by Angel Medina
“I told you to trust me, I dealt with this before. It’s a long story. However we gotta save those hostages.” Angel gloats when his plan comes to fruition.
Angel, Maria and the two officers head for the upper maintenance section of the mall.
Chapter 4
Maintenance Hell
Angel and Maria defeat BattleGlooba with some clever tactics by Angel. Despite the destruction caused by the alien invasion, Angel and company keep moving in their search of the hostages, if any are still alive that is. Dayvon and Luis find out the source of how the gloobas are getting into Earth, through wormholes. While they were curious about the source of the wormholes, they have people to save. The only question is will there be anyone to save?
Angel, Maria and the rest of the crew head into the maintenance area. The maintenance area is much darker than the store, but it does have enough light for our heroes to see what’s ahead of them. They head into a hallway full of pipes of varying types such as gas, light and water. All of a sudden a vent pops out and a group of slimers come out. The heroes easily shoot the first few, but more keeping coming out and eventually end up overwhelming one of the officers. After that the rest of the slimers are killed. All that is left of the officer that was overwhelmed is his flesh and bones.
“Arghhhh! No! Get away from me you pig! Arghhhh!” Angel orders everyone towards the screaming. It is another officer that was being attacked by a boar cop, but by the time Angel and company get there the officer is already dead.
Angel meets the boar cop head to head. The boar cop tries to hit Angel with his shotgun, but misses. The boar cop is relentless with its attacks and tries again. Angel catches the shotgun, which distracts the boar cop. Maria slices the head of the boar from behind, using the shadow blade from one of the salamander troopers. After killing the boar cop the heroes head to the water pressure room.
The water pressure room is filled with the main feed of water for the entire mall, as well as controls to control the flow of water. However, Angel and company know little about the water controls and they could care less. In the water pressure room Angel and company are met with many glooba troops. It’s a mix of salamander troopers, boar cops and iguana troopers. Angel and Maria use their shadow blades to take care of the salamander troopers. Maria is then struck by a boar cop by a shotgun whip, which knocks her down to the floor hard. Angel is angered by what he just seen, grabs one of the iguana enforcer’s chainguns and empties the gun towards the boar cops with great emotion.
“Nobody messes with my damn wife and lives, especially alien bastards.” Angel says in pure fury with no regard to his surroundings.
“Ah Mr. Medina, I hate to cut you off, but you just shot the main water pipe!” The officer tries to catch Angel’s attention.
Angel’s attention is caught when a huge gush of water breaks out of the pipe and the room begins to fill with water. The iguana enforcers are knocked down to floor when the water strikes them. Angel and the officer kill off the enforcers before the room begins to flood with water. Angel tries to get Maria’s conscience back, as he doesn’t have much time. The water is gushing out rapidly and within 2 minutes the water level is already knee high.
“Maria come on, you got to get up! We’re going to drown and this is not the virtual world where we could hold our breath. This is real life, come on honey I know you can get up, I love you honey get up for me!” Angel says with great emotion using the love between them as a catalyst.
Maria is able to get up slowly, but in time before the water gets any deeper. Angel and the officer try to open the door, but the valve on the door is rusted.
“Shit we gotta knock this door down and fast. On the count of three we’re going to bulldoze our way through the door. On the count of three go!” Angel makes up a last minute plan.
The three of them charge towards the door, but with little success. In fact the door doesn’t even budge. Angel starts to become worried as the water continued to creep up even further, it was now waist high.
“Oh God, oh God, don’t tell me this is going to be the way we leave this world. Hope you guys are good swimmers.” Angel says hysterically as he sees his death approaching.
“No babe we’re not done yet!” Maria responds to Angel.
“What are you talking about? What, we got fins all of a sudden?” Angel asks Maria.
“No you ding-dong! I see an emergency button to open the door. Let’s just hope that the button hasn’t malfunctioned with the water. I’m heading down!”
Angel and the officer head towards the ceiling, where they go up for the pipes above them and hang on to them in order to buy time.
Meanwhile Maria heads underwater and sees the red switch. She presses the switch and the door unlocks. The pressure of the water is enough to open the door and the water begins to rush out of the room.
“Everyone prepare for a rough ride this water is going really fast and the pressure of the water is going to be very high. I have no idea where the hell we’re going to end up!” Angel screams as the water begins to rush out of the room.
Angel and crew can only ride the water and see where it leads them to. The current of the water was very high, so our heroes couldn’t really move or control where they go. It feels like being caught in a current in a beach and you have no control where you are going. Luckily the officer that was with the couple is an experienced swimmer. The water was heading into the compactor room, where garbage was dropped off and burned in the incinerator.
“Angel and Maria we got to get up to the next platform or we’re going to have our goose cooked and quite literally as well.” The officer screams as he would lead the way. The heroes are within feet of falling into the compactor, Angel and crew try to take a deep breath and…
***
Meanwhile on the lower level Dayvon, Luis and the remaining two officers explore the lower maintenance area. When they begin they are met with salamander troopers, but they take care of them rather easily. Dayvon hears the scream of citizens and tells everyone to go in the direction of the screaming. The four spot hostages trying to run from boar cops and salamander troopers.
“Hold on you alien bastards, stop right there! How about taking on somebody your own size?” Luis says confidently.
“You… fool… time to die… or be part… of my family!” A boar cops says in a barely understandable alien accent.
“I would rather die here, rather than be part of your disgusting family. I’m about to stick my size 10 boot up your asses. Come on guys lets take care of business!” Dayvon says preparing to take on the aliens.
The four of them take on the aliens in melee combat. The two officers take on the salamander troopers, while Dayvon and Luis took on the boar cops. The officer’s exchange blows with the salamander troopers. One of them pushes a trooper into a heat pipe burning the trooper. The other officer who is larger in build simply picks the trooper and does a gorilla press slam, which drops the trooper to the floor filled with alien gore. Luis takes on a one of the boar cops, who is tougher than the boar cops from the previous adventure. The boar head butts Luis right in the head and then begins to pounce on Luis punching him on the floor. The boar picks up Luis and throws him towards the hostages. However despite the beat down, Luis gets right back up and tackles the boar.
“Oh you gotta do better than that; the only thing you did was get me angry!” Luis says as he mercilessly punches the boar in the head, while it continues to squeal. “Sequel pig sequel!” Luis ends up choking the boar to death to his satisfaction.
As for Dayvon the boar cops tries to shoot him, but the cop misses Dayvon. Dayvon shoots the hot steam pipe next to the boar cop, which lets out hot steam. The hot steam pours out of the pipe and the skin of the boar cop begins to peel, leaving only the flesh that Dayvon easily shoots. The body of the boar cop breaks into pieces of bones, flesh and green alien blood.
The four head towards the hostages making sure that they’re ok. No signs of physical trauma are seen o
n any of the hostages, which give our heroes hope in finding more survivors. Then the officers ask the hostages a set of easy questions:
“What were you guys doing here?” The officer asks the four hostages.
In unison the hostages say, “Shopping”
“When did you see or hear these “aliens” come in?” Each of the four has a slightly different answer, but they all corner in on the seven-thirty timeframe.
“Finally what were these guys planning to do to you guys?”
One of the hostages who was a woman from Trinidad says hysterically, “They were about to give us… the devil juice, the green stuff! They kept saying join our family or else… these things were terrifying!”
Another male hostage of Pilipino descent says, “We found a way to sneak out, the rest of the hostages are in the maintenance workers break room.”
“That’s perfect, just the information we needed. You have proved to be very helpful, now let me call for some backup to get you guys to safety.” The questioning officer says in response to the Pilipino man.
The four of them wait till the back arrives to pick up the hostages. Eventually the backup arrives and comes to get the hostages to safety. The backup gives the news that the main mall area has been totally evacuated and over 90% of the aliens have been killed. Only a small percentage remained in the mall and most of the remaining 10% were in the maintenance area.
“Cool so we got the gloobas on the run, at least for now that is. However we got to find the source of these aliens coming or at least where the hell these black holes of hell come from.” Luis says.
One of the back officers hands Luis a grenade launcher and hands Dayvon some armor piercing round for his machine gun.
“This will come in handy!” Dayvon says
“Yup, now we’re talking. Let’s go in there and kick some ass!” Luis says in confidence and a bit of arrogance mixed in.
After making sure the hostages are ok. The four of them continue deeper into the maintenance section. They begin their quest to the maintenance staff break room. As they progress through the hallway, a scorpion tail pops out and strikes one of the officers killing him. The tail disappears before the others could take a shot at the tail.
“No Matt, man down I repeat man down!” The living officer radios his staff.
“I’m sorry brother, but there’s nothing we can do here. We gotta keep moving I’m sure that is how Matt would want it.” Dayvon consoles the other officer.
Eventually the trio continues their journey through the maintenance section. Until they are met with a salamander trooper, Luis shoot’s it, but the trooper teleports out of the way.
“Not this again, everybody watch your back!” Luis screams after seeing the trooper disappear. The trooper reappears taking a sneak shot on the other officer on the head killing him. Dayvon kills the trooper before it could disappear. However their other partner taking a head shot ends up bleeding to death from his head. All of a sudden the two of them hear a gush of water coming down.
***
That gush of water was the water where Angel, Maria and their officer partner were caught in. Angel sees a platform up ahead that the three need to get on to avoid falling into the compactor area. The officer and Angel have no problem getting on the platform, but Maria finds herself falling behind the other two and unable to reach the platform. Angel takes his hand out for Maria to grab onto.
“Maria grab onto my hand! I’m going to pull you in!” Angel screams as Maria grabs his hand. “Ok honey don’t let go of my, I promise I won’t let go of you!”
“I know you won’t, I trust you with all my heart.” Then Maria sees an owl commander above the compactor area. “Angel! Hurry pull me, there’s a damn owl on the other side ready to shoot a missile.”
Angel asks the other officer to help him pull Maria in. Now Angel has two issues, first is not letting go of Maria, and second pulling her up in time before the missile lands. Angel and the other officer are able to pull Maria up to the platform just in the nick of time. The missile hits Maria location 5 seconds later.
The explosion is big enough to blow a hole where Maria was standing causing the water to go down. Ironically enough the hole is right above Luis’s and Dayvon’s location. The blast was big enough to throw the trio through the door behind them with quite the force. The trio finally gets on their feet after a few minutes.
“Is everyone ok?” Angel asks. Everyone answers yes to his question.
The trio heads down the stairs to the lower level where the gush of water can still be heard.
“Wait a minute? I thought the water was going down the compactor.” Angel says
“I saw the missile make a huge hole so all that water is going to the lower level. Oh shit that’s where Dayvon and Luis are, call them now!” Maria replies to Angel.
Angel calls Luis and Luis answers, “Hey bro what’s good?”
“Luis there’s about to be a huge gush of water coming your way! I would run forward as much I can. We’ll be down in a few minutes. We’re not too far from you.”
“Angel the hostages are being held in the maintenance break room where the workers normally eat.” Luis replies to Angel. “Cool, I’ll see you in a few.” Luis hangs up the phone.
“What’s good Luis?” Dayvon asks Luis.
“What’s good is that if we don’t keep moving, we’re going to get flushed out. That water is coming straight for us!” Luis answers Dayvon.
Luis and Dayvon run as fast as they can to beat the running water heading for them. Luis sees a valve that opens the drainage in case of rushing water. He opens it, the drainage hole opens and the water runs down the hole.
“Wow that was a close call!” Dayvon says.
“We still gotta get out of here, with all that water going into the foundation, this mall is bound to collapse.” Luis replies
“Luis and Dayvon there you go, well I’m glad to see you two are still alive. Now let’s get to the break room shall we.” Angel says in encouragement.
Everyone follows Angel’s lead towards the break room. Then a whole gang of alien troops arrive on site.
“Well let’s have some fun, shall we!” Angel says prepared for battle.
A mixture of boar cops, salamander troopers, iguana troopers and a new species arrive at the scene. This new species was a scorpion like creature only that it could stand on its own two feet. It still has the stinger of a normal scorpion, but has many more abilities. This includes agility, shooting poison juice at its victims and its powerful shell making it a tough kill.
An all out gunfight began just within feet of the break room. The screams of the hostages could also be heard. Maria and Angel easily kill off the salamander troopers, while Luis and Dayvon with their newly acquired weapons make quick work of the boar cops. However the scorpion creature proves to be very difficult to shoot. It was too fast for Luis to shoot with the grenade launcher and the others didn’t have strong enough weapons. The scorpion shoots its poison spit to the one surviving officer. He is immediately paralyzed and dies on the spot.
“Son of a bitch this bastard means business, looks like we may have to deal with it in hand to hand combat.” Angel says looking at the situation.
The creature then grabs Maria and she desperately tries to escape, but the claws of the scorpion are extremely strong. Then the scorpion is shot from behind causing it to drop her. However it wasn’t any of our heroes. It was Lieutenant Jelani that Manny had mentioned before. He’s got great agility and he is weakening the creature easily. Angel and the others could only look in amazement.
Jelani is originally from Barbados or at least born there. However, he was raised in Brooklyn for most of his life. He came to Brooklyn when he was only 3 years old. Jelani is blessed with the talent of high agility and being a person who learns quickly.
“I taught that kid well!” Angel says in happiness, since he trained Jelani and he was his protégé.
That happiness is crushed though, as the s
corpion catches up to Jelani’s movements. It grabs Jelani and impales him with is sharp tail. It throws Jelani to its right, Angel angrily watching his protégé getting killed goes in for the kill.
“Die you bastard!” Angel cuts off the scorpions head killing it. “I want all of you to get those hostages out, I’ll check on Jelani. Hey Jelani can you hear me, crap look at that hole! Don’t worry buddy we’re getting the paramedics in here now.” Angel says in great emotion while trying to hide a tear.
“Arghhhh!” Jelani screams in great pain, something Angel thought he would never see from his protégé. “Angel thanks for being such a cool friend in High School and a cool dude here. However I’m not making it, I’m losing too much blood and I’m becoming numb everywhere, I can see death in its eyes already.”
“Jelani don’t give up on me! I’m saving your ass damn it. Come on dude you taught me to be tough in High School. You can do this brother!” Angel is trying his last ditch effort to save Jelani.
“It’s… too late… my brot…her. I’m… too bad in… shape. Don’t worry… about me… go… and do it… for me… AGHHHH!!!” Jelani says his last words to Angel in a weak tone and screams in pain before he dies. The only thing left of him is his bloody corpse and Angel’s tears mixed in.
“No Jelani! My first protégé, these bastards are making this war personal already. Somebody get the paramedics 10-13 officer down, officer down! Don’t go out like this Jelani! Officer down! Someone call a damn ambulance!” However Jelani never gets up and he is declared dead once the paramedics finally show up. After the dramatic events, Angel then gets a call from Manny.
“Angel good work, we’re getting back up in there right now. It seems like the aliens have retreated at least for now.”
