“Only USMB vessels have an SDC option, Sabartinelli,” Loudon said. “I thought you knew that.”
“Shit…must’ve slipped my mind.”
“Oh, well that’s just fuckin’ great, man.”
“Palmer, I need you to zip it,” Connell said calmly.
“Hooded sweater or windbreaker, sir?”
Connell rolled his eyes. The man never seemed to fail. Maybe it was a coping device, especially as of late.
“Best we focus on survival right now,” Felina sighed, Deci in her trembling hands.
“Yeah,” Connell said as they reached the MALBO bay door without incident, towering over the crawlspace hole in the floor. “And let us just hope the others are still alive.”
8
Their return to the main world, so to speak, outside of the main labs’ glass-door foyer, led them to a fresh epiphany. This realization was rawer in a worse way than they could’ve expected it to be given any other situation. The ceiling panels were flashing, not flickering, in a patterned sequence, as if guiding somewhere. As SC6, despite their limited knowledge regarding the Xeno Project, Connell and Palmer knew what this meant—Felina could tell it in the way they exchanged stares. Felina herself remembered what Ikabu had said during their first day aboard the Manticore, but Loudon appeared confused.
“Remember what Ikabu had told us,” Felina said to Loudon as they marched down the oddly illuminated corridor, vigilantly guided by the Remoras. “In the event of a hull breach or other major crisis, an alarm will sound—we must’ve missed it while in MALBO—and the ceiling fixtures will flash sequentially, guiding passengers to the EDZ’s.”
“Emergency Disembarking Zones,” Connell said with a glance over his shoulder. “Glad you’re informed. I’m not a great explainer.”
“Well, listen,” Felina said, urging them to stop for a moment. She would hate for them to talk their way around a corner and into a huddle of those creatures. “If the alarm’s been sounded for disembarking, that’s…fifteen EDZ’s, right? Six starboard and portside…um…”
“Two below the bridge, one astern,” Connell nodded.
“Right. And two per lifeboat. They’re Valkyrie-2’s, I remember. Not a lot of space. And even if a Xeno got in one, supposing it could fit, the Valyrie-2 prohibits itself from ejecting until the necessary harness is locked, plural if two passengers, and a button punched.”
“So we needn’t worry about any of those things floating through space in a Manticore-stamped lifeboat.”
“If things work out the way they should.”
“Oh, that sounds promising,” Palmer said disgruntledly.
“Regardless,” Felina sighed. “It’s our best bet of reassurance. We can only hope that the majority of the passengers made it out. Those that survived the initial attacks, before the Xeno’s really spread.”
“But let us not forget what Asher said about the viral bile,” Connell said. “Who knows how many back in MALBO the Xeno’s dragged off into the walls without killing. Remember all the missing bodies…that much gore, and so few corpses.”
“Shit. He’s right, Sabartinelli,” Loudon said. “Remember all those scientists in MALBO—there were far too many in there to have been included on their public manifest.”
Felina cursed under her breath.
“There’s no stopping what’s already happened,” Connell insisted. “All the more reason we haul ass to the security center to regroup and reassess the situation. Our best bet is to reach the bridge, but we need Cassel or Ikabu—if not both—to enter. With Keyes supposedly as close to this research project as Asher’s insinuated, then I suggest we leave him out of the proverbial circle-of-trust, at least for now.”
“I can live with that,” Loudon said firmly. Palmer nodded just as resolutely, notwithstanding mutely.
“Sure. Lead the way, Remoras.” Felina swallowed and gripped her Deci tighter than ever before.
Upon reaching the portside corridor that extended past the cafeteria, the sight was catastrophic. They realized that the word ‘hope’ was but a gossamer notion that may never grace their palms again. Blood painted the walls and blotched the ceiling panels, which nonetheless flashed sequentially without flaw. It would become difficult to traverse the corridor’s floor without slipping through puddles and broad smears of blood, which as far as they could discern were entirely human derived. The less sallow fluid they saw, the better—less bile, less spread.
For once, it was pleasant in its own terrible way to actually see corpses littering the corridor. Some were plastered to the wall, faces ripped from skulls, limbs from torsos in haphazard piles, but for the most part everything severed could theoretically be pieced back to its origin.
Many of the bodies were so mutilated that there was no discerning anatomy whatsoever. It was just flesh and bone, sinew and muscle.
The raw odors hung in the air like summer humidity.
The cafeteria sign could be seen eighty feet down the corridor, its nearest entrance to their left. As they cautiously proceeded, trying to regulate their respiration while watching their step and often tiptoeing past crimson puddles, it became obvious: the worst of the slaughter had occurred nearest the cafeteria. Bodies piled. There must’ve been close to thirty corpses in this corridor alone.
For once, the worst part was clarity instead of erratic lighting. The sequencing of the light panels did not affect the corridor’s steady illumination; it was more of an aesthetic signaling. Here, unlike at MALBO, they saw everything for what it was—
Pure horror.
Their senses scrambled to reorient and their minds became a frying pan of thoughts. Panic took a hold of Palmer sooner than it did anyone else; even so, the other three sustained a pretense of composure.
“This is it, man,” Palmer started to gripe as they gradually moved through the hallway of death. “Connell, can’t you see? We’re fucked, man! Oh, no, I ain’t gonna become one of those fucking monstrosities! Not on my watch. Game over, man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now!?”
Connell suddenly detached from the group to grab his comrade of three years via handfuls of his uniform, pinning him against a wall. They were roughly same-sized men, but Connell had a couple of inches over Palmer. He spread his figurative cobra hood and made it seem like tenfold that.
“Keep that up and I guarantee you even their deaf ears will hear us,” Connell growled quietly.
Palmer looked as though he was on the verge of collapse. His eyes were wet and his lips ajar. He tried not to look his superior directly in the eye but ultimately couldn’t avoid it and in them found a molecule of motivation.
He started to slowly regain his soldier’s disposition.
What he would claim as his birthmark virility.
“What rhymes with ‘Palmer’?” Connell asked, his own hands relaxing to relieve them of Palmer’s uniform. He raised his eyebrows. “Huh? What rhymes with ‘Palmer’?”
A few seconds passed. “Calmer.”
“Right. Get it together, Palmer. Nut up. You got this.”
Palmer nodded, swallowed, and finally pulled himself away from Connell, readjusting his uniform. He slid across the rare section of clean wall, almost tripped on a headless corpse, and then found his footing on the other side of it.
“Thankfully,” Connell sighed.
They were just now upon the leftmost entrance of the cafeteria, Palmer a few steps ahead of the rest. He absentmindedly peered in through the open doorway and exclaimed under his breath before pirouetting to be against a wall again.
The others just stared blankly at him.
“There’s a fucking town meeting in there, man!” Palmer said, his voice a mess of shakes.
“Did they see you?” Connell asked in a harsh whisper, not realizing that volume clearly didn’t matter.
“I dunno, sir, do you hear them screeching and charging us!?” Palmer’s smartass response was answer enough.
“Okay, good, then we book it.”
“Ho
w many?” Loudon asked.
“Eight, I don’t know, ten maybe.” Palmer’s eyes raced in his head.
“We can’t take ‘em?” Loudon turned to Connell.
His eyes widened. “Not a chance. Our best bet is book it to the security center, we’re not far now.”
“Take the lead.”
With Loudon and the adjacent Felina prepped for doing some quick progression, Connell nodded then signaled for Palmer to regroup. He only did this once the others passed the doorway, too, without being seen. But Felina couldn’t resist glimpsing inside, although it risked her almost tripping on a corpse. She managed to catch so much as a blurred sight of the creatures in the cafeteria. Too quick to count, although she might have guessed six healthy specimens, the Xeno carnem standing quadrupedally in an awkward huddle not far from the food counter, amid a mess of overturned tables and a few corpses. Their ashen bodies heaved with breath and although they didn’t make a squeak of sound, Felina imagined them talking somehow.
Already, the group was on their way.
They passed the second cafeteria entrance without being spotted, and were thankful for this much. Then they rounded the corner, led in part by Connell but also with Palmer close by his side, unable to resist the speed of haste.
Around the corner they nearly bumped into two creatures. They were of the viral kind, well on their way through metamorphosis, poor men—or women?—experiencing the latter stages of becoming Xeno carnem. Their flesh was swollen in places but already their skulls had begun to warp conically, and the bones of their chins extended at a terribly curved angle. Their skin grayed and sported a sheen much like the healthy specimens’ carapaces. Only their arms and backs were having trouble adhering to the metamorphosis process, donning deformities such as gilled shoulder-blades and scythe-like hands.
Eyeless sockets glared up at them, a pulsing redness behind their craters, and certain enough the creatures perceived them in their own way.
Jaws gaped and already sharpened teeth hissed, saliva spewing from macabre mouths.
Connell hip-fired his Seighty into the right one’s face, blowing out the back of its elongated skull. It howled dreadfully as it fell back, clearly incapable of sustaining the damage that the healthy ones could take. The other had swiftly sprung to the side, evading Palmer’s first shots, then lunged at him using the left wall as a launching pad for its legs. It tackled Palmer to the ground, talons digging bloody troughs through his biceps while its jaws lashed down. His Seighty hit the floor, skittering across it.
Felina and Loudon ganged up on the creature with their Deci pistols, pumping its side full of 10mm rounds as it struggled to focus on the human beneath it instead of the threat. Finally the distraction got the best of it and with a shrieking howl the creature reared up, lashing out at the women with its fleshy scythe-arm. Loudon took a lacerated below her right clavicle, darkening the navy uniform even more with her blood. She called out and reeled back, Deci gone from her clutches.
It slid across the floor and hit the heel of Connell’s boot. He was too busy already pummeling his enemy with 6.8mm ammunition, until it was a shredded cornucopia of flesh and viscera. Meanwhile, behind him, Felina gritted her teeth and got down on one knee to shoot upwardly at the attacking creature. It was seconds from impaling Loudon’s left shoulder when its virally malformed brow ruptured in a spray of skull fragments and brain matter. The purplish-red blood was too viscid for comfort and smacked the floor wetly. Its corpse slumped to the left side, inches from Connell’s boots. He grimaced and sidestepped, but his head was on a pivot. The rest of the corridor could have been clear had they possessed better fortune.
Reality was upon them with teeth and claws.
Its voracity was endlessly cruel.
“Incoming!” Connell barked. He stooped to give Palmer his left arm, which the man took gratefully. He grimaced as he stood, the pain in his scored arms unavoidable. Flesh wounds nonetheless, he would live. Likewise, Felina helped Loudon to her feet, just after handing her the dropped Deci.
The four of them gazed down the lengthy corridor, which had a lavatory fifteen feet away and to their right. Beyond that was another forty feet until the next corridor which branched off of it. If memory served Felina correctly, this bisected the Manticore to reach its main starboard corridor.
Encroaching down the hallway, about a hundred feet and enclosing, were four Xeno’s—one healthy specimen leading three progressive transformations.
“What now?” Loudon asked, cringing as she felt her red-hot chest wound.
“I say we bottleneck them in the lavatory,” Palmer suggested.
“And risk being so easily cornered?” Felina said. “No thanks. I say we have a better chance—”
The creatures came up on the perpendicular corridor and a volley of gunfire cut through their ranks. The lead Xeno carnem was moving so fast it hardly got hit with anything, but did shriek like a banshee and grind to a halt, pirouetting just in time to bear witness. The gunfire persisted, annihilating its newfound brethren. The viral Xeno’s groaned and croaked as their bodies became extraterrestrial Swiss cheese. One of them survived with severe injuries, retreating with half an elongated skull and an entirely blown-off left arm at the shoulder.
Finally the gunfire stopped, and the ringing in the four’s ears caught a fade in the corridor.
Connell was leading them in advancement already, speechless but sporting rejuvenated composure. Even Palmer was benefiting from the confidence boost, and the resurgence of liquid hope in his veins, aided by the form it took via gunsmoke. The acrid scent was for once incredibly refreshing, and almost squashed the reek of the creatures’ slaughter. Not to mention their own ravaged flesh and spilt blood.
Mikhail Landham emerged toting a TG-24 at the hip. He stared down the withdrawn Xeno carnem which had started to mimic its viral kin’s retreat, but instead found its heels meeting with the left wall. Its jaws gnashed, followed by a hiss of abandonment before it impulsively charged the imposing human. The shotgun’s muzzle lit up the already illuminated corridor with jagged bursts of gunfire. The Xeno at this range stood no chance against the whopping force of 12-gauge buckshot, much less at an automatic rate. Landham barely flinched as his bicep muscles rippled and the buckshot decimated the creature. What remained of it was thrown up against the back wall.
Meanwhile, behind and to his left emerged from that side corridor a sentinel with an irate expression.
In Diego Ochoa’s hands was a Seighty, and he shouldered it to put down the viral Xeno with a precise headshot. The three-round burst was followed with a curt five-round cluster that replaced the creature’s skull with gruesome nothingness. Ochoa spat at the creature, albeit far from its point of death, then regrouped with Landham.
The two men met with the others halfway between the lavatory and bisecting corridor.
“Boy, are we glad to see you two,” Connell said with a tiresome sigh and feeble smirk. He and Landham exchanged forearm grabs before the latter inspected Palmer’s wounds. He insisted he was fine, and Landham shrugged but apologized in his rugged voice that he had to be sure.
“So you know what we’re up against?” Connell asked.
“The Xeno carnem,” Landham said. He looked over at Ochoa, who had grown ugly with contempt. The sentinel nodded, nose wrinkled, then turned his back to stare down the corridor from whence the creatures had come. Landham refaced the others and shrugged, exasperated. “Calloway filled us in. Madhavari helped.”
“Madhavari is with you!?” Felina asked.
“Yes. He’s got a nasty foot wound…uninfected, bile-wise, but who knows what from there. Madhavari suggests we get to the Infirmary so he can amputate it; says he doesn’t want to risk infection. Can’t be sure if it’s even possible, but he isn’t exactly on the opposite spectrum of paranoia.”
“Was he bit?” Loudon asked, her hand rising to the laceration on her chest.
“Yeah,” Landham said. “He claims scratches are harmless. Chances are
saliva, even, but he got their blood in his. That was fifteen minutes ago. We’re going there now, just clearing a path.”
“Where is he?” Connell asked. “Where’s Madhavari?”
“Back in that corridor, with Arevalo.” Landham sighed. “We best get moving, sir. The others are in the security center, everyone else is alright. Keyes is apparently held up in the bridge, though. There’s a communication server in the security center, Cassel tried to reason with him, but he’s lost it—says he’s got Brennan navigating the Manticore toward Dingir for quarantine.”
“That cannot happen,” Felina practically growled.
“See if you all can come up with a plan,” Landham said. “But we’re going. Gotta go down a level to get to the Infirmary. According to the security feeds…the ones still intact…we should have a fairly clear path. Secondary labs apparently has a couple of specimens, cafeteria five, don’t know about the rest. A lot of carriers—the infected ones—by the quarters and engine rooms.”
“That’s not good,” Palmer said.
“To put it simply, yeah,” Landham said. Felina realized that this was a man who seldom spoke, according to introductions mere hours ago. Now it was his voice she knew the best, and under such dire circumstances, the hoarseness of his tone was tenfold worse. There was a tinge of hopelessness in it that she wished she hadn’t detected.
“Good luck, Landham,” Connell said with a nod. “Get back in one piece, will ya?”
“Yessir. See you, Connell.” Landham whistled curtly, catching Ochoa’s attention. Felina guessed he had witnessed Taylor’s death as per the security feeds, if not simply by one of the other’s testimony.
Arevalo appeared in the corridor just then, with Madhavari’s arm slung around his neck. He had a makeshift tourniquet bandaging his foot, which bled through.
“Ah, nice to see you two again,” Madhavari breathed heavily, nodding at Felina and Loudon.
“We’ll see you soon, Madhavari,” Felina said.
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