by S. A. Lusher
He couldn't see Keron, but he could hear him, somewhere nearby, screaming.
Not good. Greg shouldered his rifle, flipped to full auto and squeezed the fucking trigger, pouring as much gunfire into his hideous thing as possible. The skeletal melted-wax beast had to be a good ten feet in height. Greg stitched a line of holes that blossomed open on its awful waxy flesh, starting in its mid-section and going up, punching through its sunken chest, through its long neck that looked too thin to support its head and the up to the impossible skeleton skull. The beast roared in fury, until its head was split open by the armor-piercing rounds.
All at once it collapsed, an impossible, unmoving shape.
“Holy fuck,” Greg whispered, getting his breath back. “I mean...fuck!” he said, a little louder.
“Are you okay?” Jennifer asked. He gasped, not realizing that she'd come closer to him. “Sorry, didn't mean to startle you,” she murmured.
“I'm...I think I'm okay. Wait, where's Keron?” he asked, suddenly realizing that the man was no longer screaming.
They both began scanning the immediate area, and Greg's eyes fell on a large armored shape lying in the dirt.
“Keron!” he called, rushing over to him. Jennifer hastily followed. “Keron...oh fuck,” Greg whispered as he drew close enough to see the problem.
His helmet had been dislodged in the crash. As a result, he could see that the man's head hung at an impossible angle. There was a bulge in his neck...it was broken. He was twitching his limbs, grunting and panting, his face strained from the no doubt tremendous pain he was in.
“What are we going to do?” Jennifer whispered as they stood over him, hovering uncertainly.
“Go,” Keron gasped out. “Leave. Me. Go. Now,” he growled.
“We can't just leave you,” Greg replied.
“Nothing...can be...done. Fix...the problem. Can't be...of help...anymore. GO,” he commanded through clenched teeth. “Hurry.”
Greg realized that he was right. Nothing could be done to help him. He couldn't imagine fixing a broken neck was a simple process and even if it was, neither him nor Jennifer could make it happen, not here. The only option would be to go on, to hurry the hell up, because every second they took was another second that Keron, and the others on this planet, were in prolonged agony. Until it was fixed, they had to endure the suffering.
“We'll hurry,” Greg said. “We'll get it done.”
Keron didn't say anything, merely closed his eyes and began whispering to himself, perhaps meditating.
“Come on,” he said to Jennifer. She started following him. They made their way past the crushed wreck of their jeep.
“I guess we're going there on foot,” Greg said. He glanced at the creature he had killed. “What the actual fuck is this thing?” he whispered.
“I don't know...and I'd rather not hang around and find out if there are any more of them,” Jennifer replied.
That sent a chill through Greg and he looked around, but there was nothing to see save for Keron and the ruined jeep. Hating that he had no choice but to leave the man there, since they couldn't help him and they couldn't carry him because he was right, he'd just slow them down and they needed to hurry to get this situation fixed somehow, Greg and Jennifer set off. As they began making their way towards the research site, a drop of blood fell on Greg's visor. At first, he thought it might be the blood from inside his visor, which he'd forgotten to clean up, (it was coming from his nose, he'd determined), but then he realized it was from outside.
And then another drop fell, and another.
“What the fuck?” Jennifer whispered, looking up.
“It's...it's raining blood,” Greg replied, staring in utter, shocked disbelief. “It's raining blood! Are you fucking kidding me!?” he screamed.
“Greg, we have to hurry,” Jennifer replied.
He knew she was right, they had no other recourse, but he could feel his sanity beginning to slip, just a bit.
The pair hurried on through the bloody rain.
* * * * *
“Good lord...” Jennifer whispered.
She and Greg had been walking for close to twenty minutes, the last five of it going up a natural incline in the ashy earth, and had just crested the rise. They found themselves staring down into a gaping maw of twisted insanity. The blood rain, their visors kept clean only by continually using a wipe function, only made it worse.
It had turned the ashy earth into a wretched horror.
“Even if God did exist, I don't think He'd be here,” Greg muttered in reply.
For a moment, her mind couldn't quite seem to lock onto what she was seeing. There were...buildings, and walls, and pathways, and uncertain shapes moving among these. But it all seemed somehow unclear and it made her head hurt. The strangest thing of all was that the blood rain ceased at the crater, as if it were the eye in this storm. The sight of the blood falling all around the edges of it only made the scene more surreal.
“There,” Greg said, pointing.
She followed his finger and saw that he was pointing dead center of the maze. Almost gratefully, she focused on the structure that resided there. It was human, it was normal in a sea of impossibility. A thing of right angles and metal walls and glass windows. It was hard to see, mired in the maze that surrounded it.
“The research base,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah. We have to get to it,” Greg replied. He activated his radio. “Drake, can you hear me?”
There was a pause, then a reply, faint but there. “Yeah...I got you. What's your status?” He didn't sound too good.
“We're at the rim of the crater the research base apparently rests in. We lost Keron and our vehicle. There's some kind of maze...”
“I know. I see it. We're at the crater too...we must be at another side,” Drake replied.
Jennifer looked up and scanned the rim of the crater, immensely grateful to have some excuse not to be looking at the maze or the blood rain. It felt dangerous, like a long fuse had been lit. For whatever reason, she still couldn't exactly focus on the maze, couldn't tell precisely why it scared the fucking shit out of her. From the way they were talking, it sounded like none of the others had either. After a bit of hunting with her zoom feature activated, she found them, three distant shapes on the far side of the crater. She pointed them out to Greg.
“I see you,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
A pause. “We're still alive.”
“I figured.”
“And sane.”
“Good. We've got to get through this...maze, and, uh, reach the research site at the center. From there we can figure out what the fuck to do next,” Greg replied.
“Yeah...yeah, okay. We'll, uh, meet you there.”
“You okay, Drake?”
“Yes, I just thought...I saw...nevermind. Let's just go.”
“Fine. Out.” He turned to face Jennifer. He looked paler than usual. “You ready?”
She nodded, lying. She wasn't ready. None of them were ready for going down there. They set off, heading off, down the steep grade of the crater, towards its core. It was huge, maybe three hundred meters across. Consequently, there was about fifty meters of space between the lip of the crater and the beginning of the surreal maze that they had to navigate if they wanted to get to the core. They were fast approaching the outer wall.
“What is that stuff?” Greg whispered as they came closer to it.
As they got lower, less and less of the overall maze was visible, which made it easier to focus on the actual details that Jennifer's mind had been working so feverishly to conceal from her. She stopped dead in her tracks as she realized what it was.
“Oh fuck,” she moaned. “It's...it's skin,” she whispered.
“No, it...that's not possible,” Greg replied. “I...” He trailed off as, she was sure, his brain was forced to stop making adjustments to reality and face the situation head on. They were looking at a wall made of bones and skin stretched taut ac
ross it. Ugly gray human flesh, hammered into big, bleached bones. The perimeter wall was a good ten feet high and was topped with big, bulbous skulls with too-big, empty eye sockets and screaming mouths stuffed with razor teeth. The skulls stared down like malignant sentinels.
“We...we have to find a way in,” Jennifer heard herself say. It was the part of her that wouldn't let her give up, the part of her that saw no option in failure or quitting. A hard, relentless core she'd been born with, a core which she'd built herself around, accruing determination, strength and stubbornness over the decades.
“There,” Greg said, his voice taking on a hard edge. He pointed to an opening the wall.
It took a lot of that strength, but she made herself start walking towards it, her gun ready. She walked right up to the edge of the entrance and stopped, peering inside. A natural corridor, created between the very unnatural walls of flesh and bone, extended away to the left and right from the entrance. She was reminded of the stark black rock formation maze she and Keron had navigated not all that long ago. Thinking of Keron, lying there in agony with no other recourse, spurred her into action and she stepped across the threshold.
An unholy chill went through her as she did this. She took a quick look around, certain that someone or something would be in there with them, somewhere nearby, but the corridor they'd entered remained empty.
“Come on,” Greg said, his voice tight.
He set off down the right pathway and Jennifer followed. The ground beneath them had changed inside of the maze. Instead of the dry, bleached, ashy dirt it was now a gritty kind of gravel that was a very dull green in color. Something about the color and the texture of the stuff set Jennifer's nerves on edge. She forced herself on.
And they walked into the maze.
At first, it wasn't too bad. The only thing they had to contend with was the awful smell of dead meat, slowly rotting in a hot desert sun and the oppressive feeling of unseen eyes, like a baleful, malignant god staring at you with retribution and Old Testament punishment in mind. As they walked through the flesh maze, Jennifer found her eyes drawn continually to the walls they walked between. It was hideous and awful, torn straight from a nightmare. The skin itself was wet and hideous, stretched tight over the bone structure and hammered into place with big rusty nails. She found herself wondering who the fuck built this, how and why? Was this really human flesh? Or something else? Was it an illusion?
It was something she found herself coming back to. All of this was too unreal, too awful, too impossible to be real...
Right?
“Jennifer...”
She gasped, stopped and looked back. The voice she'd heard...it was Mark's voice again. It was absolutely unmistakable. It was him, calling to her from beyond the grave. She shook her head and forced herself to keep walking. Ahead of her, she heard muttering, and realized it was Greg. Was he hearing things? Seeing things? Their previous conversation came suddenly to the forefront of her mind, on survivor's guilt...
Who had he gotten killed?
Jennifer realized that her attention had strayed and she'd been looking at the ground. Snapping her eyes up, she felt ice fill her veins as she saw that Greg was gone. “No, no, no,” she moaned, rushing forward, “not again.”
She hurried down the current alcove she was in, hit the corner, turned and-
“Jennifer.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, frozen, unable to comprehend. Mark stood before her, in an open area, a dark, bloody hole in his forehead. Blood had dribbled down his corpse-pale face and his hair was matted with the stuff.
“You got me killed,” he said. He didn't sound angry. Anger she could have understood, could have dealt with maybe. He sounded...lost. He sounded like a child you had promised you would let nothing bad happen to, and then something horrible, something unspeakable had happened, and they could only look to you with confused pain, tears in their eyes, asking why, why had this been allowed to happen? You had promised.
“Mark...” she whispered.
“Why? Jennifer? Why did you do it? Why did you keep pushing him?”
Jennifer fought for control. She felt like she was going to be torn apart by a maelstrom of raging emotions. She squeezed her eyes closed. He was dead. There was no way he could be here. She made herself believe it.
“You're not real,” she whispered, clenching her fists, squeezing her eyes shut. “You aren't real...” She opened her eyes.
She was alone in the courtyard bounded by flesh and bone walls. She let out a sigh of relief, but quickly lost it as she heard a surprised shout and gunfire. Feeling her combat instincts kick back into high gear, she rushed forward, across the courtyard, out the other side, across a short corridor and burst out into a larger, open space.
Standing on what seemed to be a road in between structures made of that same awful flesh-and-bone material, Greg was firing on a pair soldiers, driven insane by their tormented state. He was trying to keep them back. She recalled his previous statement: go for the legs. Sure enough, he knee-capped the first one, shredding one leg and blowing the other off at the knee. Jennifer joined in, repeating the same process with the other one.
This newest development didn't seem to douse the flame of their bloodlust or relentlessness at all. Ignoring their ruined legs, they began crawling for them. She and Greg quickly shot off their arms at the shoulders. Jennifer felt her gorge rising as she stared at the two bodies, now limbless, flopping horribly on the ground, still screaming.
“Fuck, I hate this,” Greg whispered.
“Where'd you go?” Jennifer asked as they started walking along the street, giving the two limbless bodies a wide berth.
“I...I'm not sure. I turned around and you were gone and...”
“Did you see something? Someone?” she asked.
“I...” He shook his head.
“I saw someone Greg, someone dead. Someone I got killed.”
He hesitated, then sighed. “Yeah, I saw someone...his name was Campbell.” They kept walking and as they talked, Jennifer continually scanned the strange buildings around them. It was no longer just flesh and bone, she saw glistening meat that seemed to pulsate slowly. She could also see other things mixed in with the flesh that made up the walls of the structures, if they could be called that, they seemed to have no entryways or exits, around them. Organs. Brain matter, livers, hearts, kidneys. Even eyeballs, patches of hair and fingernails.
“Who was he?” she asked, to distract herself.
“This guy who worked with Rogue Ops. He flipped on them, came over to my side. I never fully trusted him but he was with me to the end. Last one to die. Well, second to last, technically. There was nothing I could do to save him. But I think he's kind of come to represent all those people I killed and all those people who died around me. For the most part, I know that...there really wasn't much I could do then. I was just reacting to the situation I was in, working for the betterment of mankind. If I hadn't done what I'd done, the virus would have gotten out or an insane AI would have escaped. But afterward...”
“Afterward?” she pressed.
“I could have walked,” he said. “I could've...I killed a lot of people. A lot of people.”
“And if you hadn't done that, from what I understand, they would have killed many, many more people than that. Even if those soldiers you fought were just following orders, even if they themselves didn't understand the scope of what they were doing, that they were on the wrong side of the line...you still made the right choice. Simply put, you did the right thing. You killed however many hundreds of people to save countless billions. It's that simple.”
“Is it?” he murmured.
“It is,” Jennifer replied firmly. Though she wondered. It all sounded right, but everything tended to get screwy when you dealt with things like ending people's lives.
They turned down another street and paused.
The edge of the original compound, the research site, was visible at the end of the next fake str
eet. They were almost there.
They hurried on.
CHAPTER 12
–Decay & Dementia–
“I wish I had access to some medical equipment,” Parker said.
Drake was startled out of a strange state that he hadn't even realized he'd been slipping slowly into, a kind of fugue as he trudged through the rain of blood. They were, according to his heads up display, almost to where the research site was supposed to be.
“What?” he replied incredulously. His mind was beginning to feel...weird. Detached. Dislocated from the world around him. It was difficult to focus, difficult to hold onto his thoughts. “Why?” he asked, glancing at Parker.
She was a little ahead of him and to the left, a figure in black powered combat armor turned red, coated utterly in runs of blood.
“I want to analyze this blood,” she replied. “Who's is it? Where is it coming from? Is it human? Is it actually blood?”
“It sure looks like blood,” Eric replied morosely. He'd hardly said anything ever since they'd been attacked by the bone creature.
“It might not be,” Parker murmured. “I just wish I could study it.”
Drake wasn't sure how to reply to that. He wondered if she was crazy...it seemed like a crazy response to the situation. Or maybe she was the sanest of them all? She didn't seem very disturbed by what was happening around them...maybe this was just how she dealt with this insane shit. He felt like he was starting to crack up. He'd had to fight off the urge to start giggling more than once on the walk over here.
Abruptly, the blood rain cut off. As it cleared and his visor made its latest pass, (it was the only thing giving him any kind of visibility), he found himself staring down into a huge crater filled with...with something, structures of some kind?
“Drake, can you hear me?” Greg's voice suddenly filled his ears, though it sounded faint and partially distorted.
“Yeah...I got you. What's your status?” Drake replied. He didn't like the way his voice sounded. It seemed just as distant and disconsolate.