Crashed

by Eric S. Brown

  “Matt’s right,” Lorie said. “Hawkes and Valerie are our own people. We can’t just leave them to die.”

  “We don’t even know that they’re in trouble. They might be perfectly fine somewhere just waiting out the storm,” Alex reminded her.

  “And you’ll be able to live with yourself if they aren’t?” Lorie pressed the security chief.

  “Look, the bottom line is that it’s not my call. It’s the major’s, and you heard what she said. This base takes priority right now,” Alex said, trying not to sound too harsh. He liked Hawkes too. The man was a crappy card player and the weekend games weren’t going to be the same without him if Matt was right about him and Valerie being in trouble. But it really wasn’t his call. He didn’t have the authority to send the two pilots back out there, storm or not.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Matt argued. “If you let us go back out, we’ll be able to do more than just Lord willing find Hawkes and Valerie. We could be Zulu’s eyes in the sky. If those monsters are out there, we could not only find out if they’re headed this way but maybe even get a count of their numbers.”

  “I’m sorry, Matt, but you need to drop it,” Alex told him sternly. “I mean it.”

  “Right …” Matt sneered and then snapped, “Where do you want us, sir?”

  “I think we’ve got enough folks guarding the command center. Why don’t you two head over to the power generator building with Davis?” Alex made his words sound like a suggestion but Matt knew an order when he heard it.

  “Sir, yes sir!” Matt spat and then turned his back on Alex, storming off down the corridor.

  Lorie gave Alex a final pleading look.

  The security chief shook his head and Lorie moved to follow Matt.

  “Lorie!” Alex called after her. “Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

  Lorie nodded and then she was gone.

  ****

  Lee had finally slowed his dangerous speed on the Snow Beast. He had calmed down some after watching a monster that shouldn’t exist murder Jim through the heavy vehicle’s forward window. Sergeant Lopez clutched his automatic shotgun in a white-knuckled grip. Things had gone from bad to worse fast. The last time the sergeant had checked on the wounded in the Snow Beast’s rear, Mays had passed on. Without Jim there to attend Thomas, Lee didn’t think he’d be able to hang on much longer either. Whitiker though had come around and propped himself up against a wall. He hadn’t believed a danged word of what they told him about the monster and Jim, but he had accepted the M-16 Sergeant Lopez had forced on him anyway. Whitiker kept hold on the weapon with his left hand as he had lost his right in the crash. The bandage covering the stump at the elbow of his right arm clearly needed changing. Red seeped through it and sometimes dripped onto the floor near where he sat. Lee didn’t know squat beyond basic first aid though, and he was afraid to even touch a wound as bad as Whitiker’s, even if just to change a bandage. That wasn’t his job. His job was to drive the Snow Beast and get them to Zulu Base. Not that he was doing so great at that either. The storm and the lack of any kind of navigation system made it nearly impossible to know where they were. Lee had done his best to keep the Snow Beast moving in the direction he believed Zulu Base to be in, but the mad flight from where they had encountered the monster that killed Jim left him second-guessing himself.

  There was no help coming from Sergeant Lopez. The sergeant looked to be on the verge of losing it. Lee had heard him mutter words too quiet to really hear what they were to himself every few minutes. The one word Lee could make out every now and then was devil. From how the sergeant squeezed his automatic shotgun, Lee suspected the sergeant was replaying his encounter with the monster over and over in his head. Whether it was because the monster terrified him or because the sergeant felt guilty for Jim’s death, he didn’t suppose it mattered. The man was a nervous wreck. Lee had seen soldiers lose it before during his tour and it was never a pretty sight.

  “You okay, sir?” Lee asked Sergeant Lopez.

  The sergeant shook himself and looked over at Lee as if he were coming out of a trance.

  “I’m fine,” Sergeant Lopez responded gruffly. “How much longer until we reach Zulu?”

  Lee shrugged. “That’s impossible to say for sure, sir. We should be getting close though.”

  “Any luck raising them on the comm?” Sergeant Lopez popped his shotgun’s magazine and rechecked that it was fully loaded for the fifth time inside of an hour.

  “Sir, the comms are out, remember?” Lee said cautiously.

  “Then why in the hell haven’t you been working at repairing them?” Sergeant Lopez growled.

  “I’ve been driving, sir,” Lee reminded him. “That’s my job. I’m not a tech.”

  Sergeant Lopez seemed to settle some, looking a bit remorseful for his behavior.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Sergeant Lopez told him. “That thing … It’s got me rattled.”

  “Me too, sir,” Lee said. “I would say that’s a natural response after running into something like that thing.”

  “It was a fragging, real-life Yeti, wasn’t it?” Sergeant Lopez asked.

  “I couldn’t say for sure, sir, but if Yetis exist, I’d say that is what one would look like,” Lee agreed.

  Sergeant Lopez stared out the forward window at the falling snow. “I didn’t sign up to fight monsters,” he said to himself more than Lee.

  “Sir …” Lee said as he spotted something in the distance. “There’s something out there ahead of us.”

  Leaning forward in his seat, Sergeant Lopez squinted, trying to see through the waves of snow that the Snow Beast’s wipers barely managed to keep from piling up on the windshield.

  “Is that …?” Sergeant Lopez asked.

  “It’s a helicopter, sir,” Lee blurted out. Bringing the Snow Beast to a halt, Lee looked the bird over as best he could given his field of view of it. “Doesn’t look like it crashed, sir. The storm must have forced it to set down.”

  “If it didn’t crash, what in the fragging devil happened to its forward window then?” Sergeant Lopez challenged him.

  Lee hated saying what he was thinking aloud, so he just said, “I think we both know the answer to that, sir.”

  “The monster …” Sergeant Lopez said quietly, his voice so low that Lee barely heard him.

  “I would say it was more than one of those things, sir.” Lee stared at the helicopter. “Look at its side door. Something attacked it too.”

  Sergeant Lopez didn’t say anything more. He just sat in the passenger seat, looking at the helicopter as he somehow managed to clutch his automatic shotgun even tighter.

  “Should we go around it, sir?” Lee asked.

  The sergeant remained silent.

  “From the look of it, anyone that was inside of it … that creature and more like it probably tore them apart.”

  When the sergeant still didn’t respond, Lee said, “Roger that then. We’re going around it. Once we get to Zulu, we can notify them of its location and they can send out help.”

  Sergeant Lopez finally spoke again, sounding relieved that Lee had decided their course of action for him. “Good call … What was your name again?”

  “It’s Lee, sir,” he said. “My name is Lee.”

  “Right,” Sergeant Lopez grunted, already beginning to lose himself in his own dark thoughts again.

  “Hey!” Whitiker called out from the rear of the Snow Beast. “Did I just hear you guys say we found a helicopter?”

  “Yeah!” Lee shouted back at him. “We sure did. There doesn’t look to be anyone alive on it though so we’re going around it.”

  “What the hell?” Whitiker griped. “Whatever happened to leaving no man behind? Besides, did you stop to think that it might have better comm. gear than this thing we’re in? If it does, we could call for help and put an end to this mess right here and now.”

  “Sergeant?” Lee turned to look at Lopez. “What do you think, sir?”

  “S
tick with the plan …” Lee could see the sergeant was having trouble remembering his name despite the fact that he had just told him what it was.

  “You heard the sergeant, Whitiker,” Lee said. “We’re going around it. If the things that likely killed its crew are still close by, we are likely to find ourselves being next on their menu. I don’t know about you, man, but I want to live to make it home.”

  Whitiker looked like he was about to keep arguing but Sergeant Lopez put an end to it.

  “Drop it, Whitiker. Lee’s right,” the sergeant growled. “We’re going around it.”

  Lee felt bad about not checking out the helicopter for survivors, but he continued to assure himself that there likely weren’t any. He kicked the Snow Beast into gear and got it back into motion. The heavy vehicle drove around the helicopter and continued on its way toward Zulu Base.

  ****

  Major Dixon, Clay, and Dustin remained in Zulu Base’s command center. Everyone else had been armed and assigned a position by Alex. Were they going a bit over the top protecting the base? That was something she wondered but decided that their call had been the right one to make. If the creatures out there in the storm showed up on their doorstep, at least they would be as ready as they could be for them.

  Alex entered the command center carrying a heavy-looking bag. He laid it down on top of a console near where Major Dixon stood and unzipped it.

  “You didn’t think I had forgotten about you guys, did you?” Alex asked, grinning.

  The security chief took two M-16s and extra magazines out of the bag. “These are for Clay and Dustin,” he told her as Major Dixon watched him.

  “Thanks, man!” Clay smiled, getting up from his workstation to snag one of the rifles and carry it back with him. He propped it against his chair and returned to his job.

  Dustin came over to get his M-16, looking much less excited about doing so than Clay had been. “I haven’t touched one of these since Basic.”

  Alex frowned at the tech. “That’s a shame. You think you can handle it?”

  Dustin made a show of readying the rifle. “I think I got it, yeah.”

  Laughing, Alex said, “I guess you do.”

  “Anything for me?” Major Dixon asked.

  Alex grinned like a devil. “Oh yes, ma’am. I saved the best for last.”

  Reaching into the bag, Alex pulled out a Desert Eagle and handed it to her.

  Major Dixon accepted it with a smile on her face. “Very thoughtful of you, Alex.”

  “I know we haven’t seen eye to eye on a lot of things since we got here,” the security chief told her. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you, ma’am. I figured this would go a good ways toward making up for those disagreements.”

  Major Dixon chuckled. “It does indeed. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am,” Alex said with a grin.

  “As lovely as this pistol is …” Major Dixon said, “I still hope I won’t need to use it. If those things get inside this building to the point of reaching this command center …”

  Alex nodded. “Then we’re likely all screwed anyway.”

  “Everyone else is in position?” Major Dixon asked, changing the subject.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Alex answered. “I sent Matt and Lorie over to the power generator building with Davis. That guy is a prick, but I couldn’t leave him over there alone. Everyone else has been assigned to one of the three doors of this building. I’ll be watching the main one myself.”

  “Good.” Major Dixon looked over at Clay. “Any luck breaking through the interference and getting a transmission out to the Kennedy?”

  “No, ma’am,” Clay said, shaking his head. “I haven’t been able to make contact with the ship yet, but I am still trying.”

  “What about Hawkes and Alpha two?” Major Dixon asked.

  “No luck there either.” Clay shrugged. “If I could just figure out one hundred percent what is causing the interference …”

  “Well, don’t give up,” Major Dixon urged him.

  “Hadn’t planned on it, ma’am,” Clay told her.

  “Dustin?” Major Dixon turned to the tech.

  “All the close-in cameras are fully functional, ma’am,” Dustin reported. “I’m keeping a sharp eye on their feeds, but as of yet, all I can see out there is the snow coming down.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Major Dixon said.

  “I hope so,” Dustin agreed. “Trust me, you’ll be the first to know if anything changes.”

  ****

  Matt and Lorie had followed Davis back to the power generator building. They had remained at its door. The place only had the one entrance so if anything tried to get inside of it, coming through them would be the only option. Davis had gone on deeper into the building to continue whatever it was he working on. From the grumbling Davis did under his breath, Matt had caught that whatever the man was doing needed to be done in order to keep the heat on. Matt was glad to be rid of him. He tried hard to like everyone despite their flaws, but Davis pushed him to the limits of what he could take.

  “I saw how you looked at the copter as we came over here,” Lorie said. “You still want to go back out there, don’t you?”

  Matt barely kept himself from snapping at her as he answered, “You know I do. Frag, you do too.”

  “You’re not wrong …” Lorie said quietly. “But our duty is here. Hawkes and Valerie aren’t newbs, Matt. They can handle themselves and you know it.”

  “Against things like what the major showed us …” Matt met her eyes. “I don’t know about that. I’m not even sure Alex would have a chance surviving an encounter with one of those monsters, Lorie.”

  “Matt …” Lorie whispered his name and he saw that something was wrong.

  Lorie gestured from him to keep quiet and come closer to the door. There was a small window at close to eyeball level in it.

  “I think I saw something moving out there in the snow.” Lorie kept her voice as low as she could as she spoke.

  The window was too small for both of them to see through it easily so Lorie stepped aside to let him at it. Matt moved up to it and looked about outside. His field of vision was limited and the darkness of the night and falling snow didn’t help. Even with the base’s exterior lights on, it was hard to see.

  “I don’t see anything,” he told her. “Are you sure it just wasn’t your nerves getting the better of you?”

  “I’m sure,” Lorie said with no trace of doubt in her voice.

  The two of them had worked together long enough for Matt to know that she at least wholeheartedly believed what she was telling him.

  “Okay then …” he said. “What do we do about it?”

  Before Lorie could answer, the door was smashed inward, torn from its hinges. It hit both of them as it came. Matt took the worst of it, being closest to the door. Its metal slammed into him, knocking him off his feet. He narrowly avoided being squashed beneath the weight of the door and the monster that followed it inside by rolling his body to the left. Only the edge of the door struck Lorie. She staggered backward, the sleeve of her parka and the flesh under it sliced open. Blood flowed from her open wound as she screamed. The monster whirled toward her, its feral eyes glowing a bright shade of yellow.

  Lorie fired into the monster, point blank, with her M-16. The weapon chattered and bucked in her hands. She grimaced as its firing shook her wounded arm, but her grip on it stayed firm and her finger was tight on its trigger. Her blast of fire caught the monster completely by surprise. It reeled away from her as her bullets ripped at its arms, shoulders, and chest.

  Matt managed to get out of the monster’s path. Lorie’s onslaught held its full attention and it didn’t even seem to know he was there. Pumping a round into the chamber of his shotgun, Matt took aim at the monster’s face. It saw him in its final moment, yellow eyes going wider as if the thing somehow knew its life was about to end. Matt’s shotgun thundered and the blast it fired blew the monster’s he
ad apart in a shower of blood, brain matter, and bone fragments. The monster’s body thudded onto the floor between Matt and Lorie.

  Before either of them could even move, another of the monsters appeared in the doorway. It came charging into the building at them. Matt tried to pump another round into the chamber of his shotgun but the monster was too fast. It plowed into him with enough force to send him flying from his feet. Matt felt several of his ribs snap inside of his chest from the impact. There was no air left in his lungs to scream with though in the brief moment before he came down crashing to lie on his back.

  Lorie’s M-16 was already ready for action. She blazed away at the monster with a series of three-round bursts that emptied the remainder of her rifle’s magazine. Her first burst tore at the monster’s right shoulder, staining the white hair there red with blood. The monster turned to face Lorie as her second burst punched at its chest. The monster gave a pained grunt, looking down at the holes the bullets had dug in its flesh. Lorie’s third and final burst met the monster as it recovered and sprang at her. It wasn’t enough to stop the monster though. Closing the distance between its position and where she stood, its white hair-covered hands lashed out, swiping at her. Lorie dodged the monster’s claws of the monster’s right hand but those of its left made contact with her. They sunk through the cloth of the parka she wore and into her flesh just above her left breast. They tore downward along her body, breaking the ribs they had caught on as they went. When the monster’s claws came away from her, they were dripping with her blood and Lorie was opened up from near the top of her chest all the way to her stomach. Lorie stumbled, slumping against the wall behind her.

  Matt watched from where he laid, unable to help her. He tried to yell her name but couldn’t. Pain coursed through him from the effort. Gritting his teeth, Matt rolled onto his side and managed to shove himself to his feet. Every breath he took hurt like Hades. His breathing was forced and labored as he snatched up his shotgun, working its pump. In the time it had taken him to get up, the monster had plunged a clawed hand into Lorie’s stomach. Its fingers wiggled about inside of her guts as she howled and shrieked from the pain.