by S. A. Lusher
“Was it something we found? How did they know about that?” Megan asked.
Ishi shook his head. “No. They brought it with them. They call it...the Necro Virus. It's old, ancient. It says in the reports that it's a Cyr virus.”
“Holy fuck,” Jennifer whispered.
“Where are we?” Megan asked.
“I'm not sure. Navigation is shot. But the log, what's left of it, seemed to indicate that we have moved far from our original position. But listen, this is the important part: they were working on a vaccine and a cure, and one of them worked. They succeeded. They have it down on the research deck, under lock and key.”
“Which one?” Jennifer asked.
“It doesn't say. I'm having to piece a lot of this together. But, either way, I think we should make it a priority to get it,” Ishi replied.
Jennifer nodded tightly, straightening up. “Yes.”
“Does it say who betrayed us?” Megan asked.
“No...well, not yet, anyway. There's still a great deal of data to sort through.”
Jennifer sighed and considered how to proceed for the moment. It didn't take too long. “Ishi, you're staying here on the bridge, alone. Megan, you're coming with me. We're getting that research. Ishi, I need you to keep sorting through the data. Lock the door behind us.”
Ishi looked pensive, but, considering the alternatives, he simply nodded. “Okay.”
“Thanks,” Jennifer said. She found a thanks went a long way in situations like these. She then got Mark on the radio. “You got all that?”
“Yeah. I got it. I'm almost out of the engineering deck.”
“Good. One more thing. Obviously, we've encountered several different kinds of the zombies now. I think we need to name them. I was thinking Ghost for the invisible ones and Titan for the giant bastards,” she said.
“That sounds good to me. Well-labeled and easy to remember,” Mark replied.
“What about the spitters?” Megan asked.
“We'll call them Spitters,” Jennifer replied.
“Oh...duh. Okay.”
“Good. Got it Mark?”
“Yeah. Spitters.”
“Okay. Good luck. Out.”
Jennifer led Megan towards the exit. It seemed like she hadn't stopped moving since she woke up. And she supposed that was true. She was glad there had been a shower there at the beginning, but there was still a lot more moving to do.
With that though in mind, Jennifer exited the bridge with Megan in tow.
She locked the door firmly behind her and pressed on, deeper into the plague ship.
* * * * *
“Thank you,” Mark whispered, allowing himself a small ration of relief. It went a long way in this gray, bloody, drab environment.
He'd finally managed the climb out of engineering. Honestly, it hadn't been more than a single stairwell, given that the cargo deck was just one level up, but the whole thing had felt like a brutal slog through hell so far. As soon as he'd arrived onboard the cargo deck, coming up in a small complex of offices and restrooms, he'd spied a single open door in a hallway of closed doors. It had beckoned to him, so he'd gone to investigate.
And he'd been rewarded.
It was once a break room, but someone had decided to turn it into a last stand. Which was depressing, because it hadn't worked out. Among the bloody debris, however, was a small cache of ammunition for both his pistol and his recently claimed shotgun. As he recovered these shells and bullets, Mark felt oddly dislocated from the world around him. In a moment of startling clarity, he felt very much like the protagonist of an action-horror video game. He'd played enough of them, preferring the old-school handheld controllers hooked up to screens against the virtual reality that had grown so popular.
Something about it just didn't sit well with his vision, it made him queasy. But he was happy enough with retro gaming.
Now he was living it.
It wasn't so happy anymore.
With a heavy heart and a churning stomach, Mark collected up the ammo, slid it into his pocket and left the break room. He'd never seen carnage like this before. Well, not in real life. He thought he would be more freaked out by it, and then he realized he probably was. Shock, that's what it was. He was still in shock. What would happen when it wore off? Well, that was in the future, if he even survived that long.
Slowly, Mark navigated his way out of the office complex, just wanting to get to the oxygen leak and repair it as quickly as possible. The first order of business was to find out what kind of leak they were talking about here. If it was small enough, he'd have to find a suit and enough materials and tools to manually plug the hole, which he honestly wouldn't really look forward to. Mark had never been comfortable in those EVA suits. If it was something too big, then he'd have to find some other kind of workaround.
Which he hoped it was, since that was more his specialty.
Speaking of which...
Mark opened the door at the end of the hallway and stepped through into a sort of lobby that admitted access to the office complex. He spied a general access terminal. It should give him the information he wanted. He crossed the room and set his shotgun down on the floor, leaning it against the nearest wall. At some point he'd have to find a shoulder strap for the thing, but no such luck yet. He quickly navigated the menus, putting his clearance as a tech to work and pushing through a lot of the random crap to get to where he needed.
It took a moment, but he finally had it. The oxygen leak that Jennifer had been referring to was in cargo bay six. Apparently there'd been some kind of explosion that had blown out a section of the hull there and while the main door to the bay had sealed off, there'd been some kind of malfunction with the ventilation system, so air was still being sucked out into space through the vents in the room. Very, very bad, given how much they needed that air. Mark already knew how to fix it, though. With this thought in mind, he turned away from the screen. The process should be relatively simple and he thought about it as he crossed the room.
Presently, he was at one end of the cargo deck. The door he was about to go through would grant him access to a large, segmented corridor that ran the length of the ship. Along either side of that corridor were rows of cargo bays, one row to left, one row to the right. Sandwiched between each bay was a maintenance area. This is where he would need to get to in order to 'close the hatch', as it were, on the oxygen leak.
As Mark opened the door, he let out a startled gasp as a zombie appeared in front of him. Only, it wasn't a regular zombie. It must have been what they were now calling Spitters. It let out a shriek and shot something at him. It was pure luck that Mark managed to sidestep it. He brought his shotgun up and squeezed the trigger. The thing's head exploded in a visceral spray of black gore. Or, well, maybe not its head, but definitely most everything above its chest. Mark waited a moment, to see if there were any others.
When none showed up, he took a moment to hunt down the thing that had been shot at him. It was buried in the lobby wall. Up close, it almost looked like bone. It was about three inches long and as thin as a nail. It was also dripping what must have been pure infection. Mark turned away from it and let out a startled shout as he spied a hulking figure in the doorway. He raised his weapon once more but froze at the last second.
“Hold it!” the figure snapped.
“...Frost?” Mark hazarded.
“Yeah. And you must be Collins. Sorry I couldn't get to you in time in engineering. I lost my radio when I got into a scuffle with some of the ugly bastards. Ran into a lot of trouble. But I'm here now, what are we doing?” he asked.
“Well, I've fixed the engines. Now we need to seal the oxygen breach. I'll lead the way, you watch my back,” Mark replied.
“Sounds easy enough,” Frost replied. “Two things though. I thought I saw someone else out there while I was on my way down. Don't know who. The only other thing is there's some real nasty ones down here with us. You're gonna want to watch out.”
“
Like him?” Mark asked, pointing to the Spitter he'd killed.
Frost shook his head. “No, not like that. It had wicked big claws. Like a fucking raptor...I guess there are new ones now, huh? Come on.”
Mark nodded. He studied his surroundings as they left the lobby and stepped into the first segment of the huge corridor. It ended in one of the divider walls about a fifty meters ahead. They had to get past it, to the next section. The corridor was broad and tall and mostly clear. There were a few crates around and a pair of forklifts, otherwise, the place was empty. Mercifully, the huge steel doors that led to cargo bays on either side of them were closed.
“So where are we going?” Frost asked.
“Next segment up,” Mark replied. “I've got to get to a pair of maintenance access alcoves.”
“Fine,” Frost said.
They moved slowly past the abandoned cargo gear. Looking at it gave Mark a chill. It had the feel of abrupt abandonment, of being in the middle of a job when the shit went down and you needed to tear ass out of there immediately. He pressed on, following in Frost's wake. The man was immense and looked like a grizzled vet, carried himself like one, too. He was glad they were working together. They finished the short trek through the first segment of corridor and Frost opened up the man-sized door in the first wall.
He stood in the doorway, nearly filling it, then stepped through. “Looks clear, come on,” he said without looking back.
Mark hurried to join him. He wanted to be out of here as quickly as possible. Once he'd gotten this done, he imagined that maybe, just maybe, he could head back up to the safety of that infirmary. He wasn't cut out for this crap. The first alcove they needed was immediately to the right. Mark headed towards it.
“Wait here,” he said. “I'll just be a few minutes.”
“Uh-huh,” Frost replied.
Mark opened the door and looked inside. Nothing awaited him save for a long, low room about ten meters in length. It was sort of a mixture between a storage bay and a maintenance area. Thin metal shelving units ran along either wall for the first part, broken up by space that was sometimes empty and sometimes taken up by a crate or a locker. The second half of the room, the far end, was comprised of a pair of workstations and a couple of workbenches. Seeing that there was nothing in the room, that it had escaped the previous conflicts basically untouched, Mark hurried past the shelves and settled into place at one of the workstations.
It took all of three minutes to navigate the menu, override the controls and force the vents in that area to seal. Mark let out a breath of relief as he stood up. Well, that had gone pleasantly enough. Halfway done. Maybe ten more minutes altogether and it'd be done.
“Hey!” Frost snapped at the entrance. “Get out here!”
Mark felt an icy chill shoot through him. Snatching up his shotgun, he ran down the length of the alcove. Frost had moved away from the door now, holding his own shotgun tightly to his shoulder. Mark stepped out into the corridor and all at once saw what the man had been so upset about. A pack of zombies were coming for them, except...they weren't normal zombies. They looked...short. Hunched, almost. And their arms were somewhat curved and ended in gleaming black razor-sharp claws. They let out shrieks as they raced towards the two.
Frost's shotgun loosed a shell with a resounding and tremendous boom. The head of the lead zombie exploded into a spray of dark blood. Mark took aim with his own weapon and jumped into the fray. He squeezed the trigger. The shell hit another one of the malignant things along the side of its skull. Not quite a perfect shot but it was more than enough to tear a decent-sized chunk of blood, bone and brain matter away.
Definitely enough to put the thing down.
Those two died easily another, but the remaining four were fast. They ducked, dodged and split up, coming for the pair of survivors with a tremendous speed and vitality. Mark focused on the nearest one, trying to track it. He aimed and fired. The shotgun blast clipped its shoulder and sent it sprawling. He pounced on the opportunity, readjusted his aim and fired again. This time, its head was splattered all over the deckplates. Mark felt a momentary elation of triumph that was immediately squashed by the other creature.
It was coming right for him.
It took a swipe at him with its wicked sharp claws. Mark screamed and jerked his head back. He could feel the fucking air whooshing by his face and smell the awful, rotted taint on the creature. It was that close.
Mark's ankle caught on something behind him and he tripped. Crying out, he fell flat on his ass and narrowly avoided another swipe. The shotgun was still in hand. He didn't even have to aim, now that the barrel was pointing directly up at the wretched thing bearing down on him. He squeezed the trigger. The force of the blast picked the beast up and threw it backwards. Elsewhere in the corridor, Mark could hear Frost fighting for his life. Scrambling to his feet, he took a quick look around and saw that the thing he'd hit point-blank was getting back up. He let out a small sound of panicked shock, tucked the shotgun to his shoulder and fired again.
This time, the thing joined its brethren in death.
Looking around, Mark saw that Frost had put down the others.
“That's all of them,” he said, slowly lowering his shotgun. He reached into his pocket and began fishing out and feeding shells into his weapon. “Come on, let's wrap this up.”
Mark nodded. His hands shaking, he began to do the same. No other creatures showed up as they crossed the final stretch of distance to the second alcove. Relief swept through him as he opened it up, found it empty and hurried to sit down. He did his job and, once again, was rewarded. The vents closed without a problem.
The cargo bay was fully sealed.
Mark ran a quick check to make double sure, then he called up Jennifer to tell her the good news. “Jennifer, I did it,” he said.
“Great. Did you find Frost?”
“Yeah. He's here and intact.”
“Good. Megan and I are up on the research deck. We're looking for a cure or a vaccine against this Necro Virus. We could really use the extra firepower, there's a lot of the bastards up here. It looks like this was ground zero.”
Mark felt his hopes sink back into the dark, murky depths of his soul. It wasn't over. He was a fool for thinking he could take a break.
But what else could he say?
“We're on our way up.”
CHAPTER 07
–Instability–
Jennifer was definitely right about one thing: there were more zombies on the research deck than anywhere else she'd been so far on the ship. What was worse, the research deck, nearest the middle, was the largest deck. It was a nightmare of twisting passageways, interconnecting chambers and all sorts of little alcoves and corridors. Not exactly the place a person fighting a horde of zombies wanted to find himself in.
Mark was at least glad that he had Frost with him. The guy was a certified badass. He had an amazing combat sense and stunning reflexes. After fixing the leak, they'd quickly made their way to the nearest stairwell and had gone up. Almost as soon as they stepped out of the stairway and into a long corridor, they'd run into trouble. A dozen zombies were stumbling here and there, but as soon as they locked eyes on Mark and Frost they'd unified and attacked. It had left the pair of men suddenly fighting for their lives.
A resounding blast split the air and the final zombie dropped.
“Okay,” Frost said, hastily shoving shells into his shotgun. “Now where?”
“Let me find a map,” Mark replied.
They hadn't liked him to be on this deck too much back when this ship was normal and not a spacebound dreadnought of plague and death. Everyone on the research deck had special clearance and he'd only gone there a few times to make some quick repairs to some of the basic equipment, so he hadn't gotten to see much.
Mark took a moment to survey the corridor they were standing in. It continued along in either direction, largely just smooth panels of titanium white metal, which made the blood really stand out. The
lighting was bright and harsh and reminded him of a hospital. Not the most comfortable feeling. There were only two doors in the corridor, but he ignored both of them as he spied a general access terminal screen not too far away.
They were a bit fancier here. Instead of being an actual fixture jutting from the wall like most decks, this was merely a screen actually built into the wall. Apparently corridor space was considered premium down in the research labs, either that or it was just more aesthetically pleasing. Probably that second one, given that this was a corporate vessel.
“Watch my back,” Mark said quietly as he approached the terminal.
Frost grunted in reply. Mark quickly opened the terminal menu and brought up the map, then he checked it over. Then, all at once, he realized that he wasn't quite sure where they actually had to go. He opened up a comms channel.
“Jennifer, we're on the research deck. How do you want to do this?”
“There's a cold storage facility near the middle of the deck. Cold Storage Bay Four. That's supposedly where this cure or vaccine is. We'll meet there, quick as you can,” Jennifer replied. Again, she sounded harried.
Mark frowned as he studied the map. “Okay, we'll get there as quickly as we can, but it's quite a ways away,” he replied.
“Fine, just hurry.”
From somewhere further down the hallway, something growled. Frost tensed and Mark sighed softly. This wasn't going to be easy.
* * * * *
Jennifer exhaled forcefully as the final Spitter was put down. She stood in the corridor, her back to Megan's, each of them covering an end of the passageway they had suddenly found themselves trapped in, and scanned her side.
“Clear,” she said, unhappy to note that her voice was shaking slightly.
“Clear,” Megan replied.
That's when she let herself relax, just for a second. The corridor was a pretty great place in terms of hiding spots: there were none. She had a bright, white view of everything. She'd put down eight hostiles this time around. It was their third firefight since reaching the damned research deck. The place seemed to be packed with the bastards. It had been really miserable, really slow going. She'd just heard from Mark the second time and he was promising that he and Frost would try to hurry. Which didn't mean too much down here.