Necropolis 2

by S. A. Lusher

  “Here, we need to go here.” Campbell halted.

  Greg blinked and realized he'd been focused too much on his arm. He stopped and opened the door Campbell had indicated without comment. It led them to what struck Greg as an elevator lobby. There was a small bank of lift doors positioned along the back wall. Otherwise, the room was bare save for a few chairs.

  “What's this?” he asked.

  “The main elevators,” Campbell replied.

  “Why haven't we been using these?”

  “They aren't as...secure.”

  “So why are we using them now?”

  “We aren't. We're going to use the stairs.”

  Greg sighed, and shrugged. Whatever, it didn't matter. They crossed the lobby and opened a door tucked into the back of the room. A zombie lurched out at them. Greg put it down with a quick shot the skull and went pistol-first into the room beyond, which was small, cramped, deep, and empty. He walked across the small landing in the stairwell he'd come to and glanced up, then down. The stairs went up and down for several stories.

  “Down,” Campbell said helpfully.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Greg muttered unhappily.

  He walked down, his dark thoughts turning darker as he remembered Erebus' grating voice, calmly inquiring and explaining while he cut Greg's fucking arm off and attached a new, unfeeling, mechanical one. It would be a tool in the bastard's destruction. His mind wandered, briefly, and he thought about getting a new one. A regular arm. How much would it cost? How long was the procedure?

  Greg shoved the thoughts aside. He led them down three flights of stairs and opened the corresponding door. A similarly disheveled and wrecked lobby waited for them. A few more zombies milled around. Greg put them down with quick, proficient shots and crossed the room to the door set into the far wall.

  As the door opened, it revealed yet another length of corridor. How many miles of hallway had Greg traversed since he'd come to this wretched ship? He stepped out and looked around. As he began to call the all clear, a Creeper suddenly shrieked and leaped at him from where it had been hiding in a vent grate overhead.

  Greg was so startled he dropped the pistol. Everything seemed to slow down as he stared death in the face once more and, with nothing else to do, he thrust his metal hand out and caught the Creeper's neck in his grasp. The thing began shrieking and scrabbling to get loose. Greg squeezed and his fingers tore through the thing's neck. In a spurt of black blood and a twitch of the thing's entire body, the Creeper died.

  “Holy shit,” Billings whispered as he stepped out.

  “I guess it has some uses,” Greg grunted as he dropped the body.

  He wiped his hand off on his uniform, then knelt and retrieved his pistol.

  He glanced at Campbell. “How far are we from the armory?”

  “Just down the corridor,” Campbell replied, now staring at Greg's bloodstained hand.

  Greg turned away from them and continued to lead the way. They crossed the length of the corridor and came to the armory. Greg said a small prayer, hoped for the best and then opened the door. He found himself staring at an almost empty room.

  “Fantastic,” he mumbled.

  “Don't worry! Chances are the explosives were ignored,” Campbell reassured him.

  They entered the armory. Billings stood guard by the door while Greg, Kyra and Campbell hunted through the remains of the room. The walls were occupied by ranked rows of lockers, some of them slim gun lockers, others thicker armor lockers. They were broken up occasionally by benches. Greg pried open one of the larger lockers and found a bulletproof vest. He grabbed it and slipped it on, feeling a little bit better.

  While Campbell hunted for the bombs, Greg and Kyra looked for an upgraded arsenal. He couldn't find a rifle, but Greg did manage to locate a discarded shotgun that had been shoved up underneath one of the benches. He found a shoulder strap for it, as well as a scattering of fat red shells that he collected and pocketed. The shotgun was still loaded. He flipped the safety off, and then let it hang by the sling.

  Another few moments of fervent searching turned up a handful of magazines for the pistol. He pocketed half of them, and passed the rest off to Kyra and Billings.

  “Jackpot!” Campbell called from across the room.

  They all turned to look at him. He was at a broad locker at the back, hunched on the ground, staring into it. Greg and Kyra joined him. He was carefully handing small yellow squares. As luck would have it, he'd also located a duffel bag.

  “These are perfect,” he said, slipping the bricks into the bag. “HE Eight. Beautiful stuff. Here, you take these. They can't be in the bag with the bricks.”

  He passed a handful of small, slender metal things to Kyra, who stared at them dubiously. They vaguely resembled stubby bullets.

  “What are they?”

  “They're detonator rigs. You shove them into the charges. They're all rigged up to a detonator, which I've got in my pocket. You hit the detonator, they send a small electric charge through the bombs, sets them off. They're harmless, otherwise.”

  Campbell fed the last of the explosives into the bag, zipped it up, shrugged it over his neck and stood up. “Ready to go.”

  Greg considered making someone else carry the bombs. Then he decided if anyone were to have that unpleasant task, it should be Campbell. He led them back out of the armory, hoping they could press on uninterrupted. The way looked clear.

  “How far now?” Greg asked, although he was beginning to remember this area.

  “Not far,” Campbell promised.

  They jogged on through the blood and death, heading through the last few passageways before finally returning to the data network center. The two massive doors that led into the darkened room studded with large nodes of glittering equipment were open. Greg wasn't sure how to feel about that. He led the other three of them cautiously down the length of battered corridor. Apprehension began to ebb the flow with his fury.

  No, he thought, I'm doing this. No backing down.

  He flicked the flashlight mounted at the end of his shotgun on. The pale beam of light cut through the gloom that saturated the data room. Greg frowned intensely. Lots of places to hide, lots of shadows and niches.

  “Where do we put them?” he asked quietly.

  Campbell shrugged out of his bag and began passing the bricks to people. “Just around, each person take a corner of the room, put them on the mainframes. There's enough here for two per person. Kyra, pass out those things I gave you. Don't stick them in until you've planted your charge. Everyone got that?”

  “Yes,” Greg muttered, accepting two of the yellow bricks and two of the detonating pins. “Everyone keep an eye out. If Erebus was going to try and stop us, it would be here.”

  They all replied affirmatively and split up. Greg loped off into the darkness, eager to be done with this part of the plan. He couldn't hear or see anything in the gloom. The only sounds that came to him were the quiet movements of the others. Greg reached his corner. He pulled out one of the bricks and planted it on the floor next to one of the mainframes. Then, carefully, he stuck the pin into the brick, burying it halfway in.

  Working quickly, he moved a few meters away and then repeated the action. A bit of his tension seemed to lift as he stood, finished with planting his bombs.

  “How are we doing?” he asked, hating how loud his voice sounded.

  “Done!” Campbell called.

  “Me too!” Kyra said.

  “Just finishing now,” Billings replied.

  “Oh, that's too bad, I was hoping to catch you in the act. Oh well, close enough,” Erebus said suddenly from the ship-wide comms system.

  The lights abruptly flared to life, bathing the room in intensely brilliant luminosity. Drones began pouring into the room, firing wildly at the scattered survivors. Greg immediately ducked down behind one of the mainframes. A pair of Drones advanced on him, he whirled around from behind cover, raised the shotgun and blew one of their heads off. The other
raised its arm. Instead of a hand, it had a wide-bore gun.

  Greg put a fist-sized hole in its chest and prepared for more...then froze when he saw just how many were coming into the room. There had to be a couple of dozen of them. More, even. They were coming in through the vents. Greg began to fall back as a hail of gunfire peppered his position. He went the only way he could: towards the back of the room, near the security center where what felt like a million years ago he'd regrouped with Powell and Cage. He could see the others doing the same thing he was.

  They gathered in front of the doors, hiding behind mainframes.

  “What the fuck are we going to do?” Campbell called over the gunfire.

  The Drones advanced, but slowly, their legs still not yet meant for speed or dexterity. Greg wished that meant something, but it didn't, the Drones were going to take them down with pure numbers.

  “Gimme the detonator,” Billings called.

  Campbell, who was the nearest to Billings, passed it to him. Billings looked at the small thing in his palm, and then nodded to himself.

  “They're most thinned out along the left side of the room. I'll make a distraction. You three get the fuck out of here!” Billings called. He tossed something to Campbell, who caught it, then began to move.

  “What's this?” Campbell asked.

  “The part! Keep it safe!”

  “Wait. What kind of distraction?” Greg replied.

  “Gonna run into the security center, let them know I've got the detonator. Once you're out, I'll blow the bombs.”

  “But you'll die!” Kyra cried.

  “Nobody lives forever. Now go.”

  “Billings, don't do this! We can find another way out,” Greg called.

  “Too late. This way I get to die and it means something. Fucking run.” Billings suddenly shoved Campbell towards Greg and Kyra, and then hopped out in front of the Drones. He held up the detonator.

  “Look what I've got,” he called.

  “Billings! No!” Greg screamed.

  Billings turned and sprinted into the security center.

  “We have to go, now,” Campbell roared, shoving Greg and Kyra.

  There was no choice. The Drones focused on Billings. Greg, Kyra, and Campbell broke for the left wall, slammed into it and began sprinting along its length, making for the exit. They passed dozens of Drones along the way, who now seemed more interested in Billings. Greg fired at any who tried to get in his way, blowing heads off or decimating torsos. For a second, the Drones crowded in around them and it seemed that none of them would get out alive. Then the three of them blew a hole in the ranked Augmented and squeezed through it.

  Greg burst out into the corridor beyond and kept running full tilt, expecting the bombs to go off any second. He glanced behind him, spying Kyra and Campbell keeping pace with him. Greg looked forward again, focused on running.

  When were the-

  The bombs went off.

  A solid wave of force and heat picked Greg up and threw him several meters down the corridor. His hearing was reduced to a loud ringing, but he managed to hang on to his sight. Greg grunted as he landed and rolled a little ways longer, then came to a stop. He stumbled to his feet, his equilibrium askew, and caught sight of Kyra and Campbell.

  “You made it,” he said, though he couldn't hear himself.

  Kyra looked up at him, seemingly confused, then took his offered hand and stood shakily. Campbell said something but Greg couldn't make out what it was. Not that it mattered, he was probably just complaining.

  They waited for ten minutes before they felt stable enough to walk. Greg was glad when his hearing came back and the world stopped swaying. He turned and looked back down the corridor they'd fled from. It ended in twisted, blackened metal. Large amounts of smoke billowed from the hole where the network room used to be.

  “Come on,” Kyra said after a long moment. “We really need to go.”

  Greg found it difficult to stop staring.

  “Billings,” he said, softly.

  Kyra took his hand. “I know...come on.”

  Greg turned and began following them deeper into the ship.

  Chapter 17

  –Beyond Sanity–

  A war was being fought within the metal hull of the Anubis.

  As Greg led Kyra and Campbell silently through a side passageway, he heard the sound of three armies clashing. Williams and his Dark Ops troops were no doubt doing everything they could to regain control of their operation gone horribly wrong. Erebus and its Augmented were moving relentlessly forward with Erebus' own plan, whatever dark and terrible thing that might be. And the Undead were going berserk on everyone.

  For a long while, Greg had said nothing, merely brooding about Billings. He supposed he should have seen something like this coming, in retrospect, what with all of Billings' grim, bleak dialogue on life. Of course, being in a nonstop nightmare like this tended to turn most people towards darker thoughts.

  Had Billings' death meant anything?

  Greg decided that it wouldn't mean anything at all if they didn't get to the engines and go through with this plan. Then what? How many times had Greg asked that of himself? The future was becoming smaller and smaller, first weeks, then days, and then mere hours, as Greg's life expectancy kept shrinking. He glanced down at his arm.

  And then this.

  “Okay, this is as far as it goes,” he murmured, coming to the end of the side corridor.

  They'd managed to make their way down to the engineering deck and looked for ways into the engine room itself. Only they kept running into problems. There were several more out of the way routes into the engine room, but they were all, for one reason or another, blocked off. Some were locked down and there seemed to be no way to override them. Others were physically damaged to the point where the doors couldn't open.

  “It's locked,” Greg growled.

  “Shit,” Campbell muttered. “Looks like we'll have to go through the main corridor after all. This sucks.”

  Greg didn't look forward to it. They turned and made their way back along the side corridor. They'd taken a short break to look for any potential way to hit the self-destruct button without actually, physically being there, but short of going to the bridge, which was very far away and no doubt under control of one of the three groups, there was no way. So, they'd opted to press on to the engine room, which seemed to be heavily contested territory.

  “I can hear a lot of fighting out there,” Campbell said uncertainly.

  “Good,” Greg replied curtly. “We'll slip through while they kill each other.”

  Campbell seemed uncertain, but Kyra was with Greg all the way. It was just the three of them now, at least on this ship. Greg wondered if Cage and Powell were okay. He wondered about their bomb. How close was it to actually being built? Had any of the three armies managed to gain a foothold on the other ship? There was only just Powell and Cage over there, even if Cage was a bit of a killing machine...

  Greg stopped at the first door he could and froze his thoughts. None of that mattered. Now was the time to fight or die. Plain and simple.

  “Everyone ready? Safeties off? Guns loaded?”

  Kyra and Campbell responded affirmatively.

  Greg opened the door to the main corridor that would take them directly to the engine room. It sounded like a world war raged within it. He poked his head out and looked around. An army of Drones fought a battalion of Dark Ops troops, both of whom were involved in an intense battle with a legion of Undead.

  “Holy fuck,” Greg whispered.

  “Time to go,” Kyra replied.

  They slipped out into the unmitigated chaos. Greg still only had his shotgun. He hadn't managed to find any other weapons along the way. He kept his gaze continually sliding over everything as he slunk along the left wall, trying to keep out of everyone's way. Combat was fun and all, but staying alive was, by far, much more fun.

  Up ahead, a Berserker tore through a dozen Drones, which were doing ev
erything in their power to bring it down. Greg paused as it crashed into the wall just a meter in front of him, leaving a huge dent, then righted itself, stumbled, and punched a Drone so hard that it came apart into several flying pieces.

  He rushed past, before it took notice of him, and narrowly avoided a small hail of gunfire. Glancing over, he saw a pair of Dark Ops troops take down some zombies. They seemed to take notice of him and the others, raised their weapons, prepared to fire, then a Creeper leaped onto one of them and knocked both of them over. The trio of survivors pressed on. All around them blood and bullets flew. The corridor became overwhelmed with a pall of gun smoke and death. Greg found himself wishing for a gasmask.

  They pressed on. The massive opening at the end of the corridor that led to the engine room grew slowly, inexorably closer. He saw a lot of fighting going on in there as well. He ducked as a cluster of Lancer spikes came his way, embedding themselves in the wall. Greg prepared himself for combat, but a squad of troopers took down the collection of Lancers, who turned and opened fire on the squad.

  “This is crazy!” Campbell cried.

  “As hell,” Greg agreed.

  Somehow, in all that ataxia, they managed to gain entrance to the engine room without having to fire a single shot. The room was enormous, half of it taken up by titanic pieces of equipment that maintained the engines. The walls were lined with workstations and the floor were studded with equipment nodes. The fighting was crazier here, though it seemed that Dark Ops might be gaining the upper advantage with sheer numbers.

  How many of their soldiers were on the ship, committed to taking it back? How many men and women were about to die because of Greg?

  A fuck of a lot less than they had killed when they'd destroyed Dis, he decided.

  “There. We've got to get to that terminal.” Campbell indicated a terminal at ground level, roughly in the center of the far wall that housed the monitoring equipment for the engines. There were a lot of enemies between them and it.