by Tom Barber
He recalled the recording, Olson noting that Ryan was following him and his team everywhere, not saying a word.
Doc, what the hell are you doing?
Doc?
It had never been Ryan. It was one of these things. Olson, his team and the Delta guys in the kitchen had unwittingly locked themselves in with one of them.
And Miller had done the exact same thing.
Since he’d escaped the control room, they’d imitated his mother and then something in the shadows that had somehow made him feel like he was buried alive, his worst nightmare. Seeing into his mind and manifesting his dreams and nightmares in order to kill him.
One hell of an assault tactic.
Standing by the closed door to 2, Miller took deep breaths and checked his watch. The transport would be here in seven minutes.
He gritted his teeth, thinking of how close he was to getting home.
The thoughts helped and he started to regain control.
But then the red lighting and fire alarms suddenly cut out and the entire place was plunged into complete darkness and silence.
Alone in the dark, Miller’s heart started thumping hard again at that most primitive of fears, unable to see or hear anything other than the sound of his own shallow breathing and knowing there were things here coming to kill him.
He shut his eyes, focusing, keeping his senses alert.
He had to make it along this corridor, down the stairs to the ground floor then rescue Bailey and get them both to the roof.
Realising the M16 203 was empty and an unnecessary weight to carry, he laid the assault rifle quietly on the floor then pulled his Beretta from his holster, a magazine in the weapon and one on his vest.
Gripping the pistol, he recalled firing at the being impersonating his mother and how he’d hit nothing but air.
These things were fast as hell.
He felt his breath catch and inhaled deeply, focusing. He needed one of the two shotguns from the Delta ship, but he’d given them to whatever Olson and Weathers were in the control room.
Maybe the weapons were still there.
Miller managed to locate the button to the second floor corridor and pushed it, the panel sliding up in the silence.
He suddenly remembered the flares he’d taken from the Delta Force ship.
Taking one from his pocket, he ripped it off and threw it down the corridor, the red flare lighting up the hallway as it went, spitting red light and smoke.
It was empty.
He crept down the corridor, both hands on the pistol, tensed and waiting for something, anything to attack.
He saw the control room up ahead, the door closed, and headed towards it, ready to fire at the slightest movement, the only sound the hissing of the flare on the floor.
He stepped past it and came to the end of the 2nd floor corridor, a few feet from the control room.
He saw this side of the door had been dented from whatever had been smashing against it when he, Olson and Weathers had been the other side.
Taking a deep breath, he hit the button and aimed into the gap as the door slid up.
Nothing.
He ripped off another flare and tossed it into the room, checking left and right.
It was empty, the only movement some sheets of paper as they blew in the wind from the window he’d smashed to escape.
Miller stepped forward in the silence, looking for a shotgun, and immediately spotted one of them dumped on the floor.
Holstering the Beretta, he grabbed it, racking the pump as a shell flew out, telling him it was still loaded.
Standing alone in the control room he checked around quickly, looking for anything that resembled a switch which could restore the power, but couldn’t see anything.
Tilting the shotgun, he checked his watch in the light of the flare.
6:33.
6:32.
6:31.
He slid out of the room, checking the stairwell beside him with the shotgun aimed and jammed in his shoulder.
Nothing except an awful acrid smell of burnt flesh drifting upwards.
A flashing alarm here was providing some light and he made his way down achingly slowly.
He stopped on the landing.
The being he’d burned with the two grenades was gone.
Keeping his shotgun trained on the empty space, he quickly headed down the stairwell towards the ground floor and the rec room, suddenly fully understanding why Olson’s team and the Delta Force guys had been massacred.
Whatever these things were, they recovered as fast as they moved.
The door to the ground floor was closed. Miller stood there beside it in the darkness, paused for a moment, then hit the button.
The panel slid up.
Miller eased his way through the doorway into the corridor, took a flare and ripped it off.
Something appeared right in front of him in the red light.
The shotgun barrel was aimed ahead. As he recoiled, Miller fired instinctively, the shell smashing the nightmare back, blowing pieces of it into the air.
It screamed, but the blast didn’t knock it off its feet, and it started morphing into something else.
Realising what was happening, he didn’t give it a chance, dropping the flare, racking the pump and fired repeatedly, blasting the apparition down the corridor, emptying the shotgun shells into it, each muzzle blast lighting up the corridor as he shouted from the adrenaline.
The onslaught pounded the being back, shrieking with each impact, the sound hurting Miller’s ears as he fired.
It eventually came to a halt and lay in a crumpled heap down the corridor.
His chest heaving, Miller racked the pump and realised he’d walked almost all of the way down the corridor. The rec room was behind him to his right.
Taking a last look at what was left of the dead thing, he stepped back and ducked inside the rec room.
It was dark in here too, so he ripped off one of his remaining two flares and held it up.
He stopped and stared at the pool table in the hissing, spitting red light.
It was empty.
Bailey was gone.
TWENTY TWO
Standing there alone in the rec room, holding the flare in his left hand and the shotgun in the right, Miller stared at the empty table.
Bailey was gone.
He turned and checked the rest of the room, but there was no sign of her.
Rolling the flare to the ground, he backed up and checked the shotgun, his mind racing as he tried to work out what the hell to do next. He was out of shells, having used them all in the corridor.
He swore, dropping the weapon, and checked his watch.
6:00.
5:59.
Time was almost up.
Pulling his pistol, he crouched there all alone in the dark red room and desperately tried to think. He reached into the pocket of his BDUs subconsciously, feeling for any more shotgun shells, but found something else.
The real Olson’s recorder.
He looked at it for a moment.
Almost on cue, that awful chilling shriek came from somewhere in the building which made him jolt, every sense on full-alert.
Everywhere he looked in this place was death.
His team, Olson’s, the Special Forces.
With just his pistol and now with Bailey missing, the odds were not on him making it out of here.
He realised he was ready to do something he’d never been able to do before.
Keeping the Beretta trained on the door, he pushed Record and a light flashed on the device in his left hand.
All alone, the alarms going off in the corridor in front of him, he closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of what to say.
He’d never written or said these words before.
‘Hey. Dad,’ he whispered, watching the door. ‘It’s Will.’
He blinked sweat out of his eyes.
‘I hope you get this one day. I’m in deep shit. I don’t know if
I’m going to get out of this one.’
He paused, trying to find the right words.
‘I didn’t mean what I said the day I left,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry, Pop. I was an asshole. You didn’t deserve that.’
He looked around the empty room.
‘I just wanted you to know that. I hope you get this. I did the best I could.’
He paused.
The knuckles of his right hand were white around the recorder.
The scream echoed around the building again.
It was getting closer.
‘Take care, Dad. I’ll see you again one day. This is Corporal Will Miller, United States 101st Spartan Division. Out.’
He stopped the recording, then rose and placed the device on the pool table. Someone would find it when any back up finally came.
He heard movement from down the corridor.
Miller aimed his pistol two handed at the door and waited. When they came at him, he was determined to take at least another one of those bastards down with him, going out on his shield.
Standing there, alone in the near-darkness, waiting, he glanced at the empty pool table beside him.
As he stared, he became aware of something he hadn’t noticed before.
A couch was sitting at an angle, having been pulled away from the wall. It hadn’t been like that earlier, when he’d first come into the room carrying Bailey after the crash.
He looked at it for a moment, then backed towards it slowly and checked the other side.
What he saw stunned him.
There was a body, dressed in the same fatigues as his. He pulled the couch away and the body flopped over onto its back.
It was Keller.
Miller stared at his dead comrade and thought back to earlier to when he and Olson had returned after finding Keller outside on the plain. He remembered moving in here, finding the thing imitating Weathers all alone.
He’d looked over at Bailey’s body, still here at that point, and pictured the scene in his head.
The couch against the wall had been sitting at an odd angle. He hadn’t paid any special attention to it.
But Keller had been behind it.
So why the hell had they found a fake Keller out in the middle of the plain?
Then, in the dark room with the real body of his dead comrade lying beside him, it all made sense.
The gunfire.
The scream.
Finding Keller’s body out there with just one set of footprints around it.
Taking the body back with them, going upstairs, then Garcia suddenly reappearing as Keller’s body disappeared.
The body that appeared in front of the truck had never been Keller.
It was the being impersonating Garcia.
It’d been the fake Garcia who’d been hunting the last Delta Force soldier, finding him as he retreated towards his ship and killing him. He was never on the roof with a rifle; he was out in the desert. When Olson and Miller suddenly and unexpectedly veered off-course, they’d caught him unawares on his way back to the station. He’d had to instantly change into Keller to take away suspicion and screeched as they braked, not out of fear, but to send a message to Weathers back at the base to hide Keller’s body.
For some reason, they’d wanted him to believe Garcia was real and continue the charade, Miller none the wiser.
But why?
As he stared at his dead comrade, the fear and confusion he’d felt at Bailey’s disappearance and his apparently hopeless predicament suddenly started to ease.
It was replaced by anger.
These things had killed the team of scientists first stationed here.
They’d destroyed the real Dr Ryan’s body, with one of them pretending to be Ryan when rescue arrived.
It had observed Olson and his team of Rangers for a few days; then the beings killed Harrison and Dawson.
Olson, Weathers, Garcia and the Delta guys had followed, the last of whom had accidentally shot down his ship and taken out everyone apart from him, Keller and Bailey.
These things had killed scores of people, sixteen of whom he damn well cared about.
And his mood switched from hot anger into ice cold rage.
Turning, Miller looked around the dim room and suddenly spotted what he’d been looking for upstairs. Moving towards the music player, he pressed the switch for the power generator beside it, and the back-up lighting came back on.
Gripping the pistol, he headed for the door, his face expressionless, no fear there anymore. He waited, then ducked out, looking into the dark corridor through the sights of the Beretta, ready to empty the entire clip into anything that moved.
No hesitation.
No mercy.
Corporal Will Miller was a Spartan, which meant he never gave up, no matter the odds.
He was going to find Doc Bailey.
No way in hell was he going home without her.
The stretch of hallway was empty save for the dead thing at the end that he’d destroyed with the shotgun. It hadn’t got back up, which reassured Miller. They could be killed, but it took a lot, a barrage of firepower.
Along with Olson, Weathers, Garcia and the other he guessed was Ryan that had been battering on the control room door, he guessed there were four of these things.
With this one in the corridor and the one that had impersonated Garcia in the garage, that was now two of them down.
Two remaining.
Miller made his way down the dark-red corridor with the pistol held up in front of him, ready to tear apart the entire moon looking for Bailey.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, he heard movement from the kitchen two feet ahead to his left.
The door was still open.
Pausing for a moment, he psyched himself up, on full alert.
He eased himself slowly through the gap, edged around the blockage and spun into the room, aiming with the pistol.
He saw a figure standing there, near the metal table Olson and the Delta Team had used as a barricade.
She turned as he entered.
It was Bailey.
She looked terrified.
‘Will, where the hell have you been?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I was getting so scared.’
She pointed at the carnage behind her and her chin started to quiver, tears in her eyes.
‘What the hell is going on, Miller?’
He looked at her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘We need to get out of here.’
She took a step towards him.
Putting all of her weight on the broken leg without any reaction at all.
There was also a strange smell in the air, like something had been burned.
He remained where he was for a moment, emptying his mind, then took a step forward to narrow his field of fire.
No hesitation.
He suddenly whipped the pistol up and fired.
The thing imitating Bailey dodged the first four rounds, moving with incredible speed, but the fifth clipped it and it screamed in pain.
The impact seemed to slow it and Miller emptied the clip, all twelve remaining rounds, the being screeching as it was knocked back across the kitchen.
Once the pistol clicked dry, Miller ripped off his last flare and threw it towards the being, which immediately caught fire.
It started to shriek and thrash in the flames, the ear-splitting sound filling the room.
Now standing in the middle of the kitchen, Miller looked over the steel table the Delta team had used as a barrier.
The real Bailey was lying there.
He ran around the table and dropped down, checking her pulse.
She was still alive.
With the burning creature shrieking across the room and the fire alarms still ringing, Miller reloaded the Beretta and slotted it back into his holster, then grabbed one of the assault rifles from the Delta guys. He pulled a spare clip from the dead man’s chest and loaded it into the rifl
e, cocking the weapon, and stuffed another spare into his pocket.
He reached forward and pulled Bailey up, lifting her over his shoulder, then rose and carried her towards the door.
Behind him, the burning being shouted his name, but now it was distorted, a horrible parody of Bailey’s voice, then turning into his mother’s , then Keller’s, all the time mixed in with those terrible screeches.
‘Miller! Miller! Help me, Miller!’
As he made it to the door, Miller paused, thinking of all his dead comrades.
He lowered Bailey, then turned and emptied an entire clip from the assault rifle into the burning creature, all the shrieks stopping as the assault rifle cut it to pieces and finally killed it.
When the rifle clicked dry, all thirty two shell casings tinkled to the floor beside him, he reloaded and hoisted Bailey up again, then checked his watch.
That was three of them dead.
And just three minutes to go until the transport arrived.
TWENTY THREE
Carrying the real Bailey over his shoulders, the assault rifle in his right hand, Miller stepped out into the ground floor corridor, the noise of the sirens reverberating around the building.
He turned right, heading for the stairwell which would take him up to the control room, then paused.
Turning, he walked in the opposite direction towards the garage, keeping the rifle trained on the dead creature at the end of the corridor as he stepped quickly past it.
Reaching the end of the corridor, he pushed the button for the first door, which slid up.
He cleared the stairwell beyond, then sealed the door behind him and walked forward and hit the button for the second door into the garage.
As it slid up, he immediately noticed that the body of whatever had imitated Garcia was gone.
Cursing, Miller lowered Bailey gently to the ground, then checked left and right with the weapon, waiting for the Garcia being to attack at any moment. These things could take a hell of a lot of punishment. He kicked himself for not giving the damn thing an entire magazine when he’d shot it.
Clearing the area, he ran down the steps and across the garage, sweeping left and right.