by Mike Kraus
“One of you tell me how to get down there. I’ll distract them, try to get them to follow me and see if I can pick off a few of them.” If obtaining the thing needed to stop the nanobot swarm meant a sacrifice, Marcus reasoned that he should be the one to do it. When he didn’t hear a response, Marcus turned to see Rachel standing behind him, performing her own weapon check before she met his gaze.
“I lost Sam today, but I’m not going to lose you, too. Besides, I’ve got an idea.”
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
9:05 PM, April 11, 2038
Instead of smashing the chair over the man’s back as he had intended, Leonard barely managed to succeed in blocking the knife flashing toward him. The chair collided with the man’s hand, causing him to howl in pain as he dropped his blade to the floor. In the confusion, Leonard lost control of the chair and it skidded to the side and smashed on the wall, leaving both him and Nancy’s attacker unarmed.
In a flash of lightning, Leonard was able to get a good look at the man’s face, remembering the conversation he had overheard as he saw the bandage over the man’s eye. Dots instantly connected in his mind and he realized that this was the same man whose picture was on the driver’s license that Samuel had examined days ago.
The man snarled and ran at Leonard again, wrapping his arms around Leonard’s body and carrying both of them to the floor. Leonard punched the man in his side, causing the man to howl in pain. Leonard pushed Richard off of him and dove blindly through the room toward the doorway where he had heard the knife clatter. Another flash of lightning filled the room, showing a pair of boots standing before Leonard, who was only a few inches short of reaching the blade. One of the boots moved forward and stepped on the blade, kicking it back out the door and sent it tumbling down the stairs.
“It was you who deceived us!”
Samuel stood in the doorway wielding a mean-looking rifle that was aimed downward at Leonard’s head. Lying prone on the floor, Leonard slowly stood up and backed away carefully as Samuel advanced into the room. Behind him, Leonard could hear Richard wheezing on the floor. A soft groan came from near the window and Leonard looked behind him, relieved beyond measure to see that Nancy was alive. Her eyes were still closed, but Leonard had arrived quickly enough to keep her from dying at the hands of the madman. The question now, though, was whether or not he could save them once again.
“It was you! You brought this plague upon us! You deceived us!” Samuel continued his ranting, ignoring Richard and Nancy as he focused solely on Leonard.
No longer in the mood to play the part of a cowed and milquetoast captive, Leonard went on the offensive, shouting at Samuel even as he continued to shuffle backward. “What the hell are you going on about, you fool?”
Samuel’s eyes widened and he spread an arm out, gesturing out at the field where the villagers had assembled. “The army of Satan has arrived, brought here by you and your cohort, given entry into our village by none other than your hand. And you have the audacity to feign ignorance when the proof of your deception stands on our doorstep, preparing to wage an unholy war against us?”
Samuel narrowed his eyes and spit on the floor in front of Leonard. Leonard shook his head and shouted angrily at Samuel. “You’re an idiot! You kidnapped us, forced us to work here for you and now you blame us for something beyond anyone’s control?”
Screams echoed outside, drifting through the savage winds that beat against the structure. Distracted from Leonard’s tirade, Samuel glanced back out the window. Dozens of the creatures had poured through holes in the barricade and were attacking the villagers while the main body of the horde still waited outside the perimeter. Gunshots rang out as the villagers tried to form a line to fend off the attack, but for every creature that was wounded or killed, two villagers were eviscerated in its place.
With Samuel’s attention diverted, Richard made the first move, lunging toward Leonard as he screamed something incomprehensible. Leonard was ready for Richard this time and spun to the side, avoiding the crazed attack. As Richard passed by, Leonard kicked him as hard as he could in the abdomen, sending him crashing into the wall headfirst. There was a sickening crunch from the impact, and Richard lay still on the floor, moaning in pain.
Samuel didn’t seem to notice the brief scuffle as he stood in front of the window, his gun hanging loosely from a strap around his neck as he watched the devastation out in the field. The villagers were all but overwhelmed by the small number of creatures that had passed through the wall, and the few that remained were barricaded inside a nearby building. Firing valiantly at the creatures, the terrified men and women had a large stockpile of weapons to use against the creatures, but not nearly enough hands to make a strong show of force.
Leonard hurried to Nancy’s side and eased her into a sitting position, checking the bruises on her neck and head. “Are you okay?”
Nancy nodded slowly, wincing and holding her head as pain shot through her eyes to her temples and then to the back of her skull. Leonard pulled her to her feet and turned her around, facing Samuel once again. The cult leader’s eyes were wider than before and he held the rifle at waist level, swinging it wildly from side to side as he paced around the room, talking loudly more to himself than to Nancy and Leonard.
“The Day of Judgment may be at hand, but only you shall be found lacking! My flock shall rise evermore, no longer constrained by these earthly bonds!” Samuel stopped in the middle of the room, his legs and arms spread wide as his hair blew in the wind. “Your judgment is now at hand! And you shall be judged now, and for all eternity!”
Seeing that Samuel was starting to focus on them again, his rifle beginning to rise up and aim at them, something inside Leonard snapped. He blinked several times as a red mist descended over his vision, clouding both his sight and his mind. Only one thought was with him as he ran at Samuel, moving faster than he could have thought possible: Escape.
In Samuel’s delusional state, he failed to notice Leonard’s charge fast enough and he reacted slowly, pulling the gun up when Leonard was only a few feet away. Leonard grabbed the rifle and twisted it, sending it to the ground as he brought a fist up to connect with Samuel’s jaw. From Nancy’s perspective, Samuel was out cold on the ground in mere seconds. Leonard, on the other hand, experienced it in slow motion, hearing every visceral sound as Samuel’s teeth cracked under the strain of the punch, seeing every droplet of sweat and blood fall from Samuel’s face to the ground.
It took every ounce of strength for Leonard to stand his ground instead of kicking and beating Samuel’s unconscious form. Nancy’s voice came to him from the background, guiding him through the red mist and back to reality. “Leonard! We have to get out of here! Those things are coming!”
“The APC is downstairs. Let’s go!”
Leonard snapped around, trying to locate where the rifle had fallen when he attacked Samuel. Movement from the corner of his eye startled him and he turned to see Richard coming at him from the opposite side of the room. Hardly seeming to notice Nancy, Richard headed straight for Leonard, a broken chair leg held aloft like a dagger. With the rifle several feet away, Leonard braced himself for the impact, trying to determine how best to defend himself from the incoming assault.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden
9:29 PM, April 11, 2038
“This is suicide.”
David was standing in front of the laboratory door, blocking Marcus and Rachel from exiting. He could barely believe what he was hearing from the pair, much less willingly go along with Rachel’s off-the-wall plan.
“If you don’t get out of our way, we’re all going to die anyway. Just stay here and activate Bertha once we get down there.”
Rachel’s plan was, admittedly, extremely risky. But despite his protests, David realized that it was their only chance. In the bowels of the laboratory complex, several floors below the room where Bertha sat, an emergency generator system was in place. Isolated from the main power network and equipped wit
h enough fuel to run the entire building for three months, it had more than enough power to charge the electromagnetic pulse generator in moments instead of hours.
Because of the generator’s isolation—for both security and practical reasons—it couldn’t be activated remotely. David had all but forgotten about it once he discovered that he was trapped in his lab, and instead chose to focus on eking power out from various experimental power systems scattered through the complex. It wasn’t much power, but it had allowed him to charge Bertha for the pulse that had destroyed Mr. Doe’s nanobots.
Once Rachel reminded him of the generators, David’s mind instantly cycled through all of the possible ways the activation could go wrong. The generators could have been destroyed by the original release of nanobots, Mr. Doe’s creatures could have disabled them or the power cabling running from the generators to the building could have been damaged. Rachel was right, though, and David knew it. The creatures would be through to the EMP testing chamber soon enough. Unlike the mutated beasts on the surface, controlled by the advanced AI of the nanobot swarm, these were most likely directly controlled by Mr. Doe. As such, they were acting on commands from him, and if he had decided that brute force was the best way to accomplish his objective, there was no way around it.
David sighed heavily and dropped his hands. “Fine. You’re right. Just be safe, both of you.”
Rachel gave David a quick hug before she exited the laboratory behind Marcus. “Keep an eye out. We might be running back in a hurry if these things decide to go after us.”
“Don’t worry, I have plenty to do here. As soon as I see the power come back on and Bertha is charged, I’ll trigger a multidirectional burst. It won’t be as powerful as the one before, but it should knock out everything in the building seeing as we’ve lost the EMP shielding due to the collapse of so many floors.
“I’ll probably lose my systems in here when I trigger the blast, but if I can finish isolating the satellite signal before that, we’ll finally be one step ahead of Doe.”
With the generators on her mind, Rachel didn’t bother to question David’s hasty explanation. She crept out through the door to meet Marcus who was waiting for her in the hall. Glancing around, he whispered to her, hoping that none of the creatures were lurking in wait yet again. “So, where to, captain?”
“Fastest way’s going to be through there.” Rachel pointed through the pile of debris that she and Marcus had shifted out of the way, down the dark corridor away from the stairwell they had traveled through earlier.
“Great. More dark hallways. You know what, I think I’m starting to miss the surface. At least up there, the muties aren’t being controlled by some megalomaniac. Plus, the sun actually shines once in a while.”
Rachel snorted and grinned at Marcus, then took off down the hall, climbing quickly over the debris pile. She kept her flashlight on its lowest setting and used it sparingly, stopping every twenty steps to shine it down the hallway to check on their position. It had been a long time since she had personally been in the generator room, but she was glad that she at least had a general idea of where it was. Only the senior members of the laboratory complex were given the precise location and activation steps for the generator room. Like the digital door signs, it was yet another piece of the complex and seemingly odd security puzzle put together by the higher-ups.
Though it was true that Mr. Doe would have knowledge of the backup power generators, Rachel theorized that he would be so intent on destroying Bertha itself that he would forget about them. Even if he had divided up the pack of creatures and sent half to the generator room, there were enough individual generators present that it would take half a dozen creatures a long time to tear them all down. Two versus six with only a pistol and rifle weren’t very good odds, but Rachel liked them better than facing all twelve creatures at once.
Moving along behind Rachel, Marcus silently cursed himself yet again for losing his rifle in the earlier scuffle. While the firepower in his pistol was enough to bring down a normal person, a rifle had a distinct advantage with its superior penetrating power. He had already passed Rachel his extra magazines, but even with additional ammunition, she would only be able to put out so many bullets with just one gun.
Beyond David’s laboratory, down the corridor, evidence of more destruction continued to grow. In whispered tones, Rachel explained to Marcus that the central holding chamber for the nanobot swarms was located nearby, and the damage in the local area was more than likely caused when they broke free.
“Why didn’t they do this to the rest of the building? Why just here and the top floors?” The pattern of destruction didn’t make all that much sense to Marcus.
The ever-present response came once again, though this time it had none of the usual exasperation that Rachel felt when Marcus had previously asked her questions that she didn’t know the answers to. “I don’t know. “ Unbidden, she continued. “Of course, if I were to guess, I’d say that it was the AI on either a personal vendetta or just as part of its destructive routine. You’ve seen how peculiar the swarms have been.”
“I’ll just be glad if we get to the generators and find them intact.”
“Well,” Rachel explained, “Unless Doe’s little friends have gotten into the room, they should be fine. There was never an electronic record of the generators, so the original swarms wouldn’t have known to go looking for them.”
“Score one for paranoia.”
Marcus and Rachel walked in silence for several moments. The room holding Bertha was lower in the facility, so they heard nothing from the creatures that were trying to break in to it. By leading them to a stairwell at the far end of the facility, Rachel hoped to avoid the creatures that were near the EMP holding area and get directly to the generators. Unfortunately, the collapse of an entire wall a few hundred feet before they reached the stairwell derailed that particular idea.
Stuck in a dead end, Rachel paced back and forth in the hall, trying to think of an alternate route. While she mumbled to herself as she was absorbed in her thoughts, Marcus examined a series of steel door outlines on the wall. In the dim light, it took him a moment to realize that the doors were actually elevators. Excited, he pulled out a knife from his backpack and jammed it in to the crack on the doors. Using the blade as a lever, he slowly pried the doors open, using his fingers and then his hands once he had separated the doors with the knife.
Wherever the elevator was, it wasn’t at the floor with Marcus and Rachel. The dark shaft seemed to extend into infinity as Marcus cautiously peered up and then down, looking for any signs of light from either the creatures or another source. After seeing nothing, he whispered for Rachel to come over and look at the elevator shaft. She hurried over and grinned at the sight, shining her flashlight inside the empty vertical passage.
Now that the shaft was illuminated, Marcus could see a ladder extending the full length of it, barely an arm’s reach away from the entrance. The ladder was narrow and the rungs small, as it was intended as a maintenance and emergency solution, not a regular method of travel. Without hesitation, Rachel crossed in front of Marcus and grabbed the side of the ladder, swinging her legs over to the rungs. With her rifle slung over her shoulder, she began to descend the ladder, looking up at Marcus.
“Well, let’s go!”
Marcus reached out and took hold of the ladder, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as he tried to block the image of the deep elevator shaft from his mind. While he wasn’t afraid of heights, he didn’t enjoy them either, particularly ones that involved dangling from a shamefully small ladder over a dark, bottomless pit. Psst! Marcus hissed, getting Rachel’s attention. She was already twenty feet down the shaft, moving quickly down the ladder like it was a part of her everyday routine. Rachel looked up at him, stopping momentarily.
“Can’t you throw one of those EL lights down the shaft so we can see the bottom?”
Rachel shook her head. “No way. We’re making enough racket as it is.
We don’t need to advertise our presence to those things with a flashing neon sign!”
Rachel immediately resumed her descent, leaving Marcus clinging to the ladder at the open elevator door. Groaning, he began to make his way down, holding on to each subsequent rung with an iron grip. Moments later, he heard Rachel give off a loud grunt along with the sound of metal clanging upon metal. Unsure what had happened, he quickened his pace, hurrying down to where the sound originated from.
At the bottom of the elevator shaft, Marcus climbed off the ladder and looked around, drawing his pistol once he realized that Rachel wasn’t with him. A faint glow illuminated the bottom area, indicating that she was somewhere close by, but he couldn’t tell where the glow originated from. The bottom of the shaft held no visible exits, though he had passed by several closed doors on his way down.
“Rachel?” Marcus called out timidly, not wanting to be heard by the pack of creatures. Silence was his only answer. He stood with his gun at the ready for a moment before letting it sag. Shaking his head, he kicked the wall in frustration. “Great. Now what?”