by S. A. Lusher
But no, at least then he felt like he could possibly get out of the situation.
Escaping from Williams' cell looked like cake compared to this.
“Greg...Greg!”
He jerked, snapping back to reality. Jennifer was trying to get his attention.
“What?” he asked.
“We have to figure a way out of here.”
He nodded slowly, still trying to process all that Drake had reported over the radio. Enemies that could not die, that could not be deterred, threatened, reasoned with or bribed. Painkillers had no effect. That realization alone sparked a million truly awful thoughts. Greg found himself imaging all the wretched, godforsaken situations in which someone could be injured and being forced to endure the pain with no hope of relief...
“That's why they're attacking us,” Greg heard himself saying.
“What?” Jennifer asked.
“The people who attacked us,” he repeated. “They've been driven insane by pain. They can't stop hurting.”
When they had left the security center behind, they'd made it most of the way to the communications center before a group of ragged, bloodied, insane people had arrived, seeming to come out of nowhere. Without warning, they'd charged for the three of them, clearly meaning to do them harm. Greg had tried to deter them, at first with verbal warnings and then with warning shots, but nothing would make them stop.
Even when he put a few rounds through their skulls.
Now he knew why.
They'd locked themselves in the comms tower and had then received the call from Drake. Now they were trapped and they could hear the demented shouts and the banging as the now insane populace of Ash tried to break their way into the building. Greg felt confident that they couldn't get in there. No matter how hard they tried, they weren't getting in through reinforced, bulletproof glass and steel walls, at least not for a while, not with their bare hands. But they couldn't stay here. They had to get out, get to the research site and...
And what?
Find a miracle cure for this situation they found themselves in.
“Ideas?” he asked finally, looking at Jennifer and then Keron. The big man was over at a workstation, studying it. He had been for the past several minutes.
“I've got one,” he said, finally. “You won't like it.”
“I rarely do,” Greg replied. “What is it?”
“This place has an armory. There are explosives in that armory. We blast our way out. In the ensuing chaos, we can make it back to our vehicle and escape the colony.”
Greg considered it for a long moment. Blasting their way out...he imagined limbs and torsos and heads flying through the air...would that kill them? No, but it would at least incapacitate them. But could Greg really live with putting someone through that kind of torture? He tried to imagine being in fifty different pieces...and somehow still being alive, feeling it all. The thought was too big, too alien, impossible to actually conceive of in the same way that it was impossible to truly, honestly, fully understand how big the universe was.
“How many are there?” he asked finally.
“Too many,” Keron replied. “Look.”
He moved over to another work area, one with a large screen mounted on the wall, and called up a feed from a security camera. He was right, there were too many. There were a good fifty or sixty of them out there.
“What about other exits?” Jennifer suggested.
Keron shook his head, calling up two more camera feeds, which showed other crowds of restless psychopaths packed in a dozen deep around the entryways. “Only three ways out of the building,” he replied.
“What about underground tunnels? Sewers or maintenance access?” Greg asked. He'd used those methods enough times himself.
Keron shook his head again. “No, nothing we could fit into. And there's no other buildings around close enough that we could theoretically make it to from the roof.”
Greg closed his eyes, considering the situation. After a long moment of trying to block out the muffled screaming and banging, he reluctantly concluded that Keron was right: they had no choice but to blast their way out.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “All right, get the bombs. We'll plant them, blast them and then book it back to the entrance, then peel out of here.”
Both Jennifer and Keron responded affirmatively and Keron began to lead them back to the armory he'd located. Greg felt a grim misery settle in as he prepared to do this. Obviously, whatever had happened, it had been some kind of accident. Even if it wasn't...these people, it wasn't their fault that they had been driven literally insane by pain and agony. Unfortunately, if he and his allies had any hope of dealing with this situation, of rescuing them, even if in this situation the term 'rescue' was nothing more than the sweet release of death, then they had to do this. They had to blast their way out, bypassing the risk of getting so injured that they too became insane and would be added to the ranks of madmen out there.
The armory was a small room, though it was tightly packed. A lot was missing, gun lockers hanging open, glass cases shattered, blood and bullets on the floor. They spent a few quiet minutes searching the room, looking for their explosive salvation. Greg tried to keep his mind strictly on task as he helped the others gather up the small squares of yellow explosive. There were just three of them, but three would be more than enough for their plans. After locating the detonating pins and the detonator itself, they returned to the main entrance.
Keron planted and armed the explosives.
Greg found his mind continually trying to search for some alternative, but the stress of the situation and the gnawing fear and anxiety made it difficult. For once in his life, he had run into a situation where he felt no thrill of danger, no adrenaline surge. He felt nothing but fear. It was a horrible, wretched feeling.
His hands trembled as he watched Keron finish up. Clenching them into fists, Greg fell back when Keron gave the all-clear.
They retreated to the center of the structure.
“The blast should punch outwards and maintain most of the structure's integrity,” Keron explained as he primed the detonator.
“Everyone be ready to book it,” Greg replied.
Keron did a countdown and then hit the button. There was a deafening blast and the lights flickered, then went dead.
“Go!” Greg yelled.
They ran and he led the way. Once free of the central room, he spied a huge, ragged hole that had been torn in the wall of the comms tower, where the main entrance used to be. In a smoky, hellish haze beyond the opening, he heard what sounded like the moans and wails of the damned. As he led the way outside, Greg briefly stumbled to a halt, bearing witness to the atrocity they had just committed. The smoke was beginning to clear and spread out in the parking area and the street beyond the building was a scene straight out of a waking nightmare.
Body parts were scattered everywhere amidst sprays of blood and smears of flesh. And they were all still moving, still impossibly alive. Fingers twitched, muscles spasmed and those mouths that were still intact enough to do so screamed soundlessly, as they were no longer supported by vocal cords. Some who had been near the back were still relatively intact, missing legs or arms, still rolling and writhing on the ground, shrieking with insane abandon.
“Come on!” Jennifer screamed at him.
Greg felt his body react to this, even if his mind was prepared to jettison all rational thought. How could he deal with this? How could anyone?
It wasn't over, not by a long shot.
There was more screaming, the other inhabitants of this damned, doomed colony were coming to help spread the madness that engulfed them. Greg ran on, retracing his steps through the butchered settlement, racing along the bloodied streets with the howls of the damned following after him. Jennifer and Keron ran alongside him, silent and grim and determined. Greg's mind went elsewhere as he ran. Everything was happening in a blur. They passed the primary security center, they passed some apartments, a f
ew restaurants with shattered windows, other buildings and wrecked vehicles and signs of deathless chaos.
They ran.
Greg didn't really seem to come back to himself until, suddenly, they were back where they started, emerging from the clinic they'd originally gone into.
He found himself staring at their vehicle in stunned disbelief. Standing there, gasping for breath, he felt a slow horror of realization creeping over him.
The vehicle had been trashed.
It wasn't going anywhere.
* * * * *
Jennifer's mind raced.
“Now what?” Greg asked. His sounded very lost and afraid.
She had seem something...somewhere...
“The primary security center!” she snapped, turning around and racing back into the clinic, a plan throwing itself together in her mind. “Come on! Follow me!”
The sudden grinding of boots turning in the grit and the pounding footfalls meant that they at least were following her. Greg seemed at a loss. She didn't blame him. She felt adrift herself, awash in a sea of mind-churning terror. Especially for this next part. They would have to run straight back into the tide of ataxia they had just escaped.
“Where are we going!?” Greg finally snapped as they forced their way through the clinic and the Mega Taco.
“I saw a vehicle, a jeep, similar model to ours, in the parking lot of the primary security center!” Jennifer replied. “We get there, head out through the other side of the colony, escape!”
Greg just grunted in reply. She heard a lot of unasked questions in that response. What if it was trashed, too? Out of juice? Broken somehow? Or what if it was missing?
Well, it was better than all the alternatives.
They burst back out onto the street and found themselves facing a horde of twisted, screaming chaos.
“Grenades!” Keron snapped.
It was their only hope.
Feeling a wretched guilt, she primed one of her fragmentation grenades and then tossed it along with the others Greg and Keron threw. They landed amongst the charging horde of creatures and blew huge, bloody holes in their ranks. Taking advantage of the sudden opening and extra space, the trio ran straight through the middle. Jennifer simply ran, pushing herself, using all the speed and dexterity her training and power armor granted her. All around her were the shrieking remains of the colonists and she tried not look at them.
She was reminded, vividly, of the classic idea of Hell.
This place definitely fit the bill, but she tried not think about that, either.
Instead, she kept running, pushing past partially collapsed structures and broken windows, all of this hellish horror presided over by an obsidian sun and a red-and-black sky. Luckily, they didn't have to travel quite as far this time, and before she knew it, the central security bunker was coming into view. Her heart leaped into her throat in hope as she spied the vehicle in question. It was at least there, she hadn't imagined it, and it looked intact.
“There it is!” she called.
She bolted, summoning up another reserve of energy, sprinting down the street, hearing the heavy thuds of her combat boots slamming into the pavement. She managed to get there before the others and slung herself into the driver's seat of the open-topped vehicle. Feeling for the ignition, she managed to get the jeep started as the other two made it there and threw themselves inside. The engine revved to life, the vehicle was functional.
“Go!” Greg screamed, panic bleeding into his voice.
With the damned screaming towards them, Jennifer hit the gas and peeled out of the parking lot, hitting the road and making for the other side of the colony. For several seconds, nobody said anything. The main road was clear enough at least, save for some wrecks of vehicles, but those were easy to dodge around.
Finally, as the other main gate came into view, Jennifer let out a huge sigh of relief. It was open, the way was clear.
They passed through the gate and back into the vast wasteland, towards the research colony. Towards, hopefully, a solution to this nightmare.
CHAPTER 10
–The Long Road–
“How the fuck are we gonna get out of here?” Eric asked.
Drake was wondering the same thing himself, but he kept getting distracted by the burning agony in his shoulder. Thanks to the work Parker had done on it, the wound was cleaned and closed. Consequently, it didn't hurt as much as it had before, when it was simply an open hole in his body, or maybe his brain was making certain adjustments to the constant pain.
“The vents,” Parker said. They both glanced over at her. She was standing near the front of the control room, on the raised area, frowning deeply in concentration. “They served you well enough before, so we get down into the vents and maintenance areas beneath the floor.”
Eric shook his head. “I don't think that will work,” he replied, crossing the room and joining her up there. He slid back into the seat he'd used when contacting Greg and the others, then brought up a detailed map of the facility. “Yeah, I was worried about this. They're sectioned off. We could only go so far. It wouldn't take us all the way back to the entrance.”
“It'd be better than just opening up the door and kicking our way out,” Drake muttered.
Parker was studying the map Eric had called up as well. “Okay, what about the vents in the ceiling?” she asked.
Eric studied them for a moment. “They're sectioned off too...but, wait, here...here's a path we could take that would get us most of the way there.”
Drake walked over, trying to put the pain somewhere else in his mind, to focus on the mission and the situation at hand. He saw what Eric was talking about as the stayed at the topographical schematic of the base currently being displayed. The tech had highlighted a path through the vents in glowing green. It would take them over a good portion of the base and they could drop down into a storage area just a couple meters away from the entrance they'd come in through.
“This is gonna be dangerous,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” Eric agreed, “crawling around in the ceiling is about as safe as it sounds, especially since we're all in power armor, but it should hold.”
“I don't see any other option,” Parker said.
“Neither do I. Fine then, come on, sooner we get started, the sooner it will be over.”
Eric stood up and pointed out the appropriate vent grate they'd have to take. It was over in the far back left corner of the room. They gathered beneath it and Eric boosted Drake up to the vent grate. He opened it up and then bit back a bark of pain as he grabbed the edge and hauled himself up into it. Once he was inside the narrow confines of the vent systems, he crawled forward, making way for Eric, who was boosted up by Parker. Once she was in, Eric slowly got himself turned around, reached down and hauled her up.
For the first several minutes, they all crawled along in silence, making their way towards the exit as quickly and safely as possible. All around them, they heard the sounds of deathless, psychotic chaos. Drake wondered how long he could keep this up. He'd been in pain for extended periods of time before. He'd actually put up with worse than this, but it was the fear that it might get worse, significantly worse before the end, that was really agitating him. He'd been hit by some shrapnel once when he, Trent and a collection of other mercs were trying to extract a corporate exec that wanted to turn to another corporation and it had been a solid two hours before he'd gotten any real treatment. He'd been shot more times than he cared to count. Stabbed, too.
But this...
It was the fear more than anything. He supposed that, in a way, he was lucky. Something Drake had learned long ago was that when you were in the middle of a mission or a life-threatening situation and fear was a factor, there was always just one answer.
Get the fuck over it and focus on the objective.
He'd gotten good at that. What was unfortunate was that he kept glancing out of the ventilation grates and seeing pretty fucked up shit. At one point he saw a man
whose arms had been ripped off bashing his head repeatedly into a wall while shrieking. Another view showed him a group of people pulling a man's guts out of his stomach and eating them while he screamed his sanity away. The thing that made him stop looking, even accidentally, was when he saw a headless body walking around, bumping into things in an office complex.
That was too much and he felt his stomach twitch.
He wouldn't let himself vomit, not inside of a suit.
“What are we going to do about this?” Eric asked, finally breaking the silence. “I mean...how the fuck are we going to get out of this?”
“Normally,” Drake replied, “when we come up against something weird and bizarre and alien, and the answer isn't immediately obvious, we just...keep going. And then something crops up and we act on it and it usually solves the problem.”
“That sounds a lot less certain than I'd prefer,” Parker said.
“I agree wholeheartedly with you,” Drake replied. “But those are the breaks, I'm afraid.”
“I don't suppose anyone has any theories on dealing with these...people. Shooting them obviously doesn't work. Running from them or hiding from them is just a...a stop-gap, a temporary solution. Is there some way to stop them?”
“What about a paralytic agent?” Drake asked. “Some kind of gas or injection?”
“No,” Parker replied. “If the painkillers are completely ineffective, it's a fairly safe bet to assume that other drugs don't work either.”
“Wonderful,” Eric muttered.
“We'll think of something,” Drake replied.
They kept crawling. Drake was finding it harder and harder to focus as the pain in his shoulder got worse. The stuff Parker had used to keep the wound together was pretty strong material, but eventually it would come undone and the injury would reopen. He tried not to think about it. Instead he focused on the map. They'd made it over half the way there now and had gone undiscovered by the psychotics roaming the military base.