Clearing Force

by Nathan Hale

“I’ll take the next one” as he stepped back, away from the elevator.

  “No, get on, there won’t be another one. Is there anyone else on this floor?” I inquired.

  In broken English he said “No, senor, I’m the night maintenance man and am all alone” as he stepped into the elevator with us.

  Just in case the elevator decided to make another unscheduled stop, at least a stop unscheduled by us, we put the unarmed man behind us so we could shoot without interference if necessary. As we descended he asked why we weren’t stopping at the first floor.

  JJ answered “Because we don’t want to be one of those monsters breakfast, that’s why!”

  Jose answered “What are those things? That terrible noise knocked me out and I can’t believe I wasn’t shredded by the glass like Jesus was!”

  As the elevator again “Dinged” JJ answered “You were lucky, let’s hope you stay that way. You’re maintenance, is there a tunnel down here?”

  As the doors silently slid open the lights flickered for a few seconds and then remained on. As we got off the elevator, each man searching his quadrant for anything non-human, we had Jose get inside our circle. He answered “Yes, there is a tunnel, but the doors locked on this side, I’ll have to go to the maintenance office to get the key.”

  I briskly answered “Which way, we have keys, so don’t worry about that.”

  He may not have understood what I meant, but he guided us to where we wanted to go. When I saw the large, supposedly unbreakable, security lock I smiled as I removed my pistol from its holster. For years I had been razzed to death about my non-department issued .44 magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, or cannon, as most of my friends referred to it. Finally, after almost eighteen years on the force, I was going to get a chance to use it, on that lock!

  Unbelievably, it took two shots to finally destroy that damn lock! Before we swung the door open I replaced my two empty brass with bullets and re-holstered my pistol. We had Jose swing the door open, into the room, while we aimed our rifles, looking for trouble. Just before he opened the door Jose had flipped the tunnels light switch on so the only thing we saw was a rather large rat temporarily dazzled by the sudden light.

  We all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the empty tunnel. That was when Jose said he needed to go to the maintenance office before we went any further. I looked at him and asked “Why?”

  He looked sheepish and, at first, wouldn’t answer. Finally we pried the reason out of him. He had a shotgun and ammunition in his office, an unlicensed shotgun. Telling SWAT team guys about an unlicensed gun in New York was probably scaring him almost as much as the monsters. JJ went with him to retrieve his weapon, while inquiring if he had any others. This morning the rules had changed forever.

  They weren’t gone long, but before they got back the entire building shook from one of the huge monsters ramming into it. They were almost to us when the building reverberated from the beasts second ramming into the structure and we could hear the sounds of heavy objects impacting the floor above us. I was the last man into the tunnel and, after pulling the door shut behind me, I began chasing after my friends.

  Behind us I could faintly hear the monster when it rammed that building a third time. The tunnel passed underneath the street and was more than wide enough to move either people or freight between buildings safely. The island was riddled with tunnels like this, ostensibly for that purpose, but all too often they had originally been used for somewhat more nefarious purposes.

  I caught up to my men just before we reached the end of this tunnel blocked by a large steel door, probably locked on the opposite side. Peters and Odeler began attempting to break the door down with their shoulders when I asked if they had tried the obvious, the door knob. Peters grabbed the door knob and turned, the heavy door began opening into the new buildings basement when I quietly said “Wait, we don’t know if anything’s in there.”

  I heard Jose jack a shell into his shotgun while I slung my rifle over my shoulder and removed my revolver. With two heavy caliber rifles ready to take on the larger creatures, while Jose’s shotgun and my revolver were ready to handle the smaller ones; we were as ready as possible. Peters cracked the door a little and quietly said “The lights on, I’ll throw it open on three. One, two, three” and he threw the door wide open.

  The entry door banged off the basement wall and bounced back slightly while Peters moved out of our way, exposing two surprised little monsters eating a very dead woman less than ten feet from us. Their heads popped out of the woman’s abdomen and turned towards us. With a roar Jose’s shotgun went off and one of the creature’s heads exploded! The bucket of chlorine laden water the woman had been cleaning the floor with began to leak as several of his pellets punched through the plastic bucket on wheels she had been using to clean the floor when the monsters had surprised her.

  Its companion turned toward us as I aimed and shot my revolver. My “cannon” barked and my bullet hit the thing where its neck attached to its feathered body. With a squawk it hurled backward and died while its purplish black blood began to drip onto the floor where it appeared to seethe and pop when it touched the still wet tile.

  Despite the risk, JJ and Odeler ran across the basement and slammed the wedged open stairway door shut only moments before several thuds hit the door. We looked around the basement area just in case another of the small monsters was hiding somewhere. They weren’t.

  While we were searching the basement for more monsters, Jose was searching for an entrance to another tunnel. He started to yell something when a loud rumble came from the tunnel we had just left because the oversized monster had collapsed that building.

  Jose shouted “Give me a hand please, there is a la puerta here!”

  “A what?” I asked.

  Frustrated Jose said “A la puerta, senor, uhh, a door!”

  With a smile on my face I yelled “He’s found it, let’s get moving. Good work Jose, do you have any idea where it goes?”

  He shook his head “no” as he moved a bunch of empty boxes from in front of the door. The door didn’t even have a padlock on it.

  There wasn’t a light switch on the wall this time, so, if there were lights at all, the switch was inside the tunnel. We prepared to open the door the same way we had last time, two with their rifles ready to fire, the other two with the shotgun and my pistol. Peters was in control of the door, which opened into the basement. Because it would be dark in the tunnel we all turned our flashlights on, some light was far better than no light.

  Once again, Peters gave us his three count and swung the door open. Hurriedly we moved our flashlights around while searching for targets, while one of us found and flipped on the light switch. The light erupted down the tunnel showing that it was empty, except for carefully stacked boxes along one side. They must have been using the tunnel for storage and whoever had been in charge of maintenance must have been in love with chlorine because there must have been twenty or thirty boxes full of bleach carefully stored just inside the doorway. Most of the rest of the boxes were marked “toilet paper” and “tampons”. As JJ took point I joked that maintenance was storing enough toilet paper to supply the city only to have Jose become somewhat angry and tell us that a large hotel like this one used tons of toilet paper.

  Once again, I was the last person into the tunnel, so, as I began closing the door behind me, I heard the elevator across the room “Ding” its arrival warning. I waited for the doors to slide open, hoping that some people were trying to escape through the basement, like us.

  When the doors slid open it wasn’t people that leapt off the elevator but three of the second wave of monsters. Without hesitation I slammed the door shut behind me as I saw one of the monsters running directly towards me. As I ran I yelled “Three of the large ones just got off the elevator!”

  Behind me I heard a heavy thud as the beast attempted to ram its way through the closed door, while shrieking a loud noise. When that didn’t work, I heard it begin to
use its claws on the thin skinned metal door. I glanced backward and saw the first of the monsters force its way through the shredded door into the tunnel behind us so I yelled, as I armed my rifle “They’re through, I saw three of them come out of the elevator, remember to shoot for theirs heads.” I dropped to my knee and chose as my target the first one through the door.

  Even though I had hearing protection in my ears, the roar of Jose’s shotgun, deafened me. He had whirled around and fired with the muzzle of his shotgun just slightly behind, and to the right of, my head so the full blast of sound hit me like a club. Unfortunately, the bird shot he was using, only bounced off the creatures feathers shredding a bunch of the boxes of liquid chlorine the maintenance crews had used and releasing a heavy concentration of chlorine gas into the tunnel.

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts and vision as I swore softly and sensed, more than heard, Jose jack another round into his shotgun. I did hear him screaming in fear when Odeler shouted “My shot” and, a second later, his rifle barked, temporarily destroying the hearing in my other ear. If we lived through this I fully intended to upgrade my hearing protection and to avoid shooting big guns inside small brick tunnels ever again!

  But the beast no longer cared. Odeler’s .50 caliber bullet,