Free Ace of Spades Chronicles : Book One by P.R.Sharp Page A

moments, then buckle under its own weight before slowly falling from view into the storm drain. Chunks of torn meat and globs of infected blood, dripped from the subway ceiling and walls, adding to the impression that they were now standing in some hellish cavity rather than an innocuous public walkway. Infected approaching lunged over the edge and also fell from view into the storm drain, tumbling head first into the sudden drop. "Ha ha," Zola yelled with delight. "Don't fuck with the bull, you bastards, or you'll get the horns."
    "Are you touched in the head?" Yates screamed, his ears ringing.
    "I'm getting there," Zola replied with a crazy grin. He looked out of the entrance and over to the other subway, then ran towards it. "Hold this ground," he called over his PRR, his voice barely a whisper. He twisted and launched a pair of rapid grenade rounds from the belly of the M4 into a small group of infected descending the path that ran back up to the supermarket, followed by a couple of tidy head shots. "I'll be two minutes." And then he was gone; inside the long, shadowy tunnel.
    ***

Zola flicked on the torch attached to the rail platform of his barrel and tried to control his breathing. The sun was still in the process of rising, and the tunnels aspect faced north south, forcing the creeping, morning light to have practically no presence at all at this early hour of the day; the dark seemed to be ensnared by the walls, ceiling and floor. Only the pavement, the trees and shrubbery beyond the exit were visible, everything else stood in silhouette or cold, damp blackness. On the far left lay the dismembered body of an elderly man; he had been lunch for an unknown number of infected many days before; what remained of his face stared back at Zola down the beam of his torch as he slowly panned the interior of the subway. The old man startled him and he flinched, ready to fire a shot into his skull if he moved even an inch. But the corpse sat still and did nothing, just stared back at him with long dead eyes frozen in terrible fear and pain. "Poor bastard." Zola muttered and turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He shouldered the M4 and pulled out his knife, jamming it into the tiny gap between the nearest lighting panel and the casing that anchored it to the wall. He worked the knife as if he were opening an oyster, coaxing the plastic housing out just far enough for him to force the tip of the blade in further until there was a release of tension and the panel snapped away from its housing. Zola caught the plastic covering and gently placed it on the ground by his feet. Pausing only to check over both shoulders, he took off his rifle and leaned it against the subway wall; he did the same with his Benelli semi-automatic. Following another quick glance over his shoulder and a reassuring stroke across his SIG-Sauer, he started to remove the money bags that were concealed around his person and within his uniform. Ignoring the constant sound of gun shots coming from the other subway, he had packed the equivalent of seventy thousand into the compact space when he started to smile; this is going to work , he thought. A sudden chuckle, more like a hiccup, accompanied a bigger smile as he pictured himself returning to this spot at a much safer time to collect his treasure.
    ***
    The pathways were beginning to get choked with infected. They drunkenly rambled through the trees, unrelenting in their onward march towards the subway mouths. They tripped and stepped over the bodies of those downed seconds earlier by bullet fire, and their rasping grunts and groans grew louder as their numbers increased.                        Yates and Xander were like a couple of cats on hot bricks. They kept firing and were able to keep a large area of open ground where all the paths converged free of any trespassers, but there was a blind spot to the far left, and it was here where Yates suddenly caught peripheral sight of