Romeo Delta 2

by Taylor Rikkinen

  “What the hell?” Eddie said quietly. “Were you recording that?”

  “Yeah, I’m live streaming a copy of it to the office computer right now,” Romney said quickly. “I’m going to zoom in fully. I think I can make out the insignia on those uniforms.”

  Eddie stared at the blurry pixelated picture and after a few moments he was able to make out the logo. “Definitely Kyva Corp private security, but what’s that other bit?”

  A small display came up where Romney began adjusting digital knobs for sharpness and contrast and soon they both had their answer, but neither one of them was surprised.

  “Search and rescue,” Romney said with confidence.

  “Well, they seem to be doing good on the searching end of things,” Eddie said darkly. “I’m not sure about the rescue part though.”

  “Do you think we should get out of here?” Romney asked.

  “Hell no,” Eddie scoffed. “I’ve got a lot of questions that need answers and if we back out now, we’ll lose this opportunity forever. We may not be able to get back inside if we leave.”

  “So, what do you suggest?” Romney asked.

  “Data collection,” Eddie said shortly. “You said that you can go a couple days without your body. How about we camp out for a few nights and plug you into everything that’s got a working data port? I’m willing to bet that there’s still some power running through this wreckage along with security feeds that Kyva Corp don’t want us looking at.”

  “Yeesh… That sounds pretty ballsy,” Romney said, with concern heavy in his voice. “If we get caught, then we will most certainly be screwed. Did you bring your gun and silencer?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said lowly. “Erin Wilco’s story about little grey men got to me. That last log with her all drugged up and rambling… I don’t know… It sounded a little too real for me and got me thinking.”

  “That there were little grey men?” Romney asked.

  Eddie shook his head. “No. That there was something in the air making them see things that weren’t there. Did you ever hear about the Salem witch trials?”

  Romney rolled his digital eye up at Eddie and it looked quizzical. “Damn Eddie, that’s ancient history. What about them?”

  “Well, did you hear about that one theory where a fungus was infecting the rye they used to make bread that caused effects like LSD? Made them see weird shit and act all scared.”

  “That was one possibility, yes,” Romney agreed. “I take it that you are drawing a comparison here? You think the grey dust that spewed out of Romeo Delta 2 was just that? Some sort of hallucinogenic fungus.”

  “It would explain the mass paranoia before the station fell and why they’re outright purging the possibly infected right now. Maybe there ain’t no cure and Kyva Corp already knows it.” Eddie speculated thoughtfully.

  “Then why does Erin Wilco seem so normal when she is so obviously infected?” Romney inquired.

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Eddie said with a distant look. “Let’s focus on making a camp for now and be sure to send Doctor Singh a copy of that video. I’m sure she would be interested to know about the burn squad and their cure for the infection.”

  “Already on it,” Romney said dutifully. “There is a worker’s camp set up near the outskirts of the Section three ruins. It’s about two clicks from here and should have everything we need to make a base of operations. So long as you don’t run that smarmy mouth of yours, we should be able to integrate relatively undetected.”

  Chapter 17 – Chemical Induced Submission

  Erin had no sense of time and it was becoming apparent that nightmares and reality were bleeding together to the point of being nearly indistinguishable. She was sitting around a small fire with Major Tom and not paying much attention to the things he was saying. It had been a few days since she attempted suicide by way of the needled claws and teeth that the shadowed gremlins possessed, and for some reason she was getting a strong sense of déjà vu. She was scared out of her mind because she knew what the future held, but at the same time her body was dull and numb and the only thing that kept her awake was the fact that she was having phantom pains in her legs again. She wanted nothing more than to bury herself beneath the rags and tattered clothes that she used as a blanket, but Tom was talking and saying things that didn’t seem right or were in some way incorrect to what she knew would be true. Occasionally he would be talking about his plan to send Sky Base 10 down to the planet, while other times his voice would sound all wrong and monotone and start asking her questions that he had never spoken in living memory.

  “Perhaps I should have tried to off myself at some other time,” Erin said against her will. “But the opportunity never arose after that. I don’t wish to mar your efforts Tom. You’ve pulled me out of that mess twice now and given me two chances to live… I have no right to spit in your face and undermine you. In fact, I wasn’t thankful right away, but I’m thankful now that you did.”

  The lights began to flicker in the small fortified base that Major Tom had made and Erin blinked while trying to focus her heavy eyes. Everything was forward and backwards and she wasn’t sure if she should use past or present tense. It was confusing to her, but Tom didn’t seem to mind, so she went on anyways.

  “You gave me hope like you always do and you told me to push forward, like you’re about to again,” Erin said warmly. “Even in the face of annihilation, you’re working on an escape plan. It’s a terrible thing, but if anyone is going to survive this, then it needs to be done and done very soon at that. We need to get down to Dusk, but it was dangerous and I’m scared out of my wits.”

  Major Tom, in his dirty enviro suit and cracked glass mask, finally spoke again in his proper voice. “Will you help me, Erin? I’m scared too and I can’t do this on my own. I need a friend, someone I can trust.”

  Erin nodded with a tear in her eye. “Of course, I’ll help you. We’re outcasts now and we’ve got to stick together. Both of our teams have either been killed by the tyrants or the gremlins, or they have simply turned their backs on us. Even if it’s a long shot, we’ll take it together.”

  Just by looking at him, Erin could tell that he was depressed, but something kept him going and she was interested to find out exactly what it was. She wanted that same spark he had and she absently wondered if it had to do with that picture of the man in his wallet. The one he always pulled out and gazed at in secret whenever he thought that she was asleep. Her heavy eyes blinked as she gazed at him and suddenly he was gone and the fire was nearly extinguished. She had managed to nod off, but something had awoken her. Though she looked around, she could not see anyone or anything. The gremlins knew better than to approach Major Tom’s base as there was a line of their corpses lying just outside as an example to all those who wished to enter. They feared him. There were no glowing eyes in the vents and no whispers of human degradation in the air, so she wondered what had startled her awake.

  She was confused because she was not supposed to be awake; it wasn’t how the future was supposed to be. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep to set things straight, but there was a monotone nagging in the back of her mind that asked her nearly incomprehensible questions that only brought more confusion to her life.

  “How do you know that?” Erin asked with a drug induced tameness. “It hasn’t happened yet. It’s going to, but not yet. We haven’t even talked about it.”

  As Erin spoke, she wondered what the context of her words meant, because she was unsure of what she had been asked by the voice in the back of her head. It was like a small part of her was more aware than she was and it was repressing her in a way. She didn’t like it one bit and fought back in the tug-o-war of dominance until her vision became clear and she found herself grasping Doctor Singh’s collar in a death grip. She had dislocated her thumb again to remove the leather cuff binding her down, but she did not recall ever doing it.

  Doctor Singh was trying to fight her off
and Erin resisted her with every ounce of strength because she was certain that it had something to do with not wanting to go back to Romeo Delta 2. In her mind, if she held onto Doctor Singh, then she couldn’t be sent back to the past and relive that nightmare and watch Major Tom die all over again. She refused and yelled at Doctor Singh and begged her not to stick her with the needle again, but betrayal struck her as she heard the sealed door open and watched Joe rush into the room with armed security guards. He ripped her hand from Doctor Singh’s lab coat and pushed a knee to her chest as three guns were pointed at her head and Joe injected her with something that forced submissiveness upon her.

  As Erin’s eyes glazed over, she glared at Joe the betrayer and growled at him in a low and dangerous tone. “I will not be controlled.”

  Though her claim was bold and full of defiance, Erin quickly found herself becoming subservient once more and sleeping beneath a pile of dirty rags in Sky Base 10 while swiftly approaching something she desperately did not wish to live once more. Her grip on reality slipped into the ether of delusions and she was lost again. Major Tom was shaking her awake and he had flecks of blood on his enviro suit that had not been there before. She wanted to ask, but never found the courage whenever he came back to the makeshift base in such a condition. He had food and weapons and she was starved enough to not care about what moral boundaries he broke in order to acquire them. It didn’t matter. They were both going to die soon.

  The air had become thick and heavy with the smell of smoke and piling garbage. Within three months, the entire infrastructure of Sky Base 10 had fallen apart in a catastrophic way, leaving basic requirements for sustaining life completely out of commission. Major Tom had an atmosphere checker built into his enviro suit and the readings were only getting worse by the hour. With the heating vents and air recyclers out of order, Tom wagered that they only had another week before the station ran out of air and who knew how many air leaks there were on top of that? It came down to a choice between making a mad dash for Sky Command where the main control consoles were, or to take a safer route to get the air recyclers working again to buy themselves more time. They eventually decided that breathable air was needed in case Sky Command was down and the plan to drop the station didn’t work. The only problem was that the most direct route to the air recyclers was to cut directly through Romeo Delta 2 and use the service tunnels from there, if they were still accessible.

  They knew that in order to survive, they would need to walk through the nest of the gremlins and it was why Major Tom had been spending days lurking in the shadows and collecting supplies from unwilling donors. He had even found Erin her own enviro suit, which came with a rebreather and a temperature regulator. Though the suit was confining, it brought liberating comforts that protected her from the horrible truths just mere fractions of an inch away from the glass face shield and helped to calm her nerves in a dark and hostile environment. Once their backpacks were stuffed with supplies and munitions, they synced up their PDAs to track each other if they got separated and ventured into the unknown darkness as the last of the Rangers.

  Chapter 18 – Dying Breath

  Days passed as Erin and Major Tom climbed through the wreckage of shattered districts towards Romeo Delta 2 and along the way they had encountered the worst that society had to offer. For the most part, the people that were still alive after the riots and micro wars were simply trying to sleep away their final days in the face of hopelessness, while others were forming prayer circles and drinking their homemade poison cocktails. Barricades and roadblocks had been set up by scumbags demanding payments for safe passage while leaving dark and ominous routes open with glowing amber eyes staring out from within them. They managed to get through most of the blocks with civility and an exchange of supplies, but twice Major Tom was forced into a violent solution and average civilians with bad attitudes were often barely a match for Special Forces training. Neither time that Tom was forced to kill did he ever draw his gun, and the kills were quick and clean without Erin fully realizing that the men were dead as they lay on the ground.

  The two were constantly chased by stalkers and muggers on several occasions and eventually one guy did get the drop on Major Tom, but luckily Erin was able to get him into a headlock as Tom struggled out of the attacker’s grasp and knock him out with a club to the temple. They found themselves running down dark corridors nearly every hour of every day, but never because of the gremlins. For some strange reason, they were repelled by Major Tom and lurked in wide circles around the two as they broke through the debris. Tom barely noticed them, but when he did he waved his gun at them and they knew what the threat meant well enough to send them fleeing back into the vents.

  By the time they finally made it to the torn opening leading into Romeo Delta 2, Erin began getting cold feet and tried to back away while Tom shined his guiding light into the void and touched the sickly grey dust with his gloved hand. The dust had long since dried up and grinded between his fingers like brittle clay. He slowly leaned into the opening with his flashlight and out of pure fright Erin darted forward and pulled him back.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped at him. “Something could be waiting for us in there.”

  “I doubt it,” Tom said. “Last time I was here it was brimming with life, but look… It’s all dead now. Those things must have been keeping this place alive somehow.”

  Erin shook her head and refused to look. “No, this was a bad idea. We shouldn’t be here. I’ve got this horrible feeling crawling through my chest.”

  “Erin…” Tom said placidly. “Look at this atmosphere readout. We’ve only got another day or two before it hits the red line and we all start choking to death. These suits are good for recycling air, but the filters can’t hold out forever. We need to do this if we want to stand a chance.”

  Erin nodded as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to still her shaking nerves. “You’re right… I can handle this. I just need to take it slow.”

  Tom nodded and gently took Erin’s hand and began leading her through the jagged opening that her team had opened what felt like ages before. She felt as though she was on the verge of a panic attack, but Tom kept her rational and strong as they stepped beyond the unknown. Their meager lights filled the wide-open halls and before them was a tower nearly completely concealed within the darkness. The grey dust covered everything like ash after a fire and coated the walls like thick insulation. Strange and twisted plants that had once grown from every crack and inlet were all dried and withered where they once flourished. The entire district was quiet in a way that reminded Erin of her childhood when walking in a heavy snowfall and completely alone. The two held hands as they slowly turned around with their flashlights in hand and examined every abomination around them. Everything was dead and grey and they soon realized that they were standing in a pit of dry decay.

  They walked in silence with their eyes constantly searching the inky blackness for attackers, but there was no distant scampering of tiny clawed feet anywhere to be heard. Romeo Delta 2 was abandoned and it appeared to be because there was nothing left to eat. The distinct shapes of human bodies lined the walkways and rail lines and Erin watched the corpses closely in case one decided to sit up and move towards them on shambling feet. When Tom approached one of the dust covered bodies, Erin held back and felt her chest tighten as he cautiously leaned down and touched the wretched thing. At Tom’s gentle touch, the grey body slowly collapsed in on itself like unstable sand filling a hollow pit, until all that was left were grey and blackened bones. The dust had fallen and consumed everything organic without remorse and replaced it with its own unnatural atrocities, but when the nutrients were sucked dry and every ounce of flesh was consumed, the ungodly horrors died too and left behind only spores. The hideous little hunched gremlins watching the fresh meat in other parts of the station were born of some unknown entity in Romeo Delta 2 and were nurtured on the blood and tears of screaming victims. The nest was empty, but the cha
os remained a static fixture like a ceaseless cancer.

  The two continued their slow trek through that dark tomb of horrors until they found the service line and a ladder leading to maintenance. It took nearly a whole day to move the length of a few city blocks, but they made it to the main air purifier and discovered the truth of what had happened. A deranged man had barricaded himself in the main control room and turned off the purifier of his own accord. He was infected and delusional and pacing back and forth with insane ramblings.

  “The money men, the money men. It’s always the money men,” the delusional man muttered to himself over and over. “You wanted to work in Romeo Delta 4, where the robots are built, but no, you listened to mom and pursued biology because it was a noble endeavor. Make humanity better, make humanity great. Ha! We made a creature without a purpose or direction. We played god and were consumed by our own creation. Not spriggans or fairies or even a wendigo… No, we made grey little imps that beg for our help. Poor little imps, where is your flesh? You can’t possibly be hiding in sight and waiting to strike.”

  The delusional man reached into a plastic bowl of moldy food and stuffed it into his mouth with a fervent greed as he drew on the walls with his own filth. “The money men, the money men. They don’t care. They sit in an office and stroke each other’s cocks until an agreement is made and the profit margin increases… Six people! Six! Six to take care of the reactor and you are surprised that it explodes? Couldn’t pay for a few extra people to look after the thing? No, no, no, no, no, no, couldn’t do that, could you? You have bonuses to pay yourselves and yachts to race. It’s so obvious, isn’t it? What are 60,327 people to a shiny red interstellar cruiser? Leave us to die, leave us to suffer, ignore their cries, and let them scream. Nitrogen, nitrogen, is what we need. We won’t even know we’re dying. Sleep one and all, for they will never come. You’ve taken all our money, now why not take our souls?”