by S. A. Lusher
“Get him up,” Greg said, “I'm going to scope out the next area.”
There were some affirmative replies. Greg felt like he was barely hanging on. His encounter with Campbell had rattled him, that much was obvious. And yet, despite that...he remembered what he'd said. He'd done the right thing, and he knew, in his heart, that he believed that. Because the alternative had been to simply walk away, to let potentially countless others die. At the time, it had been the right choice.
He suddenly wondered if he would have to make that choice again. Back then, it was easy...although there had been a moment there, after they had recovered the good doctor on the unnamed frozen world, back when Kyra had left him in that infirmary, when he had seriously considered leaving and going with her.
Greg knew that the choice to stay behind had been the right one at the time...but that didn't necessarily mean it was the easiest one.
As he came closer to the opening, the heat haze seemed to lift and he caught a glimpse of what lay beyond. There was a dark cavern and, in the center of it, a large tube-shaped object. The heart of darkness.
Then, suddenly, movement.
Something rushing towards him that he knew he had absolutely no hope of out-maneuvering. Greg began to scream as something sliced into his neck.
* * * * *
Eric was coming around, finally. He seemed out of it. Had something gone wrong when the creature had attacked him with its strange psychic assault?
Then Greg screamed.
Drake snapped his gaze over as he shot to his feet.
He looked over just in time to see Greg's head detach from his body.
“GREG!!!” Drake heard himself scream at the top of his lungs. Greg's body took a few stumbling steps away from the opening, away from the thing that had hurt it, spurting a geyser of blood, and then collapsed onto the uneven ground next to its head.
Which was screaming silently.
Before anything else could happen, something brand new burst into the room through the opening. Drake stared in unmitigated horror at this new creature. It looked like...some kind of giant, armored crab covered in white bone. It walked on six legs, supporting a large, bulky body that seemed as though it was covered in some kind of bony gray armor. Its face was recessed into his shell, hidden, and the only visible thing were a pair of glowing crimson orbs. To make matters worse, instead of pincers, it had scythes that it whipped about. They seemed to be on the end of some kind of fleshy ropes and it clearly had a lot of control over them.
This is what had decapitated Greg.
Drake began screaming as he raised his rifle, flipped it to full auto and opened fire. Bullets smashed into it, sometimes breaking through the thick bone-plate armor, though more often than not ricocheting off and burying themselves in the walls, floor and ceiling. The others were opening fire too now. Drake felt panic rising swiftly within him. Not Greg, not Greg...his mind was quickly calculating as he backed up, his rifle clicking empty. He reached for another magazine, thinking, Can you recover from a decapitation?
His initial instincts told him no, but then again, he wasn't up to date on modern medicine. He'd seen fucking miracles happen and...hadn't he heard stories about it? Head transplants? He slapped the fresh magazine home, aimed and fired.
Glancing around, he saw the others spreading out. Eric was up and fighting now, at least, though he seemed to be moving sluggishly. One of the scythes came for Jennifer and she narrowly avoided it. Drake emptied his second magazine and growled, they just weren't doing enough damage. He needed to end this, somehow…
An idea was beginning to form when, suddenly, he heard Eric let out a shriek of pure pain. Drake's eyes snapped over and he saw one of those articulated blades had impaled Eric, a bloody curve of bone jutting out of his back. He screamed as the scythe was ripped back out.
“Eric!” Drake screamed, fury and blind terror filling him.
A plan whipped together in his mind. Before he could think better of it, before he could tell himself how fucking stupid it was, he abandoned his rifle and grabbed his last grenade. Then he started running towards the creature.
“What are you doin-” Jennifer began, but then screamed as a scythe bashed into her helmet. It didn't cut into her, instead it sent her flying and screaming through the air. They were running out of people and one of them needed to fucking remain intact to get this job done. He was almost there now. The creature was getting closer and closer. It seemed momentarily confused by what he was doing, and that helped him cross the final distance. Drake primed the grenade as he got right up to the fucker and then punched it into the dark hole of its face.
Something soft and squishy gave way against his unyielding, gauntleted fist. The creature began to shriek, an unbearably loud sound.
Drake released the grenade and began to pull his hand back out, trying to not let the high-pitched shrieking of the creature overwhelm him. But then cold fear filled him as he realized that he was stuck. Something in the creature seemed to squeeze, refusing to let him go. He only had a few seconds now. Drake yanked helplessly, putting his other hand against the armored shell of the thing and pushing as hard as he could.
Whatever was holding him began to give-
The grenade exploded.
Pain, impossible, fiery pain filled him as he was thrown away from the creature. He landed several seconds later with a harsh scream torn from his lungs. He should have passed out. He knew he should have passed out, but he didn't. He was still here, still horribly, awfully aware. He raised his right arm...and screamed again.
His arm, armor and all, had been blown off at the elbow. He could even see bone sticking out of the remains of his elbow and shreds of bloody skin.
“OH GOD!” he heard himself scream.
He suddenly saw someone standing over him. Parker.
“Oh, fuck, Drake...” she whispered. “Hold still,” she said, sounding more in control of herself, though her voice still trembled.
Drake fought savagely for control. His shoulder, his fucking guts and now this shit. The only possible solace he took from the situation was that he knew you could get a new arm, that he would get a perfectly new cloned arm because Hawkins would cough up the cash for it pronto...provided they made it out of this alive. A nuclear bomb of pain erupted freshly across his arm as Parker poured a coagulant powder into the wound, ceasing the blood flow. He screamed and screamed and screamed...then he regained control of himself.
“I'm sorry, Drake,” she said.
“Help me up,” he growled. So close, so fucking close to the end. No more fighting. As Parker got him to his feet, he saw that his little stunt had worked. The thing was dead, blown into a million pieces...as it should be, given what a wretched abomination it was. The cavern was full of screaming. Drake surveyed the scene, looked over his friends. Jennifer was on her hands and knees, crawling around. She looked up, briefly, and he recoiled in shock at seeing that the inside of her visor was painted entirely in blood. There was also a horrible dent in one side of it. She tried to get to her feet, stumbled and fell down, screaming again.
Eric was on his knees, holding his guts in, howling like a freshly damned soul.
And Greg.
Greg…
He was still trying to scream, though now he no longer had lungs to support it. His body was twitching miserably near his head, which was staring at the world around him with blind eyes. He was gone now, gone to them for the remainder of the mission. If he could come back after...that remained to be seen.
“Help them,” Drake gasped.
“I'll do what I can,” Parker replied. Miraculously, she was undamaged, whole and unharmed. Drake saw his abandoned rifle about five feet in front of him. He didn't want to pick it up, didn't think he'd need it, but some part of him refused to believe that. Every step forward was unmitigated agony. His arm was on fire, his guts were in hell. Suffering wracked his body as never before. He thought he'd been through pain before this, but he'd been wrong. Everything before t
his was a fucking walk in the park compared to today.
Drake reached his rifle, bent carefully and retrieved it.
“Oh, god, Jennifer,” Parker said.
Drake looked over. He saw that Parker had gotten her helmet off. Drake felt his stomach twitch. At the same time he realized the explosion had shattered his visor, (which suddenly accounted for all the stinging pain he felt in his face), his stomach finally gave up the ghost and he vomited a thick gout of bloody puke.
There were chunks in the vomit...his shredded intestines.
Jennifer's head was partially crushed and one of her eyes had been burst from its socket, hanging by the optical nerves. She was moaning, a hideous, despairing sound. Drake looked away as Parker tried to take care of her.
“Hold still,” Parker said. “Please, Jennifer, hold still.”
He looked over at Eric, who had stopped screaming and was focused wholly on covering up the gory, gaping wound in his stomach. He looked up as Drake approached.
“How the fuck did you deal with this?” he growled. Blood was dribbling from his mouth, down to his chin. “Oh god, your fucking arm, Drake...”
“Keep it together,” Drake replied, fighting through the agony. “Just...just keep it together. We're so close, we're almost fucking there.”
“I don't think I can do it,” Eric moaned. He sat down suddenly, falling back and then screaming tiredly. “Just go,” he said, shoving the words out. “Go, Drake. Finish it.”
Drake thought there was something wrong here. He didn't know what, but it was far too hard to think now. Everything was wrong. He abandoned trying to verify his instincts about the situation and nodded to Eric.
“I'll get it done,” he said through gritted teeth.
Eric said nothing as he turned away. Across the cavern, Drake spied Parker finishing her makeshift medical care on Jennifer, who was standing uneasily on her feet. A white patch was planted over her right eye, though the bulge beneath it told Drake that the eye had not been put back in its socket, merely held in place. His stomach twitched again, but he managed not to throw up this time. Gritting his teeth and fighting through the pain, he joined Parker and Jennifer.
“We have to push on,” he said.
“I know, we're almost there. I just hope to god there isn't anything in that cavern,” Parker replied.
“I'll lead the way. You avoid damage at all cost, Parker. You're...the last one among us who is any shape to get the job done.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
It seemed the decision had been made for them. There was no way any of them could keep their shit together long enough in that device to save everyone here. But there was no time to think about that now. Drake turned towards the opening Greg had been standing at previously and started walking. It felt like he was directing some kind of mechanical contraption and not his own body. Every movement was forced and he was pushing himself on through sheer willpower at this point. It was all he had left.
They managed to cross the initial cavern without any trouble. Well, beyond the crippling pain he and Jennifer were in. Jennifer said nothing, the only sounds coming from her were ragged, agonized gasps as Parker helped support her. She was having trouble walking in a straight line and Drake couldn't even imagine what a smashed skull and popped-out eyeball felt like. But he was in his own hell right now. It was like someone had opened up on his arm with a flamethrower and wouldn't stop. And he was sure whatever sewing up Parker had done on his guts earlier had torn back open. The inside of his armor felt wet with blood.
He stepped through into the next cavern.
The device, ancient and impossible and difficult to look at, rose up before him, dominating the center of the cave. It was huge, easily fifteen feet tall: a dark cylinder of latticework metal that was covered in frost. Near its base was a flat panel that glowed with burning blue symbols. Their salvation. Their way to end this.
There was nothing else in the cavern with them.
“Parker...you gotta do it...I don't think either of us can,” Drake groaned.
“I'll do it,” Parker replied.
He meant activate the thing with the control panel but he thought she was responding to another assessment: she would have to sacrifice herself. She sounded resolute and strong and sure. He wished he felt as brave as she was right then. They crossed the cavern and came to stand before the huge device. It hummed with awful, dark power. Parker set her rifle down and got to work, beginning to hit an intricate sequence of symbols.
Drake began to feel himself slipping, almost to give in to the pain. It was so difficult to hold onto his rifle, to stay upright, to remained focused on the mission. He wanted to give in and collapse. Keeping the pain at bay was a losing battle and it took all of his strength, his willpower, all of the endurance he'd spent the past three decades building. He almost stumbled and fell, but then let out a startled shout as a bullet pinged off the device, narrowly missing Parker's head. Whipping around, Drake put himself in front of Parker.
A lone figure stood in the doorway.
One of the Deathless?
“Keep working,” Drake said, raising his rifle.
“Stop,” the figure said.
“Eric!?” Drake cried. Another bullet pinged off the device. “What are you doing!? Stop shooting, Eric!” he yelled.
“No,” Eric replied, holding his guts in with one hand, his pistol with the other. “No, Drake, don't you understand? We deserve this. All of this that's happened here, we all deserve this. We deserve to be here and suffer for eternity.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” Jennifer cried.
“I see the truth now!” Eric screamed. “Why else would everything have happened to me!? Why else would I have lost everyone I've ever loved!? I must deserve it!” he shrieked.
Drake saw that he'd lost it and started running towards him. He had to take him down, somehow, someway. Had to keep him from stopping Parker. Eric fired three more times. Two of the shots went wild but one punched through Drake's chest. He screamed but kept going, crashing into Eric, beyond pain at this point.
“Shit happens!” Drake said, furious and maddened with pain and anger. He grabbed Eric by the throat with his one good hand as they both tumbled to the uneven cave ground. “There's no reason for it, Eric! You don't deserve it, it just happened that way!”
“No!” Eric moaned, twisting to get out of his grasp. “It's not true! It can't be true! Everything happens for a reason!”
Jennifer was suddenly there, a bolt gun in her hand. She placed it against his right shoulder and fired off a round. Eric screamed.
“Everything happens for a reason,” she growled, her voice rough and shot through with impossible suffering, “but that doesn't fucking mean there's some grand fucking design, asshole. No one singled you out, you miserable fuck.”
She put another bolt through his other shoulder. Drake kept on him until they had bolted his wrists into the ground as well.
“Let me up! Let me up!” he screamed, twitching and jerking violently. But the bolts held.
“I'm sorry, Eric,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “I'm sorry.”
“It's opening!” Parker called.
Drake and Jennifer whipped around. She was right, the device was opening. A crack had appeared in the middle of it and as it began to widen, a great, twisting black fog rolled out of it. There was only darkness within.
Drake stared into the darkness, waiting for something to happen, for whatever was inside to fall out. Surely it couldn't still be functional after all these years.
Twin crimson orbs snapped into being.
Drake screamed, this time in pure fear, as a real, live, actual demon stumbled out of the tube. He had a few seconds to glimpse it as it got oriented, looking around. It was a thing of sleek black metal, a whipcord thin impossibility with a head of odd angles and no mouth. Behind it, a barbed tail whipped about furiously.
Then it got its bearings and slapped Parker aside.
> “No!” Drake screamed, raising his rifle and opening fire.
It was coming for him.
* * * * *
Through a haze of absolute suffering, Eric stared up at the creature as it came towards Drake and Jennifer. There was no fighting it, no stopping it. This was Hell and they had all deserved to come here. They must, there was no other logic to it. The thought that kept rearing its head in his mind over and over again, something he had secretly been wondering for months, for years maybe, perhaps even his whole life.
Why else would so many bad things happen to him?
His whole life he'd felt like something was out to get him, something had it in for him. Now, amidst this sea of unmitigated pain, he could finally see. It had come to him after his encounter with Autumn in the darkness. It was the one clear thought he still had. It was no coincidence that misery and death and loneliness had chased him, hounded him, his entire existence. He must have done something, somehow, someway.
He deserved this.
It was the only logical recourse. And, thus, they all deserved this. They must. Everyone was so convinced there was a God or some kind of supreme being, a creator, a ruler over the universe with immeasurable, unlimited power. Eric had never fully believed in the idea and eventually he'd abandoned the notion completely. Or had he? He'd never been able to fully dismiss the idea that there was something watching, something judging. He thought he'd lived a good life, but maybe he hadn't? He must have done something.
It just didn't make any other kind of sense. It seemed impossible to him that all of these tragic events, the loss, the misery, all of it could happen to a single person merely by coincidence. There had to be some kind of force, and he must have garnered its ire somehow.
Ash was just the end of the line.
The final judgment.
They had all come here of their own accord and were all being judged.
He looked up, watching as Jennifer, Parker and Drake tried to combat the thing they had loosed from the device. It was fruitless. Parker was trying to shoot it, but it was fast. A fresh wave of pain shot through Eric and he groaned, twitching against his bindings, the bolts in his shoulders and wrists. Every movement sent bolts of pure agony through him. He watched as the creature reached down suddenly and got a grip on Jennifer.