by S. A. Lusher
“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, he began hunting for them, looking out across the crater. With his zoom function, he spied a pair of bloody figures standing almost perfectly across from them. He glanced down at the maze Greg had referred to, not wanting to look at it because there was something ugly and unnerving about it, and he saw, through an odd haze, the research site in the center. As he kept looking around, that's when his gaze fell on something immediately and powerfully familiar.
A dark silhouette stood in the nearest entrance to the maze, a silhouette he had seen a million times across the span of his bloody, miserable life.
It was Trent.
“I see you,” Greg said. “How are you holding up?”
He blinked and it was gone. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking his head. Hold it together, he told himself
“We're still alive.”
“I figured.”
“And sane.” He wondered if he was lying.
“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,” Drake said, trying to get himself back under control. He sounded worse than before.
“You okay, Drake?”
“Yes, I just thought...I saw...nevermind. Let's just go.”
“Fine. Out.”
As Greg severed the connection, Drake found himself staring at the maze spread out before him. There was definitely something wrong with it, and it wasn't just the fact that, along the peripheral of the crater he could see the edge of the blood storm, it was something...that he couldn't quite tell. He was too far away to know.
He wasn't sure he wanted to get any closer.
But he had to.
“Come on,” he said finally. “Let's get this over with.”
His shoulder was really killing him. There was nothing that could be done about that. With worry and dread filling him, he crested the edge of the crater and began marching down the steep incline of ashy earth, towards the maze. None of them spoke as they descended into the eye of the blood storm. Unfortunately, Drake reasoned, he imagined that this eye would not be calm. The blood rain had been unnerving, but nothing had actually happened to them. This though...he couldn't help but feel that something was waiting for them.
The huge collection of shapes began to come into focus as they drew closer. It looked like there was a maze of narrow alcoves making up the perimeter of the area and then, beyond that, was what almost looked like a colony: roads and buildings and courtyards. Finally, in the center was the gleaming glass and steel core, the research site itself. It was the only thing that looked normal, the only thing that looked human, and as a result, Drake found himself wanting desperately to get to it, if only because it was something recognizable in this world of sudden twisted insanity. Unfortunately, it meant going through the maze.
A prospect that was made infinitely more horrible the second he realized what it was made of.
“Holy shit,” Eric whispered as they came close enough to the exterior wall to see that it was made of...human flesh. It was bolted to a framework of bones.
“C-come on,” Drake replied. “We have to keep going.”
“But Drake-”
“We have to keep going, Eric,” he said firmly.
“He's right,” Parker murmured quietly, staring intently at the wall. “Is this really human flesh? Or is it some kind of imitation? Maybe-”
“Not right now, Parker. Come on,” Drake said, and he set off into the maze.
The others followed him in.
As he step inside, an unholy shiver rippled through him. He looked around, rifle raised, hunting for a target, something to shoot at, anything to take his mind off of this psychosis. But there was nothing save for walls of tough skin and the ground, which was made up of some kind of weird green gravel. It made him somehow uncomfortable in a totally different way than the skin walls did. He picked a direction at random, there were just two ways to go, and went, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that the others were following.
They looked awful, like some kind of bloody metal monsters torn from a nightmare, but they were there, alert and ready to fight if the situation called for it. He led the pair of them down to the end of the tight corridor they were in and took a right, trying to get to the center of the maze. The next alcove was a lot like the previous one, though there were more openings. He ignored them as he made his way to the end of the next alcove and turned right, kept walking and then took the first left he could, keeping the direction of the research site firmly in mind.
It wasn't easy, but it did seem possible.
Seconds bled into minutes, and suddenly Drake found himself turning into an open courtyard. He stopped in the entryway, checking the corners, but it just looked like a simple four walls and a ground of ugly green gravel. There was another entrance directly across from him. It looked like an entryway to the mock city.
Drake realized, suddenly, that he could no longer hear the others. He turned around and realized with a start that he was alone. There was no one in either direction of the alcove he had just been walking along.
“Parker? Eric?!” he called, turning back around.
He froze. A familiar figure stood in the center of the previously empty courtyard.
It was Trent.
He looked horrible. He was still wearing the burnt, bloodied remains of his uniform. It was torn in several places, revealing pallid skin. His veins were blackened, crisscrossing pale flesh and his eyes were pools of blood. He hadn't looked this bad when Drake had last seen him, not even in death. What was happening? How was this possible?
His head suddenly felt like it was being cracked open and he groaned, stumbling slightly, his free hand going up to his helmet in a fruitless attempt to quell the pain.
“Drake, you like me die,” Trent said, his voice flat, empty. “You let this happen to me.”
“Bullshit,” Drake growled through gritted teeth. It was the planet. Somehow, someway, whatever was happening here was doing this, causing this, worming its way around in his head. “It's not true and you know it's not true, which means you aren't real. Go. The fuck. Away.”
The false Trent figure flickered like a bad holographic. Its mouth began to open, to say something else, but the pain in Drake's brain was receding, and with it went the figure. He found himself alone in the courtyard of green gravel. Up ahead, he heard footsteps, heavy combat boots from the sound of them. That could be good or bad. Trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder, he raised his rifle and hurried across the courtyard. As he stepped beyond the threshold, he saw a figure to his right: Eric, then to his left, Parker.
“Where'd you go?” Eric asked.
“I'm not sure, I was in a courtyard,” Drake replied. “...did you see anything?”
“Yes, I saw...” Eric hesitated. “My girlfriend. My dead girlfriend, Autumn. I...she...”
“It's fine,” Drake replied quietly. “Parker? What about you?”
“I don't want to talk about it,” she said bluntly and firmly.
“What about you?” Eric asked.
“I saw Trent,” he said simply.
“Oh...god...I'm so sorry.”
“Yeah, I know. Obviously some kind of hallucination. Come on, we're closer to the installation now. I want to get this over with.”
As they set off into the new area, Drake took a closer look at it. It seemed to be some kind of awful caricature of a city. There were roads and buildings, but not much else. The roads were made of the same ugly puke green gravel and the structures were constructed of flesh and bone again. Only this time it was all more detailed, he saw organs and glistening, exposed raw meat and he was convinced that the bui
ldings were pulsating when he wasn't looking.
They made their way down the 'road', sticking to the center, not wanting to get close at all to the buildings. The fake street they were on came to an end in a T-junction. Left looked just as appealing as right, so Drake took it, leading the team down another road, picking up the pace. When this came to an end, it was just a dead end. Sighing, he turned around. They retreated back to the original intersection and took the other street...only to discover that it ended similarly. Great, now they had to move near the buildings.
Finding the biggest alleyway they could, Drake led them down it, his wariness creeping up by a large factor. He didn't like the way the walls looked. Besides being made of skin, the skin itself looked sickly and decayed in some areas. Despite his tension and revulsion, he did find his own thoughts echoing Parker's questions.
Was this human flesh? Was it real? Something else? If it was real, then where had it all come from? They hadn't exactly encountered a bunch of flayed people. If it wasn't real, what could possibly be generating this environment? Relentlessly, though, his mind kept slipping back to Trent. It hurt, seeing him again, getting blamed for his death...god knew Drake had spent enough time blaming himself for it during those first few months where the ragged wound on his psyche still felt torn open and raw and in constant pain.
But he'd convinced himself that...there was nothing more he could have done.
The alleyway came to an end, opening up into a broader, enclosed area. Drake's combat senses immediately began communicating with him. Something had happened here: pools of blood, spent shell casings and...some kind of gun. Drake moved forward, knelt and retrieved it. Not a gun, not exactly a gun in the traditional sense of a thing that you issued soldiers to shoot bullets, but it would actually be far more effective here.
It was an industrial strength bolt gun, it fired the same kind of bolts that had been used to crucify the first guy to the wall of the desolate mess hall they'd discovered him in. He checked it out, finding it fully loaded with twenty bolts. There were a few magazines laying around, so he gathered them up and pocketed them.
Just in time, too.
Someone ran shrieking into the open space from one of the four entrances that surrounded them. Drake raised his gun but Parker was faster. She aimed and fired twice, each shot a three-round burst that expertly knee-capped the shrieking, running insane human, blowing his legs off at the knees and sending him sprawling to the ground.
Good lord...why didn't I think of that? Drake gaped in wonder. He'd thought to shoot off their arms, but the legs were so much easier...was he getting stupider? It was so obvious. This place was screwing with his head a lot more than he realized.
Other screaming, pallid wretches began racing into the opening.
“Get their limbs!” Parker snapped, opening fire.
Drake had the bolt gun in hand, so he put it to use. Taking advantage of his boosted speed and strength granted to him by his power armor, he grabbed the reaching hand of the nearest maniac, twisted him around and slammed him up against the wall of the nearest structure. Without missing a beat, he pounded out two bolts, one through each shoulder, then another through each wrist, since it seemed obvious that they had enough strength and knowledge to reach up and pull the bolts out, freeing themselves.
As he finished that job, he felt a powerful hand on his shoulder. It whirled him around and he found himself staring into the screaming, half-melted face of what had once been a woman. Purely on reflex, he raised the bolt gun and fired, then let out a scream of his own as the bolt punched through the woman's forehead and exploded out of the back in a visceral spray of brains, bone fragments and gore. It split her head open.
She continued screaming, stumbling back several steps, but then righted herself and kept coming after him, the two halves of her head hanging away from each other other. Drake thought he would never get the sight of what he was seeing before him out of his head for as long as he lived. Still keyed for automatic reaction, Drake reached out, grabbed her and whirled her around, slamming her right up next to the first guy and bolting her to the wall with four quick shots. He stumbled away from her and turned, canvasing the area.
There were still a good half-dozen of them left functional and mobile, but Parker and Eric were doing good with their limbs. Drake moved around, helping them and going through the rest of his magazine in the bolt gun and all of the second one putting these psychos in their place and pinning them to the walls around them. He hoped the stuff would hold the bolts, but so far no one had broken free, and it wasn't for lack of trying.
“Fuck,” Eric gasped as the last one was taken care of. “What-”
He stopped as they heard heavy, thudding footfalls coming for them from somewhere nearby. Getting closer.
“Now what?!” Drake groaned.
He switched out his bolt gun for his rifle. Whatever it was, it didn't sound like a normal human. It sounded a lot bigger, heavier. The three of them formed up, facing the appropriate direction once they figured out where the hell it was coming from. Seconds ticked by as the footfalls grew louder. Then, finally, it stepped into view at the end of the alleyway. It was huge, at least eight feet tall, and hulking. A bulky, hunchbacked mass that looked like it was covered in some kind dull white bony armor. Its arms ended in stubby but sharp bony blades.
“What the fuck is that?!” Eric cried.
“Who cares, shoot it!” Drake snapped, raising his rifle, flipping to full auto and cutting loose. The other two did the same.
The beast loosed a roar from a mouth that seemed to open far too wide and began charging straight towards them. Some of the bullets ricocheted off, some managed to punch through the natural armor, but none of them seemed to be doing enough damage.
It wouldn't stop.
Drake found himself staring up at eight feet of alien monster looming over him before one of its claws hit him like a battering ram, only this ram punched straight through his armor and into his guts. He tried to scream as he was lifted off the ground, but couldn't.
* * * * *
Eric stared in shocked horror as Drake was physically picked up by the bony blade that impaled him. He was raised high into the sky, uttering a strangled sound that was painful to hear. Then the creature lowered him and threw him off. He slammed into the ground and this time he screamed, and didn't stop.
Eric's body jerked in reaction, slamming a fresh magazine home into his depleted rifle, rushing up to the creature, shoving the barrel of his gun up into its gaping maw and squeezing the trigger. He offered up his own scream of fury as he held down the trigger, watching the top of the unlikely thing's head open up in a spray of bone fragments and ugly black gore. When his rifle clicked empty, Eric pulled it back and took a step away from the creature. It stood upright, rigid and unmoving...then it toppled over, landing on its broad back with a crash.
For a moment, he and Parker simply stood there and stared at the bloody death and mayhem that surrounded them. The undying humans they had incapacitated still writhed and screamed around them...why did the creatures die, though?
Then Drake was screaming again.
“Help him,” Eric moaned as he saw bloody entrails sticking out of the hole in Drake's suit. “Help him!”
Parker hurried forward, kneeling over him. He lay sprawled on his back, twitching and writhing in what must be impossible pain.
“God,” Parker whispered. “I'd need a surgical team to deal with this...”
Drake's hand shot out, grabbing her wrist. For a terrifying, cold-gut second, Eric wondered if he'd gone native, turning crazy like the others.
But when he spoke, it was still Drake.
“Patch. Me. Up,” he growled through gritted teeth.
“I don't...fuck, Eric give me your medical kit,” she replied. “...and hold him down.”
Eric passed her his kit and then knelt in front of Drake, placing his hands on his shoulder. Inside his helmet, he looked impossibly pale, his face wrenched and twis
ted into a grimace of pure agony. Eric felt sick.
“This is gonna hurt,” Parker said.
She shoved his intestines back into his stomach. Drake screamed hoarsely and bucked against Eric's grasp. Eric found himself wishing the man had the capacity to pass out, but even that small mercy was not afforded on the hellish world of Ash.
Eric caught glimpses of Parker working, not really looking, partially because he didn't want to see but mainly because Drake seemed to be staring up at him, staring hard, no doubt needing something to focus on, anything.
“We'll make it,” Eric said, reaching out and grabbing Drake's gauntleted hand, not knowing what else to say.
“Don't see how,” he grunted, then screamed again, squeezing Eric's hand hard. Eric squeezed back. Parker injected him with something, obviously not a painkiller. Then she was slapping something over the gory wound.
“We'll make it, we'll get it done,” Eric replied firmly, though he wasn't sure he believed it himself anymore. When he glanced up again, he saw that she was slapping some quick patches to the suit itself, sealing it off.
“Gotta roll him over,” she said.
“Hold on, bud,” Eric said to Drake.
He yelled sickly in pain as they rolled him onto his stomach. It had gone through his back. She quickly repeated the process, then patched up the armor.
“Okay,” she said, “rest a minute, then we gotta keep moving. I basically just gave you a patch job since obviously we don't have to worry about you dying on us, but...you're gonna need serious surgery when we get off of this planet.”
“Fine,” Drake grunted. “God...hurts so much...fuck, help me up, it's not gonna get any better.”
Eric wanted to make him rest, but he knew the man was right: it wasn't going to get any better. Resting would just prolong the agony. So, they helped him up. He bit back several screams as he lurched to his feet. Eric found and retrieved his rifle, passing it back to him. Drake took it and made them let go of him.
He could at least stand on his own.