Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  Ada noticed that her two fellow survivors weren’t right behind her. She turned around, feet sliding on the cheap linoleum floors. Once she did, she saw Tomas trying to drag Tanisha away, the latter of whom was clearly in shock.

  Tanisha watched as one of the Shapeless slowly, grotesquely transformed themselves into the dead little girl. The excess matter fell off and began to sizzle and steam on the promenade floor. Tomas slung his rifle over his shoulder and chest and grabbed the cook with both his hands and physically, literally dragged her away.

  “I know it’s horrible, but we need to keep moving. If we stop, one of those things will kill us, and they’ll be pretending to be us.” Ada talked as she took one of the white phosphorus grenades off her belt. She pulled the pin and pressed the button on top to arm it. Then she tossed it at the two Shapeless in the promenade.

  “Should we abort?” asked Tomas.

  Ada didn’t even wait to watch the two screeching Shapeless aliens burn. “No. We can still get downstairs to engineering. The stairs are just down here.” She led the way down the halls, only a little more carefully than before.

  The stairwell was never a good option, not even where there was no other option. Ada knew that. She’d been down them before.

  When chaos had erupted in the station, people looked for the nearest exit. There wasn’t time to wait for the elevators, so the stairs were the next best option. The only problem was that everyone had the same idea. And where were they really going, anyway?

  “What’s that smell?” asked Tanisha as Ada’s small group approached the entrance to the closest stairwell.

  The group was all too familiar with the smell of death. Their time on the least-effective sanctuary station ever had forced them to cozy up to it. With that said, the aroma coming from the stairwell was on a different level.

  “You sure this is the only way?” Tomas got wise to what was probably behind those doors. It might have been the smears of blood that clued him in.

  “I’m sure. Now…” Ada grabbed the door handle. “This is gonna be really bad. Like, all of this death you’ve seen, it’s gonna all be in one place. You should probably use your shirts or something, cover your noses and mouths.” She was about to open the door before turning back to Tomas and Tanisha. “Maybe try to hold your breath. Ready?”

  Neither Tomas nor Tanisha was ready. But after they heard the sound of Shapeless screeches coming from both directions, they figured whatever was in that stairwell wasn’t worse than a likely vicious death.

  Ada opened the door, and immediately the smell made every other odor they’d run across on the dying station seem like the sweetest potpourri by comparison.

  Tanisha threw up in a millisecond. Tomas didn’t, at least not right away; but after a few steps, it got the better of him, and he couldn’t stop himself from spewing vomit.

  Ada managed to fight back the bile rising up her throat, but just barely. She tried to just concentrate on making it through the carnage.

  The first step onto the pile of bodies that covered the stairs was the hardest. Human legs and feet weren’t meant to walk on squishy surfaces. That was only made harder when the squish came from human bodies. Bones, blood, and feces all mixed together in a toxic swill in the massacre inside the stairwell.

  There were bodies stacked on bodies. Blood covered the walls. Not an inch of the actual physical steel stairs was visible. It was a slaughterhouse, one that Ada and her group needed to climb down two levels.

  Ada used both hands to steady herself on the railing as she climbed down the dead. Tomas and Tanisha both had to use only one hand on the railing. Their other hands were on the collars of their shirts, which they pulled up over their noses. The former of the two muttered Catholic prayers and apologies as he stepped on someone’s father, mother, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, brother, and/or sister.

  “One more floor,” said Ada as she looked at the blood-splattered sign that read, “Commercial Level Sec- 12.”

  Tomas and Tanisha just nodded. Ada had no idea what awaited them on the other side of the stairwell, but it couldn’t be worse than this.

  Could it?

  Twenty-One

  Tomas Ruiz knew death. He knew it all too well. Unlike both Tanisha and Ada, he had been in more than his fair share of battles before the UEF Atlas. In fact, he’d had a lot as a former member of the UEF Spartan Special Forces Group, or SSFG.

  During the war with the AIC, the SSFG was an elite wing of the UEF Special Forces. Their specialty was being the first ground troops to land boots on any battlefield before the regular army or Marines. They were the spearhead to any attack.

  Tomas had been in the SSFG for four years. In that time, he’d killed countless men and seen just as many die around him. He’d been in Europa, Vassar-4, Oran, and Talvos, among other major battles. His training and experience allowed him to survive the harshest conditions, behind enemy lines and against insurmountable odds.

  Eventually, though, he’d had enough. Wanting to retire but being halfway through his fifth year of duty, Tomas was allowed to leave the SSFG, but finish out an even five years aboard the UEF Atlas. It was meant to be a cushy assignment before ending a distinguished career. No one aboard the Atlas had known about his past but Saito. He’d told none of the other survivors on Sanc-33.

  Though Tomas had seen more than his fair share of death, he’d never seen it so concentrated in such tight confines. Seeing a corpse on a battlefield, a dead soldier, was much different, and in many ways easier than seeing dead civilians stacked two or three high beneath his feet.

  “Okay, we’re here. I’ll check and make sure everything’s okay.” Ada stood next to a door that had “Engineering” on a sign above it. “You wait here.”

  Tomas wanted to stop her, but Ada was running the show. Maybe if they knew more about who he was, things would be different. But this was no time for a power struggle. “Bring back good news,” he said.

  Ada actually snorted. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ada wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. This time, she was going to do some additional scouting before telling her small group that the coast was clear, because last time it was most certainly hadn’t been. She slipped through the cracked-open door.

  Blinking red lights were all that lit the engineering level. It made it a little hard for Ada to see as she slowly traversed the halls, looking for the engineering armory where they kept welding torches, flamethrowers, and cold casters.

  With each step, Ada’s heart beat a little faster. She didn’t hear anything but the sound of her own heavy breathing. Her nerves tempered some when she saw a sign on the wall with an arrow pointing to the armory.

  “It’s in your father’s office. But be quiet. Be quiet as a little mouse, Ada.”

  Ada’s mother’s words replayed in her head, and she followed her advice. She crept down the engineering-level halls, as quiet as a mouse.

  When she turned the corner in the direction of the arrow pointing to the armory, Ada heard music. While that could’ve been a sign that there might’ve been another survivor down here with her, logic came in and squashed that hope. If there was a survivor, they’d lived that long by knowing that making noise just attracted the Shapeless. And the music…it was classical, orchestral music that just felt unsettling.

  Ada came upon the source of the music, which was between her and the engineering armory. On the holographic sign next to the open sliding door was the name “Jennine Holcomb-Electrical Engineering”. As she peeked around the side of the door frame, Ada didn’t expect to see an electrical engineer.

  Standing in front of a mirror in Jennine Holcomb’s office was what looked to be, from behind, a human woman. That was, until Ada kept watching her and noticed strange twitches and jerky movements. In the mirror’s reflection, she saw a face that was slightly off.

  The Shapeless alien that was pretending to be Jennine Holcomb had facial features that were all right, except for her mouth. She kept openin
g it far too wide, then closing it, seemingly in rhythm with the orchestral music playing in the office. Ada had no idea what the monster was doing, and didn’t want to stick around to find out. Waiting for a moment when she wouldn’t also be seen in the mirror’s reflection, Ada sneaked past the open doorway.

  Finally Ada reached the engineering armory. There was a hand scanner that restricted access. It was the worst possible scenario. Royce, the engineer who’d let them use his apartment and told them about the armory, had never mentioned security measures. How was she going to get in there?

  There was only one option. Ada hated it, but she needed to get into the armory, one way or another. How she was going to do it was a bit trickier.

  Ada needed the hand of an authorized staff member who could access the engineering armory. She took inventory of what she had on her to achieve that goal. After careful consideration, she decided she’d use the welding torch and her standard-issue Marine knife.

  In order to take on the Shapeless alien pretending to be Jennine Holcomb, Ada knew she was probably going to take some damage. She accepted that reality and tried to bury it with what she could achieve by taking that pain. Standing again at the doorway to the electrical engineer’s office, she took three deep breaths.

  As quickly as she could, Ada turned the corner into Jennine Holcomb’s office. Immediately she touched the flame to the alien, setting it ablaze. Without thought, because thinking would stop her from doing anything so reckless, she grabbed the Shapeless’ arm by the wrist.

  The fires that Ada lit burned her hand as she clung onto the Shapeless alien’s wrist. She took out her knife and started cutting. In a last-ditch effort to strike back, or maybe just a dying goodbye screw-you, butter-knife-length spikes shot out from the alien’s wrist, shooting through Ada’s hand. Although she screamed out in pain, Ada kept cutting until the creature’s hand hit the floor.

  Ada let go of the Shapeless alien’s wrist, picked up the cut-off hand, left Jennine Holcomb’s room and pounded on the button to close the door behind her. She tried to ignore the banging on said door from the other side. She tried to ignore the searing pain of her burns. And she tried to ignore the blood loss from her hand, which was only getting worse.

  A little woozy from blood loss and trauma, Ada made her way back to the engineering armory and pressed the cut-off alien hand against the scanner. A series of green lights indicated that it worked. The doors opened up.

  Ada had to take care of her wounds before she went any further. She could feel the nausea rising up inside her, which would be followed by dizziness. She knew what she had to do, but wasn’t sure she could do it herself.

  “What’s taking her so long?” asked Tanisha, trying her best not to throw up again. In her brief time in the stairwell, she’d learned that not looking at all the bodies helped, so she stared intently at the wall.

  “Relax. She’s scouting ahead, making sure everything’s safe for us. Let her take as long as she needs.” Tomas knew all about scouting ahead from his time in the SSFG and how important it really was, especially on foreign terrain.

  “But what if she needs our help?”

  “She’s fine. You’ve seen her. That woman is more than capable of taking care of herself,” Tomas reassured her.

  “I know….but still, what if?”

  Tomas and Tanisha waited for about twenty minutes, until the door to engineering floor flew open. Ada, holding her own wrist tight this time to try and slow her bleeding, fell into the door, which had been opened by her body weight against it.

  “Shit! See! I knew everything wasn’t okay!” Tanisha panicked a little when she saw Ada and the damage she’d sustained.

  “I found the engineering armory,” Ada said in a trembling voice. Then she passed out.

  Twenty-Two

  “Try not to talk,” suggested Tomas.

  Ada looked up at him in confusion.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you passed out,” Tomas said. “I had to hit you with a quick infusion, but that’s not going to be enough if we don’t move fast.”

  He immediately knew what he was going to do to remedy the situation. And it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  Tomas took out his knife and cut the shoulder strap off Ada’s welding torch. He cut the other opposite end so he had just the strap, which he tied tight around the middle of her forearm. Once that blood flow was almost completely stopped, it was time for the truly painful part.

  “I found it,” repeated Ada.

  “Tanisha? Tanisha!” Tomas got Tanisha’s attention. “She’s going to need something to bite down on. You got anything? Anything at all?”

  “Uh…” Tanisha thought really quickly about what she had on her. “Yeah, hold on.” She took off her watch. Definitely obsolete in this day and age, she wore it because her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all worn the same exact timepiece. Why she’d chosen it was for the leather strap, which she folded and put in Ada’s mouth.

  “Private…Ada,” Tomas made sure to make eye contact with Ada. He wanted to make sure she knew what was coming. Tanisha grabbed her arm and tried to keep it steady. “I need to stop the bleeding.” He turned on the welding torch. “This is really gonna hurt.”

  Ada, even in her weakened state, knew exactly what was about to happen. She nodded her head and gritted her teeth.

  “Okay, on the count of three. One—” Tomas quickly touched the flame of the welding torch to the back side of Ada’s injured hand for about three seconds.

  Ada almost blacked out, the pain was so intense. Even with the incredibly thick smell of death in the stairwell, she could smell the skin on her hand burning. When Tanisha flipped her hand over and Tomas took the welding torch flame to her palm, she heard the sound of her skin crackling.

  “We’re all done. You did great.” Tomas helped Ada up to her feet. She was covered in sweat, her body still shaking from the shock she’d just suffered.

  Ada looked at her hand before Tomas wrapped it up in gauze. It was barbecued. She didn’t know if she’d be able to use it again for a while without a stim shot. A mixture of painkiller and artificial adrenaline stimulant, stim shots were used on soldiers on the battlefield.

  “You ready?” asked Tomas as Ada tried to regain her composure.

  “No, but let’s do this anyway,” answered Ada with a fake smile. She was still so exhausted, and Tomas could see it.

  After reaching into a pocket on his pants leg, Tomas took out the same pack of three stim shots every UEF soldier gets issued, no matter what their branch. “Take it.”

  Ada shook her head. She insisted that she’d be fine. The soldier inside her wanted to power through it, but reality often interfered with honor and pride.

  “You’re taking one. You don’t have a choice in the matter.” Tomas took out one of the easy-deploy syringe pens and stabbed Ada in the thigh.

  First came the relief of heavy-duty military-grade pain killers. Ada felt about thirty seconds of pure euphoria. Then came the artificial adrenaline that took away any of the haze from her high and from the blood loss. She was as alert as she’d ever been, and ready to rock.

  “Just point me in the right direction. I’ll lead the way.” Tomas lifted up his rifle and did just that.

  Ada told Tomas where the engineering armory was. They passed the room where the Swedish Marine had burned the Shapeless alien. It looked like it had tried to pry its way out.

  “Jesus, what happened here?” Tanisha looked at the slightly-ajar sliding door. One of the burned Shapeless alien’s hands had broken the seal, but it must’ve died shortly after, because it was lifeless. Smoke bellowed out of the crack.

  Before she went back to get the others, Ada, even in her injured state, had wedged her knife in the door frame of the armory room, preventing the sliding door from closing behind her. She’d gone through hell to get that thing open. She’d be damned if all that work was for nothing.

  There was a mechanical servo-type sound and loud
clicks as the sliding door to the armory room tried to close. Ada, Tomas, and Tanisha all entered what they found to be an alien-killing weapons playground. Lining one wall were modified maintenance flamethrowers used for thawing the ice that notoriously plagued the vast hull plating outside the docking bays. Along the other wall were maintenance welding torches, and cold-cast guns meant to put out electrical fires, which were a serious threat with all the technology aboard.

  “Take what you need, but only what you can carry. Leave everything else behind, starting with the rifles. We don’t need them.” Tomas dropped his rifle and picked up a flamethrower. Tanisha picked up a cold-cast gun. Ada kept her pistol, but traded her welding torch for a newer-looking one with what she suspected was a better range.

  Armed and ready for a fight, the three of them left the engineering armory and level. They reluctantly re-entered the stairwell and made their way back up to the commercial level.

  It was time for a reckoning.

  Twenty-Three

  Walter and Francesca tried to distract themselves from thoughts of their fellow survivors who were risking their lives. So they played holographic poker and other card games, keeping their conversation with each other about the joys of life before the Shapeless on Sanc-33.

  Rollins didn’t want a distraction. Instead he kept his eyes and ears on his HUD, the apartment’s front door, and the hole in the ceiling. Positioned between the two, he had his rifle on his lap, his only hand around the grip, finger on the trigger.

  Where were they? Were they safe? Did they succeed, or were they stuck somewhere? All those thoughts ran through Rollins’ mind with each tick of the clock. Ada and her group had been gone for over an hour at this point.

  Rollins didn’t hear the explosion, but they all felt the shock wave as Sanc-33 shook. He looked out the windows and saw a huge AIC dreadnought being torn apart by that uncanny gigantic liquid metal orb.