by Aaron Bunce
She is impressive with the proper tools. An angel of death, the voice said, and Jacoby silently agreed.
They moved down the passage and Lex pushed through a door to the side, sweeping the rifle from corner to corner. Jacoby entered last, finding a dark stairwell. He clicked on his flashlight, closing the door behind him.
He climbed, refusing to let his finger come completely off the saw’s trigger. The tight space filled with the sound of shuffling feet and loud breathing. He heard Lex open a door somewhere above him and waited for their small crowd to file out into the next passage.
He followed Emiko around the last corner, the group moving out through a door up and ahead. A door clicked and banged open below, the muffled sound echoing up and around the corner.
“Go!” he said, pushing her up the stairs. “Go…quickly!” Emiko nodded and turned, pushing the others up and telling them to hurry.
Jacoby clicked off the flashlight and stuffed it in his pocket, and then smashed the trigger, engaging the blade. He’d never be able to hold both at the same time.
A storm of footsteps echoed up the small stairwell, the noise quickly drowned out by the spooling saw blade. Jacoby backed up into the straight run of the stairwell, giving himself more room to maneuver.
A woman appeared in the landing below. She hit the wall and rolled sideways, grunting and moaning loudly. Her head flopped around, the strange, jerky movements even more mechanical and terrifying in the saw’s orange dancing light. She spotted Jacoby, and screamed, a horrible mess of black sick tumbling out of her mouth and running down her chin.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and brought the saw down. The blade caught her on the left shoulder and bit hard. She squealed and tried to jump back, but the super-heated blade points chewed through muscle, bone, and organs, burning and incinerating until pulling free above her right hip.
The woman flopped to the ground, her body effectively cut into two pieces. Her arms and legs thrashed and clawed, slapping the floor and walls. A man tumbled in next, the remains of a much smaller person stuck to his chest. Another body tumbled onto the landing behind him, and yet another.
“Shit!” Jacoby cursed and jumped up two steps. The man swung around, a long, boney arm stabbing into the wall to Jacoby’s right. He brought the saw up, but it pulled free before he could strike, leaving a cracked and jagged hole in the wall.
“I hope you are all out up there!” he screamed.
Boney arms swung in, driving into the ground at Jacoby’s feet. The man lunged forward, a mass of arms and mouths groping for him.
It wasn’t the voice that popped up, but an urge, or a compulsion. Jacoby acted without second thought. He kicked the lunging man in the chest and knocked him back, and then leveled the saw blade at his chest and charged in.
The blade plunged deep into squirming flesh, the monster falling back under his weight. They tumbled onto the landing, Jacoby surfing atop the roiling bodies. He ripped the saw straight up, pulling it through the man’s chest and cutting his neck and head clean in half.
The orange light danced as black fluid and severed flesh spattered the walls. Jacoby swung the saw blindly to his left and felt the blade cleave through something soft. It hit the corner of the wall and ignited the darkness in a shower of sparks.
A boney limb caught him in the left thigh, an explosion of fiery pain igniting all the way from his groin to his toes. He kicked out, catching one of the monsters with his right foot, their head crunching under the weight of his boot. The saw swung down and cut through the spear-like appendage stuck into his leg.
He jabbed and swung the saw over and over, the glowing blade biting and chewing through flesh and bone, the motor whining in a gleeful battle cry. A red light ignited in the darkness, flashing on the back of the saw, pulling Jacoby out of his frenzy. A rational part of his mind pushed in, and he managed to turn away from the churning, screaming pile of flailing monsters just before the fusion plug popped out, and the saw powered down.
0915 Hours
Anna’s throat tightened as the weight of people smashed her against the door. She tried to push back, but it was no use. A woman coughed and gagged somewhere in the group behind her, and then a man. A ripple passed through the crowd, vibrating through the people around her as if they were one. Her throat tightened a bit more, the air around her face heavy and closing in.
“Just…breathe,” she gasped, trying to push every other thought away and focus only on her next breath. The lift would get there. It would. She would hear the chime and then the doors would open. It had to. She needed it to.
The elevator grew dim, and Anna tried to blink it away, but the murk remained. The woman coughed again – a wet, raspy, unhealthy sound.
“I need out…of…here. I’m sick…d-d-don’t feel well at all. Please!”
Anna’s skin crawled at the woman’s words, an uncomfortable nausea bubbling up inside. Was it claustrophobia? No…she’d felt it above, when the monstrosity got close. The transit elevator dinged suddenly, but the sound was muffled as if she had cotton stuffed in her ears.
“You have arrived at A ring annex,” a voice said overhead. Anna could barely breathe. The door slid open and she sprawled forward, forcing her hands out to cushion her fall.
She curled into a ball as a flood of bodies poured out above her – some fell on and around her, while other stepped over and on her. She felt their feet, elbows, and knees pound down, smashing into her back and sides. Something struck the side of her face, and her head bounced painfully against the ground.
A ringing filled her ears just as she felt a bit of the smothering weight pull away. A body was pulled free and Anna dared open her eyes as Soraya’s face came into view through the pile of limbs.
“I said get the hell off of her!”
Another body pulled free and she felt Soraya’s hands hook around her, and then she was standing.
“I thought they were going to crush me to death,” Anna gasped, and threw her arms around Soraya, squeezing her hard. “You’re the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen!”
Soraya returned the embrace, holding her up and sheltering her as the crowd pushed and shoved by. They moved like a stampede, a mass of unthinking, unapologetic, and violent animals. But despite their chaos, their strength, Anna felt safe in Soraya’s embrace. She was a mighty pillar of stone holding the crashing waves at bay.
“Just let them go,” Soraya whispered.
They hung there together until the crowd from the elevator had all moved past. Anna accepted Soraya’s strength, greedily taking in the cool, fresh air, and reveling in the strong heart beneath her breasts.
She opened her eyes after the noise of the crowd had faded to a distant echo. Her head was nestled in the crook of Soraya’s neck, a familiar and almost intoxicating buzz passing between their skin. By some means, they could feel the gruesome monsters, as if their bodies were receptive to something foul the bastardized people emitted. And likewise, they were connected as well. But there was nothing threatening or dark about Soraya…quite the opposite, in fact.
Anna lifted her head, and before she realized what she was doing, leaned in and pressed their lips together. Soraya flinched at first, but didn’t try to pull away. After a moment, she leaned in, accepting the embrace and pressing them closer together.
A spark ignited between them, flooding over Anna’s skin from her lips, through her face, and down over the rest of her body. Soraya opened her mouth and their tongues momentarily brushed together.
Anna hadn’t kissed another woman before, save a few friendly pecks with friends in school, but those weren’t intimate. This was something wholly different. Soraya tasted sweet and warm, her mind immediately spinning up recollections of fragrant flowers and a tangerine-colored sunrise.
Their passion deepened and Anna moved her hands down Soraya’s back, savoring each finely sculpted curve. Soraya reached up and cupped Anna’s face, then slid her hands slowly down her neck. The electric buzz coursing th
rough her body intensified as Soraya’s hands gently slid over her breasts, the grip delicate and unlike any man she’d ever been with. Anna gasped, her chest heaving.
Soraya’s warmth intensified suddenly, as her hand moved down onto her stomach, and lower. Anna’s body hummed, the sunshine-like heat filling her completely, burning away the panic, the ache, and the weakness, leaving only warmth and the fresh fragrance of flowers in its wake.
Their lips separated and Anna dared open her eyes. Soraya watched her intently, her rich, chocolate-brown eyes speaking in a language far beyond the simple words they could form with their voices.
“Did you feel that?” Anna asked.
Soraya cocked a single eyebrow, but she didn’t immediately speak. She didn’t have to. Anna could feel that she did. And beyond the spark, the warmth of their connection, she could feel others as well – like pieces of herself floating somewhere in the station, waiting to be reclaimed…waiting to be made whole.
A scream echoed from somewhere far down the concourse. Anna and Soraya turned together and listened. It went silent, the gentle buzz of the station flooding back in its absence.
“Jacoby…he’s close. And…someone else? I can feel them, too, but not quite as strong. I don’t know how or why this is happening, but we need to find them and get out of here.” Soraya’s voice was quiet, her words slow and deliberate, as if she was rationalizing the strange experience as it happened.
Anna nodded. Soraya retrieved the stun batons from the floor by the lift doors, while Anna pulled the data point out of her pocket. A spidery crack covered the right side of the screen, a few small segments of the screen pixilating randomly, but it still worked.
She pulled up the number Jacoby had been sending them messages from and tried to bring it up on a voice call, and then a video chat, but the network continued to decline the requests.
[Hidden Network] –Error- Bandwidth insufficient. Improper permissions exist. –Error-.
“Stupid piece of crap. It’s like we’re playing Marco Polo,” Anna cursed, and pressed record.
“Jacoby, we’re here…in the A ring atrium. We just got off the transit elevator,” Anna said, pausing to turn and consider the lift doors, “two. We just got off Transit lift number two and we’re headed for the commissary now. If you can, meet us on the lower level by the exchange store…the one next to the noddle place we like.”
Soraya watched, and nodded when she finished. They set off down the hall and turned onto the concourse. The long walkway was strangely empty, a number of the long, photo-organic light bars overhead intermittently blinking on and off again. The ground hummed and the plants clustered against the walls rippled and swayed in the gentle air currents.
“Where did they all go?” Soraya whispered.
A loud bang followed a crash, the noises echoing down the wide passage ahead of them. They moved quickly up the wide stairs, a mass of tools and workbags haphazardly strewn about the ground. Several floor panels had been removed, a series of snaking, glowing cables pulled out into wide loops.
Blood covered the floor – a spattered, swirling mess of surprisingly dark fluid. Anna stopped and quietly pointed to the nearest access panel in the floor. A man’s arm stuck out of the hole, a clear technician’s tablet sitting not six inches away from his still fingers.
“This is something different, right? They can’t be down here already, right?” Soraya whispered, holding the two stun batons towards the open service panels.
“I think we’ll be a whole lot safer if we assume that whatever is affecting people around here is everywhere,” Anna whispered, and moved forward slowly.
She tread slowly forward, crouching down and picking her way through the puddles of blood. Soraya was right behind her, but she could feel the other woman’s trepidation, the unanswered question that she couldn’t quite spit out. Why are you getting closer to the big, scary hole in the ground?
Anna’s eyes locked on the maintenance tablet, but it was more than her hunger for tech and knowledge this time. She knew what kind of permissions and privileges were granted to station maintenance workers. With that kind of power, they could go practically anywhere in the station.
Anna scooped the tablet off the ground, a large, bloody thumbprint smeared halfway across the shiny screen. She moved to slide away when her gaze caught on something on the man’s arm. A glove covered his hand and stretched halfway up his forearm, several small optical cables glowing gentle blue. A small wave of nausea bubbled up in her gut, but she swallowed it down.
A neural interface glove! Anna thought, her gaze flicking from the high-tech glove, to the blood smeared all around her. Soraya tugged gently on her collar. The message was clear – let’s go now!
Anna turned back and mouthed “one minute” before turning back and sliding forward. She tried to ignore the squirmy blood under her boots, but she couldn’t ignore the smell – coppery, pungent, and invasive.
Her boots stuck to the ground, creating a sticky, tearing noise as she squirmed up to the edge of the maintenance panel. Anna reached forward gingerly and started to work the glove off the man’s still arm. It slid free an inch and his fingers twitched. Anna froze, a shiver running down her back as the man moaned.
My god, he’s still alive, she thought and looked back to Soraya. She shook her head, and mouthed “get away from there”.
Anna swung back as the technician lifted his head, his eyes popping open. His pupil’s expanded and contracted wildly before focusing on her. His mouth started to move, his breathing raspy and loud.
“It hurts…it hurts. Help…me,” he groaned.
Then she saw it properly. Someone clung to the technician, their arms and legs wrapped so tightly around his midsection that she could barely tell where one began and the other ended.
“Help…me!” the man moaned as the other face, the one seemingly growing out of his back, hissed.
The technician sunk into the darkness then, the glove pulling free in Anna’s grip. She hovered there for only a moment, her gaze unable to penetrate the dark service tunnel. And then she pushed back, slipping on the gooey, blood-coated floor. She stood quickly and followed Soraya, dancing through the puddles.
“What is that?”
“He was still alive, but…” Anna whispered back, unable to adequately explain what she saw. She knew Soraya was asking about the tablet and the glove, but the look on the man’s face haunted her, the shock, confusion, and horrible pain.
“That was stupid-stupid-stupid,” Anna hissed pulling the glove on. She felt it grow warm against her hand, and the tablet responded, a three-dimensional menu block glowing above the screen. The concourse curved around, and Soraya skidded to a stop. Three bodies lay sprawled against the right wall, their clothes torn and bloodied. Were they from the crowd in the elevator? Had this just happened?
A loud pop echoed somewhere around the corner ahead, followed by another, and then another.
“Is that a…gun?” Soraya asked. Anna shook her head.
They pushed over to the far wall, giving the bloody scene a wide berth. One woman lay draped over a box of cables. Her left arm was torn clean from her shoulder socket, but that wasn’t all. A gaping hole had been punched in the side of her head, jagged fragments of bone and pulpy gray matter framing the wound.
Anna’s thoughts immediately went back to the creature, and its long, spindly arms…how it punched clear through the tough ceramic and metal plating. Soraya flashed Anna a look, and promptly turned the knob on both stun batons, the hum and crackling electricity increasing in kind.
“Jacoby, we’re on the concourse. There’s blood everywhere. Those things…they’re here, too. Where are you? I need to know you’re okay. Mining administration offices are ahead, and then the clinic and hospital. I hope you’re close, I need you to be okay!” Anna said, recording a quiet message into the data point and hitting send.
They ran along the wide concourse, following the gentle curve until offices appeared on the right.
Glowing signs hung on both sides of the wide space. A woman screamed ahead, and then glass shattered.
0945 Hours
Jacoby kicked off a squelchy body, thrust off the next firm step, and pulled himself up. Without the saw running, the stairwell was black – the black of cloudless nights, of the worst childhood nightmares. He couldn’t see the next step, the creatures behind him, or his hands fumbling blindly before him.
Just climb!
“The door!” he screamed, fumbling for the handrail and finally finding it. “Open the door!”
The creatures thrashed in the darkness behind him, their boney limbs cracking violently into the floor and walls around him. A weight fell onto his back, but Jacoby rolled, bent his good leg, and managed to kick the slimy form away.
He kicked up another step, and then another. A slice of light appeared above and ahead, the doorway appearing like the gateway to heaven itself. A face appeared in the doorway, the eyes wide with shock and fear.
Jacoby muscled his way over the final step and threw his weight forward and through the doorway. He caught a glimpse, a flash, of a woman in black scrubs holding the door open, a bright hallway, and the massive barrel of a black rifle leveled right at him.
“Shit!” Lex cursed, a blue flash filling his vision right before the ear-splitting crack.
Jacoby tumbled to the ground, the doorframe exploding just over his head.
“You should have called out! I almost smoked you!” Lex cursed.
“They’re right behind me. A lot of them!” Jacoby gasped and pushed off the ground. Emiko was there, helping him up, but he pushed her away, and yelled, “go!”
Lex lifted the rifle and fired into the dark stairwell, the sonic rounds echoing loudly in the tight hall. Jacoby ejected the spent fusion plug and snapped in a replacement, twisting it into place.