by S. A. Lusher
“Oh dear,” Matheson murmured.
“Keep an eye on him!” Drake snapped as he charged forward, raised his rifle and opened fire. Jennifer flicked her gaze to Matheson, but the doctor seemed paralyzed with fear. Fine by her. She turned her attention to the Titan and added her stream of lead to Drake's. They both converged on the thing's chest and opened up a dozen bloody holes through which black, tar-like gore oozed. But it didn't seem to slow the thing down, if anything the beast now appeared even angrier than before. It began a cold sprint towards Drake.
He dodged at the last second, barely managing to get out of the thing's reach. Jennifer took a step back as it stumbled to a halt and rose up before her. For a moment, she felt paralyzed by pure fear. Having an eight-foot undead horror made of pure muscle would do that to anyone, she supposed, in some infinitesimal, rational part of her brain. She began raising her rifle as her muscles started working again, but, just like that, Drake suddenly appeared behind the beast. He jumped up onto its back, wrapped one arm around its neck and, with the other arm, shoved something small, dark and round into its gaping maw.
Then he jumped off and screamed for the others to get down.
Jennifer dove for cover, but right before she did, she had a vision of the thing's head bursting apart, its cranium detonating, turned into so much free-flying black gore. She landed, rolled over onto her back, looked up, saw that the headless thing was now about to topple over onto her and let out a shout. Rolling away, she barely got out from under it and scrambled to her feet, suddenly afraid that Matheson would have bolted.
But he was just staring at the thing, in shock.
“I can see why they sent you,” he said after a long moment of silence.
Drake chuckled, then, suddenly, the other guy, (had Greg been his name?), was on their radio frequency. Jennifer heard him through a haze of static.
“Drake...we found Enzo.”
“Did you kill him? Where are you? What's his condition?” Drake replied immediately.
Greg told them Enzo's condition.
Silence followed.
* * * * *
“Whoa, shit!” Greg snapped as he almost took a Lancer spike to the face. He ducked, then regained his shooter's stance, took aim and squeezed the trigger twice. Both rounds punched through the thing's ugly, misshapen head and put it down. Beside him, Eve was taking out a pack of zombies. He shifted aim and put down a second Lancer, spraying its dark gore across the wall beside it. He did a quick search for new targets, but as that second creature fell, Eve managed to put down the rest of her hostiles and all was silent.
“That it?” she asked softly, scanning the corridor behind them.
“Looks that way, come on, we're almost there,” Greg replied.
In fact, the command center was just around the corner. Greg approached the edge of the corridor, waiting at the corner, listening intently, straining his ears against the white noise of the base and the occasional distant scream or staccato burst of gunfire. After a full twenty seconds, he heard nothing coming from the way yet gone. Satisfied, he stepped around the corner quickly, weapon raised, scanning the area.
There was nothing.
Just another length of bombed-out, bloodied corridor. It ended in a pair of doors, half-closed, covered in blood and the deep rents of what must be Ripper claw marks. Someone's leg stuck out in between the door. As Greg drew closer, he realized it had been severed from the rest of the person. Ignoring it, he peered in through the opening, which was not quite wide enough to admit him. Beyond was a room lit by a handful of cheap work-lights, cutting pale beams of light through a crimson-lit gloom. Nothing moved.
He pushed the doors open and stepped in.
“Damn,” Eve murmured as she joined him.
She was right. The place was a slaughterhouse. It seemed their tactic had massacred everyone inside. Greg wondered if Enzo was numbered among the dead. It wasn't impossible. For all of their luck, all of their talent and training and skill, he and Drake and Enzo were still capable of dying from one lucky shot, one swipe of a Ripper's claw. The thought chilled him miserably. The walls were ringed with smashed workstations, ruined consoles and cracked screens that were mostly dead. Blood was everywhere.
Bodies, too.
“Find him,” Greg said quietly.
There were only two doors in the room besides the one they'd come through. One was partially open, the other shut firmly. They spent five minutes searching the corpses and came up negative. The search, at least, was easy: none of them had a false arm. Greg chose to check out the partially-open door first. He approached it, peered in through the crack, saw nothing but more crimson gloom and forced the doors open.
What lay beyond was a small office, a place an administrator might use to dole out orders for the day. It was pretty blank and barren: a desk scattered with all sorts of medical supplies and paraphernalia, infopads, empty beer bottles and bullets. Enzo's handiwork. There was also a racked row of gun lockers and a sophisticated workbench at the back. Nothing in that room, but there was another door to the left.
Greg moved through it, realizing that he had come to Enzo's inner sanctum. This was where the man had hung his hat. What he had called home. There was small bedroom through the next door. It, too, was minimalist and in a great disarray. There was clothing, discarded weapons, empty bottles, cans and food packages everywhere. A bed in one corner, a terminal in another. Lots of lube, some weed and more bullets on the nightstand.
Just one more door and that led to a bathroom with nothing interesting. Empty. Greg rejoined Eve in the command room.
“Anything?” she asked.
“No, nothing,” he replied.
They moved over to the final door and found it locked down. Eve hacked the control panel and got it open. Greg aimed his rifle, tucking it tightly to his shoulder as he stepped in, taking in what seemed to be a high-tech infirmary at a glance. A large examination table dominated the center of the room. There seemed to be no one in it...
Greg moved around the table and froze as he saw a skeletal metal hand on the floor. It was clutching something: an infopad.
“Found him!” Greg whispered harshly.
Eve hurried to join him. Greg continued shifting around, trying to get a better view of the man. Was he dead? As he shifted, Greg saw that something was hooked up to him. Two IV lines were running into his wrist and electrodes were attached to his temples. They ran to a bizarre white and chrome piece of technology.
“What the f...what is this?” Greg muttered.
“I recognize this,” Eve said softly. She knelt at Enzo's side and reached out, touching his neck. “He's dead,” she whispered. “He's cold.”
“He...killed himself?” Greg asked.
“No...not exactly...” Eve pulled the infopad from his grasp and stood. “Remember when Allan had that treatment?”
“Yes...he was a bit vague about it.”
“This is an experimental device that allows the user to go into their own mind and deal with severe mental issues. It gives you a fifty-fifty chance: you either die or get better. If the trauma is too great, too severe, then you can't defeat it. You can't face it. And you die...”
“Fucking hell,” Greg muttered, unsure of what to feel. “I can't believe he's really dead...” He looked at the infopad. “What's on it?”
Eve seemed to have forgotten that she'd grabbed it. Now that he'd mentioned it, she shifted her gaze back to the device in her gauntleted hand and began activating it. “Just one file,” she said softly. “A video file, recorded about half an hour ago.”
“Let's see it.”
She held up the infopad and played the file.
Enzo's pale, harried face popped into view. He looked like he was dying. There were large, dark bags beneath his bloodshot eyes. He'd definitely lost weight and he was sweating, his short hair matted to his skull.
He winced, as though in great pain. The shot was clearly within the infirmary they now stood in. Slowly, he began
speaking, as if he had to concentrate to get the words out.
“Greg, Drake or Eve, I hope one of you finds this if I'm dead. I'll keep this short, I'm in a lot of fucking pain. I just wanted to say...I'm sorry. I regret everything. I knew I was wrong, I just didn't care anymore. I just wanted to do something, anything, to stop the pain. It's only gotten worse. I'm going to use this fucking Russian roulette machine and see if I make it, but everyone keeps telling me I won't survive. I don't really care anymore.
“Drake...” He sighed, heavily. “Most of all, I'm sorry for you. I never wanted Trent to die. I think...he was the best of us. Or he would have been. If I could, I'd trade places with him. I'd give my life for his. I wish...I wish I had killed myself a long time ago.” He paused for a long moment, looking off into the distance.
In the background, they could hear shouting and gunfire.
“I guess that's all I have to say. Also, sorry for being a dick, Eve. I think I might have loved you, that's why it bothered me so much when you turned me down...bye.”
His image lingered uncertainly a moment longer, then he shut it down. The file ended abruptly. Greg and Eve stood there in the infirmary for a long moment. Slowly, Greg activated his comms unit, reaching out to Drake and Jennifer.
“Drake...we found Enzo,” he said morosely.
“Did you kill him? Where are you? What's his condition?” Drake replied immediately.
“He's dead, Drake. He...he's dead.”
Silence from the other end for a long time. Before anyone could speak up again, Greg began to hear a tinny voice coming from somewhere. Eve heard it too. She tracked it to a comm unit in Enzo's ear. Reaching down, she grabbed it.
While she was fiddling with it, Drake spoke up again. He sounded...tired. Resigned. “We found Matheson. We have him.”
“Good,” Greg said. “Drake...Enzo left something behind for you. A message.”
“What it say?”
“You really need to see it for yourself.”
“...fine. What's next?”
Greg hesitated as Eve began talking. “I just received a call meant for Enzo from someone named Natalia. Apparently she's prepped an emergency escape shuttle in Hangar Two. Drake, Jennifer, get there, secure the shuttle. We're going to finish up our mission: blow this fucking place sky-high,” she explained.
“How?” Jennifer asked.
“Same as we always do, set the reactor to overload. Should clean up everything nicely. We'll get back to you,” Eve replied.
“On it,” Drake said.
“I can't believe he's really dead,” Greg muttered as they left the infirmary and moved back to the command room.
“Everybody dies,” Eve replied. He looked at her, suddenly wondering how she was taking it, Enzo's proclamation of love. Probably not well.
They tracked down the most intact workstation and Eve set to it. Five minutes passed in the miserable gloom. Suddenly, Eve let out a sharp curse.
“What is it?”
“I can't fucking set it to overload remotely.”
“Of course. I think life was worrying it had been making things a little too easy for us lately,” Greg grumbled.
Eve sighed and studied a schematic of the base, then reactivated the comms. “Drake, Jennifer, listen, we can't remotely overload the reactor. Someone has to do it at the source, and it's pretty much right next to the hangar you're heading towards. One of you will have to do it or you'll have to wait for me and Greg to get there.”
“Not sure why, but something tells me we don't really have time to wait around,” Drake replied.
“I'll do it,” Jennifer said.
“You sure? You know how?” Eve asked.
“I can figure it out. I've got some tech training.”
“Okay. Call me if you run into trouble.”
“Got it.”
“We're on our way,” Eve said, standing.
“We'll be waiting,” Drake replied.
Greg and Eve left the command center.
* * * * *
“Here, it's here,” Matheson said.
“Better be,” Drake replied.
They'd stopped to take a look at a map about fifteen minutes ago, but the underground was filling with zombies and other types, making it nearly impossible to study the map. Matheson said he knew the way, so they'd been running, shooting their way through the dimly-lit passageways, following his instructions. Jennifer trusted the man to at least get them to the hangar, since it was the only way out for all of them right now.
Drake had said they'd had a ship on the surface but there wouldn't be enough time to get to it given the circumstances. So now, here they were, coming to a stairwell that would take them to the surface, near the hangar. Jennifer was thinking about her upcoming task. She would have to go it alone, she'd already realized that. There was no way Greg and Eve could get there in time to join her and Drake would have to stay behind to watch Matheson and the ship. She would be alone. That frightened her now more than ever.
The trip up the stairs was quick. Jennifer had her rifle tightly in hand, single-shot function activated, ready, (she hoped) for whatever horror the facility threw at them next. Drake gave the all-clear as they crested the final steps and he opened the door. She and Matheson followed him through and came out into an immense room. The hangar. It was mostly empty, just a single vessel roughly twice the size of an average jump ship waiting for them. Its back ramp was down. Greg had warned them someone would be inside.
As they approached, suddenly, someone appeared at the top of the ramp. It was a woman in combat armor. She held a large machine gun.
“Hold it!” she snapped.
“I'm afraid I've come for the ship,” Drake replied. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
“Where's Enzo?” the woman replied. “Did you kill him? I can't raise him.”
“Enzo's dead,” Drake said flatly.
The woman paused. At this distance, it was hard to read the expression on her face. Suddenly, she opened fire, peppering their position with a heavy spray of high-caliber gunfire. Jennifer returned fire immediately as she ran for cover, of which there wasn't much. Just a small stack of crates. She lost track of the others as she sprayed the area down with bullets, flipping it to full auto almost without thinking about it.
In the chaos, someone must have hit the woman, because suddenly the gunfire choked off. Silence fell. Jennifer had already dived for cover but now, as she picked herself up off the floor, she heard Drake cursing furiously.
“What is it? Are you hit?” she asked.
“I'm fine,” he muttered. She saw that he was crouched over a still form. Matheson. “The doctor's fucking dead,” he growled. “Come all this way for fucking nothing...goddamnit.” As Jennifer approached, she saw that a stray shot had nailed him in the right eye, turning it into a geyser of blood. He looked...surprised.
“We got the data, and that guy, Enzo, is dead,” Jennifer replied.
“Yeah,” Drake said quietly. He straightened up and began walking towards the ship. She joined him. They walked up the ramp and into the cargo area of the small vessel. Moving through it, finding it almost totally empty, they pressed on, checking out each of the few rooms the ship had to offer, until they hit the bridge.
Drake settled into the pilot's seat and began working the controls. He activated his radio. “Greg, found the ship, Matheson's dead, so's that girl, Natalia. Ship is secure,” he said.
“Matheson's dead!? What happened!?” Greg replied.
“Got caught in the crossfire. Natalia flipped her shit. How far away are you?”
“Quite a ways still.”
“Fine. I'll watch the ship, Jennifer-” He glanced back.
“On it,” Jennifer replied. “Where's the reactor?”
“I saw a terminal out there. Should give you a map of the area.”
“Okay, I'll be back as soon as I can.”
“Let us know when you get there, so we can get a feel for how long the count
down should be,” Greg said.
“Got it.”
Jennifer left Drake sitting in the cockpit, working the controls, and closed the door behind her. She moved back through the ship, down the ramp, past the pair of bodies, pausing briefly to look at the woman who had been killed. There was a hole in her neck and her forehead. She reminded Jennifer of the other woman, working with Greg and Drake, Eve. With a sigh, Jennifer began scanning the peripheral of the room for a terminal. She spotted one and jogged across the expansive space, feeling the pull of time.
A minute later, she had the map up and the route to the reactor memorized. It was extremely easy: all she had to do was travel down a corridor connecting the hangar to the reactor bay. Hopefully the process of setting it to overload would be just as easy.
Making for the appropriate door, Jennifer set out on what she hoped would be the last leg of this insane journey.
CHAPTER 16
–Escape Plan–
Jennifer stared down the length of the huge corridor she'd stepped into. The ceiling soared overhead, easily forty or fifty feet up. There were immense cargo doors set into the walls to either side of her. Clearly, she'd come to a storage area. The hallway she was in had been subjected to some kind of brutal slaughter. The air reeked of blood and death and decay. Something, something huge, had smashed its was through the corridor. Crushed bodies, as if stamped underfoot by some behemoth, littered the blood-smeared deckplates.
A powerful, palpable sense of dread and foreboding curled on the chilled air. Jennifer stood a few steps into the corridor, slowly looking around, adrenaline coursing through her veins, laced with an edge of raw terror. High overhead, powerful work-lights stabbed down, giving the area a stark, remorseless feel. She didn't want to travel the passageway. She tried to make herself go forward, but her body felt frozen.
Walking down the corridor was like walking towards her death.
But Jennifer had faced death down before, and she would face it down again. If she balked here, then she couldn't very well expect to do anything like this again in the future. This was the interview for a job she'd been pining for for years, a job she hadn't even known existed. She had to do this. There was no other option, really. Not if she wanted that position among the others who dealt with the weird, the out there, the other.