by Alan Spencer
Scoop laughed, "They were fucking useless anyway!"
A hole in the ceiling was punched above Duke's head.
"Son! Up top!"
Duke saw the hideous lamprey's sticky maw widen to take him in.
"Fuck you!" Duke unfastened a grenade from his belt, undid the pin, and hurled it upwards. The lamprey's powerful suction had no problem sucking up the grenade.
Three seconds later, a muffled POP sounded. A large section of the ceiling caved in, and the lamprey crashed down onto the floor bleeding from its middle and mouth. From the opening, jellied pieces of the human anatomy kicked up a wretched stink.
"Scoop," Henry shouted, "empty some rounds into the ceiling. Keep them busy for a moment. Duke, you, me, and Poncho keep blasting what's ahead of us."
They made short work of the smaller lampreys on the floor. When bullets didn't work, they stomped them with their boots. Henry thought the enemies were weakening. That was until a new horde charged forth in a collective front. Hundreds of them were angling after the team.
They weren't lampreys this time.
They were human beings, and they were altered.
The subjects were naked. The scientists hadn't given them the respect of decency. Henry unleashed a battle cry as one of the men ran right up to him with a hideous lamprey sucker over his mouth about to bear down on his body. Henry jammed the Gatling gun barrels into the mouth and injected the monster with enough hot lead to send its throat out its ass.
Dirty Poncho hurled a grenade when the skin over a woman's belly flapped up like a window shade. Six snakes of intestines shot forth at him, each end of pink viscera chomping at the bit with lamprey suckers and dagger teeth. The grenade turned the intestines into pureed pink.
Scoop shot the heads off ten enemies in a row, only for the bodies to lower their necks and show off the rings of teeth along their clavicle bones. Henry punched bullets through those monsters, leaving battered bodies strewn on the floor.
"Please, kill me!"
"I only want to die!"
"For God's sake, show us mercy!"
"I'm hideous."
"I never wanted to kill anybody."
"They've turned us into murdering cannibals."
"I can't stop eating flesh!"
"Meat, meat, meat, MEAT! Ahahahahahahahahaha!"
Henry blinked and blinked. Maybe if he kept blinking, he could erase the insanity of the images and what he was hearing from the lips of the suffering.
This was really happening, Henry kept telling himself, and there was only one thing he could do. Henry fulfilled his obligation as a sane and rational person, raised his gun, and unleashed a flood of rip-roaring Gatling gun bullet-fire.
A long line of people almost fifty long were connected at the hip like Siamese twins by a lamprey so long and stretched thin. The black snake pulsed with thick muscles and power. Every victim wore heightened modes of terror on their faces. Their hands and feet were shackled by chains. After the first string of bullets punched their bodies, the lamprey slipped free of each body. The god-awful sounds of slithering meat, breaking bones, and the wails of agony from the victims was almost too much to take, but Henry would be damned if he would end up as meat to be shit out some creature's asshole or a prisoner of some sick scientific anatomical study.
The long and thin lamprey wound itself up like a cobra snake. Its maw elongated to the size of a doorway. Sucker face stretched to its limits, those horrible teeth spinning with mechanical speed. The resulting suction grabbed each of the victims. The group of fifty went airborne, slashing at empty air to avoid being diced to death. It happened in seconds. The great lamprey sucked fifty of them into its dangerous mouth and acted like a meat grinder on acid. Out its hidden anus, bones fired and pinged against the wall. By the end of it, there was a tall hill of gnarled broken skeletal pieces.
"Everybody, GRE-NADE!"
Henry, Duke, Scoop, and Dirty Poncho hurled grenades at the large lamprey.
Quadruple booms later, sections of the floor opened up, giving away to flaming steel. The lamprey had fallen through the hole. Strings of black flesh dangled from the edges of the hole. Dead or not, the beast was out of their way.
There were other monsters in the room, but their gunfire had crippled them. They were other subjects from a long line of diabolical tests.
"This is Hitler shit," Dirty Poncho said, as he emptied rounds into a woman's belly whose "baby" was a bowling ball sized group of string-thin lampreys. "How could anybody get away with this? This is sick."
"Private research," Scoop answered. "It's funded by non-government entities. They don't have to be regulated. They can avoid following the rules. It's not until something catastrophic occurs that things like this gets noticed, and by then, it's much too late. The victims are already piled high."
Scoop was startled when two hands grabbed her Gatling gun barrels. The lamprey man shoved the barrels into his mouth and nodded his head in approval.
Scoop pulled the trigger.
She winced seeing the man's eyes trained on her until they burst out of his head.
Dirty Poncho stomped a lamprey with two human heads on both ends of its body.
"I can only imagine what they had in mind when committing to this research," Duke said. "You give up your soul doing this to innocent people."
"Money," Scoop said. "I did enough investigative reporting in my early days. It's always the same. Sex or money, but most often, money wins over every other human impulse. Amati was a good man, and he too had his price, didn't he?"
"We're not Amati," Henry said. "Clean sweep the area, and then we keep moving. Conrad's out there all alone. God knows what he's seen by now."
The team went about finishing off the disheartening remains of the test subjects. Scoop and Dirty Poncho had the misfortune of coming across the young woman with lamprey mouths over both her breasts and her vagina. The expression of "why me?" stayed on her face until enough bullets entered her body to sever all brain function.
When the room was nothing but blood and dead bodies, Henry brought his team together again. The only entry into the room was also the room's only exit. Dirty Poncho worked on disengaging the room's key panel.
"No go, sir," Dirty Poncho said. "Someone's locked us in."
"THAT'S RIGHT YOU'RE LOCKED IN! EVERYTHING YOU DO WORKS TO MY ADVANTAGE. YOU THINK I'M GOING TO LET YOU STOP HER? SHE'S LEAVING SOON. MAMA NEEDS A FEW HUNDRED MORE POUNDS OF MEAT FOR THE ROAD. IT'LL TAKE A LOT OF ENERGY TO SWIM TO TEXAS. IT WORKED OUT GREAT THAT THEY KEEP BRINGING IN MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU TO FEED MY CREATION."
Henry saw the hole in the floor from when the grenades went off earlier. "Quick, in there!"
Before any of the team could react, the ceiling broke into dozens of pieces. The walls on every side of them crumbled, smashed in from the other side. Black slippery bodies, widening death maws, teeth angling to spin and suck; lampreys that could double as sewer pipes were incoming. Suction force attacked them from every angle.
Steel cages were dragged from across the room and sucked up into the ceiling. Dangerous teeth bent, warped, and ingested steel. Human cages were crushed by powerful gusts of air and reduced to splinters by the time the teeth made short work of the remains. Lab desks, life support machines, refrigerators full of mysterious chemicals imploded and exploded. The chamber of horrors was emptied of every object. Henry's team was the only thing that remained. Henry forced Duke to jump down into the biggest hole in the floor first.
"Go!"
The suction attached itself to Henry. He felt the tug against his scalp, then the pull on his arms and legs. He fired the Gatling gun. The bullets were redirected midstream and sucked up into the monster's maw.
Henry couldn't believe it.
The suction was strong enough to stop bullets.
"MOVE OUT NOW!"
Scoop jumped down into the hole next.
A jagged line of flesh from Henry's scalp down to his jaw was ripped. He watched in awe as the bolt of flesh s
pun and soared into a lamprey's gaping mouth.
Dirty Poncho escaped next.
Henry's Gatling gun was pried from his hands. The lamprey above him chomped the steel and sucked it down like a garbage disposal from hell.
Suctions of air, alarming undercurrents of power, Henry was about to jump down next when a lamprey mouth filled in the hole. Henry prayed his team made it down alive. Holes were punctured into the walls and floor in increasing fervor. Henry's face was bleeding. The exposed meat along Henry's scalp blazed with pain. Henry gritted his teeth. He reached down to his belt, removed two Bowie combat knives, and clutched them to kill.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Conrad refused to stop moving. He had no destination in mind except for escape. The longer he fled from Dr. Sutherland, the more it troubled him. Where was he supposed to go? He had no map to this giant place. Dr. Sutherland could be waiting around any corner, and worse, the lampreys could eat his ass up any second. Conrad charged up a flight of emergency stairs, then rushed back down when the exit leading to the other floors were locked. He double backed, stalked new hallways where the doors were each locked, and ended up going across a long bridge that connected to another building. What he found here were living quarters. Doors were broken off their hinges. Blood painted every surface. Gaping holes damaged the floors and ceilings. He had to watch his step or else turn his ankle or fall completely through to whatever was below.
He froze when he heard footsteps rattle the floor. Not really footsteps, Conrad thought, more like somebody shambling along: one step, two step, dr-aaaaaag.
A shadow limped out of one of the rooms down the hall. First, Conrad heard something slither, then the wet smacking sound of meat being squished together. He couldn't move. Conrad recognized who this person was and he was mortified.
Bavardi.
But not Bavardi.
Half of his face was missing to be replaced by balled up lamprey bodies. Most of his skull was open to the air. Lampreys stuck out of his gray matter like amphibious circuitry. Bavardi's broken bones were fastened together by a rough collection of lamprey bodies. In Bavardi's arms, he cradled random appendages and leftovers from several dead, severely mangled bodies.
Conrad ducked into the shadows at the last moment before Bavarti could spot him. He held his breath and did his best to maintain calm. That was impossible when he heard other sounds of movement throughout the living quarters. Men and women in lab coats, about six of them, were going in and out of rooms carrying severed limbs and wet entrails. These people were exactly like Bavardi. Most of their bodies had been severely devoured or mutilated. Lamprey bodies had infested their corpses to create walking, working slaves. That work collectively involved stacking up leftovers from a previous slaughter. Whatever didn't get sucked up or ingested by the lampreys from before wouldn't go to waste.
Bavardi was the at the very edge of the hallway. He was closing in on Conrad's location. Bavardi's one eye noticed Conrad. The corpse’s face froze, except for the writhing of lamprey bodies stuffed in his eye socket and brains. Conrad had no idea what the man would have to say to him in his current state.
"Your father is a good man," Bavardi said, his voice without affectation. The man was a zombie. "He gave me a chance when everybody thought I was crazy. When I don't take my medications, all I see is violence. They tortured me to the very end of my sanity. Goddamn terrorists. Goddamn caves. Nobody comes out of being tortured the same. I did my best to control the beast, and I'm so sorry for what I did to you back at that hotel. None of that matters, because the lampreys are taking me over!"
The lampreys sticking out of Bavardi's brains tensed up and dug themselves deeper into his exposed gray matter. Bavardi's body went into spasms. Whatever human part of Bavardi came up to the surface, it was quickly buried under intense agony.
"I am their vessel," automaton Bavardi said. "I am theirs to use."
The ceiling over the great pile of body parts the human slaves had stacked up suddenly shifted. A lamprey the size of an anaconda hovered over the pile and sucked up every scrap in its spinning maw. More punches into the ceiling, five more lampreys poked their enormous sucker faces down into the hallway. The piercing whistle of air suctioned at insane speeds was a wicked screech to Conrad's ears.
Bavardi removed a long cylindrical grenade from his belt.
He came to himself again.
"No, you can't control me! Al Qaeda couldn't break me, and neither can you, lampreys! My mind is stronger than you are. You can take my body, but you can't take my mind. Run, Conrad! I'll buy you time. Go! Turn your head. The flash grenade will blind you. Now move your ass, solider!"
Bavardi's hand pushed Conrad down the other side of the hall. Conrad picked up his feet. He heard a great BOOM and a flash of bluish light filled the area.
The lampreys screeched against the flash grenade's burst of light. Conrad cleared four halls. Gunfire echoed through the muffling barriers of walls. It could be his father and the rest of his team. They could be alive. That meant there was still hope of surviving.
From one end of the hall, Conrad heard the dead lamprey-infested zombies and the lampreys themselves stalk after him. Up ahead, hundreds of lampreys the size of garden snakes slithered between the walls and the ceiling searching for food.
Conrad shot up the nearest staircase, ascended a level, and ran to the nearest door. This door was unlocked. He threw it shut, barricaded it with a long table, and put his back to it. Conrad waited and listened to see if anything would bang on the other side of the door to get him.
Several minutes passed, and all he heard was machinegun fire. When that stopped, he swore he heard a man howl in rage.
Conrad swore that man was his father.
Fists beat against the door before he could think too long on his father.
Lampreys were trying to squeeze through the crack of the door.
"I couldn't hold them back," Bavardi shouted outside the door. "I'll do what I can, but you have to get out of this room, Conrad, and fast!"
Holes burst in the door. Lamprey sucker faces hissed and spun their teeth as they slithered through the broken wood to attack. Conrad saw the bloody, mutilated faces of the lamprey infested walking corpses. Bavardi was holding them back, pushing them back, head butting them, and then collapsing when the lampreys re-claimed control of his body. But Bavardi wouldn't give up. He surged right back up to his feet to force back the small pack of aggressors.
Conrad searched the room for any options of escape. There was a steel door open a crack. It had a key panel code. He wouldn't need a password, and thank God, Conrad thought, because that was his only option to avoid oncoming death.
Retreating out of the room, he opened the steel door, and then quickly threw the steel door shut. He locked it and waited. Conrad shivered in the room. It was freezing cold. He scanned the wall for a light switch. When he turned on the overhead light, Conrad gasped in horror.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Scoop was crawling on her hands and knees in a duct system. She kept moving as fast as she could. Dirty Poncho was right behind her. She yelled to ask him if Henry and Duke were behind them. Dirty Poncho said no. He had no idea what happened to them. They were on their own. The mission was going to shit.
Scoop thought, Fuck you Amati; fuck you very much. Enjoying that money ENTECH paid you? I bet it spends well in hell! The only way out of this situation was to be devoured by a fucking fish.
The duct was growing hotter. There was no air actively flowing through it. She had lost her Gatling gun escaping that room. Scoop had a knife, maybe a grenade, and that was about it. That would do nothing to help them get out of here alive. Maybe they could find a flotation device, find a way off this rig, and hope the ocean carried them to land.
Impossible, she kept thinking. Death would be the final outcome. They were stuck here against a horde of hungry lampreys.
How could they survive?
Scoop's elbows and knees ached from being rubbed ra
w. How far did the duct system go before showing a way out? The installation was huge. She couldn't imagine what part of the rig they were crawling to or from.
Why would ENTECH do this to them? Henry and his team were loyal to the cause of humanitarian efforts. Why throw them into this trap without being fully prepared?
Henry had said it earlier, she remembered. ENTECH was compromised. Scoop doubted she'd live long enough to learn the depth of the betrayal and the reasons for mutated lampreys to exist. If she was going to die, she was going to take out as many of those lampreys as possible.
A square of light appeared up ahead, giving a break in the darkness.
Scoop moved faster.
"Up ahead, Poncho. We're almost out of here."
Dirty Poncho unleashed a yelp of pain in response. The sound of something wet and slithering like a giant slug sliding down a piece of sheet metal was stalking them. A suction of air forced Scoop to brace her feet and arms against the walls of the ducts. Dirty Poncho held on for his life as well. Scoop turned around and could see Poncho's horrified face. His mouth was wide in horror as his scalp and face were peeled backwards and sucked into the hideous lamprey's maw. Her comrade's head was uprooted from the neck in a symphony of bones cracking and muscles tearing. Headless, the rest of Dirty Poncho was dragged into the merciless void of spinning teeth and insatiable hunger.
Dirty Poncho was gone.
The body was reduced to liquid in seconds.
Then the suction was on Scoop in full force. Scoop lunged forward, grabbed hold of the opened air vent and pulled herself up with all of her might. Straining her body, almost to the point her muscles gave out, Scoop did a forward flip, and dropped straight down into an unknown room.
The lamprey beast was still incoming. She was meat to be eaten. Scoop did the only thing she could do. Scoop unstrapped the last grenade on her belt. She pulled the pin, counted to two, and tossed up the grenade into the open vent.
BA-BOOM!
