Seventh

by Heath Pfaff

  I kicked out with my legs, trying to force my boot into its gullet, but I wasn’t watching my aim and I missed by a wide margin. Its jaws clenched down on my calf. Searing hot pain exploded through my leg. I lashed out with a fist, but a spindly, disjointed limb snagged my arm and forced it to the ground. The digits at the end of the limb were barbed, hooked fingers made of bone, and they tore into my arm as the thing pinned me down with an alarming display of power.

  It wasn’t easy, but I managed to swing my free leg around enough to kick the monster in the side of the head. The “face” of the creature ripped off with the impact as though it had been haphazardly glued in place, leaving a smooth, slick white surface behind. It looked like an oblong sphere of glistening bone, broken only by a jaw that was unhinged as wide as a snake consuming a rat. The musculature connecting the jaw to the bone was bloody and exposed. As my kick connected with its head the monster’s jaw convulsed, briefly ripping deeper into my calf and then releasing its grip. The creature staggered, momentarily dazed. I pulled my leg away as the bite loosened and managed to get it free, but not without feeling an uncomfortable tearing in the muscle. As the monster regained its composure I lashed out at the hold it had on my arm, kicking and throwing my fists at the clawed limb until that, too, tore free. I was injured and bleeding, but I made a mad scramble across the audience hall on my hands and knees.

  The crew thing was apparently temporarily stunned by my blow, because it didn’t immediately resume the chase. I was back on my feet and running with a severe limp before it raised its voice in a moan of either rage or pain, I couldn’t be sure and honestly didn’t care. After a few moments it stopped crying out and was charging after me again. I knew it would be on me before I could make it to the next bulkhead, and I wasn’t sure if I could fend it off again. I likely wouldn’t get another lucky shot. Worse, I was already being slowed down by the searing pain streaming through my leg from the nasty bite in my calf. The entire wound was on fire as though I’d doused the damaged flesh in hot oil.

  I grabbed on to a chair and turned to face my pursuer, holding the piece of furniture up like a last wall between myself and death. The thing stopped, growling and hissing at me from across the length of the chair. It was still dressed in the remains of a crew uniform, and even still had the body of the female crew member, though it was twisted almost beyond recognition. Its uniform hung open at the collar, revealing large breasts that seemed the last normal vestige of its once-human body. In any other situation I might have been very interested in those curves, but the fleshless, hissing head full of jagged teeth coated in my blood kept the situation in clear perspective.

  “What the fuck are you?!” I shouted at it, waving the chair threateningly.

  It sprang forward so quickly that I didn’t have time to react. I tried to bring the chair up to a more defensible position, but I was too slow. The crew-monster-thing landed atop me, slamming the chair between our two bodies, but not in such a way that it kept the razor sharp teeth at bay. It snapped its head forward and struck at my neck. I managed to twist far enough out of the way to avoid having my jugular ripped out, but the teeth bit deep into my left shoulder, and instantly the flesh there was filled with the same terrible burning pain I’d felt in my leg. I screamed and punched at the smooth head with my right fist. The punch was as good as it could be from a prone position and in my current state. I focused the blow using everything I knew of physical combat, knowing it could be a matter of life and death.

  My hit was solid. Too solid. I felt like I’d just punched the steel wall of the ship, hard and unforgiving. My knuckles cracked and I felt the distinct sensation of my bones splinter from the impact. The creature froze and I dug my way out from under it, clutching my aching right fist. I’d stunned it again. Hitting the monster in the head seemed to slow it down, at least temporarily, but I couldn’t afford to break bones just to buy myself a few seconds.

  I changed my course. Instead of running for the next conference room I ran for the door back into the main hall. It was closer, and I was about out of juice. My leg had stopped burning, but it was beginning to feel numb instead. My shoulder was on fire where I’d been bitten, and my right hand was aching and beginning to swell. I knew I was finished unless I could reach the door to the hall and lock down the room, trapping the damned thing inside.

  I was at the bulkhead when the crew-thing grabbed ahold of my injured leg and pulled it out from under me. The door slid open as I toppled through face-first, kicking and clawing at the cold metal floor.

  “Oh, there you are.” The female voice echoed up through the throat of the monstrosity as it lurched over me. I struggled to roll myself over so I could attempt to hit it in the head again, but its forelimbs slammed down on my back, pinning me in place. I was laying half in the hallway and half in the conference room, but it didn’t matter; I wasn’t going anywhere. I felt a bright, explosive pain in my back and knew that the creature was ripping my clothing to shreds and slicing effortlessly into my flesh with its strange bone-claws. I screamed, a mixture of pain and terror bursting forth from my very being.

  If you’ve never faced imminent death, it’s difficult to describe the feeling that overwhelms you as you realize you’re not going to escape from the situation you’ve found yourself in. As the flesh on my back shredded beneath razor-sharp claws and the creature began to lap and gnaw at my back, I knew with a certainty that I was on the threshold of my own end.

  I didn’t even hear the approaching footsteps, and I barely realized that my attacker was, itself, under assault until its weight slipped from my back and fell to the ground at my side. I reacted on instinct, pushing myself to my feet with tattered muscles. Blood trickled down my back. As I regained my senses, the scene before me clarified into a macabre vision of violence and madness.

  A huge man with short shaven hair and muscles that seemed to crease every inch of his exposed flesh had appeared, and was presently swinging what looked like a heavy steel bar with both hands and pounding the crew-thing into a mess of red mush and white chunks. From his throat came a roar of such rage that I almost found him as terrifying as the thing he was destroying. I considered running.

  My leg throbbed as I put my weight on the gnawed-upon limb, and through the pain I felt a rush of light-headedness that almost caused me to pass out. There were spots of black dancing in my vision. The big man turned on me, his makeshift weapon hanging menacingly from his right hand.

  “You alright?” He asked in a voice that was a little higher pitched than I expected from a man of his stature. I realized, belatedly, that he was even younger than I was.

  “No, not really.” I answered before thinking about it. Was he asking how I was emotionally, or physically? Either way I was in bad shape.

  He gave a short, nervous laugh. “No, I suppose none of us are alright. I’m Hobbes.”

  “I’m Jim Wright.” I offered, feeling a cold sweat begin to bead on my brow. I really didn’t feel good. My leg felt nearly wooden except for the pulsing pain throbbing up through the calf and into my thigh. My shoulder felt the same way. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

  Hobbes sighed and shook his head. “No, and I suppose you don’t either.”

  I shook my head as well. “I think I might be going insane. Maybe DSD, or perhaps I hit my head and I’m just dreaming this whole mess? I don’t know.”

  “If you’re dreaming it, I wish you’d wake the fuck up. I’m tired of beating your nightmares to death with a piece of cafeteria chair.” He paused, staring at me for a second. “You don’t look so good. Did that thing get you somewhere vital?”

  A shiver passed through me, causing my teeth to rattle for a second before I could offer an answer. “It bit me in the leg and on the shoulder. I think it might have been poisonous. My leg is numb, and I feel feverish.”

  Hobbes reached to the belt at his waist and unclipped one of three metal tubes that were each about two inches long, and about the width of a pinky. He handed it to
me.

  “It’s nano-boost. I’m a Shock Trooper and they’re standard kit for us. The bugs are programmed to repair wounds and deactivate anything in your system that’s acting as a toxin. My friends and I would use ‘em to win drinking games when we hit port; at least until we were caught and were given a rigorous explanation of how much each of those little tubes actually costs. I believe it was, ‘Just slightly less than your filthy hides.’”

  I took the tube hesitantly. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Hobbes. He’d just saved my life, but after the strange experience in the medical bay I didn’t trust anything. I wasn’t sure what was real and what was being made up by my mind. Another thought occurred to me.

  “Odyssey is an exploratory science vessel. I didn’t think we had any tactical crew on board.” Shock Troops were generally reserved for planet-side combat. They specialized in taking and holding territory, and in making way for the troops that followed.

  Hobbes shrugged. “This is my first mission out, and as far as I know this is the first time Odyssey has housed Shock Troops. We don’t even have a proper barracks onboard. We’re here to manage security for a high profile project.”

  I rolled the nano cylinder in my hand. I’d seen similar devices before, though my division of security didn’t have such costly tech issued to us. I pressed the tube to my neck and squeezed the tube hard. There was a brief pause while the tech of the cylinder scanned my immune system and programmed the nano bugs, and then there was a quick and sharp pain in my neck as the nanos were injected and the cylinder cauterized the wound. I imagined I could feel the cloud of tiny machines sweeping through my body.

  “Were you guys briefed on the nature of the high profile project?” I asked, wondering if perhaps Hobbes’ presence onboard Odyssey had something to do with what was going on. Why would Odyssey need a team of Shock Troopers? A science vessel with a mission of exploration generally didn’t carry anything more than a full security retinue. We were trained in repelling ship-side invaders and had the close combat skills necessary for doing battle aboard a slipspace vessel. Shock Troopers were generally ground pounders better equipped and trained for mid- to long-range fighting.

  “The sergeant always said, ‘When you pull the trigger on your rifle, do you first explain to your finger why you’re pulling the trigger? You’re a soldier. When we need a trigger pulled, don’t expect us to tell you why. Just pull the damned trigger.’ I didn’t bother to ask a lot of questions.” He answered with a shrug.

  The numbness in my shoulder and leg was beginning to be replaced with an aching, itching tingle. I knew it was the feeling of whatever toxins I had been infected with being expunged from my system, and damaged tissue being repaired. A sense of relief washed over me. At that moment it was even difficult to be angry at Hobbes for not having any more answers than anyone else. I considered him for a moment before speaking again.

  He was a big guy, powerfully muscular and dressed in a Shock Trooper skin-suit uniform. Those suits would resist temperature changes and turn aside impacts that weren’t armor piercing. Ship security didn’t get that kind of suits, though I certainly wished I had one. They were tailor made to an individual, so it wasn’t as though they could be shared even if Hobbes had an extra one, which was unlikely.

  His musculature was likely nano-conditioning and genetic tinkering. I’d had some work done myself, but not to the same extent. I’d had my neural synapses spiked to improve my reaction times, and had my bones and joints re-polymered to make them more flexible and resilient.

  Hobbes stood with his makeshift weapon clutched in one hand, relaxed for the moment despite the fact that blood and muck still dripped from the edge of the cudgel. Could I take him in a fight? If things went bad between us, would I be able to protect myself from a Shock Trooper?

  He was stronger than me, though my reaction times might be faster. He’d be able to soak up a lot of damage, but his training likely hadn’t been centered on combat with other humans. There was little to no cause for a Shock Trooper to need to fight another human. They were trained to take down alien species on their home turf. My training, however, had been mostly centered on inter-ship peacekeeping. While I was familiar with close-quarter alien combat as well, my knowledge of hand to hand human combat was more than likely superior to his.

  It wouldn’t be easy, but I might be able to take him down if I needed to.

  Of course, I was just being paranoid. Hobbes had saved my life. Why would I need to fight him? The DSD was getting to me. I was letting myself question everyone’s motives, even when I had no cause. If Hobbes wanted me dead, he could have just let the crew-thing have me. Unless he’d been more afraid of it than me, and had used its fixation on me to take care of the one of he was most intimidated by.

  “Damn it, stop! You’re being paranoid.” The sound of my own voice startled me. I hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

  Hobbes was staring at me now. “You alright?”

  I nodded dumbly. “Yeah, just trying to…” I couldn’t think of an excuse, so I let the words falter into silence and quickly changed the subject. “What happened to the rest of your troop?”

  Hobbes visibly flinched and took a step back. “They’re dead. If not all of them, then most of them.”

  I wanted to ask what had happened, but I didn’t feel right about just blurting out that kind of question. If I started asking questions about Hobbes’ past, he could start asking questions about what had happened to me since this madness had begun. I didn’t want to attempt explanations. I didn’t even know how to start an explanation.

  Hobbes didn’t need further provocation, however. Unlike me, he seemed eager to tell someone what had happened to him, as if by speaking about it he might make some sense of it all.

  “There were twenty of us in my platoon, and we were all together when the reds came up. We’d been running readiness drills for the last week, so none of us were completely surprised by the warning. We jumped out of bed and suited up in our skins and packs. The last guy to the ordinance locker has to run point for two drills, so you can bet we were all racing to get through the bulkhead first. Unfortunately, it was locked down.”

  “We’d had our fair share of exercises, but we weren’t exactly prepped during training to sitting in one place in an emergency. What good are Shock Troops that are locked in a shitty makeshift barracks with no guns and no heavy armor? Our squad captain put in a call to the sergeant, but we couldn’t get a line through.”

  “We sat there for hours thinking it was some kind of special training drill. Thinking we’d need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Some of the guys turned on their pack lights so we didn’t have to deal with that damn pulsing red emergency blinker. I don’t know how long we just sat there. It felt like forever, and then, out of nowhere this loud banging sounded through the door, like someone was pounding on it from the other side. “

  I noticed I was grinding my teeth together. Hobbes’ story was similar enough to my own that it was like I was reliving the whole thing. I could remember everything with crystal clarity, including the building feeling of fear. I unclenched my teeth and tried to force myself to relax. Hobbes went on.

  “The shit came through the wall of the barracks, though we didn’t realize anything was wrong at first. Some of the guys were on the bench over on that wall, and it got them first. It was like a wall of shadow. I’m not sure if we’d have been able to see it at all if we didn’t have our pack lights on. It crawled across the floor so slowly. It reminded me of the stark shadows tall buildings cast as the sun sets, but where this shadow fell… man, shit got strange. The guys on the bench started freaking out.”

  “Marks, this guy I’ve known since basic, he just stood up and started screaming and stomping his feet like someone had lit his shoes on fire. Some of the other guys tried to quiet him down, tried to ask him what was wrong, but he just kept screaming and screaming until he went red in the face. Another of the guys got off the bench and hit him in the face. He h
it him real hard, but Marks didn’t stop. He spit up blood and teeth, but just kept right on screaming and stomping around.”

  “The guy who’d hit him really flipped out then. He starts cussing at Marks, telling him to ‘Shut the fuck up!’ The rest of us are struggling, trying to quiet Marks and trying to hold the other guy back. Well that guy isn’t having any of it. He grabs his stim-shots and injects all six of the damn things at once. Those are for emergency situations only, and they tell you to never inject more than one in a four hour period. I backed off at that point. I’m not stupid, but some of the guys still tried to hold that crazy bastard down. He started thrashing around, lashing out with his fists, and everywhere one of his blows landed a guy went down.”

  “Stim-shots double your strength and stamina, but they burn your body’s resources up right before they start eating your body. They last for maybe ten minutes at full steam, and then become about half as effective for another hour or so. This guy only lasted two minutes, but when he got ahold of Marks no one else had a chance to stop him. I’ve seen terrible things, Wright, but this guy… He tore Marks apart. He ripped his arms off and pounded his body with his fists until you could barely tell Marks had ever been a person. He punched him until his own muscles started ripping open, his eyes bugging out before they exploded out of his head. He died laughing and choking on his own blood, still trying to hit what little was left of Marks.”

  “Those were the worst of the guys on the bench, but the others got fucked up too. They started ranting and raving about shadows and monsters, and something coming to get them. We thought it was a bunch of bullshit until we finally noticed the darkness seeping across the floor of the barracks.”