by Frank Albelo
By the time I was able to get out of the gore puddle the other Digits had already made it to Beta and Gamma. Zeta was checking them for wounds and Delta was fussing over what they did. Beta was shaking. His armor had protected him from the claws, but the gashes on its surface and the missing plates from his abdomen belied the close call that it had been.
I wanted to reprimand Beta, but I knew it was not the time. He and Gamma didn’t deserve to be here. They should at least have normal trade jobs, not be fighting for their lives with mutated creatures at every turn. When Zeta noticed me closing in on the huddle, she moved back so I could speak with the pair of runners privately.
“You okay, Beta?” I asked as I crouched next to him.
“I… Yeah,” he breathed.
I nodded, understanding the shock he had been through. I left Beta in Zeta’s capable hands and motioned everyone else over to the corpse of the dog.
“This is less than ideal. One of these things is still alive out there, and considering there’s an animal here that looks just as fucked up as the humans we’ve been encountering, we should assume there are more,” I said while eyeing the shadowed buildings.
“What are we going to do?” asked Gamma.
“There ain’t much we can do right now little lady. We can only hope being prepared will be enough,” replied Delta morosely.
I shared Delta’s opinion. It was imperative that we move to a more defensible position. As I readjusted grip on my wrench, the handle slick with blood, I realized we also needed something better than rocks for the others to use as weapons. I was sure there were no objections to my use of the pipe wrench, but our lack of proper weaponry meant I had to do the heavy hitting.
“Once Beta is recovered a bit, we need to get into one of these buildings. Once we secure it and see what’s inside we might be able to find better weapons than these rocks,” I told the group.
There were several grim nods of approval; they all understood we couldn’t rely on just one person and a few distractions. If this underground city had more mutants then we all needed to be ready.
It took a few minutes for Beta to be able to stand steadily. With his helmet retracted I could see how pale his lightly bronzed skin now looked. I asked Epsilon to keep an eye on him. Epsilon had spent the most time with the youth other me and I imagined he would be more comfortable. Epsilon didn’t seem to mind and he patted Beta gently on the back as he escorted him and Zeta to the rest of the group.
Looking at the blood spattered on the ground, I had a thought.
“Marvin, can you use this blood to power your systems?” I asked the mech.
The robot didn’t reply right away. It quietly whirled next to the body of the mutant. The needle that had bound the ATC to me ejected, stabbing the dog creature in the neck. The tube jerked, suctioning the black blood to analyze. After a few seconds, the needle pulled back and the cart-form ATC turned to face me.
“Affirmative. It is necessary to acquire live specimens for complete extraction. Active circulatory system is necessary to account for low vacuum pressure suction,” the machine replied in its robotic voice.
I still marveled at how the ATC was able to use blood as a power source, but right then was not the time to get into bioelectrical sciences. Just when I was about to ask how much power it had been able to extract, Gamma addressed it.
“Does that all mean you can’t suck more blood because the dog thing is dead?”
“Affirmative,” replied Marvin.
All I heard was a “hmmm” from behind me until Gamma started to laugh. I turned to look at her as she managed to control her laughter enough to address our raised eyebrows.
“We are traveling with a robot vampire! I think we really are breaking some sort of record for most ridiculous situation.” With the exception of Zeta, who smiled weakly at Gamma, the rest of us just shook our heads.
While Gamma wasn’t exactly wrong about our metallic companion, the extent of her reaction was unexpected. I was becoming concerned for what would happen to our psyche if our current level of stress didn’t change. Forging past my concerns, I told the others we would move to the nearest building.
I hoped that the mutated dog would suffice as a corpse for Starden, so I pushed the corpse of the dog closer to the incline that led to the passage to collect on our way out. The rank smell was muted due to my suit helmet. While walking back to the group, I saw the others collecting the rocks they had pelted the dogs with in order to save Beta.
After the sudden attack by the dogs, I decided we needed to improve our vigilance. I took the lead. Marvin stayed at the back in case he had to block some unexpected attack. From his position he was also able rush forward to block a creature that might try to flank us. Delta stood to the right, covering Beta and Gamma while Zeta and Epsilon were on the left. Before we started walking, I made sure everyone had their helmets active. The armor plating extended from their chest pieces, enveloping everyone’s head a second later.
“Everyone ready?” I asked, readying my pipe wrench while the others held their rocks.
After receiving nods from everyone, we made our way to the building slowly.
There were about three hundred feet between the incline to the passage and the closest building. We were about a hundred feet from the incline, the remaining two hundred were excruciating. Being in the open made me nervous and evidently, the others too. The closer we got to the building, the more the other Digits huddled together, barely retaining formation.
The decay of the structures became apparent. While the shiny metal that rimmed the tiers of the buildings looked to be untouched, the stone of the building laid crumbled on the ground. In some spots entire sheets of rock had split off the building leaving rubble on the ground. The material of the building looked similar to concrete but was much darker than the one I was familiar with on Earth.
The street that led from the incline to the buildings looked to have been worn away somehow and only part of the cleared path remained.
It only took a few minutes to make it to the closest building. Everyone hugged the wall, Marvin again at our back, as we circled around to what we presumed was the front of the building.
The moment we stood on the main street, the sheer size of the city left us baffled. There was no building smaller than four stories, all of them with their odd tier constructions. The city stretched where we could see for miles, some kind of wall separated the tall tree line in the distance. I glanced at my HUD, taking note that the city stretched north, away from the USG base. I wondered if Starden knew about this city, considering how close it was to the base. Before I could get distracted by more of the city’s features, I heard shuffling from the building nearest to us. I moved everyone back up against the building.
The buildings all had hexagonal entrances and small circular windows spaced regularly on the second tiers and up. I peaked my head into the gaping hexagonal opening. A rotted set of planks lined the ground just inside the building, suggesting the presence of wooden doors long ago. The natural light coming from above did little to pierce the gloom of the first tier.
I spoke quietly into my comms, directing Delta to take Marvin’s spot at the back and for the ATC to take point. The faint illumination provided by the mech revealed similar piles of rotted wood scattered around the first tier. I white-knuckled my wrench while following close behind Marvin.
The first floor of the building looked empty other than the rotted wood. It took a few minutes but we rummaged through the piles and no creatures leapt at us. There was a pair of shiny metal doors at the back of the building, but no discernible way to open them. When I tried to pry them open, the metal refused to move. After some more semi-blind shuffling along the wall we found a set of stone steps leading up to the upper tiers.
The staircase was just wide enough for two people side by side. Marvin’s light proved slightly more effective in the enclosed space, so the ATC moved in the middle of the group. I stood in front while Delta was one ste
p behind to my left. We served as the first line of defense, hopefully stopping anything that might try to jump us from getting to the others.
The smooth steps echoed with the metallic scrapes of our boots, but no other sounds reached us.
When we arrived, at the second floor we were met with an actual functioning wooden door. There was no doorknob, it had been broken clean off, but when I pushed on it with my wrench the door swung wide. There was an audible screech as the unused hinges moved for the first time in forever. I quickly rushed in, everyone piling into the room and held my wrench ready.
There was an uncharacteristic lack of fighting from that point. The floor we had entered looked to be some kind of office level. There were rotted stacks of browned papers and flat stone surfaces with scattered bits of wood around the floor.
“Is this… and office?” I heard Gamma asking Zeta.
The woman nodded, “I think so. These things all look like desks, but they all look much older than any I have seen. The whole wood thing is definitely a surprise.”
I agreed with her. A few years prior to the Grim War, trees, forests and wooden products were at a market high of ‘only for the rich’. The times since have not changed, only a few Officials and Bankers even had wooden furniture or left over mementos.
Shaking myself off of Earth thoughts, I began testing the wood scattered on the ground. While most of it was rotted and not far from mush, it was in much better condition than the ground floor. I hoped that if we moved up to the upper floors, the materials would be useable. While rifling through the decayed wood, Epsilon found the next set of staircases, which were in the opposite side of the room from the ones that led to the ground floor.
“Alright, everyone. Same thing now. Let's stick together. If we find some wood that is not more crap than wood, then we can have some useful weapons,” I said, moving towards the next set of stairs.
I was planning on taking the stairwell door apart if we did not find another source of wood. The need for weapons was ever present. Before I realized it, we were standing in front of a metal banded wooden door.
Now we can definitely arm everyone, I thought, just as the door began to swing inwardly.
“Shit!” I screamed and threw my weight at the door.
The force intent on opening the door realized there was something on the other side holding it back. The door pushed into the stairs forcefully, a pair of tentacle arms lashing through the crack in the door. With my back to the door, I heard Delta inhale deeply. The next moment I was sitting on my ass, the door having shifted back into the frame.
Delta had fireman-kicked the door so hard, the creature on the other side had lost two limbs. The clawed appendages were writhing gently on the ground by the door. Beta swiftly applied his favorite technique, curb stomping the arms into submission. Loud screeching and scratching could be heard coming from the other side of the door. I remained pinned against the door as Beta and Delta joined me, putting their shoulders against the door just in time to deflect a tackling move from the creature within.
“What are we going to do?” I heard Gamma whisper gently. This was the most enclosed location we had been in since encountering the mutants and it surely worked wonders on everyone's psyche.
“Open the damn thing, Alpha. Then everyone throw that you got. Once we are out, have the robot get in there then you wail on the first thing that tries attacking it.” My head snapped in the direction of the suggestion. Epsilon had retracted his helmet and was speaking through agitated breathes.
I nodded, steeling my resolve. “Marvin, you heard him. If you spot something try to ram it, got it?”
“Affirmative,” came the reply.
I took a moment to scan everyone’s faces. Seeing eager smirks on everyone’s faces now that we had a plan put one on myself. I shuffled closer to the door handle. The moment the next impact reverberated through the door, I motioned Delta off of it and swung it wide. I ducked just in time as four pair of rocks flew into the room, eliciting a pair of screeks.
As soon as the last rock was thrown, the ATC plowed forward past us, crashing into one of the now visible shadows. In the moment the rocks were being thrown, I noticed that the tier was almost identical to the previous, except smaller. Rushing in after the whirling mech, I swung low and up with my wrench. The teeth of the wrench connected with the brisket of another mutated dog. The force of the blow sent it up into the stone ceiling above. The creature stuck there for a moment, then splattered guts onto the ground where it landed.
I noticed the Digits rushing to pummel the other dog creature, but halted when they noticed what Marvin was doing. Apparently the Artificial Intelligence had taken my desire to charge it with mutant blood seriously. The ATC had pinned the mutant dog to one of the office typed tables. The mutant had three weakly flailing arms that were growing weaker by the second as the mech suctioned blood right from both of the dog’s jugulars.
Moments after, the mech reversed slightly. The body of the creature dropped lifeless to the ground while Marvin whirled loudly.
“Charge at approximately forty percent. Six days of normal operation remaining,” announced the mech.
I was a bit stunned by Marvin’s initiative. I had intended for the ATC to merely keep the creature pinned, but I was starting to realize that there was much more our resident vampire could do.
“Good job, Marvin. Everyone. It was a good plan Epsilon.” I nodded to everyone present while tapping the cart ATC with my armored hand.
Beta and Gamma looked ready to celebrate, but an unarmored helmet look from me stopped it cold. I reactivated my helmet after giving everyone a meaningful look. While we had succeed, there were two more tiers to the building.
Assuming that the tier layout mirrored the previous ones, we found the staircase leading up first and left Marvin to watch it, the light that streamed through the small round windows was enough to search for goods. There were fewer rotted desks in this floor, but the wood was still not worth carrying as a weapon. Curiously, nothing other than the wood and tables looked to be inside the building we were in. The oddities kept piling on about the underground city and exactly who had built it.
Just as I was about to call it on the third floor, Zeta squealed loudly. I turned to her as she hefted a two foot long length of wood that seemed to remain solid despite her mad swings. She rushed over to Delta and handed the gruff man the length of wood. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Finding the better quality wood also indicated there could be even better stuff in the upper floors.
I quickly motioned everyone to where the ATC stood waiting. The others had collected their rocks and placed them next to the ATC. Everyone except me and Delta picked up a pair of rocks and stood at the ready in front dark stairs. We resumed the same formation and made out way up the stairs.
While we slowly made our way up, I idly imagined how useful it would be to have some kind of bag. After that initial thought, I had an idea. At least until we figured out the best way to proceed, we could store extra rocks inside of the ATC so long as it was not exceeding its carry capacity. With the additional rocks the Digits would be able to maintain a ‘volley’ on the enemy that they were facing for much longer.
I shook myself out of my thoughts, turning to see Marvin standing in front of a metal door. The penultimate floor was secured much better than the previous ones. I asked Marvin if he sensed anything, but he mentioned that the confined space and the material in the way did not let his sensor get a read. I crouched next to the door, analysing it. The door had a handle at chest level. When I tried jerking on it open, it remained still.
While I mulled over our options, the others relaxed somewhat as I decided to take a meal break. I had been growing steadily hungrier since arriving at the city. Delta remained next to me, munching on his ration quietly, as we considered what to do.
“You could break the lock? I’m sure y
our wrench can take it,” he said.
“It won’t guarantee that the door will open, but I guess it’s an option if we can’t come up with anything,” I replied.
I was interested in what laid beyond the room. I imagined that the better sealed tier would have remained in better condition than the rest of the building. There were plenty of other buildings in the city, but I had a strange feeling about this one.
When I was finally sitting down to eat, I saw Gamma tap Delta in the shoulder. Since everyone had retracted their helmets for our break, I couldn’t hear what she asked him. However, Delta handed her his newly acquired stick and the girl went up the remaining steps to the door.
With her peering over the door handle, I handed Beta my meal to put away and went to investigate. The girl was muttering to herself and I heard the sound of scraping metal. I looked down over her shoulder and noticed her using the wood to try and jam a bent piece of metal where the door latch was.