Zombie Team Alpha by Steve R. Yeager Page A

to properly handle the artifact, so he capitulated, and she had gone before him.
    That had been his mistake.
    When Morgan’s call had come over the radio to evacuate immediately, he was ready to make the climb back to the top. He urged Sharon, who was below him, to climb up to him so they could both get out together. But she’d yelled back up to him that she was almost to the artifact. She could even see it a few feet below her in the mineshaft and only needed to descend another few feet to reach it.
    Morgan’s repeated radio calls then became more and more insistent.
    Still, Cutter trusted his wife completely. She knew what she was doing. If she said it would only be another few seconds, he could give her that time. So, against his better judgment, he ignored Morgan’s cries of alarm and let Sharon finish her work while he began to climb in anticipation of pulling his wife up when she had the artifact in hand. There was still plenty of time. There always was. He was certain of it. He’d set the charges himself, so he knew just how long they had before they were scheduled to go off.
    But he was wrong. The clock in his head had been wrong. And everything from that point forward had gone so terribly wrong.
    He’d just started to pull her up when the concussion wave from the first charge knocked him flat on his ass. He lost control of the rope that held her, letting it slip right through his fingers before realizing what had happened. He tried to lunge for the rope and snatch it. But, before he could reach it, the line went taut, and the first anchor cam jerked free. Then another blast wave hit, and he fell again and the second cam broke free. And as that shiny metal anchor disappeared over the edge and into the gloom, so too went his wife, Sharon.

 
    ~19~
    CHUDOVISHE
     
    Cutter’s eyes focused on the man running below across the large stretch of gray. The man fell. Got up. Ran faster, arms pumping hard. Tiny puffs of brown dust followed his footsteps as he raced across the open space. It appeared he was heading for the thick line of trees at the edge of the clearing.
    What the hell are you running from?
    Cutter suddenly had a very bad, bad feeling about all this. It was all eerily similar to what had happened in Ecuador when they’d been attacked by those crazed people hopped up on some kind of drugs. Cutter had no idea how many of them had died when the mountain came down on top of them, but they had tried to kill him, so they had gotten what they deserved.
    The helicopter continued to circle above the cluster of buildings while Cutter and Suvorov watched the man below. With a jolt, the helicopter nosed over and plunged into a steep descent.
    Cutter lost sight of the man as the Mi-8’s heading changed to intercept the guy near the tree line. When he glanced over at Suvorov again, the colonel was speaking into the microphone of his headset while balanced on the balls of his feet and peering out the open doorway.
    Suvorov was directing the pilot. Chase that guy, he was probably saying in Russian. Cutter returned to his seat and pulled his own headset on to listen to the conversation. It did him little good as they were conversing only in Russian. He waved for Morgan to slip hers back on and interpret what was being said.
    With another shocking jolt, he felt his stomach float into his throat as the helicopter fell from the sky into an even faster descent, sinking like a stone. His stomach began to settle down right as Morgan managed to get her headset on. He shook his head at her and removed his headset and hung it on a hook above his shoulder.
    The engines on the Mi-8 raced, and the pitch of the whine grew higher and higher, almost screeching, and about a second later, a green light winked on near the rear hatch, and the hinged back door released downward before the helicopter had even set down. The men onboard remained seated until touchdown, then all of them stood up and filed out two at a time and spread out,