Looking away again he sighed lightly, who was he kidding, none of them would be safe if that was what was waiting for them in there.
“Going into that city is suicide” Seth stated to Axel that night while they were on watch. He had waited until everyone else was asleep so as not to agitate any fears or worries already there in his mind, but he had to say it to someone. In their army days, Seth had overseen their platoon as a lieutenant, while Axel had been one of his sergeants below him.
Axel nodded slowly in agreement “I know it is, but we’re not going to rush in like we do the factories where we know what we are dealing with. We just have to treat these guys like we did in the army, everything happens to the strategy, if not, we pull out and no one plays hero.”
Seth Pyper shook his head a little, sure this was something that they would have been told to handle back in the day. But they would have had a platoon of just under fifty people to do this, they would have split into teams and kept the intel going. This time they had seven people, one dog and no coms. It made him nervous to think how they would be able to pull such a thing off.
But by the morning, after spending most of the night studying the map where the sub-terrain towns were, and estimating where that alien building was, he had a full plan in his mind which he was more than ready to communicate to Oliver who was still the unspoken leader after Katya had been lost.
“Right, I say we get to this first safe town; Laelia can lay low there with Turi. On a scouting mission, it seems illogical to take a child and a dog with us.” Seth explained, talking more in one time than he ever had before. “Then I say we stick together to scout around outside, myself and Kit staying back to cover from a distance before we even consider going inside that thing. There might be people in there, sure, but there’s got to be something else in there and just running in would be completely insane.”
Oliver blinked at Seth, the man was hardly recognisable in those moments compared to the one they had got out of the factory in Sheffield. He had a stubbled beard now after a few days’ growth and, his hair was a little long, flopped over his left eye, while the shaved side was as short as his beard. He looked at Oliver with purpose; considering he hadn’t talked to any of them like he had been willing to talk to Katya, he was doing surprisingly well.
Oliver wondered if, like himself, Seth had convinced himself that Katya wasn’t lost.
Bringing himself back to reality as Seth stood in waiting for a response, Oliver nodded lightly. “Good idea, though, I think Zen should wait with Laelia. Leaving a child alone seems cruel, you know, in case it doesn’t go well.” He couldn’t imagine being alone in this world now as an adult, let alone as a child who was still scared and dependant, too scared to let Zen out of her sight after he had become a substitute father to her.
Reluctantly, Seth knew the guy was right. Even though it would reduce their numbers to five, it wouldn’t be right to leave Laelia on her own in case they didn’t come back from where they were going.
Over their travels, they could hardly say that they had collected enough weapons to be ready for something like this. Kit had upgraded his crossbow with a lighter and more powered one that they had found in a hunting shop, while Seth had looted as many bullets he could for a sniper. It was heavy on his back, but taking on this kind of mission now, he was incredibly glad he had taken them. Most guns they had found were useless, looted when the invasion had started and wasted against armour the bullets couldn’t pierce.
Seth was a damn good sniper, or at least he had been. He would be able to take accurate shots, at the very least to maim the Nerushi and Hiko so that someone could kill it easier. He just hoped he hadn’t lost any of those skills over time, he was a good six months out of practice.
To get to the first entrance though, they had to make their way reasonably close to the building, with largest building having been decimated in the fight, it seemed to loom over the city with threatening nature. The first entrance was inside a church near the Zoo, the building a little crumbled but not so much that it had blocked off the safety.
With Zen, Laelia, and Turi safe underground, those left set off towards the centre of London where the building stood. There were many Nerushi and Hiko wandering around, thankfully patrolling in pairs, so the group were able to take them out when they were out wandering the streets.
By the time they had cleared the streets, they were all exhausted. They had circled the building and cleared many streets away from it as well. Leaning against a wall, with her eyes on the building, Leonora pulled an energy bar out of her backpack.
“We have to check it out today, if that is a central hub, leaving it until tomorrow would just let more of them come in from outside areas,” She said to the others, very aware that there was a ripple of exhaustion among them. Leonora knew Axel and Seth could push through, but Oliver and Kit had not been trained for extremes. Sure, they had kept up good stamina since this started, but they also didn’t have to fight this many in one hit.
Oliver brushed his hair out of his face as he gulped down a bottle of water. “Yeah…” He agreed lightly, glancing over at Kit. Prior to all of this, Kit had been a simple farm boy, so his stamina was pretty good, but having to move as quick and stealthily as they had been, was not one of his strengths. “We’ll go in after we’ve caught our breath.”
Moving over to Kit, Oliver looked up at him with a cheeky smile “You still hanging in there, big guy?”
“Well excuse me for not being as agile as you” Kit mumbled back with a small smile pulling on the edge of his lips. The air between them was oddly tense though, as though something was begging to be said but there was too much fear of what was about to happen for either to allow those words free.
Instead, Oliver simply laughed and used his finger to poke the man’s nose before turning to the others and taking a deep inhale. “Ok, I’m ready for this.”
They all were.
“Right, we stick together like before, no splitting up and we can take on what we find. Dose yourself in this, hopefully, it’ll give us more chance of hiding without being caught.” Axel held out canisters of oil he had been collecting from the beat-up cars in the road while they rested. “And leave anything that could cause a fire behind” he added with a laugh as Seth stowed his sniper under an upside-down car.
Pulling the lower face masks up over their mouth and nose to protect them slightly from the petrol, Oliver screwed his eyes and mouth shut as he poured the oil and petrol over himself, feeling it soak through his hair and his clothes and even cling to the hairs on his skin.
“Dear, god, that stinks” He gasped out, coughing a little at the intensity of the smell even through the mask.
“You’ll get used to it” Axel chuckled slightly as he followed suit.
Once they were all doused in it, uncomfortable but hopefully less of a target they made their move into the entrance of the building.
It was the same style that they were used to in the factories, yellow-hued lights making it at least reasonable to see in. Black and metallic colour seemed to engulf them as the door closed behind them. Through the first corridor, they came to a large opening with a spiralling slope winding up the entire height of the building. From inside and with the darkness of the walls and roof, it looked like it went on forever.
Noises from a door on the ground floor caught Seth’s attention and he motioned for them to stay focused and follow him. Moving to the first door he glanced around, counting that there were four doors on this floor and the corridor they had come from.
They all adjusted their grips on their weapons before the raven-haired soldier opened the door.
There was only one Nerushi inside it, it hadn’t heard the door and it seemed slow on the uptake of what smell had wafted into its vicinity. Slow enough that Seth had pounced forward and stuck his army knife straight into the side of its neck.
Oh, how far forward he had come since they had found him. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but every time he
gripped his blade, he still heard Katya’s encouragement to him that day with the nail gun. It was amazing how one person could help you so much without ever knowing it.
Each of the ground floors was filled with tanks of the pink liquid, along with rows where, theoretically, the Nerushi and Hiko could hook themselves up to the machines and refill their food needs. Knowing what was in their pink liquid now made Oliver’s stomach turn every time he saw one and he heard Kit gag a little from behind his own mask.
The next two floors up, they found nothing moving, just more of those canisters. Oliver had been partially right at least, this was certainly storage; though as they looked at the number of canisters within the eight rooms, it dawned on them just how many humans had been liquified and harvested to fill them.
“They really are here to farm the whole lot of us, aren’t they?” Leonora sighed softly after the last of the rooms, glancing up to the floor above with a deep frown on her face. “Come on, this is our planet and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to fight for it!” She hissed.
Nodding, Seth led the way to press forward.
The third floor held the humans, they could hear them when they pressed their ears to the doors. So, did the fourth floor. Three rooms apiece. Anyone taken from the areas of London must have been brought and stuffed into this place.
Axel caught Oliver’s hand as it reached out to the door and shook his head. “We can’t yet Oliver, we gotta check upstairs and make sure the whole place is clear before we try and get these guys out.”
Oliver sighed but lowered his arm and motioned for Seth to continue. Squinting at the ceiling, they seemed to be reaching the top… possibly three more floors left? The fifth floor had two rooms either side, both emitting the sound of clanking and hissing as Seth and Oliver checked inside by listening to the doors.
Industrial scale extractors.
“Holy…” Axel cursed.
“These bloody monsters!” Leonora hissed while Oliver and Kit moved down the lines of people quickly checking their backs to see whether they were going to be able to be saved, and to check if they were even still alive. Unlike the sights they had already seen, these rooms had four rows of ten people hooked up to the extractor machines.
“We need to hurry, this many people… I mean…” Kit stuttered out with pure concern and morose on his face.
“Let’s move then” Seth confirmed, heading back out of the second room and heading up to the next floor where they were met with more clanks and more hisses. “You’ve got to be kidding me” Seth muttered at the first door, there was another floor of those poor people on the machines?!
The minute he opened the door, he wished that was what this floor held. Instead, he found himself looking at an armoury of sorts. The machines were moving the naked versions of the Nerushi along in lines, placing, and moulding the armour to them in preparation for them to go out into the country.
Seth cursed.
Having opened the door, the five of them had been advertised to a whole room of Nerushi. There must have been close to a hundred. Seth had said he thought it would be a central hub, but he didn’t expect most to be only in one room. The Hiko must have been in the second room.
The Nerushi ran at them, jumped, leapt, and pounced towards the door as the humans backed out quickly.
“Use the door as a funnel and take them out as they exit! It’ll reduce the numbers!” Seth yelled out to the others as the first two Nerushi emerged from the door, turning on Seth and Oliver but being taken out quickly by Kit’s crossbow and Leonora’s knife.
Five humans against so many… all while trying to keep any of them reaching the door to the other side. Their only saving grace right now was what the Hiko couldn’t hear this, and the last thing any of them needed was for this many Hiko to join the fray.
Everything was in chaos. None of them could really tell if any of the others were still alive as they ducked and moved to try and avoid the Nerushi’s attacks. The relatively small corridor that circled the stairwell did give them the advantage that the Nerushi couldn’t completely surround them. But when there were so many legs, it was difficult to know which ones were already dead, which ones were cut and so which neck they needed to slice into.
Oliver honestly didn’t know how they were going to survive this; they had got into this without enough planning and were now in way over their heads. Through the mass of black armour, he saw the brown hair that was Kit fall to the floor. A yell was ripped from his throat as he began to fight in that particular direction, hoping to all hell that Kit had just fallen over.
Oliver couldn’t lose someone else.
He just couldn’t.
With the piling Nerushi on the floor, it was difficult to move, but Oliver persisted. It seemed that Seth, Axel and Leonora had moved back into the armoury room as the number of Nerushi where Oliver was had reduced in density and they certainly hadn’t killed that many in this ridiculous fight for their lives.
Reaching the male with long brown hair, Oliver sliced the back of the knees of the two Nerushi baring down on him and with a blade in both hands, he plunged them into the aliens’ necks as they buckled.
“Kit!” He yelped, dropping one of his blades and crouching down next to the tall male “Kit, come on, you better not be dead!”
His heart soared with relief as Kit groaned and looked up at him with a weak smile.
“I’m not dead, but they did cut my stomach pretty good.” He said, looking down at where his right hand pressed heavily on his stomach in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
Oliver cursed loudly and moved to get his backpack off his back for the first aid. Foolishly he placed his second blade down to do this. He was desperate not to lose another than he was careless, completely reckless.
After a split second, Kit glanced past him looking terrified “Olli, move!” with his good arm, Kit reached forward to sweep Oliver out of the way as a Nerushi draw back an arm and brought it forward to drive its weapon into whoever it could.
“NO!” Oliver yelled as he tumbled to the side and attempted to wheel around in time to act.
As he did, a sickeningly horrible smell drifted through the corridor in waves. He retched a little as he reached for his blade. The smell had disorientated the Nerushi. But as he looked up, it wasn’t the only one; three were advancing on him and Kit with their eyes narrowing in focus so as not to lose them in the smell.
“Olli…” Kit coughed “You need to go”
“Don’t be stupid!” Oliver snapped at him as he made to stand between the Nerushi and Kit Rosenthil.
Then, the Nerushi stopped and dropped one by one. They crumpled to the floor to reveal a mess of brown and red hair, a stupid grin, blue eyes, and a stiletto dagger dripping with blue blood.
“Hey boys, miss me?”
Chapter 17
“Katya!” Oliver couldn’t believe his eyes as his best friend moved over to him and threw her good arm around him, hugging him tight to her. It felt like they had been put back together as the one whole person they had always been, neither comfortable with a life without the other in it. “You’re alive” Oliver choked, tearing up a little as he held onto her so tight Katya could feel the pressure on her mostly healed ribs.
“Yeah, luckily.” She chuckled as she pulled back, noticing a look of complete guilt on Oliver’s face.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped looking… I should have…” He stuttered, stopping as Katya laughed gently.
“No, you did the right thing moving to keep helping people. I was out of action for three weeks, so it would have been dangerous and unfair to everyone that you’ve helped since then” Katya wasn’t just trying to comfort him, she was being completely honest. She could never have held it against him for keeping moving, not when he was moving to the same plan she had started.
“Oi! You really having a touching moment while these things outnumber us?!” The voice of Colt yelled to them as he came around the corridor and into sight. His brow
n eyes looked at them with judgement as a sound of annoyance left his lips.
“Oh, I’m so sorry your highness, forgive us poor people with our overwhelming emotions!” Katya shot sarcastically back to him before looking to Oliver and smiling again “Get Kit treated then get him out of here… we’ll be behind you.”
Oliver nodded. Though a large part of him wanted to know who this grouchy new male was, Kit was more important right now. Turning to Kit and reaching back for the first aid kit which the man had started to use to treat himself.
“Come on then, Jackass” Katya grumbled at Colt as she passed by him to make sure the corridor back to the sloped stairwell was clear for Oliver and Kit to move through. As the days had gone by, Katya had settled into a bickering friendship with Colt, she didn’t take anything he said seriously and that made him easier to deal with. If he wasn’t ever going to be cheerful, then she’d just give as good as she got.
Silence of the Apocalypse- Journey Home Page 14