“He’s still alive, but he’s under a ton of rock. I don’t know how we can get him out.”
“Do whatever you can … quickly.” Stanton was looking down into the frigid gloom of the main tunnel. Deep in the darkness, Emily could hear shuffling and grunts and small groans, and now and again she saw something glitter. Eyes.
“They’re holding off for the moment,” Stanton said. He threw one of the brands down the tunnel. In the sudden flare of light, Emily caught her first glimpse of the zombies. Crouching half bent, in filthy shredded rags, they pulled back from the light, but not far.
Emily hurried back to Hart’s side and looked at the rocks that covered him. They were far too big to move.
“They … they went crazy.” Hart’s voice was thin and distant. “The diggings were … Everything was normal. Until they found …”
The man’s leather-gloved hand fell open, and a warm glow filled the side tunnel. In his palm lay some kind of gemstone, rich blue threaded with glowing filaments of white. It shimmered from within, as if suffused with remembered sunlight. Emily brought her light down to examine it.
“The blue star,” she murmured.
“They were afraid of it. I picked it up to look … and they went crazy. Turned on me. Not supposed to do that, not with the Switch. They … wanted to bury me, bury it forever …”
The effort of the last word made the man splutter and choke. An agonized cough racked him, and with it came a bubbling gush of black blood.
“Miss Edwards …” Stanton’s voice was tense.
“He’s dead,” Emily said softly. The sudden presence of real death among all the half-death suddenly made everything seem heavier and slower. “There’s nothing we can—”
But her words were lost. As if by some silent signal, the zombie miners swept forward in a wave of rags and rot, trampling Stanton and the light as they crowded down the side tunnel.
Emily shrieked, scrambling backward until her back was against cold rock. She felt for the devivification powder in her pocket, but it was too late. The miners were upon her, reeking of mud and rust and decay. In the flickering half-light she saw the face of a man, swollen and brutish and slack with the stupidity of death, his cheek a mass of black mold.
The thing got a slimy icy hand around her throat. The bones of the skeletal fingers dug into her windpipe, pressing hard against the wall. The close blackness of the tunnel spun around her. She struggled for breath as the corpse pushed her back …
“Mort statim!”
The words made the rocks and earth around them shudder. Stanton’s lanky form was outlined in blue flame, and there was a colossal flash. The zombies were harshly outlined in sudden daylight brilliance, then dissolved into sparking clouds that glittered like gold dust.
Darkness fell abruptly as the magical brightness faded.
“Lux,” Stanton snapped, and his pine brand flared once again, weak and wavering. The radiance of the attack had seared vibrating black spots onto Emily’s eyeballs. She tried to blink them away, but they stubbornly refused to vanish, and in a moment, Emily realized that they were not black spots at all, but two corpses that had not fallen in Stanton’s attack. They were lumbering toward her. One had a pick in his crumbling hand, and was looking at Emily as if she had a vein of gold in her forehead.
“Don’t just stand there!” Stanton was slumped against the rock, breathing hard. She reached out, trying to squeeze past her zombie attackers, but the one with the pick clutched at the loose end of one of her long braids. It yanked her back hard, forcing her to her knees. The pick gleamed above her.
Desperately, she grasped for anything she could strike out with. A gleam caught her eye. She lunged for it, and her hand fell upon the blue gemstone.
The moment her fingers touched it, everything changed. She could perceive everything with complete clarity. The texture of the walls. The sound of Stanton’s breathing. The bright metal head of the pick soaring down to split her skull. Faster than thought, she rolled to one side as the pick struck sparks on the rock by her ear. Dumb and dizzy, she grabbed one of the zombie’s leather-dry legs. If she could just knock it off balance …
… and in an instant, the thing collapsed to the ground, the pick clattering against rock, the end of her braid still