"So what do we? Just sit here?"
"You're the one who madly rushed in there. I warned you." Static swallowed his words. "... The ladders."
"Repeat."
"You're best bet will be the access ladders between levels. You'll need to move straight ahead, through the holding chamber, and then another fifty yards and on your right there will be a grill in the floor. Cut the locks and you can descend to the next level."
"Two more levels to descend? That's where we saw them.
"Good luck."
Engstrom relayed the instructions to the rest of her team.
Scully was the first down the ladder. Engstrom stood over the ladder grill, gun angled down. It was pointless to do so. If Scully got into trouble, Engstrom would never be able to safely shoot past her. She'd more likely hit her comrade.
Engstrom heard the lock at the bottom of the ladder snap open. Through her ear piece, she heard the steady breathing of Scully, the scuttling of feet, mumbled words disappearing in the static. The walls of this barge ate up their communications system. It was designed to keep prisoners contained.
"All clear," whispered Scully. "Bring down some company."
Engstrom turned to her men. "Two teams. My team down the hole. Blue team wait here. When I give the word, you follow. Leave two topside to protect our exit."
Engstrom looped her rifle over her back, grabbed the edges of the ladder, and slid down the twenty feet, squeezing her feet and hands to slow her descent. Then she was free of the ladder. She hit the ground hard and rolled off to her left, in a single motion landing in a crouch and swinging her rifle back into her arms.
Scully squatted by the wall, rifle nestled in her arms, scanning the halls. Within moments, the rest of the team descended the ladder and fanned out with precision, each to the set location along an arc, just liked they had practiced so many times.
Engstrom smiled behind her face shield. She had her team at her back. They could walk into chaos and their discipline would pull them past the fear, give them the tactical advantage, and lay order on top of a disintegrating situation.
"All right, boys. You know the drill. Blue team and gold team. One more ladder down and we extract the target."
Scully, leader of the blue team, cursed when she got to the ladder. "Someone's already cut the lock open."
Engstrom separated from the gold team. She squatted next to Scully and lifted the lock. Something had hit it hard. Gouges had been knocked into the metal ladder rungs as well.
"Teams scan the perimeter. I think our targets are on this level."
Her men fanned out. Scully waved Engstrom over to her. "Look at this."
A long trail of blood, wider than a man, smeared down the hallway from one of the pods and into the depths of the prison block.
"Why would they kill one of their own?"
"Eyes," she barked through the comms line. "Eyes peeled. We may have some hostiles to contend with."
She signaled for the team to gather to her and they moved quickly as a unit down the corridor, leaving the emergency lights by the ladder and into the flickering darkness further down the hall.
With each step, their shadows stretched and bent, forming grotesque shapes, a singular beast with multiple undulating appendages sliding along a trail of blood.
Roy's voice blasted through Engstrom's earpiece. "Sarge, you might want to think about coming back up. Kronos is pissed. He's sending down another squad. Said if you are not out of there by the time they arrive, he is going to seal you up in there. Weld the doors shut. Time to turn around."
"Stall them. Buy us time. I'm not going to leave men down here."
"There's something ahead," whispered Harrison. The boy's face had lost all color and the gun visibly trembled in his hands.
Engstrom shot a fist in the air and her team froze. "What are you seeing?"
"I've pulled the infrared up on the cameras. Too dark to see otherwise. But I saw something moving ahead of you."
"Where is it?" asked Engstrom.
"I don't know. Ahead of you," said Harrison.
"I can't see it anymore. The cameras are acting up. But it was up ahead on the left."
"How far?"
"Ten, twenty yards. I'm no good at this."
"Well, get good, because I need eyes from above."
"I'm losing the feed. I'm..." Roy's voice vanished into a wave of static. Then the feedback screeched so loudly that Engstrom had to kill Roy's incoming signal.
"Fifteen yards left. Eyes on. Shoot at will."
The team split again into the gold and blue teams, Engstrom's gold team tracking to the left, Scully's team heading to the far side of the corridor.
Engstrom strained to see ahead. The pods here were shattered. Several of the doors hung half open. The trail of blood led here as well. But it blended with the stasis fluid and she could no longer tell where it started and where it ended.
She inched forward, gun pointed forward, cutting angles, trying to pick up any sign of motion. Was that something there behind one of the doors?
Her breath rose. A drop of sweat ran down the side of her brow. Her stomach tightened. She forced himself into steady breaths. Slow and steady. Control the breath. Control the reaction. Control the situation.
Order over chaos.
They were close now. Less than five yards away. Someone was there. Standing between the doors. Unmoving.
Engstrom lifted a fist. Her team stopped. But she kept moving forward.
Engstrom's feet scraped over the broken glass. The sound was magnified. It sounded like giant metal doors scraping against each other. Her own breath roared like a wind tearing through the mountains and her heart beat was giant drumming, beating so hard that the entire world shook.
She fought to keep her hands steady, but the tip of her gun quivered, the tiniest bit, causing the beam projecting from it to quiver. She saw her only reflection, a helmeted, armored soldier creeping towards itself, in the pod glass. Her reflection growing in size.
She smelled something foul. The same sickening stench that she had smelled when they had boarded the research vessel and removed the eggs, the stink that came from the ochre fluid leaking out of the eggs. She choked back a sudden rush of saliva in her mouth.
She wanted to turn back. She wanted to send Scully first. She was the scout after all, their tunnel rat, the point who walked into death without batting an eye, but Engstrom knew she could not. She would not send her comrade into a trap. Better to have them at her back. Better for them to be emboldened, and if need be, enraged. If they needed to shoot, she wanted them to fill the wall with holes just so whatever it was would not come for them as well.
The figure lurked behind the glass. She could not make out the features, but she saw the pale flesh of a face, limbs hanging at its side.
Why hadn't it moved?
She touched the tip of gun against the edge of the pod door and flicked it open. Her light fell on a face, a face twisted in horrible agony, but still a human face, mouth agape, eyes bulging, streams of congealed blood seeping from nose and ears. And he had been gutted too. His stomach torn open, his insides ripped out, just like the pilots on the ships.
"Something's in here with us," hissed Engstrom wheeling back around to her men. "Eyes peeled. Shoot to kill. No hesitation."
Scully was alongside her. The woman's breath was ragged. Words formed at her lips and it took her a moment before she could speak. Engstrom had never seen Scully's lips tremble before.
"Sarge, we should turn back. This mission's gone to shit. All for saving those prisoners, but this is a whole new level and we don't know the enemy were facing. We should retreat and regroup with the back ups. Put our heads together with Kronos and figure out a new plan of attack."
Engstrom glanced down the dark hallway, back at the ladder leading deeper into the barge, and her men fanned behind her, and on the opposite wall. Scully was right. They didn't know what they were facing.
Engstrom bit her lip. She wo
uld be leaving the prisoners behind. But it would only be for a little while. They could come back in with spotlights, heavier weapons, slowly cover the entire barge with enough men. She didn't have enough men to get the job done right.
She circled her finger. "Gather up. Slow retreat back to the entrance."
She turned around and set off at a slow jog. She was halfway back to the ladder when a blood-curdling shriek split the air. Two of the members of the blue team seemed to be running backwards at an incredibly quick pace, away from the ladder.
They screamed.
"What the...?"
"Watch your backs."
"To the ladder."
Engstrom could not take her eyes off the men retreating into the shadows. Men running backwards at an impossibly quick pace. Something dark hung between them. Then they passed beneath a flickering light and Engstrom glimpsed a nightmare. A glistening chitinous head, a circle of rotating teeth, and the men desperately pulling at a talon that ripped through each of their bellies.
"No, no, no."
"Shoot it."
"Can't get a clean shot."
"Defensive position by the ladder. Hold positions."
The team gathered by the ladder, guns poking in a semicircle. Curses filled the air. Engstrom sent men immediately up the ladder. Get back to Level One and retreat to the exit.
She stared down the hall. The screaming of her men reached a higher pitch, and then silence descended in the hall, the echoes of the men fading to nothing. She heard distant steam seeping, the clanging of metal, the crackle of electrical wires.
She should go after them. Scully tugged her back. Four of them remained below. Engstrom, Scully, Harrison, and Li.
"You first, Sarge."
Engstrom had just clutched the first rung of the ladder when something sodden fell down the ladder and clobbered her. Engstrom was knocked from the ladder and rolled away. It was the torso of the last man to climb the ladder. He had been chopped in half, just above his hips.
"Run," said Engstrom. "Run!"
Chapter Thirteen
SNAKE COULD NOT hear anything. Not clearly at least. He heard sounds. The curses slipping out of the mouths of his companions. The pounding of their feet on the floor of the prison block. His own commands for them to turn left, go through the doorway, and then head right at the next intersection of the Acheron.
He heard it all, but all of the sound was swallowed as if the sounds were thoughts rather than sounds.
Meanwhile he and the others ran. With what they had seen, they could only run. There was no other choice.
He should have heard everything clearly, and maybe he did.
But one thing he did not hear, the one thing that he desperately needed to hear, and that was the sound of the beast, the creature, the shadow that came for them.
He tried to imagine what it might have been: the shadow, the beast that gutted the prisoner, the demon from which they ran. But he could not fathom what it was in the halls of the prison barge. All he could understand, all that was clear, was that he had to run.
He led them through the halls of the Acheron, his misfit band of criminals, men and women who a few short minutes ago thought that they had escaped death, and freed themselves from their prison cells, and had a chance to get to the Phaethon and escape the miserable injustice that had shackled them and destined them for a slow death on the mines of Telemachus-4.
In a few moments, their entire fortunes had changed. Death retreated and life advanced. But all that reversed itself.
Now running in the halls of the Acheron, away from the shadow, he thought it was all one big sick joke. Death teased them. Death gave them a glimpse of hope, and just as quickly death tore it away from them.
Fifi and Crunch were the tightest to his shoulders. Behind them, the others trailed, men not used to running as hard as his crew was, criminals who had become soft in the execution of their own crimes. He wanted to be sympathetic. He wanted to slow down and bring them all along but he also wanted to survive.
They reached the end of a hall and large steel door. "Pull it open," he screamed to Crunch.
The world of sound came back to him. The desperate panting of the men around him. The curses slipping out of Fifi's mouth like a spontaneous street poet. Hatt talking into his hand, the only word recognizable being sin, which he hissed and repeated over and over.
The door wheel would not turn.
"This has to be more than coincidence. This has to be something more," Big T said. "This is all one big game to them and they are setting us up. Reeling us in for the big kill. Like the entertainments of the gladiators."
Thor jumped away from the others. "This is a dead end. We need to turn back. It'll catch us here. You saw what it did to that guard. We can't be cornered."
Before any of the others could say anything, he was off running. His bare feet slapping loudly against the ground.
"He's going back the way we came," cursed Big T. "Damned fool taking us right back to the beast."
Hatt cackled.
Big T swiped but the little man was out of reach. He had learned quickly to always have at least one other person between himself and the giant.
"We can't leave him behind," said Loki. "He's my brother. We stick together."
He too took to running, albeit slower, stopping and turning to see what the others did.
They looked to Snake. He grunted, scowling. "Safer with numbers. We go after him alright, but once we find him, Loki, you get a good hold of him and don't let him go running off again without the rest of us. He's headed the wrong damned way. We need to find an exit."
The group dashed after Loki rounding the corner to look for his brother. He was just ahead in the hallway, and then rounded another corner. "Thor!" he yelled. "Stop! Wait for us. We'll be safe."
Half a minute later, they caught up with Thor.
They run back to the exact spot where they had first seen the shadow.
"Oh, god, really," said Fifi. "Right back where we started."
"I got confused," said Thor. "All the turns. The place looks the same everywhere we go. I can't figure out which way is out."
"Back here certainly isn't," barked Snake. "You run off again and you're on your own. Can't risk the rest of our lives with your stupidity. You got that?"
He nodded, barely lifting his gaze from their feet. "We were cornered. I can't stand being caught in tight spaces. I can't."
Loki grabbed him by the arm. "Stick with me. Close. I'll take care of you. We'll get out of here. We'll put all of this behind us. Go back home and see grandpa again. Spend our days by the lake. Put all of this behind us."
Thor lifted his face, a few tears on his cheeks. "I won't leave you again."
"Enough with the tearful reunion," snapped Snake. "Exactly what kind of hardened criminals were you two? Crying all the time. God, you guys are saps."
"I'm sorry. I won't run off again," said Thor.
"You do and we leave you. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir." He wiped away the last of his tears with the back of wrist and sniffled loudly.
"Now's let's find us a place to set up our defenses. Gotta protect our backs."
Snake led them back down the hallway away from the holding chamber where the prisoner had been brutally murdered. He glanced over his shoulder. He could see that doorway, the red spilling out. They needed to move fast.
"These fools are going to get us killed," whispered Fifi as they crept along the dark corridor. "We should ditch them first chance we get."
"Safety in numbers, girl. Plus I don't want to leave anyone behind to these monsters in here. We gotta figure a way out."
"Well, push comes to shove, I'm pushing them out of my way. Not going down for some fool. Come to far along for that kind of madness."
They were gliding along a row of opened pods, weaving their way through the bodies when the shadow emerged from the intersection ahead.
Fifi issued a string of curses. Crunch stepped in front of h
er.
"Hide," warned Snake.
They had nowhere to go. It was too far to run back to the last corner. Snake tried to determine if they could outrun the creature to the holding chamber and slam the door behind them but he doubted it. God only knew how fast the creature moved.
So he did the only thing he could think of. He pressed himself back into one of the stasis pods and eased the shattered door shut behind him. The others followed suit, except for Big T who instead fell to the ground with the corpses.
Snake did not feel safe inside the pod. If anything he felt less safe. He was trapped. He had nowhere to retreat. The walls of the pod pressed against him, making him feel claustrophobic. A shiver ran up his spine and he had to fight back the urge to squeal.
But worse was that the pod offered no real protection. The glass was shattered, a large gaping hole, and he could feel the warm air of the prison barge surging through the opening.
Even worse, he heard the shuffling of the creature, its limbs scratching against the floor, a chittering rising as it got closer.
He glanced left and right. The others were also in the pods. Fifi and Crunch to his right, the others to his left, closer to the creature.
A cold sweat broke across his brow. Had he just made the wrong decision? Had he just trapped them? Taken away any chance of retreat? Delivered themselves on a silver platter to whatever it was that hunted them?
The scraping and chittering grew louder. Snake froze, squinting with his one good eye so that it could have looked like he was still in sleep or dead. A foul smell rose in his nostrils, the same foul smell that he had smelled in the cockpit of the Galileo.
The murderous creature was on them.
Outside the stasis pod, the lights in the hall flickered. He saw the pods across from him, still sealed, the prisoners floating in death, suspended in the pale light.
Then the lights died and total darkness.
The lights turned on again.
Big T, lying among the bodies, scratched his nose. Fool!
Darkness again.
Alien Infestation Page 7
