by Colin Sims
“It’s a trap, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“Just stay behind me,” Alec said.
I felt an odd sensation tickle up my spine as I realized I wasn’t as afraid as I should have been. My heart was beating fast, sure, but not pounding like it had been for the past hour. It worried me, as if some part of me was now missing. Or maybe it was just the shock.
“They’ll be a few floors up if they’re waiting for us,” Christianson said. “One will drop below and we’ll be caught in the middle.”
Alec nodded, took another step forward, and told him, “We’re fish in a barrel down here.” He suddenly stopped. “I don’t like it.”
“You got an idea, Cap?” asked Christianson, keeping his eyes glued to the door.
Alec lowered his rifle. “Watch Michael,” he said and trotted over to the bunker. He stepped inside, picking his way through the bodies as he scanned the ceiling.
“I thought so,” he called back to us, re-emerging in the doorway. “Both of you, get in here.”
I ran into the bunker as Christianson followed. He was walking backwards, never letting his sights leave the stairwell. Once he was inside, Alec told him to take a look and pointed at the room’s upper left corner.
“If there’s one thing I can teach you,” Alec said, looking at me with a slight grin, “it’s that there’s always something you can do.”
There was a small ventilation duct with incredibly narrow slits about ten feet from the floor along the far wall. It was nestled in the corner and was barely visible.
Looking at Christianson, Alec said, “Give me a boost.”
The two stepped forward and Christianson laced his fingers together to hoist Alec high enough to get his hands on the vent.
“It’s armored to Hell,” Alec said, feeling around the edges with his fingertips. “But it’s wide enough.” He paused for a second, angling his head in appraisal. “Probably.”
He hopped back to the floor and looked at me for a moment before returning his attention to Christianson. “I’m thinking shape charges,” he said to him. “They’re going to be loud as shit, but I don’t see another way.”
“Roger that.” Christianson nodded and took a knee to swing his pack off his shoulders.
“Michael.” Alec looked at me. “Start dragging those bodies away from the door so we can close it.”
I stared at him for a second. The gory corpses made me want to vomit. “Me?” I asked.
“Yeah. You.”
I looked around the room. Bodies were everywhere. At least three or four of them were heaped on top of each other across the entrance’s threshold. I grabbed one of them by the ankles and pulled backwards, keeping my eyes closed. I tried to imagine I was doing anything other than what I was doing.
I dropped the legs after a few horrid seconds of dragging, but right as I did, Alec told me, “Not there, genius. Along the sides. We need to keep a clear path.”
“Why” I asked, grabbing the feet again.
“Listen,” he said. “These charges are going to be loud. And if Slicers are up there, they’ll come for us the instant we blow this vent.”
“Why don’t they just come now?” I asked, pulling the body sideways.
“They’re big fans of the surprise attack,” Christianson explained as he focused on wiring the explosives. “They don’t risk getting shot if they can avoid it.”
I grabbed another corpse and started dragging. I was still dying to know how Alec and his guys knew so much about these new aliens.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Alec was also dragging bodies. But in his case, it looked like he was stacking them like a step stool below the vent.
“Almost ready here, Cap,” Christianson said to him.
Alec looked back at me and grunted, “Michael, hurry up.”
“All set,” Christianson announced.
I dragged the last pair of legs to the sidewall and trotted over to the two of them.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Alec said, looking between me and Christianson. “We can’t close the door before the blast or we’ll blow our ears out. So—Christianson—you stand by the entrance and ram that thing shut after we detonate. You good with that?”
“I’m good.”
“And Michael—you’re going first. I’ll boost you up there and then you crawl. Don’t look back. Just crawl. And keep going no matter what happens, got it?”
I nodded, noticing that my heart was getting jacked again. Apparently my strange sense of calm from a few minutes ago wasn’t meant to last.
“Christianson—you’re next. I’ll boost you and then you pull me up.”
“Negative, Cap.” Christianson shook his head. “You follow your brother. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Alec smirked at him and said, “I’m not being a hero, I promise. I just don’t want to be the guy who has to pull your fat ass into the vent.”
Christianson grunted with a smirk of his own. “You’re the boss,” he said and handed Alec the detonator before running over to the bunker door.
Alec turned to me and asked if I understood what to do.
“Yeah,” I said, staring up at the vent. “I’m just not sure I can.”
“Look at me.” Alec grabbed my shoulder. “You have to move fast. When we blow the vent, that Slicer will be on us in a heartbeat.” He paused for a moment, noticing that I was visibly shaking, and then added, “Just breathe. And remember: What have I been telling you for the past five years?”
“That I suck?”
“No,” Alec said.
“Doubt Equals Dead,” I replied mechanically.
“That’s right.” He put his other hand on my shoulder. “You hesitate, you’re dead. You don’t believe in yourself, you’re dead. And this time, Christianson and I will be dead, too, so let’s try to avoid that.”
I nodded.
Alec took a second to nod back, as if agreeing with himself that I was ready. “Here we go,” he announced, looking to Christianson. “You good?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Christianson called back, taking a firm grip on the bunker door. His grenade launcher was still aimed toward the stairwell in case any Slicers arrived prematurely.
Alec yanked me to the corner of the wall under the vent.
“Make yourself into a ball and plug your ears,” he told me.
I noticed that he’d left a narrow space between the wall and his step-stool pile of bodies. We both crouched behind them. I brought my knees to my chin and plugged my ears as tightly as I could. I watched as Alec mouthed the words, “Ready on three, two …”
The blast was like a bolt of lightning straight into my heart. My whole body shuddered under the force of it, and for the second time that day, I could barely hear amid the constant ringing in my ears.
But I could hear enough to know we were in trouble. There was a sickening screech from the other room, and Alec yanked me to my feet. The whole bunker was clouded in dust. The next thing I knew, I was being hoisted up to the smoldering hole in the wall that used to be the vent. I grabbed the edge, burning my hands, and pulled myself into the air duct. There was barely enough room to move, but I managed to crawl forward on my elbows. I heard garbled shouts behind me, followed by a series of explosions. They shook the walls and scared me to death. For all I knew, the Slicer was already inside the bunker.
But I kept crawling. That’s what Alec had told me to do. I squirmed forward, trying to push with my feet as I paddled with my forearms. It hurt, and I could barely breathe. The tight metal tunnel was filled with smoke. Still, I inched forward, keeping my head down as I sipped air from along the bottom. It tasted like gunpowder.
I was at least ten feet deep when I propped myself up like I was doing a pushup and looked past my feet to see if anyone was behind me. For a second, the hole was empty, sending a jolt of panic through my spine, but then Alec’s head appeared as he pulled himself inside.
“Move!” he shouted, although I could barely hear him.
Several minutes went by and I was drenched in sweat. I could barely gain any traction with my arms, and it felt like I was slipping and sliding within a giant steam valve.
I stopped for half a second to try to catch my breath, but as soon as I did, Alec told me to keep going. I could hear his breath behind me, ragged and desperate.
“If there’s a turn ahead,” he rasped, “Turn left. I know where we’re going.”
For a second I thought, “How could he possibly know?” but four seconds later I bumped my head into another wall. Alec had his flashlight out, but with it bobbing around while he crawled, it was hard to see anything more than shifting shadows and grey metal.
“There’s a turn,” I called back, contorting my body around the curve. “Where are we going?”
“Just keep moving,” Alec grunted. He kept coughing and I paused. It sounded like he was going to hack up a lung. “You’ll know it when you see it,” he finally managed to say and pushed at my feet.
So I kept going forward. At least ten minutes passed before there was another cross-section—where Alec told me to go right—and just as I squeezed around the corner, I saw an ounce of light trickling down from a vertical shaft.
“There’s a way out,” I announced, crawling with renewed purpose.
Alec was still coughing as he said, “I know. It’ll take us to the sub-basement under the kitchens. There should be a ladder; you see it?”
I crawled forward a little more, twisting my head to look up the shaft. “Yeah,” I said. “There’s a grate about ten feet up. You want to go first?”
“Unless you want to be the one to make sure it’s clear—then yes.”
“I’ll keep crawling forward so you can get by,” I said.
I crawled forward another ten feet or so before I propped myself up to look at Alec behind me. All I could see were his feet as he stood upright in the ventilation shaft.
“What do you see?” I called back, but he didn’t answer. Instead, I saw his feet disappear as he started to climb.
It took me a second to recognize the significance of the tunnel being completely empty behind him.
“Where’s Christianson?” I shouted.
Alec responded with a “Shh!” so I squirmed backwards until I could flip over and look at him.
By the time I did, he had already climbed back down and was looking at me with a finger pressed to his lips. “I don’t see anything, but stay quiet,” he told me and reached down to pull me up.
Once I was back on my feet, he whispered, “The Slicers can blend in like lizards. You have to keep your eyes open, understand?”
“What happened to Christianson?” I asked again, keeping my voice hushed.
Alec glanced at me before looking up at the vent overhead. “He’s gone,” he said coldly. “But he killed the damned thing first.”
He started climbing the short ladder, keeping his rifle in one hand, pointed at the opening above.
I waited for a couple seconds in a daze, trying to picture what must have happened back in the bunker. I’d heard the shouts and the explosions, and now my imagination was filling in the gory details. It was crazy to think that Christianson was simply gone. He’d been alive and talking just a few minutes ago.
“Come on,” Alec whispered down to me. He was slowly pushing open the grate as I climbed the ladder below him. He peeked his head through the opening and swiveled his M4 around the room before crawling out completely. I climbed up to join him, kneeling in the middle of a small, cold room stacked with large crates of food. Most of them were filled with fruits and vegetables, but there were also a number of shelves of flatbread alongside some hardened wheels of cheese.
Alec swung his pack off his shoulders, wincing.
“You all right?” I asked, turning to look at him.
“It’s just a scratch,” he said, waving me off. “We need to stock up on supplies. The Deadlands aren’t an easy place to find food.”
I was barely listening. All I could do was stare at his shoulder. “Alec, that’s a lot of blood.”
He glanced at his arm. “It’s not mine,” he said. “Not most of it, anyway. Now, stop worrying about me and grab some of that bread.”
As I started to get up, he handed me his pack and added, “Get as much as you can fit. I’ll be damned if you survive all this shit only to starve to death.”
I nodded and headed over to the shelves. Alec stayed where he was, pointing his rifle at the door.
I shoved as much of the bread as I could into the pack before I asked, “What about water?”
“It’s scarce,” Alec said. “But it’s a hell of a lot easier to find than food. Grab some of the fruit, too. Bananas. You’ll be glad you did.”
So I did, and by the time I was through it took a serious effort to zip the pack shut. I’d taken a fair amount of food, in total, but it wasn’t a ton. The pack was fairly small and already had other supplies in it. Still, I figured it could last us a couple days.
“Let’s move out,” Alec said, getting slowly back to his feet and moving towards the door. “The entrance isn’t far from here.”
“What entrance?” I asked, putting the pack on my shoulders.
“A passage built in the Old World,” he answered. “We think it was military. We use it in Special Missions.”
“So it’s like an escape tunnel?” I asked.
Alec paused at the door, checking it for heat before grabbing the handle. “Well,” he said. “It is today.”
He pushed it open and we crept out. The hallway ahead was empty except for a pair of dead bodies. I could barely see them amid the red glow from the emergency lights.
“Remember,” Alec whispered to me, “They blend in. Keep your eyes open.”
I nodded as I fell into step behind him. He had his weapon raised, and I couldn’t help but occasionally glance at the holoscope to make sure there wasn’t any red.
We barely took twenty paces before all hell broke loose from somewhere above. Alec and I both paused as a wave of explosions pounded down through the earth and shook the walls. It sounded like whoever was above ground—which was still several stories up—was being carpet-bombed from the sky.
“What’s happening up there?” I asked.
Before Alec could answer, his radio crackled, “Comman—er Tripp! You —opy, over?”
He grabbed the radio. “I copy! Hanson, what’s going on?”
There was a second’s pause before the radio crackled again, “They’re ev—where! I’ve nev—! …. —We can’t hol—”
And the radio went dead.
“Hanson!” Alec shouted. “Hanson, you copy?”
Nothing but static came through the receiver. There were a few more explosions, but fewer than before. I looked at Alec. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked. “They’re all dead.”
Alec tried his radio again but was met with static. “Looks that way,” he said quietly. He was either dazed or just thinking. I couldn’t tell which.
“Doesn’t matter.” He wheeled toward me. “You stay focused and follow me. I’m getting you out of here.”
And with that, he continued to creep down the hall. There were several doors on each side, but he seemed to be looking for a specific one.
“Here we go,” he announced, turning to face a door to our right. “Through here.”
I kept quiet as I followed him through. I was doing my best to scan the walls and the ceilings for a camouflaged Slicer. The thought of one of them jumping down on us at any second kept my
heart beating at the steady pace of a machine gun. But Alec was with me. He’d spot it before it could attack.
We weaved our way through a series of rooms and halls until finally we were in what I assumed was some type of boiler room for the Capitol House. It must have been a hundred and twenty degrees in there and was full of steam from leaking valves.
“It’s a tight fit,” Alec told me, pointing to a gutter-sized grate behind one of the water heaters. “I’ll go first to scope it out, but keep an eye on that door.”
I nodded as he knelt down to pry open the grate. A few seconds later, he was squeezing feet first through the opening. I heard a soft splash as he dropped from view.
“It’s clear,” he called up to me through another fit of coughing. “Toss down the pack.”
I swung it off my shoulders and pushed it through the vent. I didn’t hear a splash, so I assumed Alec caught it. I got on my stomach and shimmied through the opening until I was hanging by my hands.
“It’s only a few feet,” Alec said. “Go ahead and drop.”
I did, and I landed in a couple inches of water. As I stood upright, I could barely see a thing. The only light in the tunnel was coming from the boiler room above us and Alec’s holoscope. I could just see his face lit up in soft blue as he looked at me.
“This way,” he said, turning away to lead us forward.
The next thing I knew I was shoved to the ground. There was a loud thump followed by an explosion. My brother had just fired his grenade launcher. I heard a deathly shriek from somewhere ahead of us, but it quickly fell silent as Alec emptied a full clip of Seekers into it.
A few seconds of reverberating silence passed before I said, “They’re down here …”
I heard the splash of Alec’s footsteps as he helped me up. He winced as I grabbed his arm. “Yeah. I saw,” he answered.
“We should go back up top,” I said quickly.
I didn’t want to stay in the tunnel a minute longer. Even if there was an army of Slicers above, it would be better to face them up there than die down here in the pitch black.
“Negative,” Alec said, loading a new grenade. “We’re a hundred percent dead if we go up there, but down here—my guess would be about eighty percent.”