The Floating Zombie by D. F. Jones

Author:D. F. Jones [Jones, D. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Action & Adventure, Cyberpunk
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2019-08-27T07:00:00+00:00

XIV

Brushing the sweat and spray from his face, Phil felt as if a bomb had exploded in his stomach. He breathed deeply several times to ease his thumping heart and tackled the first nut. He had three off by the time Jane arrived.

“I found a screwdriver!” She knelt beside him, hair streaming, shouting in his ear. “And a thing of tools from Colmar’s desk!”

“Leave ’em and bugger off!”

She saw his knuckles were scraped and bleeding. “Take it steady—you know we’ve plenty of time!”

He gave a short high-pitched yelp of a laugh, paused in his work, pulling her head to him. “Not anymore, we haven’t!” He told her of his other find

She reacted by picking up the second spanner. He half-opened his mouth, then shrugged. It took them the best part of ten minutes to get all the nuts off; Phil sat back on his haunches, holding on with one hand. “Now bugger off—see if you can find the first one,” he shouted, hoping she’d stay.

She ignored him, pointing at the cover. “What do we do—lift it?”

With neither time nor inclination to thank her, he nodded. “Shift around, opposite me, lift it straight up—want to look at the underside!”

In the appalling conditions, even this simple task was hard, although the two-foot-square cover lifted easily enough, proof the paint film had been broken.

“Higher,” he shouted. “Get the bastard up!” He craned his neck to look underneath. Nothing was attached to it. “Right—dump it!”

As the plate clanged on the deck, Phil anxiously scanned the square dark hole, and there it was: a black-plastic box, like a small transistor radio, fixed to the inside of the coaming. For several seconds they both stared.

“Doesn’t look very big.” Unconsciously, Jane was whispering, her voice lost to Phil in the howling wind.

“Gimme the torch!” He crouched over the hole, his fear abating fractionally. He looked at the dial setting; it should have made some sort of sense, but his brain refused to work. Anyway, he wasn’t going to play with it. He shone the torch into the gap between the device and the steel it clung to, then turned the beam downward. It seemed to be lost, soaked up by the black cavern. A flicker of light came back, reflected by the surging remnant of oil swilling on the tank bottom sixty feet below, but in the dim light he saw what he sought, the wire running from the device.

Again he sat back, sickened by the smell of oil, and his own fear. “Let’s have your tools,” he said unsteadily.

Colmar’s wallet looked more like a watchmaker’s kit, but it did include a small pair of pliers. He thought briefly of simply cutting the wire, but his training rejected the idea sharply. One wire at a time: to cut both together could close the circuit. The fact that his frightened mind should even consider such a daft idea frightened him even more.

It was all quite simple, really. Nothing to it; timing device, held by magnetic clamps, connecting wire, and down there, bomb and detonator.

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