giving the object the appearance of the disk movies Yuri had often watched in the recreation rooms after his shift. But it was certainly not one of those.
“What…is that?” Petrov asked.
Daynov bit the tip of his finger and tugged his worn gloves off. He ran a fingertip over the fragment, tracing along the sharp edges. “I do not know. I found it sticking from the ceiling. Perhaps it is a tool of some kind?”
“I have never seen anything like it before,” Petrov said. “Yuri?”
Yuri pursed his lips and considered. He was the oldest of the three, and the implied expectation was that he must be the wisest. He drew a sharp intake of breath and scratched the whiskers on his chin. Exhaling, he said, “Yes, I have seen before.” But that was a lie. To smooth it over, he took a bite of sausage and chewed while considering further.
“It’s…very cold,” Daynov said, turning the object over in his hands and running his fingertips back and forth across the pitted surface.
“Let me see,” Petrov said. “Give here.”
“No. Is mine. I found it. You can’t—”
As Daynov looked up, Yuri saw confusion clouding the young man’s eyes. Daynov suddenly went unnaturally stiff, as if he’d been shocked. His eyes became even more vacant and glossy. Yuri stopped chewing and set the remains of his meal onto the creased paper that had once wrapped it and wiped his lips with his fingertips.
Petrov hovered before Daynov, bobbing left and right and examining the man from different angles. He waved a hand in front of Daynov’s eyes to summon a response then drew back in confusion when the younger man did not even blink.
Normally, it was difficult to get Daynov to stop talking. He was always telling anyone who would listen about a new woman, a new conquest, or how he had a new plan that would make him enough money to escape the drudgery of the mines once and for all.
But he was frozen solid, unable to speak.
Then Yuri noticed something else. He sniffed the air. It had a metallic tinge to it, as if the very air around him had become charged with electricity. Like after a lightning storm.
“Give to me.” Yuri pushed away from his resting place and reached for the metal object in Daynov’s hands. Daynov held on to it tightly, clutching it in a white-knuckled grip. Yuri tugged harder and, using his superior strength, was able to snatch it away. Petrov then helped the younger man sit on the mineshaft floor, and Daynov came out of his daze and started muttering incoherently. His lips moved slower and slower, until finally, he stopped making any noise at all.
Yuri stared down at the metal object in his hands. It was cold and growing colder against his skin. The object’s surface was rough and pitted but strangely uniform, maybe even manmade. Squinting at it in the dim light, he brought it closer to his eyes to examine the strange surface pitting in more detail. He ran his index finger along one edge. The pits on the object were not random but somehow ordered into thin, precise rows.
Over his many years below ground, he’d seen every type of metal that could be found by mining. Most were locked in ores and had to be extracted before they could be processed. But there were a few rare specimens of naturally occurring metals that had been discovered accidentally—nuggets of gold locked in quartz, or the even rarer lumps of natural aluminum. But he had never in his life seen anything like what he held in the palm of his hand. It could not be natural. It had to have been manmade. But made from what? And by whom? And for what purpose?
He pressed his thumb against the cold metal. Through his thick callouses, he felt nothing except for a slight chill emanating from the object. Somehow, it was colder than the air around it.
Impossible.
After he had lifted his thumb away, his other fingers began to tingle. Curiously, he stared at them as he flexed each—one by one. They were all moving slower and slower, as if they had been stiffened by the cold. Soon, he had to fight just to bend his fingers even a fraction of a centimeter. A bitter coldness was growing rapidly in him as well.
It was then that he realized the terrible mistake he had made. He instantly wanted to drop the metal object and get as far away from it as he possibly could. But he could not let it go. He could only stare at the object while the coldness crept downward, deeper into his arms, into his elbows, into his shoulders, and finally into his chest. The icy tentacles felt as if they were reaching inside him and probing deeper and deeper, seeking, searching for something. Only the mental training he’d had as a soldier kept him from panicking. But his growing fear was beginning to win.
He could sense the foreign presence as it took control. It was something evil, wicked, and it was attempting to bore into his mind. His eyes involuntarily flicked to Daynov, showing the man on the mineshaft floor, only a few feet away. Though, to Yuri, the young man could have been a million miles away because he no longer had control over his own body. Not even his eyes.
Daynov grew more and more distant and indistinct by the second. Petrov hovered over the younger man and shouted down at him while alternately casting terror-filled glances at Yuri.
Yuri knew he should be able to hear what Petrov was saying. He could hear the sounds that were being made, but he could not understand the words being said. His body was starting to shiver, and his arms lifted not of his own volition. Then those arms went limp, and his right foot jerked and scratched at the dirt. He almost fell forward.
At his feet, Daynov began to convulse as his eyes went fully white and rolled back in his head. The young man’s entire body was trembling and bucking wildly. Froth formed on Daynov’s lips. He slammed down hard against the solid rock floor, and his back arched unnaturally, lifting him onto his head and heels.
The part of Yuri’s brain still containing his own consciousness wondered if what was happening to Daynov would soon happen to him as well.
No.
He decided it would not.
I will resist whatever is invading my mind. I will hold out. I am strong. I am soldier.
Petrov retreated from them both, raising a hand to his mouth and shouting unintelligible gibberish in both directions down the mineshaft. Then he tripped and fell onto his backside and frantically kicked away from the convulsing Daynov as his eyes went even wider with fear and his boots dug twin furrows in the dirt. Somehow, he was able to regain his feet. He stumbled in front of Yuri and shouted something. Yuri could not understand what Petrov was yelling but could see the man’s lips moving and could hear the muffled cries, but the words were frustratingly not making any sense.