Tunnels 06 - Terminal Read Free Page B

death.
    ‘I’d have done the same,’ Jiggs confided to them.
    But he didn’t have time to examine what else was in thereas he gently laid Drake on the floor and set about tending to him. Battlefield triage was nothing new to Jiggs. Slipping Drake’s Bergen off and removing the booster tied to his wrist, he methodically catalogued the areas that needed attention. Having worked his way along each of Drake’s limbs and then the trunk of his body, he quickly found the injury to his shoulder.
    ‘That’s no burn. That’s a bullet wound,’ he mumbled to himself, then glanced at the welts on Drake’s head and the charred areas of his combats, which would need to be carefully removed to assess the damage to the tissue beneath them. ‘But it’s probably the least of our problems.’
    He scanned the cabin around him as he voiced his concerns out loud. ‘Major trauma from third-degree burns … huge risk of infection from this septic environment … and unless there are any supplies here, just my medikit to work with.’ He rolled up his sleeves. ‘Hey ho,’ he whispered grimly. ‘Off to work we go.’
    If Drake had any hope of pulling through, at least he was in capable hands. Jiggs was highly proficient in field medicine. In some of the places he’d been sent – often the middle of nowhere – he’d frequently been called upon to use his skills to save both himself and those around him.
    But now Jiggs suddenly noticed his patient had stopped breathing.
    ‘No, you don’t, old man. You’re not going to die on me.’ He leant over and gave Drake mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. ‘Not today,’ he said, as he began to thump his chest to get his heart beating again. ‘Not on my watch.’

 
     
    P ART O NE
    Aftermath

 
     
     
    Chapter One

    S chraack!
    The small skull split open under Will’s boot, the hollow sound resounding through the empty New Germanian street. Will hadn’t been looking where he was treading as he’d moved towards the pavement, and had completely failed to notice the diminutive skeleton stretched out in the gutter.
    ‘Oh … my … good … God,’ Will swallowed as he stood over the skeleton, which had to have been that of a child. Although very little brain tissue remained inside the skull, the sight of the empty pupal casings spilling out was horrifying. The climate of this inner world with its ever-burning sun couldn’t have been more favourable for the armies of voracious flies, which had stripped the flesh from the human skeletons in a matter of weeks. Eight weeks to be precise. And stripped it so efficiently that the stench of decay that once hung over the dead city had almost completely vanished.
    Everywhere Will looked there were sun-bleached bones, mostly poking from crumpled clothes. Since the virus had also killed off all the mammals that would normally have scavenged on the remains, the bodies had lain undisturbed, stillprecisely where they had fallen.
    Undisturbed except for the carrion-feeding birds. Avian species had been spared by the virus, and a little further along the road Will spotted two fat crows playing tug of war over something beside a discarded hat. They didn’t bother to move until he was almost on them.
    ‘Get away!’ he shouted, aiming his foot at them. Beating their greasy black wings and giving ugly calls, they grudgingly took to the air.
    Will saw what the crows had been fighting over. On the tarmac was a human eyeball, so desiccated and discoloured it resembled a rotten plum.
    He couldn’t stop himself from staring at the eyeball as it stared accusingly back at him, its ragged optic nerve strung out behind it like a tail, as though it was some kind of new animal.
    ‘This is so wrong,’ Will whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by all the signs of death around him. People had clearly left their homes in their thousands to gather here in the centre of the city, where they’d succumbed to the virus. They must have been desperately hoping that their