by G J Ogden
“Where’s the third one!?” shouted Ethan, spinning around, but the monster was nowhere to be seen. Zoie still lay dazed on the floor after Ethan’s earlier tackle, and he darted for her bolt-thrower.
“I don’t see it!” called Yuna.
“Watch the shadows!” Ethan shouted as he staggered beside Yuna, unable to put his full weight onto his leg.
The next few seconds felt like years as both jerked from side to side, seeing shapes and flickering shadows in every corner, and then Ethan found the black eyes again, staring at him from behind the commemorative sculpture. This was a simple column built up from the coarsely-hewn pieces of rock that were among the first stones to be laid at Forest Gate, decades earlier. It was a symbol of hope and renewal that represented the struggle and achievement of the settlers who had first re-built after the Fall. Yuna saw it too and fired, but her target anticipated the attack and ducked away.
“Split up, you take the far side!” Ethan called out, but Yuna had not checked her footing and she slipped on the thick, red-black blood on the floor. She stumbled on, trying desperately to keep her balance, but the blood on the soles of her boots was like oil, and she fell forward, the bolt-thrower slipping from her grasp as she attempted to cushion her fall.
Yet, the creature did not leap from its hiding place to strike at Yuna, as Ethan had expected it to do. Instead, it moved to keep the stone obelisk between itself and Ethan and, as they circled in unison, a streak of light breaking through the window slats illuminated its face and Ethan again froze, this time not in terror, but in astonishment. The face was unmistakably that of one of the maddened; its cheeks bowed inward, pressing on the jaw and revealing the outline of blackened, decaying teeth, while what was left of its hair lay thickly on an elongated skull, like rough cotton fibers. Its eyes, black and soulless, were the same eyes he remembered from the creature he had faced on the GPS space station, the first time he had ever been as close to one of those things as he was at that moment. But it was not the creature’s face that made him freeze. Though most of its body was covered in dirtied and tattered clothing, there was a thicker, inflexible covering across its shoulder and partly across its chest. Although it was cracked and dented and scraped, it had a recognizable blue sheen, and an unmistakable arrangement of three scuffed, but still legible letters - U. E. C.
“Kurren?” Ethan said out loud, as if speaking the name would somehow help this all make sense. It did not respond to the name, but continued to glare at Ethan. If it recognized him, there was no way to know since its dead eyes gave nothing away.
“Ethan, shoot it!” cried Yuna, scrambling to retrieve her bolt-thrower. “What are you waiting for!?”
The cry from Yuna again roused Ethan, and he raised the weapon and fired, sending bolts thudding into the rock, shattering some of the blocks and showering the creature with dust. Yuna stretched out and pulled her bolt-thrower towards her with the tips of her fingers, then aimed and fired. The first two bolts flew wide, but the third struck its shoulder and embedded into what remained of the UEC combat armor. The creature roared, and leapt towards Yuna, but Ethan fired again, hitting the remnants of the chest armor, which deflected the bolt harmlessly away. It glared at Ethan, then Yuna, and then spun around and sprang towards the slatted window, bursting though it to the outside with such speed that neither Ethan nor Yuna could get another shot at it.
Ethan looked at Yuna and then his muscles tightened. “Summer!”
They ran and bustled through the door onto the deck outside the council chamber, but the maddened shell of General Kurren was already charging towards Summer, who was still sat penitently in the middle of the settlement square, oblivious to the action.
“Summer!” Ethan shouted at the top of his voice, before running towards her, but he stumbled on the narrow stairs and fell heavily on to the dirt. Winded, he got up, leaving the bolt-thrower behind, and tried again to reach Summer, but his breath and legs gave way. Yuna fired at the creature from the veranda, but the bolt-thrower was inaccurate at range, and the bolts flew wide. They could do nothing but watch and hope that Summer could react in time.
Fortunately, she did. On hearing Ethan’s cry, Summer had twisted her body and seen the attacker racing towards her. Adrenalin flushed into her veins and her warrior’s instincts kicked in; instincts honed from a lifetime of hunting and fighting, and never accepting defeat. She picked up the bow that she had left on the dirt beside her and drew an arrow, letting it fly in a near instant. It struck the creature in the chest, but still on it came. Kneeling, she drew another arrow and loosed it, striking the abdomen, and another, which thudded into the chest, piercing the bent and fractured blue chest plate, but still the creature did not fall. There was no time to fire again, before it had launched itself at Summer with the force of an avalanche. But the ranger was more agile, managing to dodge at the last moment as her attacker’s outstretched hand raked along the back of her coat. She rolled and recovered while the creature tumbled and skidded to a halt, carving a trench through the dirt. Summer pressed her advantage, striding over to it as it scrambled to its feet and lashing it across the head with her bow. The strike stunned it, but only for a second, before it swung a claw-like hand in response. Summer ducked under it and rolled to the side, lashing the creature again with the bow, but it was like trying to crack a rock with a pebble. The attacker grabbed the bow and heaved it close, pulling Summer along with it so that their faces were only inches apart. She drew away, disgusted by the its foul stench, but then the letters on the shoulder plate caught her attention. They were splattered with the black-red blood drawn out by the arrow she had embedded though the metal, but she would never forget that symbol for as long as she lived. Then through the cracked blue chest plate, sewn into the fabric of its blackened and torn blue shirt, she saw a single word: KURREN. Summer looked back into the maddened General’s black eyes and her entire body exploded with fury.
Summer released her hold on the bow, letting it whip back into her assailant’s face, and then swept its feet from under it. It had barely hit the dirt before Summer had drawn an arrow from her quiver and dropped on top of it, driving the shaft through the creature’s black eye and deep into its brain. It flailed wildly, striking Summer to the back and side, and she felt a rib crack, but still she pushed harder, sinking the arrow deeper until finally the maddened body of what was once General James Kurren lay still. Summer stood over it and looked down as the pool of thick, black-red blood expanded around its head, seeping into the coarse brown soil in almost the exact same place where Elijah and Summer had died. She closed her eyes and saw their faces again, dead in the dirt at her feet, and let out a howl of pure anguish and rage that could easily have been mistaken for the inhuman roar of the maddened.
“Summer?”
She opened her eyes and saw Ethan, stooped over, breathless and holding his knee. Moments later, Yuna skidded to a stop beside him. Both of them looked at her and then down at the body at her feet, framed by blood, the fragments of its armor glinting blue in the sunlight.
“Are you hurt?” panted Ethan.
Summer was holding her cracked rib, but shook her head; the pain she felt was not physical. “This was Kurren. Why would he come back here?”
Ethan’s eyes flicked to the body and then back to Summer. “Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t General Kurren, at least not any longer.”
“Perhaps part of it remembered this settlement?” Yuna suggested. “It was the last place he saw, before the sub-surface city, after all.”
Ethan remembered how the creature had acted differently to the others they had encountered in the council chamber. “The Maddening took him quickly. Maybe there was still something of him in there.”
“I should have killed him the first time he stood here,” said Summer, still angry.
“Then you’d be just as dead as the others,” said Ethan.
Summer locked eyes with him. “Maybe I deserved to die here. Did you ever consider that?”
“But you didn’t, and now you owe it to Elijah and Katie to live,” snapped Ethan, tired of hearing the same rhetoric. “I’m not expecting you to forget, I’m just asking you to fight and to be the warrior you just showed us you are. I’ve never seen anyone fight one of those things and live, but you just did. You can beat anything, Summer, you just have to want to.”
The wind picked up again, swirling the dust between them and carrying the sound of the huge metal gate sliding back into its mounts. Forest Gate was secure once again. Ethan glanced back at the council chamber and saw Zoie coming down the steps, a little gingerly, but otherwise seemingly unhurt, and then peered back into Summer’s eyes, expectantly awaiting her response.
“What I want died here in this dirt, Ethan,” said Summer. “I’ll fight, and I’ll kill as many of those things as I can before I fall, but only because it’s all I have left.”
Ethan shook his head; he wanted to shake the stubbornness out of her, but unlike what remained of Kurren’s blue armor, Summer’s defenses were yet to show any cracks.
The sound of the crawler’s engine drew their attention and Ethan turned to see it approaching from the far edge of the settlement. It stopped a few meters away and Tyler stepped out. He saw the dead body and rocked back against the crawler’s metal chassis.
“Is that…?” he said, anxiously.
“Yes, and it’s dead, so don’t worry,” said Yuna. Then she frowned, wondering what had prompted the engineer to step out of his protective cocoon. “What’s up Tyler? It’s not like you to venture outside.”
“You and Zoie need to decontaminate,” said Tyler, “and take your medication. You shouldn’t stay outside in this toxic atmosphere for much longer. The CAEAs can finish without us. I’ve set up a generator by the far wall, so they will all be able to recharge periodically.”
“Thanks, Tyler,” said Yuna, feeling guilty for being snarky with the engineer.
Zoie arrived and looked at the body. “Who got it?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Yuna, and then Zoie noticed the arrow sunk into the creature’s skull, and looked over at Summer with a mix of fear and reverence.
“Come on, we need to decontaminate.” Yuna placed a hand on her sister’s back and warmly ushered her towards the crawler. She noticed Summer was still cradling her side.
“Hey, Summer, let me check out your injury. I’ve got some of Gaia’s medical gear in the crawler; I’m no expert, but I can at least do something for the pain.”
Summer didn’t answer; she appeared distant, and then she stumbled back, glassy eyed.
“Summer?” said Ethan, but again there was no response. Then she held her chest and bent double, falling to her knees.
Ethan and Yuna both ran to her, and caught her before the strength in her legs failed.
“Summer!” Ethan called out, but she had already slipped into unconsciousness.
“Get her inside the crawler!” urged Yuna.
Zoie and Tyler joined them and together they carried Summer into the crawler and lay her down along the back seat. The door hissed shut and the atmosphere inside the vehicle began to purify. Ethan squeezed into the front with Zoie, to allow Yuna the space to work. Taking the medical kit from the stow above her head, she opened it and attached probes to Summer’s skin. With another device, she pricked her finger and allowed the blood to soak into a pad. A panel inside the lid of the medical kit flashed into life and began to display data from the sensors on Summer’s body.
“Is she hurt?” said Ethan, impatiently. “Can you help her?”
Yuna shook her head. “Her injuries aren’t bad. They aren’t why she collapsed.”
“Then why?” asked Ethan, desperately.
Yuna scrolled through the data on the panel and then initiated another round of analysis, before placing a capsule into an injector and pressing it to Summer’s neck. It hissed and the capsule liquefied into her blood stream.
“Yuna, what the hell is going on!?” Ethan yelled.
Yuna twisted around in the cramped space of the rear compartment and looked at Ethan. “We need to fetch Gaia, I only know the basics.”
“But you know something?” said Ethan, reading between the lines. “Whatever you know, you have to tell me.”
Yuna drew a hand through her hair and sighed. “I think she’s suffering from the effects of genetic damage.”
“Genetic damage?” exclaimed Ethan, and then a wave of nausea swept over him. “You mean the Maddening!?”
“It’s very early stages, Ethan, and I need Gaia to check her out to be sure.” Yuna wished she had broken the news with more tact. She lacked the bedside manner of her mother. “I’ve given her a shot of our anti-radiation meds. I don’t know if it will help, but my guess is her exposure to the toxic dust cloud after the space station fragment hit may have something to do with it.”
“We should take her back to the complex,” said Ethan.
“No, with the city destroyed and the lower engineering entrance sealed, we’d never get her up the mountainside,” said Zoie. “We can send the GARD; it won’t need to make it all the way there before it can transmit a message to the complex. Gaia can travel here in one of the other transports.”
Tyler nodded. “I’ll configure the GARD now.”
“I suggest we move Summer inside, somewhere familiar and comfortable,” suggested Yuna. The meds will protect her until Gaia gets here and can check her out properly.”
“We can take her to my hut,” said Ethan.
“Don’t worry, Ethan, she’ll be okay,” Yuna added. “My mother is working on a new serum, using your blood as the key. We have time.”
Ethan nodded and managed a weak smile, but inside he was ready to fall apart. He’d lost Katie and Elijah; he couldn’t lose Summer too. He grabbed her hand and pressed it to his face. “Fight, damn you. Fight…”
Chapter 6
The walk across the quarantined sector on the UEC base felt as frightening and unsettling to Page as any of his experiences while planetside. In many ways the quarantined sector mirrored the desolate locations he had seen on the planet. The silent, empty streets, with their smashed and broken buildings and foreboding shadowy corners reminded him of the spaceport outside of the megacity known as Green Haven, and the vacant city built deep inside the flat-topped mountain. In both of those locations he had been forced to fight the corrupted creatures the planetsiders called the maddened, and though he knew that the quarantined sector was free of that particular threat, every flickering shadow and dark corner seemed to possess their aura.
They reached the boundary, where Maria had indicated that they could cross through into the adjacent sector. As expected, the main inter-sector transitway had been sealed as part of the quarantine protocol, and Page’s heart sank as he saw Maria moving towards a nearby service hatchway.
“Are you sure we can’t get through any other way?” said Page, sounding a little like a whiny teenager.
Maria glanced at him and subtly raised her eyebrows, but then continued to undo the screws that held the service hatch in place.
“I’ll take that as a no…” muttered Page, glumly.
Page realized that the hatch led into the void, a sort of no-man’s land that existed between the habitable domes. It was a strange world between worlds that was just as cold and desolate as the quarantined zone. Page did not welcome the prospect of venturing inside any more than he wanted to stay in the quarantined zone, but it seemed there was no other option.
Maria undid the final screw, placed all four into her pocket, and pulled the panel away from the wall. There was a sudden release of cold, musty-tasting air. Maria scrunched up her nose. “Ugh, it smells like wet socks in there.”
“You’re not making this any better for me, you know,” said Page, kneeling beside her and peering into the dark crawlspace, which was just as cramped and uninviting as the first one they had squeezed through. “Who are we trying to find on the other side of this, anyway?”
>
“We’re looking for Ashley Jansen”
“The civilian flight instructor?” said Page. Though he had never trained as a pilot, the name still rang a bell.
“Yes, though she was a commander in the Flying Corp before that, and a great pilot too, before she hung up her helmet. She trained me as a cadet, and more recently my duties used to include teaching new recruits basic flying skills, while Ashley focused on flight theory, technical training and flying techniques for the more advanced trainees. So, we’d see each other frequently and became friends.”
“Why do you think she’ll help us?” asked Page.
Maria gestured towards the opening. “Less talking, more crawling, soldier.”
Page’s face scrunched up, as if he’d just bitten into something sour, but he obliged and headed in first.
“Ashley was a strong supporter of the peace process,” Maria continued, following Page into the crawlspace. Then she shuffled around one hundred and eighty degrees and pulled the hatchway panel back into place. Taking two of the screws from her pocket, she screwed them back at opposite corners.
