Unleashed: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 1)

by Aaron Bunce

  Jacoby wrenched the plasma saw off the table, twisting the plug, and clicking on the power button, all in one, economical movement.

  The tool vibrated in his hand, the capacitors whining softly. The contact points on the blade were already hot by the time he stepped out of the storeroom, the blade beginning to spool.

  “Clear the door! Clear a path!” he shouted. Emiko and Yani yelled and jumped back, the saw’s almost amber glow filling the room with light.

  “Lex!” he shouted, lifting the saw as he approached the door. She spun, mouth opened in a half-formed curse, and her eyes shot wide.

  “Will that cut it?” she asked, jumping out of the way.

  “It cuts through rock and ore like butter,” Jacoby shouted over the saw’s whine. Janice’s voice cut into his thoughts just as he brought the glowing blade up to the shiny metal.

  Don’t fuck around with MY saws. They cut rock, not metal. They cut ROCK!

  The blade bit, the saw jumping in his hands, glowing sparks immediately bathing his legs and the ground beneath him.

  “Please…cut,” he grunted, tightening his grip and forcing the blade fully into the thick metal.

  We don’t ask it to cut, Jacky! We make it cut!

  0900 Hours

  The plasma saw whined loudly, the blade sinking hungrily into the metal a foot below the door’s centerline. Jacoby eased it sideways. Hot slag flowed out from around the blade and dribbled down the door to pool on the floor.

  He could hear Lex behind him, feel her anxious energy. Someone else was shouting, too. It sounded like Doctor Reeds, but he couldn’t turn away to be sure. The blade reached the doorjamb and he slowly eased it out, being careful to keep the blade spinning.

  Jacoby lifted the saw and started a new cut a foot above the centerline, moving it slowly to cut parallel to his previous cut. His arms shook, and the saw vibrated, but it was familiar. Damn he missed running a saw. There was indeed something honest about mining – perhaps the act of breaking lumps of lifeless rock down into its building blocks and allowing them to be purified and molded into something new and useful.

  He finished his second cut and pulled the saw out, the blade barely clearing the door before the motor powered down and the fusion plug turned and popped free.

  “Shit,” he cursed, and then let the hot blade dip towards the ground. Jacoby yanked the spent fusion plug out of the port. He jammed his hand into his pocket and fished around for a fresh plug, but glanced up.

  “They’re breaking through the door! They’re breaking through!” Doctor Reeds yelled, running into the locker room and slamming the door behind him. Yani ran to his side. Both men threw their bodies against the door as a loud and violent crash sounded out in the lab.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Lex urged. She bounced on the balls of her feet, her hands grasping at the air, as if clutching for a weapon.

  The new fusion plug slapped home and twisted, the saw, already hot, spun back to life in an instant. Jacoby changed the cut vector, the blade head rotating until it was straight up and down.

  The hot blade punched into the steel, more molten metal sliding out. Flames spurted in glowing bursts as the paint covering the steel ignited.

  “Jacoby!” Lex yelled behind him, but he couldn’t stop. Hell, he couldn’t even make the saw cut faster. At this point he was just holding it in place.

  A crash sounded behind him, the locker room falling into chaos. He had six inches left to cut…four…two. And then the blade broke through. He felt Lex behind him, prepared, like a coiled spring ready to break.

  Jacoby ripped the blade free and dropped to the side. Lex jumped forward and kicked the door hard, sending it swinging into the darkness. The glowing cutout in the middle of the door hung in the space, now fused to the sturdy locking bar.

  Lex leapt over the puddles of molten steel and disappeared inside, automatic lights blinking on and filling the doorway with light.

  Jacoby spun and found Reeds falling over a bench, and Emiko teetered by the farthest row of benches, a monstrous form breaking through the door. Yani jumped over the benches, hooked Emiko and swung her back towards Jacoby. The nurse screamed and tumbled. Yani took a single step to follow, but pitched sideways as an impossibly long object flashed across and skewered him, pinning him to a locker.

  Jacoby managed to catch Emiko and hefted her off a knee. He pulled her behind him, spooling the saw at the same time. Jacoby ran right at the monster, breaking every O.S.H.A rule he’d ever been taught in the process.

  He lifted the saw up over his head, but couldn’t get to Yani before the creature snapped another arm forward, punching it right into the man’s throat with a loud, wet crunch.

  The glowing saw blade came down, cutting through the closest arm with only a hint of resistance. The blade rotated around and he brought it back up, quickly severing the other arm. The creature staggered back, squealing loudly, the smell of burned flesh and bone filling the air.

  It was definitely one of the people from the clinic, or more than one of them. The flesh had darkened, but he could clearly see a woman’s torso sticking out of the side of a man’s ribcage. The two heads stuck together, as if the flesh was slowly trying to merge them into one.

  Jacoby pushed off of Yani’s body, the man pinned in place by the severed limbs, and brought the saw around. The creature jumped back onto the bench, another long appendage stabbing into the lockers behind it for balance.

  “Come on, you ugly sack of rotten guts,” Jacoby growled, leveling the glowing-hot saw between them.

  It lashed out without a sound, the two long appendages stabbing from its torso and hitting him in a blur. Jacoby swung the saw around, but caught only air. The creature’s attack hit him hard, violently knocking him back into the locker.

  Duck!

  Jacoby lurched to the side as a boney appendage burst from the creature’s chest and stabbed into the locker above his shoulder. He brought the saw up, catching one of its human-shaped arms just below the shoulder, and cut clean through.

  Another white shape burst from the body in a splatter of dark fluid and stabbed into his right arm, jarring it aside before he could bring the saw back down. His right hand knocked free, the saw swung down in his left, and the safety engaged, immediately spinning down the blade.

  The creature shrieked and brought its long, severed limbs up, the burned and blunted ends poised to pummel and crush his face. A sharp crack split the air before the creature could strike, chunks of fleshy bone bursting into the air. Jacoby looked over as Lex stepped out of the ready room, a long, glossy rifle tucked tight against her shoulder.

  “Get clear!” she yelled.

  Jacoby grunted and kicked his boot up onto the creature’s midsection and pushed. The skin and muscle squirmed beneath his boot, but it slid back, the spear-like appendage pulling free from his right arm. Free from its hold, Jacoby fell.

  Lex pushed in, the barrel of the rifle flashing brightly. The creature spun around as the round punched through its chest, blood and bits of flesh blowing out its back. Both mouths screeching, it turned on Lex, horrible, insect-like arms lashing out.

  Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop.

  Jacoby covered his ears as the rifle came alive, the munitions splitting its flesh open from stomach to neck, organs, bones, and bodily fluid bursting out the back and all over the floor.

  He pushed up onto his knees after the echoing reports faded to a dull ringing in his ears, and found the creature slumped to its knees, a gaping, smoking hole where its chest used to be.

  A spent magazine dropped out of the rifle, Lex sliding a replacement in without pulling it from her shoulder. She slapped it for good measure, as a trickle of smoke drifted off the barrel. She stepped slowly forward, the weapon still trained on one of the creature’s heads.

  “Is it dead?” Emiko asked, rising from the floor beyond Lex.

  “I uh…I uh,” Reeds stammered, giving the creature a wide berth, before looking back at Jacoby and then Lex. “I do believe
that Lex here did an incredibly efficient job of moving its guts from inside its body to over there on the floor. Thank you for that.”

  Jacoby eased up to his feet, the pain in his right arm flaring as he wrapped his fingers around the saw’s grip. He squeezed the trigger, just enough to get the points to pre-heat, but not to engage the motor. Reeds approached the creature, leaning in to get a better look.

  “Please don’t…I don’t think you should get that close to it, Doctor?” Emiko said, still hovering behind Lex.

  “Doc,” Jacoby warned, and shook his head. He tightened his grip on the saw. That creeping feeling still roiled his guts a bit. Either it wasn’t dead, or there was another close by. Jacoby flicked his eyes up to Lex, and she nodded. Jacoby’s finger tightened around the trigger, the motor engaging.

  “I think it is quite dead now, Emiko. If we are to survive, I fear we need to gain a…”

  The creature shuddered suddenly, its head snapping up, a wet, sucking noise issuing out of its body. Lex moved to fire, but Jacoby was faster. He fully engaged the blade and brought the plasma saw across at shoulder level, severing both necks in a single pass.

  He kicked the decapitated body over as the heads came to rest at Reeds’ feet, the stumps of its necks cauterized and smoking. He held the saw, ready to plunge it down at the first sign of movement, but the sickly sensation was already lifting. The body was still…dead.

  “Do you think they know who or what they are anymore? Even feel pain? Jacoby cut off three of its…arms?” Lex asked. She kept the rifle trained on the creature’s body, and lifted one of the long, boney appendages with a boot toe. “And after, I pumped an entire magazine of sonic cavitation rounds through it, dead center-fucking mass, and that still didn’t kill it.”

  Jacoby felt the truth of her words. They’d just killed someone. Well, several people, as their bodies had somehow melted and grown together.

  “Yes…yes. Truly horrific,” Reeds muttered, glancing over to Yani’s body pinned against the lockers, and quickly looked away, “able to break through a sturdier-than-most metal door, exceedingly aggressive, exceedingly adept at killing, and frustratingly hard to kill. I think the only thing we know about these things might just be…well, might just be that we don’t know anything about them. Not much humanity left in it, I think.”

  “I think it’s time we get out of here, doc. Maybe find someplace a little safer, eh?” Jacoby suggested.

  Reeds nodded, his eyes remaining locked on the dead creature at their feet. Then he hooked an arm around Emiko’s back and guided her out of the locker room.

  Jacoby set the saw on a nearby bench and rolled his right sleeve up to expose a bloody wound on his bicep. Not just a wound, actually. The creature had punched its needle-like arm right through. And yet, it was already closing, the new, pink flesh growing in as he watched.

  “Doc said it was a virus? Does that mean it can spread?” Lex asked, her gaze dropping form his eyes to his arm. He read the underlying question – if you’re infected with something, does that mean that I am now, too?

  Jacoby rolled the sleeve back down and scooped the saw off the bench, careful to avoid stepping in the mess of guts and blood on the floor. Lex nodded, taking his unspoken response.

  “How many of those things do you think are out there?” she asked, “I grabbed the rest of their ammunition, but there was only so much. If I blow through that many rounds to almost kill one of them…”

  “We’ll have to find a more efficient way to kill them,” Jacoby said, finishing her thought. Lex nodded, and they left the locker room together.

  They found Manis and the rest of Doctor Misra’s staff still locked in the office. They poured out, faces red and fists raised, until Lex stepped forward.

  “Shut up!” she yelled, the rifle whirring as she tightened her grip. The group, two women and three men, immediately went quiet.

  “We’re leaving. It’s time for you to unseal the lab doors,” Reeds said, as Jacoby pulled the data point out of his pocket. There were no new audio messages from Soraya’s phone.

  Damn! he thought. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. The pressure in his head intensified, and somewhere, deep in the fog of his mind, he thought that he felt her.

  Yes, I feel them, too, the voice chimed in as he opened his eyes again.

  “Them?”

  Yes, both of them. Don’t be slow.

  “I can’t do that. Can’t unseal the lab, not after what we just saw. Layla’s order went to administration offices. Once the door is sealed, only they can unseal it,” Manis said.

  Jacoby lifted the data point between them. “So, have them unseal it. Tell them whatever they want to hear. Tell them it was a test, or a false alarm. But do it, now!”

  “I don’t take orders from you! You’re the reason why we’re in this whole mess in the first place. If it weren’t for you…”

  Lex stepped forward, the people around Manis parting like an opening book. The rifle barrel snapped up, hovering right before the administrator’s face.

  “We weren’t asking. You call, you get it done. That’s the easy way. You don’t? My finger twitches and I have Jacoby cut that door open with his saw. Either way, we get out of here. Only one of those options sees you leaving with us,” Lex said and ever so gently pressed the barrel against Manis’ cheek.

  The color drained from Manis’s face and his eyes went glassy and wide. His mouth worked for a moment, but Jacoby stepped forward, holding the data point against his chest before he could condemn himself.

  “I can see you’re scared. We all are. But I’ll tell you now, if you don’t think she’ll do it, then you’re just wrong. One of those things broke through the lab door on its own and she took it down without flinching. If they can get in here, they’ve probably already made it out into the station. The longer we stand around, the more people die. Don’t believe me? Go in the locker room and look for yourself. But be careful where you step,” Jacoby said.

  Manis stared at him for a long moment, but let out a shuddering breath and dropped his gaze to the floor. Lex dropped the rifle as he accepted the data point and immediately made for the mangled door. Jacoby hung back, dropping into line behind Manis and the others.

  When it came time for him to move through the bent and broken door, Jacoby paused. Strips of skin and muscle hung from the jagged metal.

  “I guess that answers that question,” he whispered, bending out of the way to avoid the mess.

  A virus works to supplant its host. Perhaps this is what happens if nothing gets in its way.

  “That’s a horrifying thought,” Jacoby whispered as he straightened on the other side of the door.

  “What’s that?” Lex asked.

  “Oh, just thinking out loud,” he lied, and tried to hide his surprise.

  Tell her about me…about us, the voice said, and Jacoby immediately shook his head.

  Lex turned and moved away from him, her rifle tight against her shoulder, the barrel scanning the ruined beds and dark corners.

  She is clever. She will figure it out. And then what will you tell her?

  “That I have conversations with a little voice in my head? That you’re a fractured part of my mind given an unreasonably loud voice by something that may or may not be an Alien organism living inside my brain,” Jacoby mumbled under his breath.

  Yes, perfect! Add that I like redheads, and you prefer blondes, so we establish the parameters of our relationship. I think she will understand. Let’s tell her now before that twerp opens the doors and we all get torn apart!

  “I don’t think she will find it nearly as funny as you,” Jacoby whispered, as Reeds pushed Manis up to the large, lab doors.

  “Open it!” Jacoby said, walking up to stand next to him.

  Manis swallowed, his eyes temporarily flitting to the ceiling.

  “If you’re worried about what they do to you, just tell them that I threatened you or something,” Jacoby offered.

  Manis
closed his eyes but tapped on the data point. A moment later, the doors clicked loudly, and slowly opened.

  “That’s it? That’s all you had to do?” Lex snorted behind him and pushed out in the hallway, sweeping the rifle left, before the passage to the right.

  “Well, shit!” she swore.

  Jacoby pulled the data point out of Manis’ hand and pushed him into the hall, Reeds and the rest of the group shuffling along close behind. He turned to find Lex standing in the middle of the passage, her rifle lifted towards a massive hole in the ceiling.

  “I think that answers our question, doc. They’re out,” Lex said, and skirted the jagged hole above.

  Jacoby ushered the rest of them through, pulling anyone to the side that got too close to walking directly beneath the hole.

  “Where to, Jacoby?” Lex asked.

  “The commissary.”

  “One floor up, through the hospital and clinic, and we’re basically there.”

  “You all are just going to make this whole mess worse. You’ve likely killed everyone on this station,” Manis said, his eyes nervously scanning the hall.

  “Misery loves company, sir, as I say. If you and Layla hadn’t kept secrets, none of this would have happened in the first place. This is on your…” Reeds argued, but Lex swung around a corner and went rigid.

  “Heh! You on the ground, can you hear me? Are you all right? Wait a minute…stay back!”

  Jacoby’s skin started to crawl, his insides bubbling.

  “Lex, get back!” he yelled, just as someone appeared from the hall to their right. The rifle barked once, the muzzle flash filling the dark space with blue light. The man grunted and staggered to the side, but refused to go down. Lex managed one more shot before he was on her.

  Jacoby moved to help but watched as she jabbed the weapon’s barrel hard into his face, knocking him back a step. She fired two rounds in quick succession into his chest, and a third into his face. The man collapsed back and fell still, a dark pool spreading around his head.