“We are almost to our destination,” Platt announces. “It is an UNCOST quarantine station, at the mouth of this valley.” Within minutes, we do- and we find a scene straight out of any Hell one might believe in.

The first thing we see at the quarantine station is a burned-out drone tank. 20 meters away is a smashed barbed wire fence, sagging under the weight of many, many bodies. Most of the dead are civilians, and all killed by gunfire. The camp is a typical set-up: A barbed-wire enclosure of 50 by 200 meters, with a gate at either end, and a bunch of pre-fab buildings inside. Eight guard towers stand over the fence. 3 of the towers have been knocked down with explosive charges to their stilt legs, one (the largest) has been taken by force, and the others got are destroyed by gunfire, hand grenades and improvised fire bombs.

We find most of the bodies at the rear of the camp, beyond the fences and behind a convenient projection of rock. The story there is plain enough: The staff do their best to dispose of the dead without drawing the attention of the living. Burning’s out of the question, as nothing advertises like smoke. Conventional grave-digging is impractical: Not enough men to dig, and not much soil either. But, it so happens that the camp is at the head of a line of interconnected natural channels, going at least two kliks down the valley. A practical solution presents itself: Dam the channels with debris, dump the bodies in, dump sand over the bodies, and repeat as necessary. They start down the valley- looking down, I can see at least two freshly-covered trenches- but the demand’s more than expected, and it won’t do to have a backlog. Soon they’re burying them faster, shallower and closer to camp, until they reach within thirty meters of camp. Starting with an erosional channel no more’n a meter deep, they dig themselves a sizable trench, almost 2 meters wide, 60 long, and at least 5 deep. It’s at the bottom of a steep rock face that isn’t looking too stable; the kind of picturesque cliffs where people build houses and geologists point and laugh. Maybe the plan was to set off a rockslide to top off the mass grave.

That’s where we find them. There’s about fifty bodies stacked next to the trench, and 3 dead Albanian MPs next to them. They all have those purple lesions. It looks like one keeled over as he worked, then one of his mates shot the other and then himself. There’s twenty or so bodies in the trench, some sticking up to within 30 centimeters of the top. It’s way too shallow. They’re lying on sand, and more bodies are poking up through that.

Quimby and I have to take an inventory of this gruesome scene. As we’re working, we hear a noise. It seems to come from the trench. We glance over our shoulders. One of the bodies is sticking up a few centimeters higher. Quimby laughs. “Something under it must be settling,” he said. “All this creepy stuff sure makes you jumpy, doesn’t it?”

“You looked, too,” I say defensively. “Let’s go back to the others.” Just as we’re turning to go, we hear another sound, louder than before. Then there are more noises. I look into the trench, and now there is no question: Something is moving beneath the earth. They grow louder, nearer and more numerous every second.

“They must have buried somebody alive!” Quimby says.
“There’s a lot more than one,” says I. By now, the sand and the first layer of bodies is going up and down like it’s high tide.
“Could it be infiltrators?” Quimby says.
“There would never be this many in one place. Besides, who was going to bury them? The Albanians?”
“They must be plague survivors, then,” Quimby says.
“Survivors?” says I. “How could there be survivors? The grave diggers are dead!”
“Well, what’s the alternative?”
“You tell me,” says I. I‘m looking at a rosary hanging from his equipment belt.
“Well, of course all the modern denominations recognize that actual, physical resurrection is out of-”

“Aye, aye- but I should think it’s those as is in the grave who have all the swing votes!” I unlimber my sidearm, a “super Uzi” submachine gun. It’s not really an Uzi, doesn’t even look that much like an Uzi, but whatever one calls it, it still kicks ass. It fires .45 ACP, Casull and 67-gauge shotshells, and it has an over/under grenade launcher. The grenade launcher is the kind where the grenades are stacked in a disposable barrel; it has multiple barrels for different kinds of grenades. “We can test this hypothesis,” says I. “If they’re alive, then they stop moving when I shoot them.”

Quimby tries to take away my gun. “You can’t do that! We should be helping-”
Just then, a hand thrusts out of the dirt. Rest assured, this the deadest thing I’ve ever seen. What next- how to tell? Well- I’m sure you have heard the cliche about people “freezing in terror”. I can tell you from experience that that doesn’t really happen in combat. When someone is in danger, the natural response is to is immediate action. Even a guy who cracks will run, hide or surrender, not stand still where he is. But that is exactly what Quimby does. We watch as something- it had been a woman- digs its way up from the grave, then climbs hand over hand up the wall of the trench. Right when it reaches the top, Quimby starts screaming.

I manage to pull the gun from his hands and fire a burst of ACP into the thing’s skull. Blow the better part of its head off. It falls back, but it crawls back up. A burst to the center of the back puts a stop to that, but it’s still moving a little. By now, there are at least a dozen of them coming up, all along the length of the trench. I shoot a couple concussion grenades into the trench. Things go snap, crackle and pop, and a 3-meter section of the trench caves in. All the zombies suddenly fall down- must be the noise messing with the inner ear. But moments later, they’re coming up again. I shoot a few more, then I decide that this is a job for hand-to-hand tactics. So, I shoulder my rifle and get out something I keep with me whenever I’m away from home: my rock hammer. Every geologist has one, and mine’s a little larger than most. It’s solid steel, about as solid as it gets short of actual armor, with a long, slightly curved spike on one end of the head. I pull this thing from my belt and let the nearest corpse have it with the pointy end.

These things- might as well call ‘em zombies- are getting out of the trench now, but they’re having trouble getting to their feet. They haul themselves out of the trench, and then spend the next few minutes trying to get to their feet. Most do, but some finally just start crawling through the snow- and they go almost as fast! I go up and down the line, hitting and kicking and stomping. A modest hit with the flat, heavy end is enough to knock one down, and a hard blow from the claw end around the ear or where the spine goes into the skull- the occiptital condyle, if you’re playing paleontology Jeopardy-will keep it from getting back up. I mostly get them with the flat end and follow through with the point. They don’t seem to know how to respond to me. Some try to grab me, but their hands flail around like they’re blind. I shoot 5 of them with ACP, fire a couple more conkers into the trench, and when things get a little too crowded, I use the last conker to knock the whole lot down at once. One catches me by the leg, and it grips me like a vice clamp. But instead of trying to pull me down, it tries to pull itself up, like it thinks I’m just an inanimate object. I kick it in the face, and it rolls back into the trench, hits at least three other zombies, and brings them back down, too.

Just then, I hear more sounds. Now the corpses above ground are moving. I start grabbing them and throwing them into the trench. Just as I’m picking up the seventh of these, I hear this whoosh. I look, and I see one of the gravediggers on his feet, flailing the shovel at my general vicinity. It isn’t tracking me with its eyes, which look too decayed to be much good anyway. I drop the corpse and back away, but it’s too late. I get hit in the head, barely stay on my feet. Fortunately, the impact knocks the shovel from its hand. The zombie makes three more swings before it figures that out. I can’t count on hitting hard enough through that helmet, so I give it a rap on the chin that knocks it into the trench. Another grave digger, this one with a pick axe, starts to get up. Before it can get off hands and knees, I jam the claw under the helmet into the spot where the back of the head meets the spinal column. It collapses, twitching. Behind me, I hear a click. I turn around, and sure enough, the third grave digger is sitting up and pointing a revolver at me. It pulls the trigger again, but the gun won’t fire, because the hammer isn’t cocked. Before it can figure out that small detail, I flip a switch on the grenade launcher and fire a couple armor-piercing grenades into its cranium. This has the unfortunate affect of spraying the contents all over my face plate.

So, I’m standing there, trying to clean off my helmet enough to see again, and hitting any zombie that runs into me. I hear gun fire from the camp, and Quimby is still screaming. “This won’t do,” says I. I manage to clean off enough gunk to see, then I look up the rock face, and see a particularly beautiful landslide waiting to happen. “Get back!” I say to Quimby. He finally stops screaming, but he still won’t move, so I have to haul him back.

I aim at a joint toward the top of the rock face. I fire the last 3 AP grenades. The noise echoes, and the zombies on their feet fall down. There’s a shower of rocks, including a dozen or so boulders in the one-meter size range. Most land in the trench, but not all. I have to step lively to keep from getting hit. I load another clip and fire 4 more grenades at likely spots, and a boulder big as a Thing comes down. It lands on the edge of the trench, collapsing a 5-meter section, and then rolls almost 20 meters down the line before it stops, caving in the walls. A lot more little ones come down, too. I fire the last grenade, and bring down some looser debris that fills up the trench nicely. Better’n half the trench is caved in or covered, but I still hear them moving. I got one more barrel in the launcher, and it’s loaded with phosphorous grenades: They make smoke, but the smoke burns. I fire all five through gaps in the debris cover, and throw a standard hand grenade in after. The smoke and noise and shrapnel is channeled through the trench. Plumes of dust come out, walls cave in, and the debris jumps up and then sinks down. When all this is done, seven intact zombies are still on the ground. I finish them with my hammer.

Just when the last one topside is down to nothing but twitching, Quimby screams again. I look down ad see a hand coming up through a chink in the covering of debris. There’s nothing attached to it. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” I say. I pulp it by kicking over a big rock. When I stoop and listen close, I still hear occasional movement. I also hear shooting from the camp. Then I hear someone coming up behind…