After a moment, his vision was clear and he tossed the wipe away. He quickly recovered his pipe, then frowned at the bent nature of it. Before long, he'd have to find some other blunt object. He slid it back into his belt, turned and went over to the body holding his machete captive. As he knelt to retrieve it, wrapping his fingers around the bloody handle, Allan hesitated. This particular crewman wasn't wearing much, and as such, more of his skin was exposed. Something new was showing, something that made Allan's entire body go cold.
A rash of angry red welts had broken out across the man's back. Allan gently probed one of the welts with the tip of the machete and felt his gorge rise as it burst and viscus black liquid slowly oozed from the wound. He took an involuntary step back. His first instinct was that it was some kind of sickness. Is that what had been making everyone insane? What, exactly, had they been doing on this godforsaken plague ship, Allan wondered miserably.
If it was a sickness, it had obviously spread fast. Some kind of virus or disease...he didn't have any kind of knowledge on that sort of thing. Not even vague, general information. The only thing he could think of was how could it get into him? Touch, probably. He was in this suit, and none of the blood had gotten on him. Hell, he hadn't even had any kind of skin contact. So he was probably safe. Right? Hopefully...
Unless it was airborne.
Or...he remember swallowing that water in the infirmary. What if it had infected their water supply? What were the symptoms? Were there any? Allan realized that it didn't matter, because without information, he wouldn't figure out shit. He took off running, sprinting across the mess hall, prepared to go grab Fletcher, open the lockout to the bridge and find out exactly how fucked he was. As he stepped into the cold storage unit at the back of the mess hall, his radio abruptly crackled to life. Through a haze of static, he heard Fletcher.
“Gray...come get me, hurry! They're outside the door...I think they're trying to get in,” she whispered, sounding absolutely terrified.
“I'm coming, I'm almost there,” Allan replied.
“Hurry!”
Allan took in the cold storage bay as he passed through it, checking for anymore demented crewmen. Fridges and freezers lined the walls. Everything was covered with a smooth layer of ice and a thin gray fog clung to the environment, still on the air. There was nothing and no one waiting for him in there. Pushing through it, Allan hit the far door, opened it up, moved through a small antechamber and came to the living quarters section.
“They've found me! They're breaking down the door!” Fletcher cried.
He could hear pounding, but he wasn't sure where from. Letting out a short, frustrated huff, Allan took off in the likeliest direction.
“Is there any other way out?” he asked.
“No!”
“Just...hold on, I'm almost there!” he replied.
He raced through flickering, derelict corridors, passing several open and closed doors, trying to find the one Fletcher was hiding behind. It would at least be easy enough, considering there would be a mob of psychotics trying to break it down. Coming to the end of one corridor that terminated in a T junction, Allan hesitated, listening, then broke left. He pounded down another passageway, took a right turn, then stopped.
“ALLAN!”
He heard that both over his radio and from close proximity. He saw the back of a crewman entering one of the living quarters. Allan raced down the corridor, hearing Fletcher begin screaming. He reached the doorway, grabbed the nearest crewman by the back of his suit, pulled the machete back and rammed it forward through the man's throat. Not bothering to check and see if the man was actually dead, though he couldn't imagine him surviving, he ripped the blade out, yanked the body backwards and tossed it into the corridor.
He spied three or four more psychotic security personnel inside. He couldn't tell because they were all a tangle of thrashing of limbs as they converged on Fletcher, who, Allan realized with a sudden, stomach-freezing terror, wasn't wearing her suit of armor.
They managed to lock eyes once before one of the security personnel grabbed her head and gave a hard, vicious pull. The flesh around her neck ripped apart in a spray of blood. At the same time, another began the process of tearing her arm off. The other two began mercilessly pounding what remained of her body with their bare fists.
“Fletcher!” Allan shrieked.
Something broke in him, and suddenly, time seemed to come to him through a red-tinted haze in confusing flashes.
In one instant, he was bashing someone's head into a wall over and over again. Powerful hands grabbed him from behind as he watched the skull cave in, blood and brains spraying out from the wound he'd created.
Then he was bashing in a chest with his pipe, blood flying across his visor, his armor, other constantly shifting bodies.
In the next instant, he was on the ground, wrestling with someone, their face hovering above his faceplate, the face an expression of bloody fury.
Then he was squeezing someone's neck with his suit-enhanced strength, the neck collapsing within his hands, getting smaller and smaller.
Blood, so much blood, everywhere.
A flash of metal, bones crunching, a furious shriek.
Then he was sitting on the ground, his back to something, heart pounding, lungs heaving, his visor covered in viscera. Allan let out a low groan. His throat hurt, felt raw, and he had a bad headache. He tried to swallow, but found his mouth dry. As he stood up, he realized it wasn't just his throat that was sore, but his muscles as well.
Allan surveyed the room he was in.
For a second, he wasn't sure what had happened, he could only get flashes of violence. But then he remembered as his eyes fell on the five corpses. They were all horribly beaten, mangled and, in some cases, dismembered. His gaze paused as he spied what remained of Fletcher, and a sharp bolt of miserable guilt struck him. She had been trying to prove herself, just a scared tech looking to not go to jail because of political bullshit.
“Fletcher...” he moaned, then felt his stomach twitch.
Turning, groping for his visor control, he stumbled out of the room and just managed to get his visor open as he collapsed to his hands and knees in the corridor and vomited. He kept going for several seconds until he was dry-heaving, then pulled out a few of those wipes. After using one to wipe off his mouth, he hawked and spat several times, then closed his visor and washed it off with the rest. When he was finished, he spied his machete, half-in and half-out of the open doorway. He retrieved it, then realized his pipe was missing.
He spent five minutes looking for it, but never found it. Sighing, gripping his machete, Allan left the room, purposefully not looking at Fletcher, and went in search of the security center. Five miserable minutes later, he stood before the primary console, alone in the dim room. He quickly ran through the procedure, shutting down the lockout node. Once the process was finished, he took a minute to sit down in one of the chairs and pull out his portable medical kit. He was really starting to feel like crap. His whole body ached.
Lifting his visor, he popped a cocktail of pills into his mouth, a mixture of anti-virals, antibiotics and painkillers, and washed them down with all the water in his canteen. When that was finished, he closed his visor, replaced the medkit and canteen, and activated his radio.
“This is Gray to Duncan and Colin, what's your situation?” he asked.
“We're...ah...getting there,” Duncan replied after a moment.
“Fletcher's dead,” Allan said numbly.
A pause. “What happened?”
“The crew got her. How close are you?”
“Okay, to be honest, we got lost,” Colin chimed in.
Allan sighed. “Fucking wonderful. Do you have any idea where you currently are?”
“We're close to the medical wing, I think. Hold on...okay, we're just outside Storage Room 48-B,” Duncan replied.
Allan sighed. “Get in there. Stay put. I'm coming. Hunter, what about you?” A pause, then nothing
. “Hunter? Can you hear me?” Still nothing.
Allan felt his frustration and fear growing.
Without another word, he set off.
* * * * *
He found Duncan and Colin exactly where they said they'd be, in a squalid, poorly-lit storage bay, waiting sheepishly for him. Some distant part of Allan's mind noted that it was strange for these two to get lost. They were both Spec Ops veterans...how could they have gotten lost? But he was tired and in pain and his mind kept turning back to those red welts, to the idea of a virus that had been released...had he been exposed?
“Come on,” he said, leading them out of the storage bay and through the threshold into the medical wing. “There's something we should talk about.”
“What?” Duncan asked.
“I don't know if you've noticed, but there's red welts on the affected crew members' bodies. I'm thinking they were experimenting on some kind of virus or something and maybe it got out. The obvious implication here is that we're at risk,” Allan explained.
“I hadn't noticed...fucking fantastic,” Colin muttered.
“One more reason to get this job done,” Duncan replied. “How do you think it's transmitted?”
“I honestly don't know. I can only hope its not airborne or in the water. If it's in the blood maybe, then we should be fine, since we're in our suits,” Allan replied.
They spent the next several minutes navigating the medical wing. Allan found that his headache was growing worse, and he was extremely thirsty. He regretted draining his canteen and made a note to find more water, preferably some not from the general supply. All the while, he was trying to get hold of Hunter, who remained off the air.
The medical wing was wrecked more so than the rest of the ship seemed to be. They passed infirmaries that looked like they'd been subjected to brutal firefights, the walls dented and bloodied, tools and equipment scattered across the ground. The three of them found guns among the dead, but they were always ruined or broken somehow. Allan had the idea that perhaps all of the ammunition onboard had been expended, or maybe all the ammo actually within the guns themselves, and the crew had taken to using them as cudgels.
They managed to find the second security center without incident, and without hearing anything from Hunter. After a few moments, they had the second portion of the lockout lifted and were on their way to the third security center.
* * * * *
“Are you shitting me?” Colin groaned.
Allan stared at the welded shut door and considered his options. They'd had to bash, bludgeon and murder their way through close to a dozen more insane personnel on the way out of the medical deck and on their way to the oxygen plant.
And now this.
“Now what?” Duncan muttered. He didn't sound anything like his usual, cheery self. And, if anything, Colin had been even more frustrated and cranky than usual. As opposed to his hopes, Allan had only been getting angrier and more frightened as time went on. He had to really sit on the urge to start physically attacking the door.
“Ships have maintenance tunnels belowdecks,” Allan replied. “It'll be the most direct route and honestly, we need to be quick.”
“Why?” Duncan asked.
“Do you want to stay here?” Allan replied.
“Well what the fuck do you think!?” Duncan snapped.
Allan stopped, turned and looked at him.
“Sorry,” Duncan muttered. “It's just...”
“Yeah, I know. Come on.”
They hunted around for a few moments before locating a small maintenance room with a hatch in the floor. Allan went first, prying open the hatch and staring into the dim shaft below. After a moment of seeing nothing, he lowered himself into the hole and climbed down the ladder. Colin went next, followed by Duncan. The trio soon found themselves moving along a tight and narrow metal tunnel. Allan felt his pulse begin to drive harder and faster. He was leading the way now, machete in hand. He had yet to grab another weapon.
They'd made it roughly halfway through the tunnel when he heard something, a quiet mutter that sounded very near by. He stopped, swallowing, machete raised. Anyone could be down there with them. The tight maneuvering would make for some nasty, difficult combat. If only he could find a single working pistol...
He started moving again and found himself thinking of Hunter. Two of them were dead now, Smitty and Fletcher, not to mention the skeleton crew onboard the speed ship. Four of them against however many insane, demented crewmen were onboard, ready to rip their guts out or die trying. Possibly three...where was Hunter? Maybe she'd lost her radio, or maybe she was hurt and holed up somewhere, waiting, or maybe-
A massive, hulking figure suddenly stepped out in front of him and punched him, once but hard, in the chestplate, sending him stumbling backwards. He landed hard on his back, gasping, staring up at this immense menace standing over him. Only it was no longer interested in him but the man standing behind him.
Colin.
Before Allan could react, he realized that this titan was holding onto something. This one had learned. He held a short metal pole of some kind, what might have been a pipe, stained with blood. The crewman pulled the pipe back and with the overhanded gesture of someone throwing a spear, smashed the end of it directly into Colin's faceplate. The sound of shattering glass and screaming briefly filled the small corridor, followed by a wretched and immediate silence as, Allan imagined, Colin died. The crewman pulled the metal pole free.
Colin immediately collapsed to the floor.
Screaming, Allan surged to his feet and shoved the tip of the machete up into crewman's head, directly through his jaw, ramming it through the roof of his mouth and piercing his brain. The crewman's body vibrated violently, as though he was having a seizure, limbs twitching furiously, a horrible gurgling sound emitting from his ruined mouth. Allan tore the machete free and shoved the crewman back.
He fell bonelessly to the floor.
Allan and Duncan stood there for a moment longer, staring at both bodies, then just at Colin. Neither said anything for a long time. What was there to say? Another among them was dead. Allan thought he'd feel something more, a burst of emotion, something. But he just felt a hollow, sad loneliness. Finally, he stirred.
“Come on, we need to go,” he said.
Duncan looked like he wanted to say something, but apparently nothing came to mind. In the end, he followed Allan silently out of the maintenance tunnel.
* * * * *
Hunter wasn't at the final security center.
There was no sign of her anywhere around, and she still wasn't on the radio.
Allan sat before a workstation, bathed in a soft green and white glow, and watched the final lockdown protocol lift, granting him and Duncan access to the bridge. After a moment, Allan slowly stood. He felt like shit. His head was pounding, his throat dry, his muscles aching and now, on top of everything, he felt hot.
He turned up his air condition units in his suit another notch and turned to leave. “Come on, let's get this over with.”
Chapter 07
–Contamination–
The bridge.
They were finally at the bridge. Allan thought it was a little strange. He'd gotten used to getting to his goal only after a ridiculous amount of sidestepping and new problems and fuck-ups. Now, as far as he knew, he only had to open up a comm link, make the call and wait. Of course, he also had to determine whether or not he and Duncan were infected with an unknown virus, survive any and all remaining insane crewmen, find Hunter and last long enough to get picked up. That was, of course, providing that nothing else went wrong.
Allan decided to stop thinking about all this.
He and Duncan stood before the door that led to the bridge. They'd downed another four dementia-riddled crewmen on the way there. Duncan had hardly said two words to him since releasing the final portion of the lockdown. Allan wasn't feeling in that good a mood, either.
“You ready for this?” he asked, staring at the
terminal that would grant them access to the bridge once and for all.
Duncan shifted beside him. “As close as.”
“Good. Let's go.”
He still only had his machete and Duncan had grabbed a long, red wrench that made a particularly disgusting sound when it broke a human skull. Allan reached out and hit the access button. The door parted and split open. The bridge was revealed to them: a sparking, smoky wasteland of blood and death. A handful of crewmen waited for him: what remained of the bridge crew that presumably had been locked in when the lockdown activated. There were five of them, one of them wearing a black uniform trimmed with red.
The captain, Allan realized after a moment.
“Let's get this over with,” he said, raising his machete.
Duncan grunted a reply and raised his wrench.
Both parties rushed at each other simultaneously. Allan started off the party by bringing his machete around in a broad arc, burying the blade halfway into the nearest man's neck. The blade's edge was already getting dull, he noticed. In a spray of blood, he ripped the blade out, kicked the man back and turned his attention to the next psycho warrior headed his way. It turned out to be the captain. He was older, tall, with muscles that looked grafted on. He filled out his torn, bloodied uniform. Allan groaned internally, this wasn't going to be easy.
In an attempt to repeat his previous victory, Allan brought the blade around again, hoping to sever a jugular, but the captain brought up one meaty arm and stopped the blade cold. The machete reverberated in his hand as hit bone and bounced off. With a roar, the captain leaped onto him, causing him to drop the machete. Allan quickly found himself on his back, powerful hands around his neck, squeezing, cutting off his circulation. Panic ignited within him. He needed to end this. Distantly, he could hear Duncan shouting something furiously.
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