by S. A. Lusher
Greg, Kyra, and Campbell slipped out into the corridor after making sure it was clear. They hurried over to the security officers.
“What the hell is happening?” Greg asked as he fed more shells into his shotgun.
“Chaos,” one of them replied, breathing heavily. “All was quiet, then, all of a sudden, the things were coming in through the airlocks. Lockdowns, drone guns, scanning equipment, all of it just went dead. We need to get to the command center.”
“Lead the way.”
The group hurried down the corridor to a closed door at the end. One of the guards opened it while another waited at the middle, weapon at ready. Even before the door finished opening, a thin, black barrel stuck in and fired. Suddenly, half the guard's head was missing and his corpse slumped to the floor.
Greg shouldered his shotgun and fired, blowing a fist-sized hole through the chest of a Drone that had lain in wait on the other side of the door. Another popped in, firing, its face blank and emotionless, glistening steel and circuitry covering half its body. One of the security guards shot it twice in the head and a third time in the mouth for good measure. Beyond the door was another corridor wreathed in chaos.
To his left and right Greg spied battlefields. There were easily a couple dozen Drones swarming the area. He could see the entrance to the main hangar where the bulk of their important equipment resided far down to his right and started towards it. They needed to make sure that remained safe above all else.
Greg reached the battle first. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to find cover, nothing to do but point and shoot. He put his shotgun to the back of a Drone’s head and fired, watching the skull vaporize in a plume of red gore and sparks. Even before that body finished falling, he swung the barrel around in a tight arc and fired again. Blowing the arm off another and sending is spinning and sprawling to the ground.
He heard the others add their own gunfire to the mix. Between his squad and the handful of survivors on the other side, standing in the opening where the corridor ended and the hangar began they managed to wipe out the rest of the Drones in a few moments. Greg left the two security personnel he'd found with the others to secure the area, and then took Kyra and Campbell into the hangar, which still seemed secure.
He led them across the way, through the chaos, towards the makeshift command area. Lynch and Mike had made it back and conferred with Burne and Powell.
“What's the word?” he asked.
“Death,” Lynch replied grimly. “Glad you're here though, Bishop. These walls are pretty sturdy and take a hell of a long time to cut through. The windows are basically the same. That means that the only points of ingress these assholes could be coming from are the airlocks and some hatchways leading up from the tunnels. I've got guys securing those hatchways, but I'll need three good teams on the airlocks.
“Burne, take a squad and get to the east airlock. Mike, you've got the west one, grab a squad. Bishop, you get your two cronies to go and secure the north airlock. Just go back out the way you came in, follow that corridor all the way to the end and turn right. You'll find it. I want you to kill anything you find, secure it, and then wait for reinforcements to hold the position. Is that easy enough for you to remember?” she asked.
“Got it,” Greg replied.
“Hold it,” Lynch said suddenly as they turned away.
Greg turned back around. “Yeah?”
“Any of you know how to work a welding kit?”
“I do,” Campbell said.
Lynch frowned, and then grunted. It seemed to serve her as a sigh. “Fine. There's one over there on that table. Grab it. Seal that fucking airlock shut. And do a good job, or I'll take that welder to your junk.”
“I...okay.”
They turned and left the command area. Campbell grabbed the welding tool from the table and secured it to his belt as they made for the door.
“Better do a good job, Campbell,” Kyra said with a smirk in her voice.
“Yeah, yeah,” Campbell muttered.
They moved past the security entourage that was still hanging around the exit, taking potshots at Drones that stepped out into the corridor and began making for them. The trio made their way down the lengthy, vaulted passageway.
“Does anyone find the sudden failing of our security systems in perfect conjunction with an Augmented strike even a little bit suspicious?” Greg asked.
“I thought they just hacked our systems,” Campbell replied.
“Maybe...but Powell is good. Really good. We're pretty much manually sealed off from exterior influences, as far as I understand it.”
“So you think someone turned off the defenses?” Kyra asked.
“Please tell me you still don't think it’s me,” Campbell said.
“At this point, I'm not sure you're smart enough for something like that,” Greg replied.
Campbell rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks.”
“Of course, you could just be pulling the long game, pretending to be an idiot.”
“Again, thanks.”
“I don't think it's you,” Greg said.
“Who then?” Campbell asked.
“That's the thing, no idea. There's something like sixty or seventy people I've seen so far. Probably more. No idea how many of them might be willing to turn. Erebus tried to cut a deal with me. It obviously didn't work, but I imagine it's gotten better at making deals.”
“So, what do we do?” Kyra asked.
“For now? Stay alive and keep an eye out. It could be anyone.”
They reached the end of the corridor, putting down a few surviving Drones in the area. The fighting seemed to have moved on to other portions of the base, for which he was grateful. These new and improved Drones were downright terrifying. They could move, swiftly and with great lethality. Greg turned a corner and looked around.
Nothing. The corridor beyond was smaller and clear, save for a dead Drone on the ground with its chest caved in and half its head blown away. Greg moved past it when the thing suddenly twitched. Light flickered into its remaining eye.
“Bishop...” it said in a groaning monotone.
Greg whirled and raised his weapon, but held his trigger finger. “Erebus.”
“I'm not done with you...not yet.”
“Same here, you fucker. I'm not even close to done with you.”
Greg squeezed the trigger and blew the rest of the things head away.
“Man, those things are fucking creepy,” Campbell muttered.
“Yeah. Come on.”
They kept going, following this corridor another dozen meters and locating the smallest of the three airlocks, the one they'd come in through originally. The inner door was open, but there was no one and nothing waiting for them in the locker room or the airlock. Greg moved forward, double-checking the interior of the airlock itself, and found it empty.
“Okay, get to it, we'll watch your back,” he said.
Campbell nodded and stepped into the airlock. He slipped on a pair of black welder's goggles he'd grabbed and set the work, welding the door into place so that it wouldn't open without considerable effort.
Greg moved back into the locker room with Kyra. They sat on one of the benches and kept an eye on the only way into the room besides the airlock.
“So...” Greg said.
“So...?” Kyra replied.
Greg laughed. “How about dinner and a drink after we get out of this shithole of a system?”
“I think that sounds like the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life...god, I've never been so tired. Or wanted a drink so bad.” She stretched and popped her neck.
“I hear that!” Campbell called from the airlock.
“Ugh, I don't like that guy,” Kyra muttered.
“He's kinda growing on me,” Greg admitted.
She glanced dubiously at him. “Tell me you aren't serious.”
“I'm afraid I can't do that.”
Kyra heaved a sigh. “God, fine. I'm not going to be one of tho
se bitch girlfriends that try to choose their boyfriend's friends for them.”
“You know, you strike me as the kind of girl who gets along with guys rather than girls,” Greg said suddenly.
Kyra opened her mouth to respond, stopped, closed it, and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess you could say I am. It's honestly never occurred to me before, but yeah, almost all of my friends have been guys. Which is kind of annoying.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I don't know if it's just me, but I can tell when a guy is thinking about fucking me. It happens a lot. I used to let it go to my head...then I realized that if given the opportunities, most guys would fuck pretty much any girl they come across.” She shrugged.
“I see,” Greg replied.
Kyra laughed. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Uh-huh. You're gonna have to get used to this. I swear like a sailor, I can probably drink you under the table and I'm not afraid to fist fight.”
“I'm pretty much used to that at this point.”
“Man, is this how you guys flirt? It's weird,” Campbell said.
They both looked over. He was standing in the doorway, goggles still on, welder in hand. He smirked and chuckled.
“Get back to work,” Kyra said.
“But I'm done.”
“The inner door isn't sealed up.”
Campbell heaved a sigh, closed the inner door and set to work. Several more minutes passed in an uncomfortable silence until he finally finished, killed the torch, and straightened back up. He turned to face them.
“Done.”
“Finally,” Kyra replied.
Greg activated his radio. “Lynch, this is Bishop. We're secure.”
“Good. I've got a security team on the way there. They're gonna eyeball the job and, if they're satisfied Campbell's done a good job, then you'll all head for the garage for back up I understand Burne is having some trouble.”
“Roger that.”
While they waited, Campbell asked, “Do you really think I'm dumb?”
Greg looked at him for a moment, and then held up his hand, his thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart.
“A little,” he admitted.
“Thanks, Bishop. You're a great guy.”
“Better answer than I would've given,” Kyra replied.
The security team showed up. They were frustrated that they couldn't look at the outer door, but seemed satisfied with the job done on the inner door and reported as much to Lynch. Once that was done, the six of them set off again into the complex.
The sounds of conflict grew louder as they drew closer to the garage. Listening in on the comms network, Greg could hear that Mike and his squad had finished up their own job and were also converging on the garage. There must have been a hell of a battle going on there. The chaotic cacophony only grew in intensity.
Greg made sure he'd reloaded his weapons, switched to his rifle, set it three-round burst and moved into the garage.
Hell had been loosed. Chaos boiled. Burne, Mike, and their two squads were doing battle with a couple of dozen Drones. Bullets flew everywhere, blood pooled on the floor, and bodies fell. Greg threw himself into the fray without much thought for anything else. He sighted up a Drone and blew out its left eye, sending it careening to the ground. Greg lined up a second one and blew away a portion of its skull.
Greg emptied his magazine, ejected it, barely heard it clatter to the floor and slammed a fresh one in. He burned through his bullets, spraying blood and sparks through the air, his hands steady, his aim true. Around him, men and women fought and died against unfeeling corpses driven by cybernetics and electricity.
With the infusion of Greg and Mike's squads, Burne and his men began gaining the upper hand and taking out Drones left and right. Seconds bled into minutes as the reek of gunpowder, blood, and death filled the garage. Blood, red, darker red, and outright black, slicked the floor. Greg allowed himself to believe that they were going to make it through this without too many losses when it happened.
The far garage door, the inner door of a huge airlock, suddenly dented inward. A tremendous bang tore through the area. Greg groaned and quickly put down the remaining augmented. This was never a good thing. A second, third, and fourth dent had appeared in the ground-level, central area of the huge door by the time the last Drone fell.
“Get ready!” Burne called.
The survivors, numbering close to twenty, regrouped and backed away from the dented door, reloading and preparing themselves for whatever new horror was about to burst through and throw a whole new level of pain their way.
Silence descended as the men got into position, those that could grab cover doing so. No more dents appeared. Greg's muscles were tense as tempered steel, his rifle tucked tightly against his shoulder, sweat pouring down his face. All around him, the men and women shifted uncomfortably, waiting.
Someone began to say something when the dented region of the door abruptly exploded inwards, admitting an enormous beast of flesh and steel. Greg's jaw dropped as he saw this latest terror. It was in the shape of a man, but, to his growing horror, Greg realized that it was several men that had been sewn together and were held in place by technology. The thing was easily eight feet tall. Steel, circuitry, and technology covered half of its body. The thing let out a roar and raised one hand, which was no hand at all, but, in fact, a giant blade.
It charged as a hail of gunfire opened up, peppering it with seemingly no effect. The monstrous thing was amidst the men in a few seconds. It brought its blade-hand around in a broad arc, decapitating two of the survivors. The double-sided blade came back around, cleaving through another man's torso and sending both halves of him flying.
Blood.
There was blood everywhere.
Men and women screamed and ran as this bladed terror cut through their ranks. Greg ducked behind it, switched to his shotgun, aimed high and squeezed the trigger. The beast roared, stumbled, and then spun around. Greg barely managed to get out of the way of a killing blow. He felt the tip of the blade cut through the armor he wore over his chest. Someone else shot it a few times from behind, causing it to spin around again.
They kept this up and it became a game of keep-away. Within a few minutes, the beast had taken too much damage and its head had become little more than a thin casing of battered, bloodied steel around whatever it was kept it going. Finally, it let out a loud, pained groan and toppled to the ground, crashing so hard it knocked over several crates.
“What the hell was tha-” Greg was cut off as something crashed into him from overhead and he suddenly felt a wretched, burning pain in his shoulder.
Someone screamed. He realized it was Kyra. There was a gunshot and hot blood splashed him. Greg realized he was now laying face-down on the ground. He groaned and went to push himself up, but his shoulder hurt so much he let out a sharp scream. He suddenly felt the distinctive feeling of a gun barrel being pressed against his head.
Someone shouted and suddenly it was gone. He rolled over and saw Burne standing over him, pistol in hand, as well as Kyra and Campbell.
“Wait!” Kyra cried.
Greg began to feel very hot, feverish, and his head swam.
“What happened?” he groaned.
“A Creeper bit you,” Kyra said, her face stricken with terror.
“He's going to turn. We have to kill him,” Burne said, his mouth set into a hard, grim line, his eyes colder than space.
“I'm the Cure,” Greg groaned.
His thoughts began to disintegrate, drifting away from him into an endless black void of meaninglessness.
“What the fuck's he talking about?” Burne asked.
“Turn time is what, a few minutes? Just wait,” Kyra cried. “He's different. He was there at ground zero when they released the infection.”
“What?” Burne cried, stepping back.
Their voices came from a great distance now, low and distorted. Campbell suddenly swam into hi
s vision.
“Hey, buddy. Time to put that cure to the test, huh? If you don't make it, I'll put the bullet in your head, if you want. I can't imagine you'd want Powell or any of these guys to do it, and I don't think Kyra'd be able to...”
Greg groaned. He could hear Kyra, urgently explaining something. Burne's voice, uncertain and hesitant. Campbell again. Suddenly, reality seemed to shift and he was being carried down a long hallway that might have been infinite. The lights overhead seemed to have become furry and were being boiled alive...
Suddenly, he was lying on something hard and flat and smelled distinctly of the color blue. His eyes wouldn't stop blinking.
He could hear Kyra. “See, it's been ten minutes. He's not even turning...”
Burne's face suddenly swam into his field of vision. “Damn, look at his eyes...”
Burne's face abruptly began to melt, as though the process had been filmed and then someone was hitting a fast forward button. Bits of liquid skin began dripping onto Greg and he groaned, feeling nauseous.
His head had been cracked open with a hammer and someone had placed electricity spikes directly inside his brain. His back had been swabbed with fuel and someone had applied a flame to it. He heard Billings, whispering in his head.
“Don't worry, kid. Being dead ain't nothing. It's a hell of a lot easier than being alive, I can tell you that right now.”
Kauffman was hovering over him, crying bloody tears. He opened his mouth and flaming barbed wire began twining out of it. Greg tried to close his eyes but found, with more terror than he had ever felt, that he couldn't.
“Greg...”
Suddenly Baker was there, headless, blood still spraying from the hole where his neck had once been. The blood was black and toxic. Wherever it hit, decayed flowers instantaneously sprouted. Each flower sported a demonic head that wouldn't stop screaming.
Someone held his hand.
Suddenly, mercifully, blackness took him, and he was unconscious.
Chapter 07
–Clash by Night–