Existential

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  The creature, cautious as it stalked him, had become as voracious as any other predator once it thought it had cornered its prey. The blast from the mines turned the first few feet of its body into a mess of pulpy black goo. Its legs lost traction on the ceiling, and it crashed to the floor, apparently lifeless.

  None of that jibed with what Gable knew about these creatures. Were simultaneous direct hits from two mines really enough to kill one of them?

  The black remains bubbled for a heartbeat like grease being heated in a skillet. Then it reassembled itself, pieces of it beginning to re-take the serpent-like shape. Gable poured bullets into the thing, but they had no effect. The creature re-formed in under eight seconds, new and improved, its tentacles now tipped with thorn-like stingers that dripped black acid.

  Gable put one last burst into the thing and ran for his life.

  He had recon the area before setting up his trap and knew the hallway led to a bridge extended over a chasm of unknown depth. He sprinted faster than ever before down the cramped hall, leaning forward both for speed and to avoid the low ceiling. Something struck him in the back, nearly knocking him forward onto his face. Nothing pierced his skin; the body armor had done its job. Gable didn’t dare look back at the creature as he ran from death, a futile and terrifying chase.

  Sweat poured down his face and soaked his body as he ran onto the bridge, only a few steps separating him from the pursuing beast. The hallway on the far side loomed a few strides ahead. With his left hand, Gable grabbed a grenade off his plate carrier, pulled the pin and dropped it as he entered the hallway. The beast tailed him so closely that it ran over and past the grenade before it detonated. Shrapnel must have struck it in the rear; it screeched and halted for a second as it regenerated. Gable figured he gained maybe twenty feet on the thing now, perhaps enough to turn imminent death into yet another close call.

  He turned hard right into another passage and kept sprinting, running faster than the overhead lights illuminated. A glowing orange computer terminal beckoned ahead. Gable reached it. He glanced right and left for a hallway. A dead end, he turned around.

  The creature stood motionless, about ten feet away, waiting, as though savoring every morsel of his fear.

  Gable thought of his two grown daughters, Rachel and Jenny. Jenny had married a Ranger only four months before. Worst mistake she ever made. But he was a good guy and would take care of her. For as long as he stays alive, anyway. Gable had been looking forward to grandchildren.

  Nope. He opened fire on the beast. Ten shots emptied the magazine. No time to reload.

  The creature lashed out with a tentacle and missed, the acid-dripping claw burying itself into a wall display. A single loud pop emanated from the device as it caught fire. Ozone reek filled Gable’s nose.

  He ducked another tentacle as he backpedaled, dropped his useless rifle, and then stood, fighting knife in hand.

  Time to dance with the devil.

  Max tried to reach Gable three more times but received only static and beeping for his efforts. So he did what any capable military commander would to reopen the lines of communication: he dumped the radio on his comm guy.

  “Gable, this is Red. Do you copy? Over.” Red hadn’t any luck using his own radio, and Max’s was proving equally uncooperative. “Let’s try rolling freaks...” Red muttered as he switched to one of the team’s two designated backup frequencies.

  “Good idea,” Max said, though they both knew it wasn’t likely to work. Comm had been screwy from the get-go. Gable raising him by radio had been a freak occurrence, not likely to be repeated, but they had to try.

  “Shit,” Red muttered as he returned the radio to Max. “But at least Gable’s alive.”

  “Five minutes ago, anyway.”

  Neither man repeated the most disturbing detail: LT and Sugar were dead. Fucked over by Greytech. That came as no surprise, but the reality and unjustness of it roiled in Max’s gut. I don’t give a shit how powerful you are, you’ll answer to me for killing my men.

  Gable was a wiseass bug eater who’d needle you all day long if he had the chance, but he was no liar. He might have been mistaken, however. Banner had his shitty fingers in this after all, and he’d cultivated a well-earned reputation as a treacherous, sadistic fuck over the years. Maybe he was up top; maybe his men had murdered Sugar and LT.

  Either way, somebody up there had some explaining to do if Max ever got off this ship. Banner, Liz Grey, perhaps both of them—somebody would die for killing his men.

  “Well, we’re headed down there anyway, maybe we’ll bump into him.” Red flashed his most positive false smile.

  “Pray to your gods that we do.”

  Red laughed. “I’ve prayed for the aid of several different gods.”

  Your pagan deities don’t give a shit about us, no more than God does. “Let’s move. We have an elevator to catch.”

  As they left the armory, Max took point with the fléchette rifle, Red took up rear guard with the lightning cannon. Between them with Ms. Quinones, Dr. Rogers instructed them to hang a right, and they marched briskly off, no longer burdened by Dr. Kumar. Max wasn’t pleased about Kumar’s death, but he could live with it, especially if his absence kept the rest of them alive. He was warned. The stupid old goat had it coming.

  “Straight ahead.” Dr. Rogers pointed to a large circular elevator.

  “I see it,” Max said, eager to get downstairs and try Gable again. He hoped, with their radios in closer proximity, they might be able to contact him.

  Red grinned. “Hey, this elevator has me thinking of a great lawyer joke. Wanna hear it?”

  Max narrowed his eyes and glared at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Am I sharing an elevator with the Joker?”

  Red laughed. “I prefer the Jester, actually. I’m a good guy, remember?”

  “It’s easy to forget sometimes.”

  Red had always been batshit crazy, but Max could tell the ship and the mission were eating away at what little sanity he possessed. Might be a good thing. Red worked best when he was relaxed. His noise discipline was slipping, but did it even matter? Silence was golden when fighting against men. These creatures seemed attuned to their prey on every sensory wavelength at all times. Hell, they can probably feel the vibrations of our footsteps.

  Their elevator ride ended at the center of a low-ceilinged round chamber about thirty feet in diameter. Max stepped out with the fléchette rifle at the ready. He and Red performed a quick sweep of the room. The ambient ceiling lights shed little illumination. Grating covered the room’s entire floor space, the blackness beneath glowing orange or amber in spots corresponding with computer terminals on a lower level. A couple of terminals in the wall likewise glowed orange, but most of the machines had been destroyed. One had even been torn from the wall and hurled across the room.

  Red shook his head as he observed the busted computer. “They aren’t very tech savvy, these creatures.”

  Max scanned the room. “The fact that they’re even taking an interest in electronics worries me.” Judging the room free of creatures, he waved Dr. Rogers and Ms. Quinones from the elevator.

  A Greytech directory sign pointed the way to the cargo hold through one of the room’s five exits.

  Red pointed down one of the other hallways. “I suggest you make it snappy. We need to move.”

  One hundred yards distant, the overhead lights brightened, set off by a creature in liquid form beginning to take a more sinister shape, picking up speed as it moved along. It had apparently noticed their presence.

  “Let’s go, people!” Max yelled. He took off for the hallway to the cargo hold, which ended in a T-intersection sixty feet later. No sign pointed the way.

  “Right,” Dr. Rogers advised.

  Max peered around the corner and saw more lights illuminating over another wandering creature, the largest he’d seen so far. Might be two of them. Hard to tell at this distance.

  Something clanked, and Max turned to se
e Dr. Rogers pulling up a hatch in the grated floor. “We can travel via the service passage,” she whispered. “If we’re quiet enough, we might be able to avoid detection.”

  If there aren’t already creatures down there. “What do you say, Red?” Max asked.

  Red kept his mouth shut and nodded.

  Max started down a short ladder into the service passage. The hallway above felt cramped enough; the passage beneath resembled a rat warren with five-foot ceilings and machinery jutting out of the walls. It took Max a good minute to squeeze into the hatch and lower himself into the tunnel. He oriented his fléchette rifle forward and moved to make room for the others. The two women, unburdened by cumbersome gear, dropped in without issue.

  “Aw, dammit,” Red muttered as he climbed down. “I barely fit in here.”

  “Face backward; you will have to act as rear guard,” Max instructed. Red would have no room to turn around with the lightning cannon once he entered the service passage.

  Ms. Quinones helped him down by taking his machine gun and ammo belts and then the cannon.

  “Could you move any fucking slower?” The delay left Max peeved, his lower back already aching from having to stoop beneath the grating.

  “I’m in,” Red whispered as he finally dropped in and pulled the hatch closed behind them. “Creature just entered the hallway down by the elevator.”

  “Nobody talks but me and Dr. Rogers. Move out.”

  Max had read voraciously on subterranean combat. Tunnel rats fascinated him; due to his large stature, theirs was one of the few combat jobs he felt unqualified to perform. No sane commander would have sent him on such a mission, yet as master of his own destiny, he’d chosen to be a rat. Maybe I should crawl; it would be a hell of a lot less painful. His back muscles spasmed with fire, but he ignored the pain as he duck-walked beneath the grating, inching the party forward. His gear snagged constantly on conduits, machinery, and electronics. The high whining of whirling machinery grew louder as they moved along. Generator, maybe. It helped conceal their presence, whatever it was.

  The service passage widened into a small square room; the walls lined with control switches and buttons. The floor dropped two feet. Max relished being able to stand upright, knowing the feeling wouldn’t last long. The machine whine emanated from a large metal cylinder protruding halfway out of the wall. Speech was impossible without yelling in someone’s ear, but Max had no verbal orders to convey. He ordered a stop by stopping. The women entered and sat on the floor. Red winced as he stepped down into the room, his back likewise killing him. This room provided an ideal spot to rest, something they might not run across again down here.

  The room darkened as a creature walked over the grating above on six legs. Max couldn’t make out any more of the thing than its elephantine skin and large padded paws, the toes tipped with black razor claws that protruded into the grating with each step. Max and Red watched it slowly stalk overhead.

  The machine whine had concealed them. They would be golden so long as they stayed completely quiet and still.

  As the beast passed over them without stopping, Ms. Quinones white-knuckled a string of wooden rosary beads, silently kissing the crucifix once the beast had gone. Max had to give Jesus grudging credit; he’d done a fine job keeping Ms. Q from panicking and giving them away.

  After a couple minutes’ rest, Max moved into the next tunnel, which, to his dismay, shrank in height after a few feet. He got down on his knees and started crawling. No creatures appeared overhead, and he took for granted that the others in his group would keep up, crawl like their lives depended on it. That shouldn’t be hard. He stopped frequently to unsnag his gear from various protuberances in the tunnel. Still, they made fine headway for the first twenty yards or so.

  The machine whine lessened with every foot they put behind them, but Max figured it to still loud enough to cover their movements for a while. It can’t last. Half blind in the tenebrous tunnel, Max almost crawled headfirst into a closed door. An orange holographic screen covered in prompts appeared before his face. Too big to turn around, crawling out backward would be pointless since they’d yet to pass any exits from this tunnel. With considerable discomfort, he rolled onto his side and motioned Dr. Rogers forward to open the door.

  She crawled forward and wedged herself into the tunnel next to him, their bodies filling the tight passage. She was all business, sparing Max only a glance before going to work on the door. Their faces were pressed together, ideal kissing distance, but the doctor had eyes only for the control panel. Being pressed against Red or Ms. Quinones in a tight space would only have annoyed him, but the curves and fine musculature of Dr. Rogers’s body seemed to meld perfectly to his own. His arousal increased as she shifted her body against his in exertion as she worked to open the door.

  A faint metallic clank followed by a dull thud emanated from above as a creature dropped from a duct onto the grating overhead. Alarmed, Dr. Rogers stared into Max’s eyes and pressed herself closer to him. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move at all as they waited for the creature to either detect them or move along.

  The beast seemed developed differently compared to others, taking on a simple insectoid form. Max could see only its legs, belly, and a silhouette of massive mandibles. It started walking off down the hallway they’d just traversed. As Max watched it depart, he glanced to Ms. Quinones—hyperventilating, rosary beads in hand. He would have raised a finger to his lips had it been possible, but his arms were pinned against Dr. Rogers. Thank God we have that whining—

  The machinery stopped, suddenly and inexplicably. The hallway went dead silent but for the clicking of the beast’s insect legs on the grating above.

  Max watched Ms. Quinones’s eyes bug wide as she peeked up at the beast a mere two feet away. Keep it together! he silently implored. Just a few more seconds!

  Ms. Quinones whimpered faintly as the creature passed over her—then sobbed once as fear and claustrophobia cracked her composure. Not a loud sound, but she might as well have announced their presence with a fanfare of trumpets.

  The beast stopped.

  Fuck!

  One insect leg morphed into a thin tentacle and shot downward through a small portal in the grate, perhaps a foot square. The tentacle cracked like a whip, wrapping itself several times around Quinones’s left ankle. Dr. Rogers screamed in Max’s ear, drowning out Quinones’s banshee wails and Spanish entreaties to Jesus, begging his mercy one final time. The men cursed and tried to bring their weapons to bear in the tight quarters.

  Ms. Quinones’s ankle snapped as the creature yanked her leg upward through the grating. It kept pulling with tremendous strength, forcing her body through the small port, pulverizing her bones and ripping her skin off in a downpour of blood. The sound of her pelvis being crushed reminded Max of someone chewing on a mouthful of ice cubes.

  Red rolled on his back and pointed the lightning cannon straight upward.

  “No!” Dr. Rogers screamed. She had a point: the lightning bolt would strike the grating. It might electrify the creature, but it might fry them as well. Back at her work, she jabbed at the prompts on the hologram.

  The door slid down into the floor and Dr. Rogers crawled forward into the next passageway.

  They couldn’t do anything for the old girl now, Max considered crawling away. Instead, he stuck the barrel of the fléchette rifle upward through the grating and cut loose on the terror above. It screeched as two explosive darts punched through its skin and detonated. Then it ran off down the hallway, taking most of Ms. Quinones with it, leaving behind only a few scraps of flesh, shards of bone, and her rumpled, bloody suit of skin.

  Max shook his head. He’d kind of liked her, though not in the same manner that she’d liked him. For a lunch lady, she was a pretty tough old girl.

  The report of Red’s lightning cannon startled Max. Another creature wailed as it oozed out of a duct they’d passed about fifty feet back. Max looked on in satisfaction as blue electric current cra
ckled and sparked over every inch of the creature. The energy dissipated, but the creature still moved.

  “Fuck you!” Red cried and blasted it again.

  The creature popped as if it had been cooked too long in a microwave. Red howled in triumph. Max kicked Red’s leg to get his attention. They needed to keep moving. Max squeezed through the service tunnel door and crawled onward following Dr. Rogers.

  Red’s lightning cannon erupted three more times as they moved. Max had no idea if he was killing creatures or just holding them off. His only concern was finding another hatch to get them out of the tunnel before another creature skinned someone else.

  Max rounded a corner and saw a ladder on the wall a few feet away. He stood, pushed open the overhead hatch, and laid it aside. As he squeezed out of the hatch, he realized he should try to radio Gable while the others exited the service tunnel. Nothing but the usual static and beeps. Max regretted his instruction to stay put from their previous conversation. Get the fuck off this ship, Gable. Take to the woods. If you’re still alive down here, you won’t be for long.

  He emerged at one end of a hallway that might have stretched to infinity. No computers stuck out from the walls, but several closed doors lined either side of the hall.

  “How far?” Max asked Dr. Rogers.

  “Not much further. There is a security door halfway down the hallway, then a control room at the end with a bridge beyond. The cargo hold and reactor are on the other side. The going is rougher over there—narrower halls and six-foot ceilings.”

  “My back can’t wait.” Max stepped to the corner and peered down the hallway they’d just navigated. Visible creatures dimmed everything to blackness not far in the distance. “Let’s go, Bergman.”

  Red passed the lightning cannon up to Dr. Rogers. “I’m moving, Chief. It ain’t easy being this hardcore.” He shoved his machine gun through the hatch.

  “Move your ass, or you’ll have more action than you can handle in the rear.”