by S. A. Lusher
For now, they were on their own.
Wasn't that how it always went?
“There's a lot of them down here,” Megan muttered as she reloaded.
Jennifer merely nodded, though the action was lost on Megan, who was still facing away from her. She quickly reloaded her rifle and took a moment to collect herself. She could do this. She had to do this. That's what mattered.
“Come on,” she said when it became clear that they were once more alone.
Jennifer led the way to the end of the corridor they were in. Although she figured they were closer to the cold storage lab they were looking for than Mark and Frost, she also knew that she and Megan were still a long ways off. The research deck was pretty big. They'd made it some of the way there but not enough. Now, it seemed, they had a lull in combat. Which was good. Jennifer was getting pretty worn down. She didn't want to admit it, least of all to herself, but she couldn't ignore the signs. She was getting too stressed out by all this.
She needed a distraction, if only a brief one.
“So, what's with you and Ishi?” she asked. “You two don't seem to get along.”
Megan looked briefly confused by the question, then she sighed. “He was my boss before all this...shit, happened. He's a genius. Specialized in surgery but he knew all sorts of stuff. He managed all of us. He seems so reasonable, doesn't he? But that's the thing. When you argue with him about something, he's always so fucking...reasonable. He acts like anyone who shows the slightest bit of emotion when debating or arguing about something is to be talked down to like a fucking child. Like, oh, real mature adults don't let themselves be emotionally compromised. He has no problem being a condescending dick. And, well, if you haven't picked up on it, I'm not the most emotionally stable of people, and we just don't blend well together.”
“That makes sense,” Jennifer replied.
Although honestly she was more on the side of Ishi with this one. Maybe it was just that she had never been a particularly emotional person or maybe she was just lucky enough to be able to control a lot of her emotions, but Jennifer thought that people who got ahead in life, who really made a name for themselves, were the ones who kept a lid on their emotions. People who made decisions based on emotions were rarely happy with those decisions, it seemed to her. Now, Ishi was a jerk for trying to hold that over people, because she had also discovered that people who were very emotional didn't have much say in the matter.
They simply were emotional, like a switch that was flipped in their brain.
Up ahead, something growled.
Well, it looked like her downtime was over. It was time to jump back into the fray.
* * * * *
“This looks imposing,” Mark muttered.
They had navigated a stretch of bloodied, white-paneled corridors before coming to their first big switchover area. They needed to cut through one of the primary research laboratories. The door that led to it had been broken open by brute force.
“Most of the ship does,” Frost replied. “Come on.” He stepped in through the opening. Mark gathered his courage and followed.
He stepped into a huge, open room. Everything in sight gave him immediate chills. It reminded him of horror movies where humans are experimented upon by men with no morals and a great capacity for cruelty. One of the far walls was taken up completely by a stack of reinforced steel-and-glass cages. Most of them were bloody and open. A few still had some zombies in them. He spied three regulars and a Spitter and, after a bit of focusing, a Ghost. There were three much larger cages that had been broken open.
Those held Titans, he imagined.
Worst of all were the twin rows of surgical areas. Spread across the length of the room were two rows of ten examination tables. Most of them were covered in blood and surgical tools and they all had heavy metal restraints. Two of them still had zombies strapped into them. There were also rows of lockers and a cluster of workstations and, at the other, far end of the room, were four large glass chambers with gas jets lining the walls and ceilings. Frost was already walking through this land of calculated horror and machine terror.
Mark took the first few steps in his journey across the medical wasteland and then froze as something let out a shriek.
He and Frost both spun to face their attacker, only to discover there were not one but almost a dozen of the new creatures, what Mark had already labeled in his head as Rippers, rushing in through a side entryway. Mark let out a curse of pure fear and amazement at how shitty the universe could be sometimes, brought his shotgun up and opened fire. He heard Frost doing the same. Mark started working the shotgun. He was glad it wasn't difficult. There was no time to think, only time to act, and that made it easier.
He put down one, two, three, four of the bastards in a row. But there were twelve so far and more coming in. Not really a good fight. They were packed so close together it was easy to bring them down at first, but he could tell that they were smarter than all the others he'd encountered so far. They split up and began coming at both Frost and Mark from different angles. Not good. Mark tracked the first one and fired.
Another lucky shot, he blew its stump head clean away, spraying the others with black gore. Another one leaped at him, jumping up onto an examination table and using it to launch itself. It flew shrieking through the air towards him and he fired again. The force of the blast stopped the thing short, eliminating its forward momentum, and it slumped to the floor in a heap. Another one was barreling right towards him.
Mark threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the screaming beast, and twisted around to try and track it behind him. To his horror, he spied a new clutch of zombies stumbling on stiff legs in through the door they had just come through. So very, very bad. They were still a fair distance away at least. He had to kill the Rippers first. He took a quick sweep of the area around him and only saw another four.
Yeah, only. Mark scrambled to his feet.
The one he'd dodged was still trying to get on its feet. He aimed and fired, blowing the thing straight to hell. Or wherever zombie mutations went when they died. Then he spun around and fired again as another one approached, claws raised for rending. He blew half its head away but now his shotgun was empty and there was no time to reload. Mark dropped it and pulled his pistol out. He put three rounds into the first of the two remaining Rippers, then dropped down to his knees and ducked as the final one made a leap for him.
Again, it was off balance, so he had the opportunity to twist around and put four shots into the bastard, which stopped it from moving. The zombies were getting closer now. Mark stood up, assumed a shooter's stance and, with a calm and clarity that was becoming more familiar in the face of all this blind terror, began popping their heads one after the other. Compared to the Rippers and the Spitters, it was easy business. He emptied his current magazine, reloaded and put down the remaining zombies with the second mag.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I can't believe we survived that.” As he retrieved his shotgun, Mark realized there was no one responding to him. “Frost?” he asked, grabbing the gun. As he straightened up and began reloading, he surveyed the room.
He was alone.
“Frost?!” he called.
Had he been killed? He hadn't heard the man shout out, but there had been a lot of noise. Mark finished reloading and quickly began searching the bodies. Five minutes passed, then ten, and he was at a loss.
There was no sign of Frost.
His radio crackled. “Mark, we've got a problem.”
“Me too,” he replied.
* * * * *
“Why in the fuck am I not fucking surprised!?” Megan seethed.
Jennifer sighed. “It's bad,” she said.
“How bad?” Megan asked.
“It's a triple lockdown. There's a security code we need to input and a keycard...and a retinal scan,” Jennifer replied.
“We can probably find the other two but...how the fuck are we going to find a retina?!” Megan groane
d.
“I imagine we'll have to get creative...” She continued studying the terminal she was standing at next to the large, locked down door that was keeping them from their intended destination. Unfortunately, since she wasn't a high enough rank, her security codes weren't doing jack shit for her right now. However, she was in the process of tracking down where two of the three things they needed were. Not the easiest task on this level of the ship.
“Got it,” she whispered finally.
Megan crowded in. “What?” she asked.
“Keep watch,” Jennifer replied as she studied the screen. Megan sighed and turned away from her. “Crap,” she muttered. “Okay, well, I've found the keycard. It's all the way on the other side of the deck, but Mark and Frost should be able to pick it up. There's a high level security center not too far from here that, hopefully, will at least have the codes. I'm still not sure how we're going to track down one of the people who had their retina in the database...but we'll cross that road when we come to it, I guess,” she explained.
“Okay, let's hurry,” Megan replied. “This place is really freaking me out.”
Jennifer activated her radio. “Mark, we've got a problem.”
The reply was immediate. “Me too.”
“What? What's wrong?” Jennifer asked, feeling a shooting fear. What the fuck else was going wrong right now?
“Frost is missing.”
“He is? What happened? How?”
“We were ambushed in a lab. It was a fight for our lives but when it was over, he was gone. I looked everywhere. He isn't dead, as far as I can tell, and he doesn't have his radio on him. I don't know where he is.”
“Shit...well, we can't worry about him right now. At the moment, I need you to make a detour to a bathroom. It's located directly next to Infirmary B Three. Inside of it, there should be a security keycard somewhere. Get it. Also, tell me if it's on a body or not, we might need the guy's eye.”
“...what?”
“Megan and I got to the lab. It's under a triple lockdown. We need a code, a keycard and a retina for the retinal scan. We've got a good idea of where the code is.”
“Uh, okay, I'm on it.”
“Good. Thank you. Stay safe.”
“You too.”
Jennifer took a moment to massage the bridge of her nose, pinching it between two fingers. Something of a habit she'd started building when she saw her mom do it all throughout her childhood. It had stuck and stayed, something she did whenever she was really feeling the stress. She had a headache now and her stomach felt hollow. She was hungry and thirsty and she wanted to take a fucking nap.
How long had it been since Mark had saved her from that damned stasis pod? She checked the time and was amazed to find it had been nearly six hours. Surely that couldn't be right? Six hours? It felt like less...but then, somehow, it felt like it should have been more, too. A day, at least. Instead of giving in to her urge to take a break, she popped her neck again, then her shoulders and her back, relieving a lot of tension.
“Come on,” she said. “Let's go.”
Megan didn't say anything. Maybe she could tell just how fucking wiped Jennifer was. Not really good. Jennifer wasn't often in command positions on a battlefield, but one of the rules was that if you did happen to find yourself in command, you'd better buck up and put on a brave face, regardless of how you felt. With this in mind, she set off down the corridor, rifle at ready, prepared to face whatever horrors the ship was going to throw at her.
At least, this is what she told herself.
She led Megan down one corridor, then another. They cut through a desolate break room and Jennifer's stomach growled when she saw a mini-fridge. Again, tempting, but they just didn't have the time. They passed through the door on the opposite side of the room and came to another blood-smeared, too-bright corridor. Jennifer scanned first left, then right. The security center was to the right and-
She froze as she caught some kind of movement off of her peripheral.
“Ghost,” she hissed, raising her rifle.
Only not one Ghost, more than one. At least...three? It was hard to tell. Aiming to the best of her ability, Jennifer squeezed the trigger. The bullet exploded from the muzzle, crossing the distance in no time flat and punched a hole in the neck of one of the Ghosts, causing it to lose its chameleon abilities. As soon as it did, Megan aimed and fired, blowing its head off with a shotgun blast and spraying another three Ghosts around it with black blood. That, at least, made them a bit easier to see. Jennifer sighted and popped another one.
The other two, however, would not go down so easily.
One of them dropped onto all fours and began crawling along the deckplates. The other did much of the same, except it was sticking to one of the walls. Jennifer took the one on the wall while Megan began trying to put down the one on the floor. For several seconds, she couldn't nail the invisible thing. The bullets pinged off the bulkheads, ricocheting everywhere, and then, finally, as it came within reaching distance of her, she hit it, somewhere vital but not quite life-threatening. It lost its cloak of invisibility and then it leaped for her, shrieking.
Jennifer emptied her rifle into the thing, shooting up its chest and then finally putting two more into its neck. But it was still sailing for her. She screamed in surprise as it slammed bodily into her and sent her sprawling. She heard two more shotgun blasts as she worked to get the thing off of her, then, suddenly, Megan was at her side, helping her. She rolled the dead Ghost off of her and helped Jennifer to her feet.
“Did it get you?” she asked.
“I don't think so,” she replied, checking herself over. A moment later, she let out a sigh of relief. She was fine. “No, it didn't. Come on.”
They hurried down the last leg of this particular journey and got into the security office. As they did, Jennifer spied someone sitting in one of the chairs, facing away from them. The severe tilt of their head and the stillness made her suspicious, but as she drew closer and saw the gunshot in the side of the head, she knew what had happened. The man had killed himself. Jennifer slowly turned the swivel chair around and caught sight of his nametag. It matched one of the names on the list of people approved to get into the cold storage bay.
“Jackpot,” she whispered. “We have our eye,” she said, turning to the main workstation and firing it up.
“How do we get it out?” Megan asked.
“We'll need something sharp...” Jennifer was distracted, hunting down the code.
“Well,” Megan replied reluctantly, “I have been carrying around a scalpel with me. I picked it up back at the infirmary.”
“Perfect.” Jennifer tracked down the code and memorized it. It wasn't too long and she was good at things like that. You kind of had to be when you were working security for a corporation and expected to go anywhere up the ladder. She turned around and held out her hand. Megan carefully placed the scalpel in it.
The work was gruesome and ugly, but Jennifer had never really been all that put off by blood or body horror. She wasn't sure why, but it was serving her well now as she cut a man's eye out of his skull. To her credit, Megan didn't look away.
“Okay...” Jennifer said, pulling the eye out and examining it in the light. “Looks good. We need to find something to keep it in...”
She searched around and finally came up with a sturdy looking thermos. She unscrewed the top, dropped the eye in, re-screwed it and secured it in one of her larger pockets. “And there, we've got two of the three things...” Jennifer paused as a slow horror began creeping over her. There was a vent grate directly over Megan.
It was broken out.
Something was coming out of it.
“Megan, look out!” she screamed as she raised her rifle.
Too late. The Ghost dropped out of the vent and onto Megan. The medic screamed and thrashed violently, throwing the Ghost off of her. Jennifer put it down with quick shots and then rushed over to Megan, who was moaning.
There was blo
od on her hand.
Blood coming from her shoulder.
“It got me,” she moaned. “Oh fuck, I'm so fucked. It fucking got me!”
“Shit...shit...” Jennifer whispered. She dropped down on one knee, pulled out her medical kit and set to work by first dumping a whole bottle of antibiotics and antiseptics into the wound. There was a ring of teeth marks on her shoulder, which was exposed from her torn suit. Megan howled and thrashed as she did this and Jennifer held her down. After doing that, she slapped a bandage over the wound, grabbed Megan's hand and slapped it over that.
“Keep pressure on,” she said.
“I fucking know,” Megan groaned.
Jennifer activated her radio and gave the injured medic a moment. “Mark, how close are you to getting that security card?” she asked.
“I've got the card. Literally just grabbed it. Why, what's wrong?” he replied.
“Megan's been infected.”
“Oh, fucking god,” he moaned.
“I know. Get there, fast as you can,” Jennifer replied. “We'll be there. Hurry.”
“I'm on it.”
Jennifer turned to Megan. “Come on, we need to move, fast.”
“I know, I know...” she replied.
Jennifer started helping her up.
* * * * *
The pressure was on now.
Mark had the keycard in his pocket. There was no body but hopefully that wasn't a problem. He was hurrying down a corridor now, moving in a light jog, trying to both hurry and keep an eye out for enemies. Not having Frost here was making this thing a whole lot harder. He reached the end of the corridor and found the entrance to an infirmary that he could cut across. If he moved at this pace, he should be at the damned cold lab in five minutes or so...maybe. Of course, that wasn't counting anything he might run into.