Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

Noise and dust enveloped King as bullets split the air around him, striking the ground directly in his path or zinging harmlessly into the sky. A red tracer round occasionally flashed past, like a laser bolt from a science fiction movie weapon. It seemed impossible that none of the shots had yet found him, and he figured it was only a matter of time before that changed. But he was still alive, still on his feet, and still moving, and as long as he had that, there was still hope.

He kept changing directions every few steps. It increased the distance separating him from his ultimate goal—the cave entrance—but if he ran in a straight line, he would be an easy target. Like his chess piece namesake, King’s only advantage was his ability to move in any direction, and he knew it wouldn’t be enough to turn the tables on the mysterious attack force.

Behind him, one of the helicopters began powering up, and he knew without looking that both Felice and Sara were aboard—one of them held the key to a weapon that might conceivably unmake the human race, the other held the key to his heart. Part of his mind wanted to wrestle with the puzzle of what had happened, but he pushed away everything that wasn’t directly related to figuring out how to survive the next few seconds.

Though it felt like an eternity, it probably took him less than twenty seconds to make the meandering dash across the open area to the cave mouth. He plunged headlong into the darkness, trusting the memory of his earlier explorations to guide him through the impenetrable black. The gunshots ceased almost immediately, but King did not stop running until the cave’s mass swallowed up the noise of the departing helicopter. Even then, he kept moving, one hand extended forward to prevent him from smacking headlong into the mass of elephant bones.

He didn’t trust the darkness to provide him safety. If the men accompanying Fulbright were the professionals he thought they were, then they would almost certainly have night-vision equipment; they would be able to sneak up on him without betraying their presence with flashlights. But he did have one thing going for him; he knew that he wasn’t alone in the cave.

King located the edge of the bone pile and skirted along the perimeter, searching for the path leading to the tusk shrine. There was risk in seeking refuge amidst the zombies; without Felice to command them, they might simply attack as soon as they detected his presence.

His outstretched hand guided him along the wall of bones until he reached the clearing. In the total darkness, he could hear the noise of the zombies, laboring in the dark, perhaps continuing their work of transforming the shrine into a cathedral, or perhaps gnawing on the bones of the dead. He turned to where he thought the center of the clearing was located, and then struck out blindly toward the shrine.

For once, luck was on his side. He found the massive structure almost exactly where he thought it would be. He turned right and circled around to what he hoped was the back side of the shrine—it was impossible to know for certain—and hunkered down to wait.

The wait wasn’t nearly as long as he thought it would be.

The commandos did not make a sound as they entered the clearing. But their stealth counted for little when one of them opened up on a target, presumably one of the zombies. That single shot opened the floodgates, and for the next few seconds, gunfire reverberated throughout the spacious cavern. There were at least two different rifles firing—King thought they were M-16s or some variant thereof—interspersed with shouted commands, but then something changed. The frequency of the shots trailed off, and less than a minute later, they ceased altogether, as did the shouts. The only sound that remained was of flesh tearing and bones cracking, only a few meters away.

King kept waiting.

The next sound he heard was of something wet sliding across stone. In his mind’s eye, he could see the zombies dragging their victims to the charnel pile. He followed their actions as best he could, and roughly pinpointed the location where the noises stopped. When he heard nothing more, he moved from his hiding place and struck out across the darkness.