by Jake Bible
“What about Carlos?” Ingrid asked.
Ballantine gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
“I swear. You two need to make up,” Ingrid said. “You’re nicer to me than to him and I betrayed you all.” She blushed at the admission and started to speak, but Lake held up his hand.
“We’ve all yelled at you for that enough,” Lake said. “Frankly, the subject bores the shit out of me. Go grab some shut eye.”
Ingrid smiled and nodded, gathered up her tools, and hurried from the bridge. Lake watched her go then turned back to Ballantine.
“Why do you bust Carlos’s balls so much?” Lake asked. “Every time I think you two are getting along, you get grumbly with him. The guy is an ass, but so are most of us on this ship.”
“Would you prefer we hugged it out, Captain?” Ballantine asked. “That we held hands and sang happy campfire songs instead?”
“Fuck and you, Ballantine,” Lake said and slipped back into the bridge. He walked over to a thermos, popped it open, and poured fresh coffee into his mug. “You want any coffee, smart ass?”
“I’m fully caffeinated,” Ballantine said. “But thank you for asking. Courtesies like that go a long way.”
“A long way to what?” Lake asked.
“Making it all worth it,” Ballantine responded.
“If you say so,” Lake said and sat down in his captain’s chair. He smiled at the readings that blinked, flashed, and shown in front of him, glad to have his console operational again.
The smile left his face quickly and he leaned forward.
He was about to alert Ballantine to what he saw, but he stopped when the sniper rifle cracked.
“Shit,” he swore as he got up and hurried outside the bridge to see what Ballantine was shooting at.
***
Kinsey felt the shot more than she heard it as the bullet whizzed by her head. There was a wet thunk and a loud grunt as she whirled about to see one of the croanderthals toppling to the sand, his head mostly gone. Dr. Werth screamed and Kinsey spun around to see two more croanderthals have their heads blown to bits of brain and bone.
“Come on!” Kinsey shouted, grabbing Dr. Werth by the elbow and yanking her towards the Zodiac that sat waiting in the beach. “Hurry!”
“Someone is shooting at us!” Dr. Werth screeched.
“Bullshit!” Kinsey yelled. “Someone is shooting around us! Now move!”
She wondered who was making the shots since the Grendel snipers were otherwise occupied in the jungle and in the Alpha facility. She didn’t waste too much time on the musing and looked back to make sure Drs. Logan and Sales were following closely. They were.
So were several dozen croanderthals as a mob broke from the jungle and came right for them.
“Shit,” Kinsey muttered. “We aren’t going to have much time.”
She shoved Dr. Werth at the Zodiac then stopped and faced the croanderthals, both pistols up and aimed at the mob.
“Get the raft in the water!” she yelled at Dr. Logan. “Start the motor!”
“What about you?” Dr. Logan shouted, but did not slow down.
“I’ll buy us some time!” Kinsey called after him. “Don’t worry about me!”
Kinsey didn’t wait to see how the scientists handled the raft. Her focus was on the mob that was quickly closing the distance.
She opened fire, barely even thinking about her aim. She knew the shooter on the ship was still helping as more heads exploded where she wasn’t pointing. Whoever it was, they had adjusted their sights to take out the ones starting to flank Kinsey, making sure the mob didn’t surround her.
There were fifteen cartridges in each 9mm. Kinsey made sure that all thirty shots counted as she methodically squeezed the triggers over and over. Not every shot was a kill shot, but they all did the job and dropped a croanderthal. Then her 9mms clicked empty and she took a deep breath as what was left of the mob reached her.
The first croanderthal swung an axe at her head. It was an actual axe, a red and silver fire axe yanked from the wall of Alpha. Kinsey noticed how shiny the blade was as it missed her nose by only an inch. As the croanderthal’s momentum took the axe past her, Kinsey slammed a pistol into the thing’s face, cracking its wide nose, and then followed that with a blow to the thing’s throat with the second pistol.
The mutant dropped, choking and gagging, and Kinsey put the toe of her boot right in its temple. Only when it was flat on its back and out did Kinsey see it was a woman. She couldn’t have given a shit.
A croanderthal about to throw a heavy pipe at her stumbled back a couple steps as its chest was ripped open by sniper fire. Then its head became mist and the corpse stood there for a second, arm and pipe raised, before collapsing into the sand.
Kinsey dove and rolled to the side as a croanderthal swung a heavy club down at the spot where she had been standing. She lost one of the pistols to the fine beach sand, but that freed up a hand to grab a magazine from her belt and slam it into the remaining pistol. Fifteen more shots were at the ready as she racked the slide and jumped back up onto her feet.
A croanderthal went headless and skidded to a stop a foot in front of her as three more rushed her position. Kinsey took those three down and was about to whirl to her left, instinct telling her trouble was coming, but she barely got turned before the pistol was knocked from her grip. Her forearm sang with pain as a heavy club impacted through the compression suit, nailing bone.
Kinsey immediately ducked and struck out with a sweeping kick, knocking the attacker to the sand. She kicked again, connecting with the croanderthal’s face, but the thing was able to recover and roll away, club still in hand. Kinsey scrambled to grab the fallen pistol, but there were too many croanderthals coming at her and being on the ground was not a defensible position.
She moved hand over hand, her feet sliding under her, as she retreated towards the Zodiac. The air cracked around her as bullets flew from ship to beach, but she didn’t stop to see what kind of damage they did. Grunts and yelps of pain told her that at least some of the bullets were finding marks. But several loud growls and grunts also told her there were plenty of marks on her ass as well.
“Come on!” Dr. Logan yelled as the Zodiac bobbed in the waves a few yards from shore. “Run!”
Kinsey swallowed the nasty response she wanted to shout. The man wasn’t a pro like her and didn’t know that coming on and running were pretty much what she was trained to do. She dug deep, careful that her feet didn’t slip out from under her as she sprinted across the beach, and headed for the water
She pushed thoughts of what things were in the water out of her head as she dove into the surf. She stroked hard and fast, closing the distance between her and the Zodiac in a matter of seconds. Hands reached out and grabbed her, yanking her up into the raft.
“Go!” she yelled as she fell to her back onto the bottom of the Zodiac. “Go, go, go!”
“More,” Dr. Sales said, some of the few words Kinsey had heard him speak since meeting him. “How?”
Kinsey looked up at the scientist, her eyes squinting into the ever brightening sky, and frowned. That’s when it hit her that there were way too many croanderthals on that beach. If the staff of the Omega facility had changed, transformed into those things, then there should have only been a couple dozen total on the whole island. There were more than that lying dead on the beach.
“Anything you guys want to tell me before we get to the ship and Ballantine has a chat with you?” Kinsey asked. “Because if you’ve been lying to me then I can’t help you once Ballantine gets his hooks into you. And trust me, he will get his hooks into you.”
Drs. Werth and Sales looked at Dr. Logan as he piloted the craft towards the B3. He frowned and sighed, but didn’t offer any information.
“Okay,” Kinsey said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
***
“Well, that was fun,” Ballantine chuckled as he stepped into the cool shadows of the bridge and set the snip
er rifle aside. “Remind me to join the Reynolds and Lucy the next time they practice shooting. I missed a lot more targets than I would have cared to.”
He saw the look on Lake’s face as the captain stared at the radar screen on the ship’s control console.
“Right,” Ballantine sighed. “You were calling to me about something.”
“That,” Lake said, pointing to a blip. “It’s heading right for us.”
“Is it now,” Ballantine said.
He stood next to Lake and the two men studied the blip, watching its progress across the green and black screen. After a minute, Ballantine rubbed his face and looked up at the ceiling of the bridge as if to ask why him.
The sound of the approaching Zodiac drew the attention of both men to the bridge windows.
“Go help winch them up,” Ballantine said.
“We have crew for that,” Lake said as he saw two members of the crew already running towards the winches.
“I need space to think,” Ballantine said.
“My bridge,” Lake replied.
“Not debating that, Captain,” Ballantine responded. “But do you know what is coming for us?”
“Nope,” Lake said. “And I sure as fuck won’t learn by helping winch up the Zodiac.”
“I’m asking as a favor,” Ballantine said.
“Fine,” Lake grumbled as he got up and walked out of the bridge. “Next time I won’t agree, Ballantine.”
“Noted,” Ballantine called after Lake, his eyes never leaving the constant blip.
It was good-sized, probably a ship close to the Beowulf’s dimensions, maybe bigger, if the radar was correct.
“Darby? We have company coming,” Ballantine said. “Extract and get back here ASAP.”
“That is the plan, Balla—”
Darby’s voice cut out and a loud squeal ripped into Ballantine’s ear before he killed the com.
“That is not good,” Ballantine said to himself. “None of this is good.”
He looked up at the ceiling again and stuck his tongue out.
Chapter Eight- Running In Circles
Sadly, or fortunately, it was not the first time Darren had to engage in combat while stark naked. So he was prepared for the awkwardness of having his dick hanging loose while two croanderthals came at him. Despite the risk, Darren did exactly what he did the last time he had to fight in the nude.
He thrust out his hips and waggled his dick at the attackers.
“Come for a piece of this, boys?” he called out in a high falsetto.
Both croanderthals stopped in their tracks, eyes wide and confused as Darren walked casually towards them. It was too late for them to recover by the time Darren was close enough to get to work with his fillet knife. The two croanderthals fell to the floor, blood spilling from their necks as Darren spun about to see how the others were doing.
Pretty damn well, by the looks of it.
Shane slammed his mallet and frying pain on either side of a croanderthal’s head so hard that one of the thing’s eyes popped right from its socket. Shane drew the mallet back quickly and let it fly once more, dropping the croanderthal to the floor. Blood poured from the thing’s crushed skull and Shane blew him a kiss as he stepped over the corpse.
Lucy shoved two croanderthals back with the pot lid and slashed out with her knife. One of the croanderthals slipped on a pool of blood and kicked out with his foot as he fell, nailing Lucy in the knee. She cried out and fell as well, but not before thrusting her knife up and out, catching the other croanderthal in the chest. The thing screamed and stumbled back, taking the knife with it. Lucy swore under her breath, lifted the pot lid up over her head, and brought it down hard onto the fallen croanderthal that had kicked her.
The thing’s ribs cracked like gunshots, over and over, until it lay there, suffocating from its pulverized chest and lungs. Bright red bubbles of bloody spittle coated its face and Lucy grimaced at the thing as she stood up, careful of her tender knee. She spat on the thing then went and retrieved her knife from the chest of the other croanderthal. It took some tugging, having gotten wedged between two ribs, but she managed to get it free and wiped the blade clean on the tattered remains of the thing’s pants.
Standing next to a pile of corpses, Thorne smacked his knife against his pot lid to get Team Grendel’s attention.
“Move,” he ordered. “We have no idea where the exit is and we won’t ever find it if we keep standing around staring at the dead.”
“I gotta catch a breather,” Shane said then shook his head and smiled at the look Thorne gave him. “Just kidding, just kidding. I am good to go.”
“Better be,” Lucy said, smacking his naked ass with the flat of her knife.
“Ow,” Shane complained as he tried to look back and see if there was a mark. “Damn. That fucking hurt.”
Darren shook his head and moved up next to Thorne.
“The fact we haven’t seen any stairs or elevators is starting to weird me out,” Darren said.
“You noticed that too?” Thorne asked. “Hard to believe there is only one level. But then Ballantine never ceases to surprise me. I wouldn’t put it past him to have this facility spread out over half the island.”
“Under half the island,” Shane said. “We’re underground. I can smell it. If there is only one level then it stretches under the jungle for a very long ways.”
“But only one way in and one way out?” Lucy asked. “Doesn’t make sense. What about emergencies or fires?”
“Fires count as emergencies,” Shane said.
“So does that toothpick dick of yours,” Lucy replied.
“Damn! You are not letting up!” Shane exclaimed.
“Nope,” Lucy said. “When will I get another chance to make fun of your junk? I’ll take every cheap shot I can get in.”
“I’ll give you a cheap shot,” Shane said and grinned. Then frowned. He hung his head. “I wish Max was here.”
“Do you?” Max asked, suddenly shimmering into sight as he came around the corner, his plasma rifle glowing at the end of the barrel. “That is so damn sweet, bro. I would hug you, but, uh, you don’t have any clothes on. Um…none of you do. Hey, guys? What happened to your clothes?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Darby said, joining him. She was covered from head to toe in bright blood while Mike, who came up only a few feet behind her, looked spotless. Everyone stared. “What?”
“Turns out that plasma blasts don’t blast things as much as they pop things,” Max said, grinning from ear to ear. “It is so cool to watch.”
“Fuck you, Maxwell,” Darby said.
“Let me see one of those,” Thorne insisted.
All eyes turned from Darby to Max.
“Ah, man,” Max whined. “Why you gotta take all my toys, Uncle Vinny?”
He reluctantly handed the plasma rifle over to Thorne. Thorne hefted it, turning it over this way and that in his hands then sighted down the barrel. He nodded and gave it back to Max.
“Yay,” Max said. “Toy is back!”
“You have an extra one of those for your favorite brother?” Shane asked Max.
“Where the fuck would I have an extra one?” Max replied.
“Shoved up your ass,” Shane replied.
“Just because you hide your clothes in your butt, doesn’t mean I’m hiding a plasma rifle in mine,” Max said. “I don’t play those assdeer games.”
“Nothing wrong with a little anal play every once in a while,” Lucy said.
It was the Team’s turn to stare at her. She just put her hands on her hips and stared back.
“Okey doke,” Max said. “On that note…”
“How are we not all dead?” Thorne mumbled.
“Because I’m here to save your asses,” Darby said. “Exit is this way.”
She turned to go back around the corner then stopped.
“Fuck,” she said, backing away from the corner.
Mike looked over his shoulder and frowned.
“I don’t know, I don’t care,” Darby said. “Everyone get behind us. Move to the end of the corridor. This is going to get messy.”
Darby, Max, and Mike were halfway down the corridor when the first wave of croanderthals hit the corner and came screaming at them, a multitude of weapons raised and ready for battle.
That first wave never made it more than three feet before they were obliterated and turned into flesh chunks splattered against the walls.
“Come on!” Darby called.
Team Grendel followed her around the corner then skidded to a stop. Their way was blocked by a hundred croanderthals. At least.
They swung around to go back towards the kitchen, but that corridor was suddenly filled by another hundred croanderthals.
“Where are they coming from?” Shane asked.
“Deeper,” Thorne growled as he turned and ran the only way that wasn’t blocked by sneering, hissing, grunting enemies. “We have to go deeper!”
“No,” Darby snapped at Max.
“Come on,” Max whined. “It was so easy. He set it up perfectly.”
“No,” Darby said again.
“Your girlfriend is a total joke kill, bro,” Shane said.
“So is your dick, Reynolds,” Darby said.
“That’s my girl!” Lucy said and raised her hand. “High five on that.” Darby smacked it as she sprinted past.
***
Ballantine walked into the infirmary, his hand held out, a big smile on his face.
“Will, it is good to see you safe and sound,” Ballantine said as Dr. Logan, Dr. Sales, and Dr. Werth all sat on exam tables while Gunnar moved back and forth from each, taking blood samples and checking their vitals. “I can only imagine what a nightmare you have been put through.”
“Ballantine,” Dr. Logan said, shaking the man’s hand. “It certainly has been a nightmare.”
“I am sure,” Ballantine said. “My apologies for not meeting you on the deck, but there is a situation that has come up.”
