Deathless (The Shadow Wars Book 12)

by S. A. Lusher

“No, not this time. We might as well stick together,” Greg replied.

  Jennifer glanced up at the sky and wondered what it looked like before this anomalous event hit Ash. Probably not very pleasant. She imagined that if they could have afforded it, those who built the colony would have put a roof over it, or maybe buried it in the ground. This was not a place meant for humanity.

  The trio made their way down the cracked blacktop street. Dry, ashy dirt blew across the street in whispering trails. She kept her rifle firmly in her grasp, the butt of it tucked up into her shoulder. The safety was off and she was ready to open fire if necessary. Despite the fact that they could hear nothing save the wind and see no one around, no signs of life or movement, she would not accept that the colony was truly abandoned.

  Something was here, she just had no idea what.

  Worst of all, perhaps, was the lingering question: Where were the colonists? The soldiers and scientists and technicians and, god forbid, their families? As they approached a small medical clinic near the edge of the snarl of cars and rubble that choked up the street, she struggled to maintain her detachment, her cool, her calm. This place was getting to her, it was getting to them all, she could sense it in the stiff abruptness of the others, their movements, their terse words. The radio blackout only made things worse.

  Greg led the way into the clinic. She came in after him once he gave the all-clear, spying a waiting room that looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Chairs and tables were tossed about and often broken. Blood had run down the walls and pooled in the edges of the room. They moved slowly through the clinic, their interest proving too much for them as they investigated all the rooms the structure had to offer.

  Jennifer looked into an exam room, finding a broken monitor on the floor, shards of glass everywhere. There were a few bullet holes in the walls and a cabinet had been ripped free of its moorings and smashed on the floor, scattering medical tools and supplies every which way. But there was no sign of what had happened here, to the attacker or the attacked. Each room was another portrait of chaos, another visage of desolation, another mystery. In the end, they found nothing and moved through a side door.

  Standing in an alleyway between the clinic, they saw that the blockage extended to block the alley as well, so Greg led them into the next building, which turned out to be a fast food place. It was, of all things, a Mega Taco.

  “Wow, I missed this place,” Greg said suddenly.

  “Mega Taco? They're all over the place,” Jennifer replied as they cut across the lobby.

  “Yeah, I know but we've been so damned busy running missions that I haven't had a chance to eat at one in a long time. You know my first experience with a Mega Taco was after a firefight where I almost died?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We were in a ship, a Rogue Ops ship. They had a little mall built in. They hit me with a stun round, electric. My friends managed to save me and I recovered from the shock in a Mega Taco,” Greg explained.

  “You lead a weird life,” Jennifer replied after a moment.

  “We all do at this point.”

  The front door to the Mega Taco led back outside to the main street that should take them through most of the colony. The blockage didn't extend any further. Which was good. Unfortunately, as they stepped back out into the street, Jennifer happened to glance back over her shoulder. Which was bad. Because someone had scrawled a message across the front of the Mega Taco in what definitely appeared to be blood.

  “Greg, Keron...look.”

  They both looked back, then stopped and stared.

  Death is no longer our right

  A long moment of silence passed, broken only by the whispering winds.

  “What do you think it means?” Greg asked finally.

  “I have an unhappy suspicion that we'll find out sooner rather than later,” Keron replied, his voice low and tense.

  After a long moment, Greg finally stirred. “Come on, the primary security station isn't all that far away from our current location.”

  He led them once again down the street, sticking to its middle. They were more exposed but there was also less of a chance of something ambushing them from any of the storefronts or alleyways in between the buildings. As they started walking again, Jennifer heard a whispered word from somewhere behind her. She jerked and turned around, weapon raised.

  “What is it?” Greg asked.

  “I heard something...” The voice, this time, was familiar. It was a male voice but...without hearing more, she couldn't tell anything else.

  “I didn't hear anything,” Keron said.

  “Me neither...wait, hold on.”

  As he said this, Jennifer heard something else whispered, only this time, it was inside of her helmet, over the comms network.

  “Drake?” Greg asked, echoing Jennifer's own hopes that the radio was coming back. “Can you read me? Martel?”

  The whispering persisted, grew stronger even. It almost sounded familiar. Jennifer listened hard, trying to pull some kind of meaning from the ghostly words.

  “What is that?” Keron murmured.

  Jennifer continued listening, briefly tuning the world out, knowing that she knew the voice that was speaking...

  “Jennifer...you got me killed.”

  She gasped and jerked in surprise. It was Mark. It was his voice. A dead man's voice, reaching out to her over time and radio waves. She saw Greg have a similar reaction.

  “What did you hear?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he muttered, turning away from them.

  “You heard something,” Jennifer pressed. “What?...what did you hear?”

  “Why, what did you hear?!” he snapped back at her.

  She stopped speaking, closed her eyes for a few seconds, realizing that he must have heard the same thing she had heard: someone from his past.

  Someone he felt guilty about.

  “We should move on,” Keron said. His voice was a little tighter than usual.

  “Fine. Come on, we're almost there,” Greg said, his voice sounding thick with misery.

  Jennifer wanted to press him further, to know, but stopped herself. She wouldn't want to talk about what she'd heard. Mark...she'd been trying not to think about him. There had been a lot of life and death decisions in her career, and usually they turned out for the better, or, if they didn't, she generally felt confident that there was nothing else she could have done. But with Mark...it had been reckless. She'd been so damned desperate to get information out of that metal-armed asshole, Enzo, that she'd pushed him...apparently too far.

  If she closed her eyes now, she would see a freeze-frame of Mark's head snapping back in a spray of blood.

  They hurried down the street, towards the two-storied structure of the primary security station. The whispering hadn't exactly ceased, but it was a background murmur now, almost like white noise over the radio. Jennifer was tempted to turn hers off, as she imagined the others might be, but they had probably drawn the same conclusion: whatever had severed their connection with the others might suddenly stop.

  Luckily, they didn't need to do anything annoying to get into the security station. The battered and bloodied front door opened without any trouble. A great deal had obviously gone on in the building itself. It was just as thrashed and smashed as the rest of the colony. As they performed a search of the structure, Jennifer tried to envision just what exactly had gone on in this place to cause such a disastrous ruin.

  All she could see were blood-covered men and women screaming their sanity away, attacking each other and shooting everyone and everything.

  It was a fairly unsettling vision.

  They came at last to the control room for the security station. Greg settled in at the main workstation and booted it up.

  “Let's see what we've got here,” he muttered to himself.

  As she waited, Jennifer patrolled around the room, looking out a few bulletproof windows onto the colony below them. They still hadn't found
any bodies yet. She had no idea what that meant. It was definitely creepy though.

  “All right, gather round,” Greg said after a few minutes of screwing with the workstation. “I've managed to find a few logs.”

  Jennifer and Keron moved to join them. They watched as the screen cleared to show a middle-aged man with short, black hair who looked haggard and overworked. “This is the vid-log of Commander Brighton, August Eighth, 2348. The damned scientists are all in a tizzy about something, some big breakthrough they've had but, of course, they won't say what. Top secret, state secrets, classified. And I get to sit here and continue guarding...what exactly? Nothing to report otherwise, as usual.” The screen went black, then cleared again.

  This time Brighton looked terrified.

  “This is Commander Brighton calling for immediate assistance and evacuation! A bright red pulse flooded the colony and it sounds like mass hysteria out there. Three of my security officers immediately went insane and started attacking anyone and everyone in sight. I don't know what the fuck is happening but we need help right now. I can't get in touch with the research site or the military base and...what the hell do you mean the signal's being blocked?!...well un-block it! Find a way out, we're going to need help!”

  There was an explosion behind him, he turned away from the screen. Someone screamed and gunfire ripped through the area.

  The screen turned to static.

  “Well, that was informative,” Greg muttered. He sighed and stood up. “Come on, there's obviously nothing else here for us. We need to get to the comms tower, get plugged in and see if we can at least get in touch with someone.”

  Jennifer and Keron followed him out of the room.

  CHAPTER 08

  –Pain–

  Drake brought the jeep to a stop a few meters short of the military outpost's perimeter, frowning intensely.

  Nothing about this mission inspired joy. Not that he really felt much joy during any of his missions, more of a grim satisfaction, but this...something was seriously fucked here on Ash. The perimeter fence was about twelve feet tall and made of tough, sturdy, menacing metal, topped with razorwire that gleamed dully in the light offered by the impossible black sun. Beyond the fence he could see the base itself.

  It didn't look to be in very good shape.

  “Come on, let's get inside,” he said, bringing the vehicle closer to the fence and then driving parallel to it until they reached the front gate. It was, mercifully, broken open. They wouldn't have to dick with controls or repairs or switches or any of that bullshit. They could just walk inside. They couldn't drive in, unfortunately, but this would have to do. Drake brought them as close as he could, then killed the engine and got out.

  “Head on a swivel,” he said.

  Both Eric and Parker gave him affirmative responses. They still hadn't encountered anything alive yet but this place was just too damned creepy to let their guard down. He led the way through the broken open gate, surveying the immediate area. Ahead of them, dominating the area, was the military base itself, the entire structure probably taking up a good three quarters of the space sectioned off within the security perimeter. In the open space left over were a scattering of supply sheds and landing pads, ripe for the searching.

  “Let's check those sheds out first. We'll each take one. Slow and easy,” Drake said.

  Both Eric and Parker again responded affirmatively. They sounded tense. He realized that he probably sounded the same. He headed for the middle shed of the three he'd indicated. They were lined up and a little off to the right, edging a scorched landing pad that held a scattering of metal debris. Beyond the pad was an entrance to the base itself. Drake listened hard, trying to open his senses to the world around him.

  Nothing but the winds and...something else. It was faint, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Whatever it was, it was persistent and ongoing. It sounded like it might be coming from the base itself. Well, he was sure they'd discern that particular mystery soon enough. He came around the edge of the central shed, his rifle ready for action. Sliding around the walls, he came to the door and opened it up. Peering cautiously inside, he found...just a lot of crates, stacked along the walls. The place looked untouched by the conflict.

  Drake went inside and poked around for a minute, but didn't find anything of value. He supposed he was lingering because he didn't want to go into that damned base. He didn't want to be here at all. He wanted to leave, but he couldn't and the only way to get through this mission was to just do it, like all the others.

  “Anything?” he asked as he stepped back outside.

  “Nothing,” Eric said.

  “No,” Parker reported.

  Drake sighed, fixing the nearest entrance to the military base with a hard stare. Damn, he really didn't want go in there.

  “Come on,” he said grudgingly, making his way across the landing pad. The others followed him. They walked in grim silence and Drake tried to figure out what that noise was. As he drew right up next to the base, he was sure that it wasn't his imagination, that he was really hearing something. But what was it? He still couldn't tell.

  Hoping that the door wouldn't open, Drake reached out and hit the access button. He suppressed another sigh as it slid open without a problem. Beyond was a motorpool. The place was a total wreck: half-ruined vehicles with smashed windows and slashed tires, tools and spare parts scattered across a blood-and-oil stained floor. Still no bodies though. As Drake stepped inside, the noise he was hearing coalesced a bit more.

  “You hear that?” Eric muttered.

  “Yes,” Parker replied softly.

  “What is it? I can't tell,” Drake said.

  “It sounds like...” but Eric couldn't say.

  “Come on.”

  Drake pressed forward, deeper into the base, through the wreck and ruin of the motorpool. Every time he stepped around a vehicle or a crate, he expected there to be someone or something waiting for him, preparing to ambush him. But each time there was nothing. He reached an exit at the far side of the room and it, too, was in frustratingly working order. Stepping out into a battered corridor, the sound resolved itself even more.

  And he realized at once what it was.

  Screaming.

  Someone was screaming, almost unendingly, pausing only to take breath.

  “Holy fuck,” Eric whispered.

  “We need to find that,” Parker said.

  “You want to go towards that?” Drake replied.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  She had a point. Sighing, Drake began to lead the way towards the sound. It sent chills up and down his spine. The screaming was raw and wretched and unending. It was like someone was screaming their sanity away. It almost didn't sound human, but Drake knew he could confuse it for nothing else. It was a human...but one that was no longer in any kind of coherent state of mind. What could he possibly be screaming about?

  They navigated the devastated corridors of the abandoned military outpost, finding spent shell casings carpeting the deckplates in pools of old blood that seemed to refuse to dry complete. Bullet holes tattooed the walls, the ceilings, everything and everywhere. There were discarded guns littering the floor, many of them looking like they had been used as bludgeons after running out of ammo. Drake was beginning to piece together a picture in his head of what might have happened, very much against his will.

  He envisioned a great, malignant scarlet pulse of light searing through the base, passing through bulkheads like they were nothing. Some of the men and women stationed here must have gone insane and started attacking the others. Obviously this 'breakthrough' Doctor Kruger and his staff had discovered must have gone horrifically, utterly wrong. Or possibly it had gone right. Maybe this device was some kind of weapon and they turned it on without fully understanding just what the fuck it was they were doing.

  Except...that was only half the picture, or possibly even less.

  In all this horror and chaos and bloodshed, Drake had not found e
ven a single corpse yet. So where were they? What could have possibly happened to the bodies? Obviously there had been a lot of death. But...but what?

  He suspected they might find out soon.

  The screaming was only getting louder as they traced it to its origin. They passed abandoned storage rooms, empty offices, wrecked armories and security stations, slowly getting closer and closer to that god-awful noise.

  They finally found what they were looking for in a mess hall.

  “Holy god...” Eric whispered as they all stepped into the room and were given a full, unbroken, uncompromising view of exactly where the sound was originating from.

  A man was crucified to the far wall with what appeared to be industrial sized bolts from a bolt gun. He was screaming, shrieking really. And they all knew at once why he had been screaming without end for who knew how long.

  The bolts were driven through his wrists and also through his ankles. He was completely naked and paler than pale, as though all the blood had been drained from him. And, given the amount that was pooled at the base of the wall he'd been stuck to, that seemed somehow awfully possible. His stomach had been slit open and his intestines hung all the way to his feet in foamy red-and-purple tendrils. To make matters somehow worse, his right eye hung from its socket, staring blindly as it was swung back and forth apparently without heed, hanging from its optic nerves as the man whipped his head frantically to and fro.

  “This is impossible...” Parker whispered.

  “We have to get him down from there,” Drake said, starting forward. Eric and Parker remained rooted to their position.

  “But it isn't possible, he should be dead...look, he's obviously bled out...and his intestines...how is he still alive?” Parker asked softly.

  “I've seen people survive some crazy as shit,” Drake replied.

  “No, he should at least be unconscious. Something's wrong,” Parker said firmly.

  “Whatever's wrong, we're getting him down from there. If we can't save him we can at least fucking mercy kill the poor bastard,” he muttered. He came to stand before the naked screaming man and tried to calm him. “Hey!...hey! I'm getting you down!” It didn't seem to make a bit of difference the screaming man.