Knee-Deep in the Dead

by Dafydd ab Hugh

  I stayed very, very still, frozen on the ground, trying as hard as I could to look like a “dead” zombie.

  9

  When the ammo finally ran dry, the jerking bodies above me started tearing each other limb from limb, as if auditioning for modern ballet. I seized the opportunity to roll out from under the forest of legs; the rifle was strapped to my back, but in the chaos of the moment, I left the shotgun behind.

  I ran, and this time I wasn’t followed. After thirty heart-pounding seconds, I was alone with me, myself, and I. And somewhere along the route, I had stooped and grabbed a pack, one of Fox Company’s—but I had no memory of having done so!

  I was utterly lost. I silently cursed at being reduced to the Sig-Cow and wandered more or less aimlessly . . . terrified of shadows, where half an hour ago I stalked with confidence. With just a pistol and a semi-auto rifle, I avoided confrontation wherever I could.

  With no map, I wasn’t sure what part of the plant I had reached; then I pushed through another of those trick doors—I would have missed it had I not been sliding along the walls like a mouse—and found the computer room. The lights were blinking on and off, just what I needed for a headache after everything else. When the light was on, it had a sickly blue-green color that didn’t do my empty stomach any good.

  So far as I could tell, I was alone here, at least in this section. I wasn’t happy about the way the corridor went up a little ways and disappeared around a bend. I decided then and there if I ever try to be an architect, all my buildings would borrow from my old high school gymnasium—a big, empty space where you can’t possible hide anything. May not be much in the way of privacy, but there are advantages all right.

  Placing my back firmly against a wall, I took inventory of the contents of my new pack. First thing that jumped out at me was ammo for the missing shotgun. I was going to have to replace that as soon as possible. Dude Dardier would have wanted it that way. I had some 10mm rounds for the Sig-Cow that also fit the pistol, a bit of water or other liquid, chewing gum . . . and a small, little metal object that appeared to be a shiny flashlight battery. I had no idea what the last was; the UAC logo was printed on the side, not the globe and eagle of the Corps emblem.

  First order of business was checking the liquid. I was worried it might be vodka or gin or rubbing alcohol or something other than what I wanted it most to be. But at long last I was in for a bit of good luck: it was water. While I took a first grateful sip, repressing the desire to finish it off with one gulp, I picked up the batterylike object with my other hand. Then I realized what it was. I’d heard about, but never seen, a rocket this small.

  Correction: I had seen one in a UAC weapons demo video when they were trying to sell it to the Pentagon. (We didn’t buy it—I wish we had!) Yeah, these were special little babies, all right. But no one from Fox Company had been carrying any rocket launchers. This kind of ordnance was for desert fighting. Where had this rocket come from?

  I laughed out loud. Not smart in this situation, but it was becoming a bad habit. If evil demons could be lurking anywhere, and the walls and floors were metamorphosing into Halloween decorations, why couldn’t there be a state-of-the-art tac rocket in a forgotten backpack? Maybe I’d find a tomahawk next.

  At least I’d stopped laughing. The rational part of my brain was trying to figure out where I might find a rocket launcher. Made sense. I was trying real hard to listen to the little voice that made sense. Only trouble was that a much louder voice was roaring from somewhere lower in the brain. It wanted me to find the rocket launcher, too, but for a less defensible reason.

  I guess I’d been more upset by the roomful of zombies than I’d realized—or maybe I’d been this freaked-out all along, and was only now realizing it. My God, did I really want to find that missing launcher just so I could eat a rocket?

  Suicide isn’t in my nature. I’m an extrovert type, more likely to frag someone, say a certain butthead lieutenant, than snuff Yours Truly. That’s sort of a job requirement for the Marines. The battlefield doesn’t cure depression.

  But the tac-sit here on Phobos was a lot worse than a battlefield. Having to go through the same crap over and over is just part of life. I know guys who have been married.

  But what had happened on Phobos was so far beyond normal repetition that it turned me totally cold and numb. If I could just find one living person! That thing had said . . . had implied that someone still lived. Jesus, if there’s such a thing as the soul, then mine had been beaten black and blue.

  Maybe I wasn’t being completely honest with myself. I could have killed myself with the rifle. There are other ways, too, God bless our training. Waiting for the launcher could have been just a good excuse for postponing the inevitable. Maybe. Or maybe if I found the launcher, I really would put the tube in my mouth and, as they say, “fire and forget.”

  Fortunately, I never had to make that decision. I found something else instead.

  I stood in a long, steel corridor that curved off to the right; the only light came from a bluish, fluorescent tube that curved along the left wall and a sporadic white overhead spot. I crept as near as possible to one of those white-light areas . . . somehow I felt better surrounded by more natural colors, even though it made me more of a target.

  Then I glanced to my left and saw it.

  I didn’t trust my eyes at first. They hadn’t been doing much to encourage trust lately. But if what I was seeing was real, then I wouldn’t be fooling around with any more self-destructive fantasies.

  Directly in front of my nose, scrawled with the same red paint stick that had started drawing a map in the dumbwaiter, were two capital letters: A.S. An arrow was drawn by the same dye marker, pointing to the right at a downward angle.

  I stared at the mark, memory working furiously. Two years back I had gone to see the old James Mason movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth. I didn’t know who Jules Verne was—but Arlene had insisted. She loved sci-fi of any type.

  We made a big event out of it. We had just come off a three-month stint in Peru, torching coca-leaf fields so they’d never be processed into cocaine, and we were ready for an old-movie orgy. We didn’t usually eat junk, but for this special occasion, we gorged on the unhealthiest popcorn we could buy, even including black market liquid grease-butter. I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed a trip to the movies so much.

  In the movie, Arne Saknussem, world’s greatest adventurer, was the first to explore the secrets of Earth’s inner world; he leaves his initials marked in candle soot at different levels, so anyone coming afterward can follow his route. The arrows point out the path he took when the caverns branched off.

  I stared at the mark. A.S.—Arne Saknussen; A.S. . . . Arlene Sanders.

  My gut dropped to my boots. Arlene! Arlene was alive? It had to be . . . what other explanation was there? She was alive . . . and she was doing just what I was doing: going deeper into the station, hoping to find a radio or another living human, or maybe her old pal, Fly. She was drilling deeper into this hell, hoping to find a way out!

  There was no doubt in my mind: A.S. meant my bud was still alive . . . or at least, she’d been alive up to that point, alive and still herself. She must have survived the firefight that killed her platoon.

  All thoughts of self-destruction were wiped away in an instant. I felt supercharged. For the first time since stepping foot on this damned space rock, I was happy! I moved forward, military discipline reasserting itself, putting some breaks on the warrior who would still be needed for the killing time.

  Following the arrow led directly to an exit to a patio. I took it. As always when entering a new locale, I braced for a potential zombie attack or another encounter with the monsters. But now I had a new objective: to find Arlene—and for that, I had to find a new shotgun. Neither waited for me on the patio; something brand new was there instead.

  This one took the cake, and it was nobody’s birthday. Picture a perfectly round sphere floating in the air. No
strings attached here. A blue sphere, as pure a blue as a perfect spring day back home, with one extra touch: there was a face on this ball. I didn’t have very long to appreciate how butt-ugly the mug was because no sooner had I registered all this in the brain department than the sphere rushed me and smashed into my head before I could even twitch, bursting all over Yours Truly.

  I figured I’d had it. For a moment I couldn’t breathe with that weird glop all over me, running down the length of my body, reaching the floor so I could conveniently take a header, which I did. My first thought was poison! I could still breathe, though, once my mouth and nose cleared.

  With the first swallow, I felt something cold and invigorating rush through my body. Taking a deep breath, the air seemed cleaner and tasted better.

  Suddenly, I felt great. If this turned out to be a strange symptom of the alien poison, I could recommend it. Special Endorsements available from Flynn Taggart’s coffin . . . reasonable rates. Sitting up, I expected an attack of dizziness; but it never came. The liquid had mostly evaporated by now or maybe absorbed into my body.

  With another deep breath—which felt better than ever—I stood up. I hadn’t been poisoned—just the opposite, in fact. This crazy floating sphere had been good for me! It was perfectly reasonable to assume that any weird creature coming through one of the Gates would be bad, and worse, deadly to all things human. Discovering that lovely A.S. had been the most pleasant surprise of the day (yeah, I know day and night are pretty tricky concepts when you’re stranded on a space rock the size of an average-sized garbage dump); but the second piece of good news was how this blue sphere had just made me feel like a billion dollars.

  Now that I was feeling like a new man, I was more dedicated than ever to the proposition of finding Arlene and exiting the nuclear plant. Easier said; Arlene’s arrow pointed me to the blue sphere—but was that all? Maybe I should follow the arrow down the computer-room corridor, I thought, and forget the door leading to the patio. Then again, maybe she didn’t even see the hidden door, and I just stumbled through it, misreading her arrow.

  I returned to the computer room and headed in the direction of Arlene’s arrow. After twenty minutes of winding through the maze, I ended up right back at the arrow again! “Well, that was a real brainstorm,” I grumbled.

  I decided to leave a small mark of my own, a simple F, next to her initials whenever I found them. This would prevent my mistaking one mark for the next—and anyone else, Arlene or maybe the “Ron” twins, who came this way again would know he was not alone.

  I followed her mark again, this time picking a different route; and at last I made eye contact with some company, however unwelcome. One of the familiar brown monsters with the painful, white spikes was eating something, its back to me.

  Up to now I’d been spared seeing them eat. It sat on a table, hunched over, making hard, crunching noises. I caught a glimpse of something red in its jaws as it turned its head to the side; fortunately, it didn’t check its six.

  If I’d found another shotgun by now, I would have blasted the blasphemy from behind . . . but sometimes frustration is the father of fortune, for suddenly I heard a whole bunch of the bastards walking right past me—on the other side of the thin, computer-maze wall.

  If I had followed my gut instincts and shot the demonic son of a bitch, I would have been ambushed. Shaking from a retroactive adrenaline rush, I silently told myself that my objectives were to find Arlene and get the hell out of here, off Phobos, and find a radio somewhere!

  Then a thought hit me like a ton of slag. Arlene wouldn’t bother taking time in this hellhole to scribble her mark unless she had a damned good reason. Not just to point out the sphere—if she knew it was there, she’d have used it herself like a good soldier.

  The only logical conclusion was that the arrow pointed the way out of the nuclear plant—the way Arlene Sanders had already gone. Like Arne Saknussen, she marked her own trail for all who followed.

  So why hadn’t I found it? Same way Arlene missed the patio door: there had to be another hidden door nearby that I had missed.

  Third time’s the charm. The damned door couldn’t have been more than five feet from the one I had found. One good push and it was open, leading to a beautiful piece of straight, well-lit corridor that reached its end with a clean, massive metal door that had printed on it the welcome letters EXIT—obviously a holdover from the plant’s mundane days as a hangout for humans. Feeling bold and unstoppable, I walked right up to that door and discovered that it required a computer key card before it would bless the lonely traveler with an open sesame.

  Great. Now I could be miserable again.

  10

  Something I’d learned at age fourteen: when your mind is working, don’t give it a reason to stop. I’d reasoned it out this far, fitting pieces into place. Why should I be stopped by one minor impediment?

  When you welcome thoughts, they come. There had been something wrong about the sound of the crunching from the monster that was eating. At first I was certain it was chowing down on the remains of one of my comrades; but now I realized the sound was all wrong, too high, too sharp. And when I saw the color code on the EXIT door—bright red—I acted on my hunch.

  I didn’t want to run into any more of those monsters, so I took it nice and easy getting back to the one having its Happy Meal; with that troop trooping around somewhere, silence was definitely golden. My main concern was that he might be gone. I needn’t have worried.

  Now I know why God invented bayonets.

  The thing died gurgling without a scream, a roar, or a gunshot to call monsters from the vasty deep. I missed my chance to find out if I had another intellectual demon.

  Flipping it on its back, I saw something red in its mouth—a clear, red, plastic computer key card on which it had been chewing. Next to it was a pile of plastic cards, mangled beyond repair, small red and blue globs suggesting the remains of more key cards. Fortunately, the one I carefully fished out of its mouth was still in one piece.

  The red card worked; the exit door slid open, revealing an access ladder. I climbed down as quietly as I could . . . but I still hadn’t found a new shotgun.

  The toxin refinery; such a lovely name. The dump was another step down, in more ways than one. At first it seemed as though I’d entered a zone of peace and tranquility. Greeting me was a wide-open space lit by a sun lamp so bright that for a moment I thought I was back on Earth in the middle of a pleasant afternoon. The abundance of weird-looking machinery raised my suspicions, however; I could easily imagine monsters and zombies lurking behind equipment of that size.

  As I began to explore the area, I was grateful for the first sight of a barrel full of the toxic sludge. I’d certainly changed my mind about green slime! Now that I knew the stuff was as explosive as nitro, finding it was like coming across another weapon.

  I searched frantically for another mark by Arlene. I remembered another afternoon we spent at the rec-hall flicks. We watched one of those mad scientist movies, and the laboratory was stuffed with more switches and levers than humanly possible. The more I checked out the toxin refinery, the more it seemed like that make-believe lab.

  Not all the switches had to be activated by hand, either. I made that discovery when I walked past a green section of wall, the color of a ripe avocado. The immediate whirring sound had me spinning around and ready for action. But nothing was coming to get me this time. The motion detector I had just activated stimulated my memory. CNET used to show us training videos, and I remembered that Union Aerospace used movable architecture to transport the liquid metals extracted from Phobos ore.

  I watched the corridor behind me slowly shift out of sight; it sure beat the hell out of coming into a room and finding stone and metal that had grown scales or pulsing veins. No horror faces here! The bad part was that as the physical layout changed, the corridors would realign; the route in was no longer the route out.

  With so many hidden triggers, I never knew when I
was going to shift everything all over again. Stepping on a land mine would be a lot worse; but this situation was still unpredictable enough to be a major pain in the ass. I tried avoiding the sensor eyes, but they were too well hidden. Once a motion detector activated, I couldn’t undo it; I had to love it or lump it.

  When I tossed out the old religious baggage, I thought my superstitions had gone with it. Well, Phobos might not drag me back where the nuns wanted me, but it did reintroduce me to every superstition I ever had as a kid.

  So the first thought that leapt to mind when something cold brushed my face was Ghosts! Peripheral vision warned me something was definitely there; but when I turned to face it, all I saw was a blur.

  I was still debating when something big and fast knocked me on my ass. I still couldn’t see it, but I figured any ghost that can knock you down is a ghost you can return the favor to.

  Jesus and Mary, did I miss that shotgun now! The wide blast dispersion was tailor-made for shooting something you can’t see. But if the rifle was all I had, the rifle was what I’d use. I was a Marine, damn it—and every Marine is a rifleman first.

  Scrambling back from where I’d been attacked, I readied my Sig-Cow, aimed at nothing in particular, and waited for the first blurring of vision that meant either I was having a stroke or I’d found a new kind of monster.

  The wall in front of me went a little watery, like something insubstantial was in front of it. Without staring and losing it, I fired four quick taps.

  I expected to draw blood; I didn’t expect an explosion. The ghost screamed and seemed to collapse; I wasn’t sure. Then something hot and heavy pounded me from behind, and I finally tigged what had really happened: more damned fireballers! The first shot had missed me and killed my “ghost.”