by S. A. Lusher
At the last second, he snapped the bolt gun up and fired off the rest of the magazine. The force of the bolts sent the spider flying back the way it had come in a visceral spray of gore. Greg let out a breath he hadn't even realized he held and slowly lowered the gun. His hands trembled from a cocktail of terror and adrenaline.
He ejected the empty magazine and fed a fresh one in. Peering cautiously into the generator room, he saw that some of the spiders were still alive. He moved in and, as quickly and carefully as he could manage, finished each of them off with a bolt to the face.
With the spiders dealt with, Greg stared around the room. It wasn't very large, or well-designed. There was just a large piece of machinery at the back of the room and some shelving units, crates, and foldout tables scattered around.
A screen centered on the front face of the generator flared red, blinking slowly on and off in the dim light. Greg crossed the room and stood before it.
Power: Critical Low
Relief swept through Greg. The model was similar to the one they'd found in the abandoned repair station on Dis, near the end of their stay there. Powell had shown him the simple procedure of replacing power cells.
Turning and sweeping his gaze once more across the area, he stared at a single power cell resting on one of the foldout tables. There was a pair of crates next to it, one of them open. He crossed to them and stared down. Each crate held a pair of cells. Four was more than enough to work with.
He spent a few seconds trying to decide what to do with the bolt gun. He had no holster, no sling, nothing to put it on his person. Frowning, he finally set it down on the table and picked up one of the heavy cells. He carried it across the room and set it down on the ground next to the generator.
After a few moments of hunting, he finally located a panel on the front of the device and opened it up. Two power cells rested inside. A small screen on the front of each showed a blinking, red and nearly empty bar.
Greg grabbed one and slipped it out. Instantly, all the power remaining in the area died. Everything shut down and he froze as he was plunged into an absolute and perfect silence and darkness. Greg swallowed, tried to tell himself to not be afraid of the dark. Only it wasn't the dark that terrified him, but rather the things that may lurk in the dark, things that didn't need light to see by to find him.
Moving carefully, wishing vainly for a flashlight, he felt his way along the generator until he returned to the spot where he'd set down the new cell. His heart thudded violently now and he seriously began to worry about having a heart attack. He tried to calm himself as he knelt and hauled the cell up, but dark thoughts wouldn't leave him be.
What if there was something else out there?
What if the power cell was dead?
What if he fried himself trying to do this?
What if-
He slipped the power cell into the slot and instantly the emergency power came back on. Greg spun, expecting to see something had slipped into the room with him, some dark shape looming in the doorway or perhaps right behind him.
There was nothing. He was still alone in the room. Greg laughed nervously, an anticlimax, he supposed it would be called, if this were a novel or a movie. He frowned as he realized only emergency power was on. He studied the new power cell. Yep, it was new alright. The power bar was green, full, and steady.
Finally, he decided that you had to have both cells replaced before full power would come back. He supposed it made sense. Greg took the second nearly-dead cell out, expecting to be plunged into darkness once more, but this time the single cell provided enough power to keep emergency lights going.
He crossed the room, hauled a second cell out of the crate and slipped it into its waiting, metal nest. As he did, there was a happy beeping sound and suddenly the lights all around him flared to full life. Greg let out a long sigh of relief, grabbed the panel and fitted it back into place. He walked back over to his bolt gun, and instead of picking it up and leaving the room, opted to take a break for a minute.
He hopped up on the table and sat down, relishing how good it felt to just sit there. He was tired. Already, his brief reprieve from the world in the lonely break room seemed like a million years ago. He was hungry, thirsty, and his whole body felt like it had been hit by a jump ship, then a bunch of jerks had beaten him while he lay there, unconscious.
Everything felt bruised, sore, and miserable.
He'd like to think that he hadn't complained that much, ever since waking up Dis in that ruined ship. How long ago had that been? Greg sat and thought for a long moment. At least three weeks...was it? That didn't seem right. In some ways, his days at the abandoned outposts in the wastelands of Dis seemed merely a handful of days ago, less than a week. In others, it seemed that those memories belonged to another person in another life.
The perception of the passage of time, he realized abruptly, was absolutely insane. How could something seem both yesterday and last century?
He shook his head and, after a long moment, stood up. Popping his neck, back, and shoulders, Greg grabbed the bolt gun and left the corpse-strewn generator room behind. He began to genuinely wonder how far he could push himself, how long he could keep going without a real break. Then he remembered the local star and picked up the pace.
As he approached the central mining chamber again, that same rumbling from before abruptly started. Greg froze and instinctively moved to the nearest wall. He crouched there, gun out, eyes hunting fervently along the only two entrances in the tunnel, one behind him, one ahead of him. He searched for something, anything that might give him a hint as to what the hell was making all the noise.
The tremors kept going for half a minute, sending dust and small rocks to the ground from overhead, and Greg worried about a cave in. He prepared himself to run at a second's notice, but the tremors subsided and he was still alive. Too much, Greg decided. There was just too much going on right now.
His frayed nerves were already bad enough as it was. He felt burned out and exhausted, too tired to deal with this shit, which only worsened as he came back into the main room, and for the first time, got a truly good look at the chamber above him. The walls were ringed with ladders and catwalks and there was even an elevator shaft lashed to the rock wall. To Greg's great dismay, they were, all of them, ruined.
It was as though something had come through, something huge, and gone to town on the place, destroying absolutely everything that might provide a way up. The most obvious and direct route out, the elevator, had been crushed in several places. The top had broken away and now the whole thing leaned precariously back out into the cavern, threatening to give way to gravity and tumble earthwards at any second.
The catwalks and ladders had been, for the most part, demolished, turned into confused heaps of twisted metal. Greg simply stood there and stared, continually turning in slow circles, unable to comprehend the wanton destruction that may very well have left him to die down in the forsaken mines.
Then, after a long moment, his eye caught on a huge piece of machinery, a crane, which looked very out of place underground but was still there nonetheless, had been shifted in all the chaos. The crane itself, painted in thick, industrial-yellow paint and striped with black, had crashed into one of the catwalks.
The catwalk itself looked to be fairly stable. He frowned, an idea formed, and he studied the area harder. He finally decided that there might be some way to do this. He walked over to the crane, started to climb up it, and then stopped, looking down at his bolt gun. It had proved useful, but how could he carry it up? It wouldn't fit in his pocket or on his belt. He couldn't very well hold it with his teeth...
After a long bout of indecision, he finally decided he was going to have to leave the thing behind, which really sucked. There were definitely spiders about. With a huge sigh, Greg set the thing down on the ground, cracked his knuckles, and climbed up the cabin treads of the huge crane. He made his way up them, and got onto the cabin area. The windows were cracked an
d some of them had broken outright.
Nobody and nothing inside the cabin itself, though. For a moment, Greg had the idea to try and get in there and reposition the crane, but ultimately decided he might just screw himself out of the only method of escape currently available to him. He moved around to the front of the cabin, got onto the crane itself and climbed again.
As he made his way up, Greg realized it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. The crane was at a decent angle, and was designed with natural hand-and-foot holds. He made himself focus on the way ahead.
There were four levels of catwalks, it seemed. The crane's end had managed to smash into the second story. Greg kept going and, before he knew it, he'd reached the top. Carefully, he edged onto the catwalk. It groaned slightly under his weight, making him freeze. After a moment, he decided it appeared stable enough to hold him, at least for now.
He looked around. The catwalk led around the curving wall of the chamber to a ladder that had survived the chaos. That part was easy, at least. He began walking along the platform, moving at a brisk pace, trying to ignore the shifting nature of the metal beneath his feet, the way it groaned and creaked and threatened to collapse.
He reached the ladder without panicking. Greg hurried up it and found himself standing on the third level. Okay...this one would be a little more difficult. The platform he stood on seemed stable enough, so he took a moment to survey the area. No ladders, this time. And there were huge holes in the catwalks, most of them too far to jump. Even if he dared to, they probably wouldn't support such a jump.
As his gaze made a complete circuit of the area, he finally saw one of the platforms had collapsed only partially, creating an impromptu ramp to the fourth story. What was better, behind him, there was only one gap he'd have to jump to get to the ramp. He began moving along the platform, looking down occasionally.
It was hard to believe he'd ascended some thirty or forty feet so far, or maybe higher. He wasn't sure. He came to the gap and hesitated. It was just two feet, maybe two and a half, across. Under normal circumstances, not a problem. Unfortunately, these were anything but. Greg backed up, took a deep breath, and gave himself a running start. He leaped at the last second, sailed through the air and landed with a heavy thud on the other side.
The platform shook violently and groaned in protest against his sudden weight. This is it, he thought. I'm done for.
It held. He laughed nervously and kept moving again, eager to be free of this nightmare. Greg hit the ramp, ascended and came to the final level. He looked around again and saw that the platform ahead of him was broken only in two places, and ultimately led to another intact ladder that led to where the elevator would have taken him, had it worked: another tunnel, high up in the wall, near the ceiling.
“Yes,” he whispered, triumph flowed through him.
Too soon, though. The rumbling returned, more powerful than ever. Greg started off, wanting to get to that tunnel before whatever the hell it was that made these miniature earthquakes showed up. By the time he reached the first gap in the metal and jumped over it, he realized that the tremors were only getting worse.
He set off towards the second gap and the ladder, his salvation, when the tremors seemed to reach a climax. They quickly resolved into individual booms that he realized were footfalls.
What was it? What haunted him?
Greg glanced down into the cavern as he caught dark, titanic movement.
He didn't freeze, he didn't gasp, he didn't close his eyes.
He screamed.
It was the scream of pure panic, the scream of a man who had just been given a brief glimpse of hell and assured he would be there soon.
It was a spider. A fucking enormous spider. It was easily ten, no twenty, times the size of the things he'd run into so far. It was the size of a small fucking house.
Greg’s logic fought for control, it wasn't a regular spider. No, this one glistened with technology.
It was another Augmented-Undead hybrid.
Erebus had been busy.
His limbs trembled violently. Muttering quietly to himself, Greg made for the second gap, praying to any god that might be listening and willing to lend a hand that the giant spider wouldn't notice him.
It did.
Almost as soon as he got started, it noticed and began climbing the side of the cavern. Greg screamed and ran. He barely remembered to jump in time when he hit the gap. Landing on the other side, he sprinted the last few meters, leaped through the air and landed on the ladder. He scrambled up it as the spider came for him.
The entire area shook, more of the catwalks collapsed down into the cavern. Greg made it up the ladder in record time. He stood in the mouth of the tunnel, mercifully small enough that the spider wouldn't be able to fit into it.
Or could it? He'd seen spiders fit themselves into ridiculous spaces.
It didn't matter.
It was here.
Greg sprinted down the tunnel. One enormous, metal-studded leg came down the tunnel after him. Greg let out a small scream as he looked back and ran faster than he even thought possible.
There was nothing in his head, just the animal need of survival. Something thudded behind him. He turned. The leg had reached as far as it was able. A frustrated, furious roar sounded. It was so loud Greg thought he would go deaf.
The leg retreated.
Greg kept running, unable to stop.
Chapter 11
–The Terror–
By the time Greg managed to make himself stop running, he was gasping for breath. For what seemed like eternity he'd seen nothing but a pale light and rocky walls. He couldn't stop hearing the sound of the titanic spider coming for him. What made him stop was a break in the tunnel, no longer was it just the curving rock walls ahead of him. There was an opening, an end to the tunnel, and a brighter light streaming in through it.
Greg took a deep breath, held it and then let it out slowly, trying to calm himself. He shook with adrenaline and exhaustion now. He wanted to sleep for a decade. Forcing himself to focus, Greg took in his surroundings as he came to the end of the tunnel. There was a natural opening, ringed by a metal support structure that gleamed a dull silver in the light. Immediately, he realized he'd come to some kind of vehicle repair bay.
The area was huge, the walls, floor, and ceiling retained its natural rock makeup, but there were more signs of civilization here. Besides the huge pieces of machinery, equipment, and vehicles, there were support struts built into the walls and a handful of small buildings clustered to the far right side of the cavern.
He couldn't hear anything, couldn't smell any more undeath than usual, so Greg set off for the shacks. His weapon was gone, he'd be screwed if he ran into anything hostile. And that fucking giant spider...
There were three shacks, lined up next to each other in a row. They were all relatively intact, raised slightly off the ground, complete with a short set of stairs, doors, and windows. The first one he tried was a storage room, crammed full of crates. Moving on, Greg opened up the second one, and nearly wept in joy.
A security center. Gun lockers. There were three of them at the back of the room, all were open. Greg's hopes fell as he crossed the room. The light was bad, one of the light-strips was out, the other hung at an awkward angle and flickered, giving the room an ominous, tense feel of subliminal dread.
He let himself feel hope again as he spied something dark and roughly gun-shaped in the bottom of one of the lockers. Something made a noise, out in the main bay, beyond the shack. Greg hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. He'd closed the door behind him, but the window was broken out. He could see nothing.
He returned his attention to the locker, crossed the distance between them and reached down. His fingers wrapped around the grip of a pistol.
“Thank god,” he whispered.
Greg ejected the magazine, found it full and slipped it back in. There was also a holster hanging from a rack within the locker. He didn't plan on putting away
his pistol, as it looked like it was the only weapon he was getting, but he'd still have his bolt gun if he'd only had something to hold it beside his hands, so he attached it to his belt.
After making sure the safety was off, Greg reluctantly holstered the pistol and then spent the next few moments searching the area, only managing to turn up another pair of magazines. He pocketed them both and pulled the pistol back out, feeling safer with it in hand. He turned his attention to the bank of monitors taking up most of the far wall. They didn't have much to show, as most of them were dead or stricken with static.
He stared at the few that remained live. They showed little more than lonely tunnels and empty caverns. Greg stayed and watched it for a few moments, hoping to catch a glimpse of the enormous metal-studded spider from afar, but the scenes remained unchanged. Sighing, he turned away from the screens.
Something shifted out in the repair bay beyond the glass-ringed window frame. Greg felt a surge of adrenaline shoot into his nervous system. He tried to figure out what it might have been, but it was nothing more than a distant shadow. It was probably a fucking spider, though. Greg moved out of the security center and on to the next shack. This one held an infirmary. His spirits lifted as he looked around the clean, white interior.
“Hell yes,” he whispered, closing the door behind him.
Some of his wounds had re-opened during all the chaos and he'd managed to gather up a few more since leaving the isolated break room. He locked the door and stripped off his suit and uniform. Cracking open his medical case, he cleaned and bandage the new wounds, and re-bandaged the old ones.
After a moment's consideration, he decided against injecting himself with more stimulants. He was tired, exhausted even, but he was still mentally alert. After gathering up the medical kit and restoring it with supplies taken from the infirmary, Greg pulled his uniform and suit back on. When he stepped out of the infirmary, he felt refreshed.