by S. A. Lusher
As it came near Seth, he again dove forward, towards it. It made a half-hearted swipe for him but missed as he dove past it. Perfect. Unfortunately, now it was coming right for him. Eric emptied the SMG he'd been given and listened to the hollow, listless click-click-click of an empty gun. He turned and began running. The creature let loose another marrow-freezing roar and came after him. However, before its thudding footfalls could progress very far, Eric heard a grunt of effort from Seth, followed by another, shorter sound of anger.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that Seth had leaped onto the thing's back! He had one bulky arm wrapped around its neck and, as Eric watched, his other arm came up, hand holding something small and dark that he quickly forced into the beast's wide, grinning gullet. As Seth let go and began running the other direction, with a resounding cry of 'Run!', Eric realized what it must have been: a grenade.
He turned and began running.
A few scant seconds later there was a tremendous explosion and a great blast of light. Eric stopped running and turned to see if it had worked. It took him a second to fully comprehend what he was looking at, but then he realized yes, it had worked. The creature was still standing, muscles frozen briefly in death, but its head and some of its chest was gone. Or rather, not gone, but sprayed across the walls, ceiling and floor in a wretched display of black gore. Then the creature fell forward, toppled like a tree, hitting the deckplates with a meaty thud. As it did so, Seth came into view, standing at the opposite end of the corridor.
“Holy shit,” Eric said after a long moment of the two simply staring at each other. “That was incredible.”
“Don't need to tell me,” Seth replied, then let out a laugh.
Eric joined in. The two of them began walking towards each other, laughing the crazed laugh of those who have just narrowly avoided being utterly, brutally murdered by a hair's breadth. It was the kind of ecstatic elation that came from simple survival. Eric had experienced it often enough, as he imagined Seth had.
They met in the center, near the creature's corpse.
“It's so fucking good to see you, man,” Seth said as he stopped laughing and fed some more ammunition into the huge machine gun he was holding.
“You too. What happened to you?” Eric replied.
“We shouldn't chat out here in the open. Come on, there's a storage room nearby where we can hide out for a bit. I've got good news and bad news. Well, no, just bad news,” Seth said. “But finding you has been pretty great.”
He passed Eric a few magazines for the SMG he'd given him earlier, then turned and began walking at a brisk pace down the corridor they were in. Eric tried to figure out where they were in the installation, as he had no idea how far he'd been dragged, but it all looked the same to him. The notion that he had been handled while unconscious slithered eerily into his conscious thoughts and he shuddered from it. Those creatures could have done anything to him and he'd have been utterly unable to defend himself.
He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter, that nothing bad had actually happened...relatively speaking, anyway. He was awake and aware and intact now. That's what counted. But the idea refused to leave his mind, at least for the time being. He hurried to keep up with Seth, who led him out of the main corridor and into a side alcove that granted access to a few rooms. Seth choose one door seemingly at random and opened it, then disappeared through it. He gave the all-clear and Eric hurried to join him.
“Okay,” Seth said, shutting and locking the door behind them. “Now we can talk.”
They had indeed come to a small storage room. Half of it was taken up by a crowd of differently shaped and sized crates, all made of the same, scuffed steel material, stacked haphazardly along the walls.
They both sat down heavily on crates.
“Marco's dead,” Eric said, wanting to get the worst of the news out of the way first. “So are Jensen and Amanda. And the Liberation is gone.”
Seth stared at him with wide eyes for a long moment. Then he let out a low, almost appreciative sounding whistle. “That may very well be the shittiest sentence I've heard in my entire life,” he said in amazement.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I know Ronnie is dead...is it really just you and me? What about...Autumn?” he asked, probably realizing the significance of that statement given Eric's relationship with her.
Eric shook his head. “I don't know. When Marco got separated from you, we retreated back to the ship. He thought you were dead. We were going to call for help. One of them got onto the bridge. It had already killed Jensen and it killed Marco right there. Autumn and I got separated as we ran from it and I led it back to the engine room. Or, well, that's where I ran. It followed. It fried itself on a conduit and sent the ship into meltdown. I got the hell out of there.”
“So that was that explosion I felt...how'd that thing get ahold of you?” Seth asked.
“My suit was damaged in the explosion. I was leaking oxygen. I managed to get into the airlock but then I passed out,” Eric answered.
“Shit...” Seth frowned, looking around the room, as though lost in thought.
“What about you? How'd you find me?”
“Pure chance,” Seth replied. “After I got separated from Marco, I holed up for a bit. Happened to find a stash of weapons. This beast,” he raised the heavy machine gun, “packs quite a punch. But it's still not really enough to kill them. They're tough sons of bitches. I did manage to kill one of them, though. Lured it into a fuel storage room and blew it up. I was looking for you guys and I happened to come across you and that thing. So...we've killed three of them. The one I got, the one on the Liberation and the one out there just now.”
“Three...I wonder how many there are.”
“I wonder what they are,” Seth murmured.
They both sat there in silence once more for a bit longer. A thought occurred to Eric. “Why didn't you try to contact us? I called out to you over the radio.”
Seth reached up and tapped his temple. All at once, Eric realized that the man didn't have his helmet on. He blinked, shook his head. How could he have possibly missed that? “I lost my helmet, and my radio, in the first fight. Thing ripped it right off. Almost took my head along with it,” he explained, then uttered a short laugh.
“Fucking hell...what are these things?” Eric muttered again. His mind felt like a ship adrift at sea, thoughts drifting in and out.
“I have no idea but...you know, there's one thing that's really strange. When I first saw them, a word popped into my head. Totally unrelated to anything else. It was just...there. And now it's what I think of whenever I see one of them. I don't even know where the word comes from or where I even heard it before.”
“What word?” Eric asked, almost afraid to know.
“Bandersnatch.”
“Ugh...that is a creepy word.” Eric had kind of his own similar experience, though now whenever he saw them, he found himself thinking the word demon more than anything else. These things were like demons. Mad, grinning, psychopathic things that seemed to want nothing more than to cause harm, malicious, brutal harm.
But what was their purpose?
His experience had shown him that clearly they weren't killing simply for the sake of killing. They were doing something with the bodies. And how many bodies had he seen so far since coming here? Not a one. Tons of blood, sure, but even the arm he'd seen, (Amanda's severed arm), had been collected up by one of them.
So that begged the question, what were they doing with the bodies?
But all of this, at the moment, was academic. Now that he had his breath back and the terror had subsided, Eric had one goal at the moment.
“We need to find Autumn,” he said. “I'm not sure what the chances of her making it off the Liberation before it blew were, but...if she's alive, we need to find her. Or, rather, I need to find her.” He stood up.
“Wait,” Seth said, standing as well. “I have to tell you something. I'm so very glad that
it was you I came across, because right now, you're our only hope. When I was scavenging for weapons, I came across a terminal warning me that the station's thermal units are going to go offline if they aren't repaired. Which, I imagine, would be very, very bad.”
Eric sighed. “Yes, the thermal units are presently the only thing keeping the damn near absolute zero temp outside the station's outer walls at bay. If they go offline, we'll freeze to death inside of an hour,” he replied. “Shit.”
“So can you fix them?” Seth asked.
“Well, I sure as shit hope so. It depends on the level of damage but I should be able to fix them and keep us from freezing to death,” Eric replied. “First we make the repair, then we find Autumn. Speaking of which...” he activated his radio. “Autumn, can you hear me? Are you there?” Nothing. Dead silence. “Autumn?” Still nothing. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“We'll find her,” Seth said.
“All right...come on. We need to find a map of this place. I don't know where we are and I'm not sure how to get to the thermal units, anyway.”
“I saw a terminal not too far from here, come on.”
Reluctantly, they left the temporary sanctuary offered by the storage room and headed back out into the complex of corridors that awaited them. Eric knew though that it was, at best, a brief reprieve from the horrors around them. Even without the lit fuse of the failing thermal units, how long could they hope to hide from the creatures?
It didn't take very long to track down the terminal. Seth led him right to it. It was tucked into another side alcove, in between a pair of doors. Seth watched his back while Eric booted up the terminal and tracked down the holographic map. It at least didn't take too long to figure out where they were, where the thermal units were and the fastest way to get to them. Unfortunately, they had no idea what was between them.
“Come on,” he said after memorizing the route and having Seth do the same. “We should really get moving. We've got a small window to work with.”
“I've got your back,” Seth replied.
They set off.
CHAPTER 06
–Heat–
Eric tried to control his breathing as he and Seth waited out another one of the creatures.
They'd decided that the things that Seth had named Bandersnatches (and Eric thought of as demons), should be avoided at all costs. They were just too dangerous, too hard to kill and they didn't have the resources to deal with every creature they ran into. Not to mention that three, possibly four, of their seven-person squad was down already and they were hardly two hours into this mission. Not that Eric was sure it was even a mission any longer. He more thought of it like a fight for survival. The situation was pretty fucked.
With no ship, no communications and dwindling resources, it was looking grim. They'd done an inventory check before leaving and between the two of them, they each had a pistol, the ammunition of which had been salvaged for Eric's SMG, which only had one full magazine in it and another two spares. Not that that mattered too much, given how piss-poor the bullets did against the creatures. Seth's heavy machine gun had more powerful bullets that seemed to have a bit more stopping power, but he only had a full magazine and one more in reserve. Between the two of them, they just had a single grenade and one medkit.
Things were not looking up.
“Okay,” Seth said softly, “I think it's gone.”
They'd made it perhaps halfway to the thermal units before running into another one of the creatures. Not that they had actually seen it. The second they heard it snuffling around somewhere further on down the corridor, they'd ducked into a side bathroom to wait it out, hoping and praying that the thing would wander on.
It had moved closer at first, then began to leave.
As they prepared to move on, Eric felt fear slither icily through him. He didn't want to go back out into the corridors...almost. He was slowly getting used to this situation and his desire to face the situation head on, to whatever end it might go, was settling back into place. It was a weird feeling that creeped him out. Here he was, back to wondering about his own mental health, his own state of mind. How long had he been adrift? Not just in the way he lived his life but in his own mind? Thoughts and emotions seemed fickle things, sailing out of the darkness into a brief, mental clarity and then sailing away once more.
Eric knew he needed to focus, and it was easier this time around. Someone else was with him and someone else might be out there, surviving. He had people to cling to, people that would need his help and that would offer help. He had missed the idea of pure, mutual survival. Nothing mattered anymore except for staying alive.
Seth led the way out of their temporary sanctuary and gave the all clear. Eric followed him out into the corridor beyond. For the next few moments, they simply navigated the hallways, sticking to the sides, preparing to duck into any conveniently placed door at a seconds' notice. So far, Eric felt like they had survived off of pure luck. The creatures were good at sneaking up on you and it had been blind, random happenstance so far that they'd managed to hear them breathing or the scrap of a claw against metal.
As they hurried on, Eric found himself wondering more about where the creatures came from. He'd narrowed it down to just two possibilities. They might have been discovered here, which seemed unlikely, given the fact that there was no mining going on, at least as far as he knew. It was possible, he supposed, that someone had been out exploring the asteroid and had found some kind of alien facility, probably underground.
But...that just didn't feel right.
Of course, nothing about this situation felt right and he was just guessing in the dark. It seemed more likely that they had been brought here. But where did they come from originally? They seemed too vicious to be naturally occurring. On the other hand, he'd encountered some pretty nasty creatures in his life on alien planets. Could they be a human experiment? Some kind of shock troopers? According to the rumors he'd picked up in the military, it wouldn't be the first time humanity had tried something like that.
Ultimately, speculation was just that, speculation. Guessing. Would it help him to know where they had come from? Maybe, but unlikely. No, he just needed to get the thermal units back online, find Autumn and find either a ship in one of the hangars or a way to call for help. Originally, his worst case scenario plan that had begun forming had been just to walk away from the facility after stocking up on oxygen and wait it out. But that was before he'd discovered that, apparently, these things weren't bothered by a lack of atmosphere.
How else had they gotten onto the Liberation?
It was completely sealed off from the facility. It was impossible to get into without first going outside and exposing yourself to damn near absolute zero. Since he couldn't see these things putting on space suits, it was obvious that they were fine out there, as impossible at that seemed. So that just left him with finding a way to leave the surface of the asteroid and waiting for help, because there was no way he could take on all these things by himself, or even with the help of Autumn and Seth. It was an impossible task.
But as for escape, well, even a simple jump ship would suffice for that.
They just had to find one.
But that seemed like a stretch in this godforsaken hellhole. Survival alone seemed like too much to ask for. If anything, Eric just hoped that if he died, it would be quick. He came out of his thoughts as they heard a distant growl. They both froze, preparing to hide, but it sounded far away, perhaps coming to them through the vents. They kept walking, turning a corner and coming to the entrance to the bay that housed the thermal units.
“Oh come on,” Seth groaned.
Eric sighed softly, studying the entryway. The double doors had been smashed by some kind of brute force, probably by one of the creatures. The numerical keypad next to them was dented and sparking. Even if it was fully functional, Eric doubted that the doors would have been physically capable of opening. He moved forward and studied their heavily dented surface, seein
g if there was some way to force them open.
“Well?” Seth asked after a moment. “Are we fucked?”
“No,” Eric replied, straightening back up. “Just inconvenienced. I saw a secondary entrance on the map, it's really close.”
“Great,” Seth muttered. “Well, at least we can check this off the list soon.”
Eric nodded, feeling paranoid. Not that he had any reason to feel anything but paranoid in a place like this. They began making their way around, down a series of side tunnels that would grant them access to an auxiliary entryway. More and more Eric was feeling like he'd been cast into a labyrinth, cursed to wander blood and oil stained, industrial corridors at the edge of time and space for the rest of his life.
His 'life' being measured in hours and minutes as opposed to decades and years.
Eric began wondering about what could have gone wrong with the thermal units as they navigated the side corridors. He'd done a lot of work with thermal equipment over his career and his first job right out of the military was to sign on a cargo ship that made runs way out there along the Far Reach and that ship had been pretty rundown. Its thermal units were always breaking down and many times Eric had been all that stood between the entire crew and certain death. He'd learned a lot about them those six months out there on the Reach.
“Here it is,” he said, approaching the door they were looking for.
As he reached for the open button, absolute terror shot through him when he heard a sharp grunt from farther down the corridor.
Both men turned and stared as one of the creatures stepped out into view at the end of the corridor they were standing in.
“Shoot it!” Seth roared.