Kumar was likewise the first man to scream, his cry reverberating through the hallways.
Max whirled around, rifle at the ready. The team was moving straight through a four-way intersection. Diaz, who wasn’t screaming, hung in midair where the hallways converged, suspended from the ceiling by four slimy, black tentacles, each tipped with a hooked black claw the size of a railroad spike. The tentacles entwined around his left arm and leg and his neck. His eyes bulged from the creature’s stranglehold. Another tentacle slithered around Diaz’s rifle and ripped it from his hands.
Max and Irish put the red dots of their reflex sights on separate tentacles, but the creature dropped from a recess in the ceiling before they could fire. The alien horror they witnessed resembled an octopus: tentacles converging at a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, a cluster of black onyx eyes in the center of its head.
Kumar cowered in a ball, leaving Irish and Max clear shots on the creature. But it held Diaz aloft before it as a human shield while it glided down the crossing hallway on four tentacles, the talons on each clicking as it retreated.
Machine gun fire erupted at the rear of the column. Fuck! Max hoped Sugar was hallucinating again, yet he doubted it. Sugar, LT, and Gable would have to handle whatever had popped up behind them. Max, Irish, and Red took off after Diaz.
The octopus creature retreated with astonishing speed, already thirty feet down the hall when Max and Irish rounded the corner in pursuit. They opened fire, aiming for the walking tentacles. A couple of Max’s bullets struck home, yet the appendages stayed intact.
The creature screeched its rage and launched a stream of black liquid from an orifice under its mouth, striking Irish square in the chest. His body armor began to smoke, he stopped in his tracks and yanked the emergency-release handle. The carrier dropped off him in pieces and clattered to the floor as the acid ate through it. Meanwhile, the creature continued to steadily distance itself from its pursuers.
Max heard only a cacophony of gunfire and yelling. A grenade blast from far off punctuated the dissonant fugue. Red now ran by his side. Max held his fire and concentrated on the chase. He would have shot as he ran had the creature not been hiding behind Diaz. Though Max’s brain screamed, He’s good as dead! he couldn’t bring himself to fire on the creature. Diaz might not be dead yet, and Max refused to be the one who killed him.
“Fuck, this thing is fast!” Red gasped as they sprinted after it, losing ground with every step.
The hallway widened to twenty feet, and the ceiling rose higher. A large, open portal lay ahead. The creature had already passed through. Despite his single-minded goal of rescuing Diaz, Max still noted the Greytech sign posted over the portal, bold red letters several inches tall, stark against the safety-yellow background: “WARNING! RADIOACTIVE AREA HAZMAT SUITS REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT!”
Max and Red ignored the sign and dashed through the portal. The creature had some fifty yards on them and was starting to grow indistinct in Max’s vision. They ran on.
It moved faster.
They lost sight of it a hundred yards past the portal. Twenty yards later they came to a three-way intersection. They saw no sign of Diaz or the creature down either hallway.
“Stop,” Max gasped, bent double and winded from having sprinted several hundred yards. He’d never run that fast for so long, and yet he’d still failed.
“Dammit!” Red bellowed, smashing one of his beefy fists into the wall.
“Not gonna help.” Max felt slightly nauseous, but the feeling passed. He spat on the floor and stood up straight. He saw Dr. Rogers heading for them accompanied by Irish, no worse for wear despite his ruined plate carrier. Far in the distance came Dr. Kumar, helped along by Ms. Quinones. No one else followed them. He heard distant gunfire and muffled shouts as the rest of the team engaged the other beast.
What’s the call: Chase Diaz, who’s probably dead by now? Or go back for the team and then locate his body? The choice was clear.
“We have to go help the team, then we find Diaz.”
Red and Irish glumly agreed.
Dr. Rogers reached toward him. “I am so sorry.”
Max reflexively pulled away, regretting that he had done so, but still angered by the loss of yet another man. “Let’s go.”
An instant after Ms. Quinones and Dr. Kumar passed through the portal, a huge door dropped straight down from the ceiling and slammed to the floor. The impact of the falling door shook the deck. The hallway boomed with its echo.
“Shit! What the fuck?” Max yelled.
The impact of the door dropping put both the Nicaraguan woman and Dr. Kumar on their knees. “I did nothing! We touched nothing!” Ms. Quinones yelled.
“They didn’t,” Dr. Rogers assured. “It’s an automatic safety door that drops in case of a reactor leak.”
“Shit, you mean we’re gonna be irradiated?” Red asked.
“I don’t think so. A core meltdown would be signaled by an alarm as well.”
Max reined in his emotions to keep from screaming. “Then why the hell did it drop?”
“I have no idea. There might be a temporary spike in levels; perhaps the creatures have something to do with it. And the vessel itself, sometimes it acts on its own.”
“Well shit,” Red observed, “we’re still in a radiation zone.”
Dr. Rogers seemed unconcerned. “Greytech posted that sign for liability reasons. The radiation on this level is mild; I’ve seen the Geiger counter readings. You’d have to spend days in here to be affected, at least at the reactor’s current power level.”
Max accosted Quinones and Kumar as soon as they joined them. “What happened to the rest of the team? What did you see?”
“I don’t know,” Kumar panted. “That...that...thing grabbed on to your man, then someone in the rear started shooting. We ran this way.”
Quinones provided an equally useless answer in broken English.
Max keyed his headset. “Ahlgren calling LT, do you copy? Over.” No response, only static punctuated by beeps and gurgling noises, as if he’d accidentally called a fax number. He tried again nevertheless and again received no response.
Irish asked, “That door got a control panel? Maybe the doctor can open it?”
Dr. Rogers shook her head. “There are no door controls on this side.” It made sense: better to seal off a few people to die during a meltdown than to allow the whole ship to become contaminated.
Irish turned to Max. “What’s the call, Chief?”
After a moment of deliberation, Max said, “We press on for the armory and hope that LT finds another route to link up. I’d like to find Diaz along the way. He’s likely dead, but I need to confirm.”
Diaz had three daughters, and Max dreaded telling his wife that he was gone. But at least death was final; his family would eventually accept it. MIA status would only keep them forever wondering, hoping, doubting, unable to move on with their lives. Max had never reported a man MIA before and didn’t wish to spoil that perfect record.
Irish tilted his head. “Diaz had to have bled some. I’ll bet we can pick up the trail.”
Dr. Rogers released a pent-up breath. “Even without a trail, I have an idea where he might have been taken.”
Red rounded on her. “And how could you possibly know that? Hell, how could you possibly know half the shit you know?”
“Easy, Red,” Max said. “We need her—”
“For what? All she’s done is lead us on a fucking wild goose chase through this ship. We’ve lost two people since she’s been with us, maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea to let her lead us further into the ship.”
“That’s enough—”
“Please,” Dr. Rogers said, holding up her hand. “I assure you, I have all of our best interests in mind, and I do know where I’m going. The creature forced us to come this way, not me.”
Red started to protest.
Irish cut him off. “She makes a good point, Red. We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we hav
e without her.”
“Exactly,” Max said. “Calm down. Don’t let this fuck with your head.”
Red said nothing but nodded a few moments later.
“We press on. Now let’s find Diaz’s trail.”
* * *
LT liked to think that he didn’t personify his occupation—that he was just a mild-mannered hedonist most comfortable at the poker table or a beach resort with a couple of ladies pawing his jock. Life was meant to be lived for such simple pleasures.
And yet, as enticing as these pleasures were, they paled in comparison to the high of battle. He got his kicks in the casino and the bedroom. LT lived for the chase, the fight, the thrill of the kill.
LT always had to make up for his short stature by training harder than everyone else, and it had paid dividends for him yet again. Sugar and Gable each had several inches on him, yet he outran Gable and was right on Sugar’s heels as they pursued the creature. Hell, they owned this creature. Sugar had detected it and opened fire before it got within ten feet. It turned and fled from the hail of bullets. Gable then scored a direct hit with his grenade launcher, slowing it considerably.
The beast appeared to be larger and stranger than any other they’d encountered. The size of a large bear, its four large multi-jointed like legs converged with a hyena-shaped body covered in some sort of gray membrane, from which sprouted a long snout-like mouth full of gnashing teeth surrounded by about a dozen smaller tendrils, each tipped with long, translucent, scythe-like claws.
LT wasn’t sure how long or far they’d run. It didn’t matter—this would be the first large creature they bagged, and the effort was worth it.
It scuttled around a corner a few feet ahead. LT and Sugar took the corner, guns blazing, and came face to face with the creature. Black blood flew as dozens of bullets smacked into the area where the tentacles converged. Sugar bellowed triumphant anger. LT emptied the magazine of his HK rifle, the bright flash from the muzzle illuminating the creature in the dimly lit hallway. Once the bolt locked back on his weapon, he ducked out so Gable could unload on the thing as well.
The creature reared back and raised two of its large multi-jointed appendages to attack, or so LT thought. Instead, they shot upward into a grate in the ceiling.
“No!” LT shouted. “Get it!”
A small tentacle fell off and writhed on the floor. It started to transmogrify and grow, sprouting a single black eye and several crustacean legs. At the same time, the larger creature pulled itself upward into the grate, its body morphing into black goo and squeezing through the bars. It was gone in a heartbeat.
Sugar roared his frustration. A few more rounds might have finished the creature, but he’d run out of ammo as it pulled itself into the grate. Gable switched to his shotgun and put four rounds into the creature on the floor, killing it.
Several seconds passed as they came to grips with what had happened. Ruddiman and Ball caught up to them, their rifles at the ready. Neither man said anything; the lack of a dead creature said it all.
“Had that motherfucker,” Sugar growled.
“Gave his ass a run for sure,” Gable huffed, exhausted.
LT shook his head. “I thought we had him.”
All three men were feeling the inevitable crash in the wake of the adrenaline rush. Dejected silence ruled.
Perhaps it intended to draw us away... “We need to get back and report in. Anybody get a good look at what happened up front?” LT had only seen the tentacles drop from the ceiling and hoist Diaz, but then the other creature attacked from the rear.
“It ran off with your guy, the medic,” Ruddiman said. “Last I saw of anyone else.”
Ball concurred, “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“Let’s get moving,” LT instructed. “Try to link up with the others.”
He stepped off in the lead. Navigating back to where they’d been attacked would be easy—just follow the trail of brass shell casings and black blood. Just as LT started walking, the floor rumbled for an instant, accompanied by a single hollow boom that echoed through the ship’s miles of hallways.
“What the hell was that?” LT stopped and stared at the two survivors.
“Hopefully not the Chief,” said Sugar.
“Hell, if I know,” Ball replied. “Didn’t sound explosive, and I’ve done my share of blasting.”
“Agreed,” Gable said.
“Hope it’s nothing,” Ruddiman offered.
“What does that mean?” LT asked. “What if it’s something?”
Ruddiman held up a hand. “I don’t know, sometimes things just happen on this ship. No apparent reason.”
“Keep thinking that,” LT grumbled as he resumed walking. I’m not so sure.
LT kept the pace slow as they methodically cleared their way back to where the battle began. The trip back took about ten minutes.
“Blood ends here,” Gable announced. “That’s the intersection where we got jumped.”
Max and the others had left the same telltales. They followed blood and brass down the hallway to a closed portal.
LT read the radiation warning sign above the portal. “Shit.” A holographic control panel glowed orange next to the blast door. He walked over and tried prompts on the panel, then tried his hand on the biometric reader. “No joy. Guarantee you that noise we heard earlier was this door dropping.”
“Should have had her write down how to open doors too,” Gable added.
LT keyed his headset and tried Max. Nothing but beeps and static. Several more tries by all three team members produced the same results.
Last-resort time. “Breach it.”
Gable tapped a knuckle on the blast door. “Shi-it, this thing’s a foot thick at least, I’ll wager.”
“Do what you can.”
Gable shook his head. “Whatever you say, sir.”
Ball spoke up. “Y’all shouldn’t bother, unless you like wasting your explosives. That door could withstand a direct hit from a howitzer.”
“Maybe,” LT conceded.
Again, Gable shook his head, disgust on his face. “The fucking thing didn’t drop on its own, and Max sure as hell wouldn’t have sealed the hallway behind him, so what other explanation is there?”
“Well, it might have dropped on its own,” Ruddiman reiterated. “Trust me, things sometimes happen aboard this ship, and for the last couple days, the ship has seemed more alive than before.”
“Things?” Gable asked. “Start making sense, science boy.”
“As I said, sometimes things happen: doors open, bridges extend, the elevators run constantly. The ship’s computer system senses our presence wherever we go—the automatic lighting confirms it.”
“Maybe the creatures did it,” Gable suggested. “This is their ship. Maybe they’re runnin’ the show now.”
Ruddiman furrowed his brow with a slight shake of his head. “We don’t believe that the creatures we have encountered created this ship. We theorize that they are only the cargo. And they don’t seem advanced enough to do that, yet.”
“Well, maybe they’ve stepped up their game. They obviously ain’t stupid.”
“But they’re not smart enough to do that. If they were, they would have killed us already.”
Gable packed Copenhagen into his lower lip. “I ain’t about to let that happen.”
That got LT’s attention. “Oh?”
“Time to pack up shop, LT.”
“Not your call, Gable.” LT stepped up to Gable and got in his face as best he could, though the guy had several inches on him. “After all Max has done for you, you’d just bug out in the middle of the mission and leave him to die?”
“He’s dead already.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I do know we’re good as dead if we stay on this ship long enough.”
“It’s your job.”
“No, suicide is not in my job description, nor is fighting aliens. They teach you that shit at the Citadel?”
LT threw a right uppercut. Gable blocked with his left hand, steering most of the force aside, but he still took a couple of knuckles on the chin.
Then LT went flying. Landing on his back, he skidded across the floor. He rolled and jumped to his feet, ready to finally put Gable in his place. But Gable was slumped up against the wall gasping for breath. He’d dropped his shotgun as well.
“Enough,” Sugar pronounced as if from on high. “I ain’t gonna stomach this shit. Now let’s figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do and then do it.”
“We stay,” LT asserted. “And you’re a fucking coward, Gable.”
Surprisingly, Gable turned reflective instead of enraged at the insult. “You think I like runnin’ away? You know me better than that, all the shit we waded through over the years.”
“You want to run now.”
“Because we can’t win. You gotta understand that. Best we can hope for is to get off this ship and rendezvous with the Greytech team that’s coming tomorrow morning. Have them contact the authorities and get the fucking military in here and nuke these fuckers.”
“And just buddy fuck the rest of the team?”
“Might not be any more team,” Sugar admitted. “And even if there is, we still can’t get through this door.”
“We can find a way around to the armory.”
“Say we do. That don’t mean we can find them.” Sugar shook his head. “Nah, LT, you got to listen, man. Nobody wanna leave Max and Irish and Red behind, but the chances of us finding them alive are next to nothin’. Johnny’s right about this. We need to go.”
LT was beaten and he knew it. He hated to admit that Gable was correct. They had expended a shitload of ammo fighting that last creature. How many more could they drive off before they ran dry? If we even get a chance to shoot next time. Coach, Harlow, Diaz—none of them popped off a single round.
Yeah, we’re well and royally fucked.
Existential Page 20
