Jordan pulled out his handgun as this insane moment played out and, with his other hand, gave Sinjira's untainted hand a tight squeeze.

He leaned forward to her and whispered something to her tenderly. Jordan, the man who said little or nothing and never betrayed emotion.

Sinjira heard and nodded, biting her lower lip to keep from crying out.

"Is the pain bad?" Jordan asked softly.

She grimaced and nodded. Her eyes were as filmed as the cloud created by the machine.

Then Jordan positioned the handgun close to the infected arm, above the elbow where the skin was untouched so far.

And he pulled the trigger.

The shiny, silvery flakes swarming over Sinjira's lower arm blew away. Blood sprayed out of the wound.

Ivan quickly pulled off his jacket.

Jordan had dropped his gun.

Together they each took an end of the jacket and wrapped it tightly around the bloody stump.

Rodriguez had stopped running, Ruth was leaning against him, gasping.

Sinjira screamed, her feet kicking wildly.

Then Rodriguez said, in a cold, clinical voice, "These look like nanotrites. But if they are, they're way beyond anything we've developed."

"You've seen these?"

"Not exactly. They appear to be more alive than mere machine, but-"

Ivan looked at him blankly.

The scientist shaking, his face bathed in sweat as whatever he was saying faded away, the possible scientific explanation incomprehensible to Ivan.

Sounds more like magic than science, he thought, but at a certain level, how can anyone tell them apart?

He helped Jordan pull the makeshift tourniquet tighter.

Then Jordan scooped Sinjira up in his arms, settled her, and was ready to move.

As they started walking, Rodriguez was still near-babbling.

"Like nano-machines, those things on her. But I have no idea what that thing surrounding your brother was. It's like nothing, nothing I've ever-"

Rodriguez looked at Ruth, clearly approaching full hysteria.

"Okay, Doc. Let's just calm down and get the hell out of here. All right? We'll talk later."

With a quick nod, Rodriguez stopped jabbering.

Ivan led the way, getting them to move as fast as they could, now reaching the place where the legion of dead bodies were sprawled on the floor. The cave exit was still a long way off.

Then he heard a voice, bellowing from behind them, echoing and amplified in the vast reaches of the cavern.

Kyros.

"There's no escape, Ivan!"

Why not? Ivan wondered.

They could work their way through the traps, now that they knew how they worked, so why couldn't they get away from Kyros, who didn't even appear to be hurrying to catch up with them?

Why such confidence? It was as if he knew a secret ... had another surprise in store for them.

Then Ivan heard a sound.

The vines above them were stirring.

The low, throbbing hum quickly blended into a high-pitched buzz. The gentle swaying of the vines quickly changed into the wild lashing of loose lines ... like an old-time sailing ship's rigging, whipping around in a storm.

They reached down ... down to the vast field littered with the dead bodies locked in their eternal struggle.

Or so one would have thought.

Ivan looked up ahead, then back the way they had come, and then ahead again.

The way out was still so far away.

"No escape..."

And then, to his horror, Ivan saw what Kyros meant.

43.

THEY RISE.

Ivan's first thought was that the vines lashing overhead were about to reach down and attack them, wrap around them, and kill them.

But that wasn't it at all.

As the vines swayed and snapped back and forth, they shot down spiky protrusions on long threads that emerged from inside the stalks.

But instead of attacking them, the thorns broke loose and showered down onto the field of corpses on this silent alien battleground.

They rained down onto the species, known and unrecognizable.

Ivan and his crew were moving as fast as they could, but Sinjira kept slowing Jordan down as they dodged through the spiky thorns that continued to fall down onto the corpses.

And as the thorns fell, they erupted like thousands of metallic larval sacs bursting open while a dark ooze spilled out, filling the room with a nauseating smell.

The ooze looked like the same miniscule black nano-machines that had swept over and around Kyros.

Within seconds, they covered the alien bodies, seeping into the desiccated, fossilized skin and rotting innards, painting the exposed organs and bones.

And then the bodies began to move, stirring, at first like dry leaves being swept up by a powerful wind.

"Come on! Keep moving!" Ivan said, but he realized his voice had been too low; the horror of what he was seeing so immense.

So now he shouted, his yell filling the cavern.

"Keep! Moving!"

But what could they do with Jordan, Sinjira, even Ruth stumbling and falling as they ran?

Annie turned and looked back at them as she ran, seeing the same horror show unfolding in the cavern.

The bodies were no longer dry leaves vibrating in an icy autumn wind ...

Now, they were rising, pulling up a knee here, raising an arm or a head there ... even, Christ, when half the skull was missing or had a massive hole in it from whatever had destroyed the once-living brain.

These dead beings were moving-unnaturally alive-whether by science or magic, it didn't matter.

A dozen or more staggered to their feet as more and more spiky thorns fell all around, each hit causing another body to be quickly covered by the blackish "nano-trites" that animated them.

At the far end of the cavern, Ivan saw his brother, still surrounded by the luminescent cloud.

He strode toward them with a slow, steady pace, following in the wake of this unnatural army. He was heading straight toward Ivan, relentlessly.

Kyros more alien, more machine now than human.

And he was the master, the controller of all of this.

Looking ahead, he saw Jordan stop and put Sinjira down for a moment.

Without missing a beat, Jordan slung his gun over his shoulder so he could still hold it and shoot when he had to.

Once again, he picked up Sinjira, scooping her up and carrying her like a baby as he tried to pick up his pace to elude this undead army.

By now, scores if not hundreds of them were rising up, but Ivan wasn't about to stand there and count them.

Whatever their conflicts with one another had been before, they were gone now ... vanished as they moved toward Ivan, Annie, Jordan, Rodriguez, and Ruth.

Ruth walked beside Jordan, holding Sinjira's dangling hand.

Ivan thought: As slow as they move now ... once we hit the traps, they'll catch us.

He came up beside Jordan, now also flanked by Annie.

And for a few stomach-turning seconds, amid the rising of corpses, no one said anything.

"Run," Ivan finally said, his voice hard with command. "As best you can!"

And then he turned and started firing, spraying massive pulse blasts at this army of the alien undead.

Some shots blew off what remained of heads and other body parts. Some shots seared into their chests and abdomens and blasted off arms and leg.

It made no difference.

They simply continued moving forward, crawling and writhing on the ground, making better progress than they did walking upright.

If a body was split in two, both halves continued their grim movement forward.

"I hate to say it, but it looks fucking hopeless," Ivan said.

Which is when Sinjira opened her pain-glazed eyes. Mere slits. Hazy, as if she had been sleeping or was drugged.

She raised her gaze to a dark corner of the cavern-a narrow opening that led off to one side, seemingly back into the mountain itself.

"That way," she said, her voice no more than a croak.

Jordan, struggling to carry her, ignored what she said.

But Ivan heard the urgency in her voice and said, "What do you mean?"

He looked at Ruth, who was also following the conversation. They were approaching the bottom of the mathematical steps, which they could navigate, now knowing the secret, assuming the pattern hadn't changed.

But they were moving so slowly, the undead army would be all over them, tearing at them before they were halfway up.

And would they infect them with the same nano-machines, turning them into ... who knew what?

Maybe, Ivan thought, that's when we turn against each other like they did, in a mad and ultimately futile struggle to survive. Even death wouldn't be a release.

"Trust me," Sinjira said. "They're already ... inside me. I know. Go that way."

Jordan was simply soldiering on, carrying Sinjira and intent on only one thing-getting out of this cave.

Ivan tapped him on the shoulder.

"Jordan."