[Anthologies] - Status: Deadzone by Marc Gascoigne Andy Jones

Author:Marc Gascoigne, Andy Jones [Marc Gascoigne, Andy Jones]
Language: hun
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction. warhammer 40000
Published: 2011-09-28T14:42:55+00:00

Liz dragged herself awake. She could feel her arms and legs but could not make them move. She attempted to focus on something in the duct, latch onto something to steady her spinning head. Like a whirling vortex, like the gaping maw of Chaos, the roof above her twisted and spiralled, snickered and creaked. The weight of the hive was too much. It would collapse, crush her and all those below, everyone the entire ten miles down.

'No,' Liz moaned to herself. She knew these were just delusions, fears unchecked, but they would not stop.

Something sighed in the clammy darkness around her. The soft glow of the stolen combat suit's power cells ebbed; flickered; waned some more. Liz reached wearily for the small medi-pack lying at her side. She'd torn it open when she first staggered into the duct, blood flooding from an open wound. The hypos helped to coagulate, the pills reduced the pain and the staples did their best to keep her innards where they belonged. Fever or no fever, these things were running thin. The bag was empty; the life support in the suit almost flat. To sleep was to die. But it would be painful, slow.

Let death take as long as it must, Liz thought, but damn the pain.

'I need some drugs,' she said aloud, her voice a croak.

Liz wound the suit's coils around her waist. Their small warmth was some help against death's cold. The rubber hissed as it pressed against her bleeding side. The shreds wrapped around her, Liz crawled slowly, like a cat bloated on sump rats. Her legs and arms shook with every move. Sweat ran from her body.

Dehydration. She wiped her hand across her face as she crawled, and tasted the salt and iron. Vital fluids. The dawning pain was intensifying, like a thousand steel spines protruded from her bones every time she placed a limb on the ground. Was she sweating blood now? Had the fever penetrated so deep that her heart was seeping life now? The noise in her fog-bound head intensified. The rush of static, buzzing as though every synapse was burning out, flaring like match heads, popping like overloaded transformers.

The dim light flickered, reflected from a slowly rotating fan set in the roof of the tunnel. Ancient dust hung in dirty stalactites. The floor was suddenly cold and jagged under her hands: another grate. Liz peered down. Quarters. Rich tapestries, colours so bright they burnt her retinas. A vast, solid table, dark as midnight. The vaulted ceiling; a thirty foot drop. Too far.

The pain kicked up another notch and Liz screamed. She wept. The drugs would run out, and she would die. Perhaps the fall was worth it? Perhaps it would end the pain quickly?

She struggled with her combat knife. The shakes intensified. She gripped the blade handle tighter, hoping her remaining strength would be enough to wrest control of the quivering knife tip as she tried to place it close to the grate's screws. Her hand slipped

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