An older man in a pair of emergency services scrubs approached the shambling newcomers. His hands were out before him, as if he could corral them by simple force of will. The first zombie in the pack turned empty eyes toward him and vomited up a spray of very familiar brown goo.
“Look,” Holden said.
“I saw.”
“No,
All down the casino level, tube station lights were going off lockdown. Doors were opening. The people were pulsing toward the open tubes and the implicit, empty promise of escape, and away from the dead men and women walking out from them.
“Vomit zombies,” Miller said.
“From the rad shelters,” Holden said. “The thing, the organism. It goes faster in radiation, right? That’s why what’s-her-name was so freaky about the lights and the vac suit.”
“Her name’s Julie. And yeah. Those incubators were for this. Right here,” Miller said, and sighed. He thought about standing up. “Well. We may not die of radiation poisoning after all.”
“Why not just pump that shit into the air?” Holden asked.
“Anaerobic, remember?” Miller said. “Too much oxygen kills ’em.”
The vomit-covered emergency medicine guy was still trying to treat the shambling zombies like they were patients. Like they were still humans. There were smears of the brown goo on people’s clothes, on the walls. The tube doors opened again, and Miller saw half a dozen people dodge into a tube car coated in brown. The mob churned, unsure what to do, the group mind stretched past its breaking point.
A riot cop jumped forward and started spraying down the zombies with gunfire. The entrance and exit wounds spilled out fine loops of black filament, and the zombies went down. Miller chuckled even before he knew what was funny. Holden looked at him.
“They didn’t know,” Miller said. “The bully boys in riot gear? They aren’t gonna get pulled out. Meat for the machine, just like the rest of us.”
Holden made a small approving sound. Miller nodded, but something was niggling at the back of his mind. The thugs from Ceres in their stolen armor were being sacrificed. That didn’t mean everyone was. He leaned forward.
The archway leading to the port was still manned. Mercenary fighters in formation, guns at the ready. If anything, they looked more disciplined now than they had before. Miller watched as the guy in the back with extra insignia on his armor barked into a mic.
Miller had thought hope was dead. He’d thought all his chances had been played, and then, like a bitch, it all hauled itself up out of the grave.
“Get up,” Miller said.
“What?”
“Get up. They’re going to pull back.”
“Who?”
Miller nodded at the mercenaries.
“They knew,” he said. “Look at them. They aren’t freaking out. They aren’t confused. They were waiting for this.”
“And you think that means they’ll fall back?”
“They aren’t going to be hanging out. Stand up.”
Almost as if he’d been giving the order to himself, Miller groaned and creaked to his feet. His knees and spine ached badly. The click in his lung was getting worse. His belly made a soft, complicated noise that would have been concerning under different circumstances. As soon as he started moving, he could feel how far the damage had gone, his skin not yet in pain but in the soft presentiment of it, like the gap between a serious burn and the blisters that followed. If he lived, it was going to hurt.
If he lived,
His death-self tugged at him. The sense of release, of relief, of
“What are we looking for?” Holden said. He’d stood up. A blood vessel in the man’s left eye had given way, the white of the sclera turning a bright, meaty red.
“They’re going to fall back,” Miller said, answering the first question. “We follow. Just outside the range so whoever’s going last doesn’t feel like he has to shoot us.”
“Isn’t everyone going to do the same thing? I mean, once they’re gone, isn’t everyone in this place going to head in for the port?”
“I expect so,” Miller said. “So let’s try to slip in ahead of the rush. Look. There.”
It wasn’t much. Just a change in the mercenaries’ stance, a shift in their collective center of gravity. Miller coughed. It hurt more than it should have.
The mercenary captain took a casual step back and strode down the exterior corridor and out of sight. Where he had been, Julie Mao sat, watching him go. She looked at Miller. She waved him on.
“Not yet,” he said.
“When?” Holden said, his voice surprising Miller. Julie in his head flickered out, and he was back in the real world.
“It’s coming,” Miller said.
He should warn the guy. It was only fair. You got into a bad place, and at the very least, you owed your partner the courtesy of letting him know. Miller cleared his throat. That hurt too.
Holden glanced over at him. The pachinko machines lit them blue and green and shrieked in artificial delight.
“What?” Holden said.
“Nothing. Getting my balance,” Miller said.
Behind them, a woman shouted. Miller glanced back to see her pushing a vomit zombie away, a slick of brown goo already covering the live woman. At the archway, the mercenaries quietly stepped back and started down the corridor.
“Come on,” Miller said.
He and Holden walked toward the archway, Miller pulling his hat on. Loud voices, screams, the low, liquid sound of people being violently ill. The air scrubbers were failing, the air taking on a deep, pungent odor like beef broth and acid. Miller felt like there was a stone in his shoe, but he was almost certain if he looked, there would be only a point of redness where his skin was starting break down.
No one shot at them. No one told them to stop.
At the archway, Miller led Holden against the wall, then ducked his head around the corner. A quarter second was all it took to know the long, wide corridor was empty. The mercs were done here and leaving Eros to its fate. The window was open. The way was clear.
“Miller?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It looks good. Come on. Before everyone gets the idea.”
Chapter Thirty-One: Holden
