by S. A. Lusher
While there was a part of her that did relish the challenge, even if the challenge was kind of insane, there was another part of her that wanted to be somewhere far away, somewhere safe and warm and well-lit.
Jennifer stopped. They were close to the stairwell that would take them up to the bridge. Something was wrong, though.
“What is it?” Megan asked, her voice low and harsh.
“I don't know,” Jennifer murmured softly, studying their environment.
They were in a sort of crossroads chamber. Behind them was the corridor they'd just come through. To the left and right were more corridors, the right one leading back to another apartment block, the left one leading off to a storage section. In the wall dead ahead was the door that granted access to the stairwell.
“There,” Ishi whispered suddenly, the fear slipping through his composure.
Jennifer turned to the left, where he had indicated, and saw it. It being a twisting confusion of nearly invisible movement. One of Mark's new zombies. It looked like a...ghost. Jennifer raised her rifle, ensuring the single-shot function was activated and the safety was disengaged, and aimed for where its chest would be, given that was the broadest target. She fired twice. Both shots connected and twin explosions of black blood appeared.
The creature itself also appeared.
Thrown out of whatever concentration it needed to blend into the environment around it, the thing was now visible. It was tall, thin and milk white. Hideous crimson eyes, maddened with the fever of whatever infection drove it, stared at them. Jennifer adjusted her aim as it opened its mouth to offer an alien shriek.
She fired another shot directly into its maw.
The back of its head burst in a shower of black gore.
It slumped to the floor.
“Holy shit,” Megan whispered. “They really are invisible.”
“What does this mean?” Ishi murmured.
“It means they're evolving,” Jennifer replied.
“What's next up the evolutionary ladder?” Ishi asked.
“I'd rather not find out. Come on.”
She led them into the stairwell.
* * * * *
Panic rose up and ensnared him.
Mark heard a yelp of fear escape his throat. That was what it felt like: he didn't consciously do it, it came out of its own accord, escaped him. For a second, it felt like he'd gone totally blind. But then he realized he could actually see things: the screen of the console he'd just been checking for one. And the lights of the machinery and equipment around him for another. The lights had gone out. A power surge of some kind?
Mark remembered that his shotgun might have some kind of flashlight built into the muzzle. He felt along the barrel for a while and then found the switch and flipped it. A brilliant beam of light cut through the darkness. Well, that was better at least. But what had happened to the lights? All the equipment seemed to be working. Mark considered this latest development for a moment. As he did, there was a crimson flare as the emergency lighting kicked into being. It helped...but not very much. Mark heaved a sigh.
He was going to have to go on.
He flicked off the flashlight, figuring, unhappily, that it would give him away, hindering him more than helping him, (provided the zombies had to rely on sight as much as he did), and that he'd just have to get used to the red glow of emergency lighting. When his eyes had adjusted, he moved to the door, unlocked it and opened it up. Nothing waited for him. Mark thought about his route for a moment, making sure he had it locked in his head, then took the first step out into the corridor beyond. Time to continue his journey.
Progress was slow and painful.
Seconds bled into minutes.
Mark slunk along corridors, miserable and cowering in the shadows. Grunts and groans echoed down to him, sounding monstrous and alien. What else was down here with him? Once he came perilously close to being discovered by a trio of zombies, but apparently they didn't do too well in the dark, which was fine by him. He managed to reach the second repair site, which was one of two main power relays.
This one in particularly was damaged, too damaged for repair, so it was bleeding off a hell of a lot of excess energy behind the bulkheads. He had to hit the emergency shutoff, then, after that, he would have to go activate another dormant power relay. Mark worked quickly, moving about the room, cutting off the relay. When he had finished, something caught his eye. High up on the wall, over one of the larger pieces of equipment, was a vent shaft. One that he could actually access. It would make his trip a lot easier.
A lot safer.
He hoped.
Mark decided he'd rather be in the vents than creeping through darkened hallways. He made sure everything was secured, though he'd have to carry his shotgun still, but that shouldn't be too hard to manage. He climbed onto the equipment, opened up the ventilation grate, took a good look down it with his flashlight and then slid the shotgun in. He followed it, hoping that there was nothing in there with him.
Mark started crawling.
Just one more place to go, and he'd be done with this.
* * * * *
“You are shitting me,” Jennifer groaned.
It felt too easy, coming up out of the stairwell and getting to the bridge with only having to kill another three zombies. And, apparently, her instincts were correct: it had be too easy. The bridge was locked down. She'd been holding out hope that it wasn't, that Ishi was wrong, but it was. She was looking over the terminal next to the huge set of doors that led to the bridge itself, sealed firmly against intrusion. Her security clearance got her access to the information on the lockdown. She sorted through a bit of data, figuring out how to end it.
“Anything?” Megan asked.
“Hold on...okay, shit. I've got it, it's annoying. We need two things. The first is a keycard, which I've managed to track down. The other thing is we'll need to engage a dual-lock system. What this means is that one of us needs to be physically at two separate terminals, activating them both at the same time, in order to raise part of the lockout. The card will do the rest. The two consoles are at two separate security checkpoints and...as luck would have it, the keycard is at one of those checkpoints. So we'll go there first.”
“How will we deal with the dual-lock?” Ishi asked as they set off.
“We all go to the first one, I leave one of you there and escort the other to the second lock, where we initiate the system, then we'll meet back at the bridge,” Jennifer replied.
She led the pair of them away from the bridge, back down the central corridor and came into a large security checkpoint. The place had been shredded by gunfire. Ignoring it, Jennifer broke right and jogged down the hallway. Luckily for her, the bridge deck was actually pretty small. Not much up there but the bridge itself, some offices and bathrooms and a few security checkpoints. In fact, she could see the first one right now.
Jennifer skidded to a halt and a zombie stepped out of one of the open doors down the hallway. Only...it wasn't a zombie.
At least, not a normal one.
“What the fuck...” Jennifer whispered, covering it with her rifle.
It had all the makings of a regular zombie, except...the chest. The chest looked like it had been split open somehow, expanded. The arms hung almost uselessly at its side and its head was lulled back, almost looking like its neck had been broken to make way for the addition to the chest. What resided within the chest, amidst a field of sickly-looking glistening gray meat, were a trio of dark, large holes, big enough to fit a finger inside of.
As she was staring at this, one of the holes contracted slightly, then expanded, ejecting something directly towards her. She cried out a warning, but the two medics had apparently already gotten out of the way. Narrowly avoiding the thing by dropping down onto her knees, Jennifer sighted the ugly thing and put it down with half a dozen shots. At the sound of it dying, another two of them stumbled into the hallway from hidden niches and open doors. She put them down, too, thi
s time with just four shots, two for each, finding sensitive spots and not freaking out so much. She stayed knelt like that for a moment, then rose slowly.
No more were coming.
“Okay, we've got a new one,” she muttered as she moved slowly towards them.
“This makes them significantly more dangerous,” Ishi said quietly.
“Yeah, it does,” Jennifer murmured, studying the three corpses she'd produced. Ugly beasts. How was this possible? “Come on.”
She took them into the first security center, finding it empty and largely cleared out of anything useful, except for the keycard they were looking for, which was lying discarded in a pool of blood. Making a face, Jennifer retrieved it and wiped it off on the leg of her uniform, then slipped it into one of her pockets.
“Megan, stay here, lock the doors behind us. I'll contact you through the radio once we get down to the other checkpoint. If the radio doesn't work, I'll use the terminal-to-terminal comms system. We'll sync up and hit it, got it?” she asked.
“Got it,” Megan replied.
“Maybe I should stay here,” Ishi suggested. “I mean, it's just down the other hallway and I'd just be a hindrance on you, given my inability to properly defend myself.”
Jennifer considered it. He was making a good point, but she thought she could hear fear in his voice. He didn't want to go back out there. But did that stop him from making a good point? No, no it didn't. Maybe she just didn't want to admit to herself that she didn't want to be alone if she could help it. But she was stronger than that.
“Fine,” she said. “Lock the door behind me. Wait for my signal.”
They both nodded and she headed back out into the corridor.
* * * * *
Something was in the vents with him.
Mark was sure of this. He could hear it occasionally. He had wanted to get out the first time he'd heard it moving around in there with him, but there were a lot of zombies out there in the hallways. He could see them every time he passed another vent grate. Whatever it was that was behind him was still behind him, a ways back. So he'd opted to hurry on. He was pretty close to the final power relay. If he just got there and activated it, he'd be done with this fucking deck and he could hopefully go back upstairs. This is what he told himself.
But it was closer now.
Mark made a final turn and scrambled forward. His exit was at the end of this particular stretch of ventilation duct. He kept going, feeling the tension ratcheting up as, somehow, whatever was chasing him seemed to figure out that he was about to escape. Two meters passed. Then five. He was almost there when he heard it getting really close. In a panic, Mark pulled out his pistol, flipped over onto his back and aimed down the length of his body. Something was crawling towards him, something he had a hard time seeing.
One of the invisible ones.
Mark opened fire, once, twice, three times. A spray of gore appeared, followed promptly by another one of the mutated zombies seemingly popping into existence. Letting out a relieved sigh, he put his pistol away and finished his journey, sliding out of the vent and into the room he needed. It was basically a copy of the one he'd left. This job was even easier. All he had to do was flip a switch. He left the vents after making sure the room was empty and did said switch flipping. The lights didn't come back on.
So what did that mean?
Wanting to get to the bottom of this, Mark activated the terminal in the room and quickly began sorting through the data. Five minutes passed, and then he realized what he was missing. The problem was very simple and very obvious.
The lights had been turned off.
He reactivated them and they came on without a problem. So what the hell did that mean? Someone switched them off?
Turning away from that mystery for the moment, Mark instead checked out the engines. He let out a relieved sigh. They were working fine.
He activated his radio.
“Jennifer, you there? You busy?”
A pause. “Mark? Why weren't you answering earlier?”
“I haven't received any calls.”
“Shit. Now the radios are going screwy. Okay. I've almost got the bridge open. Look, I need you to get up to the cargo deck and repair that leak in the hull...have you found Frost yet?”
“No. I haven't heard anything from him,” Mark replied. He considered telling her about the lights, but she sounded busy and harried enough as it was. “I'll get up to the cargo deck and get to work on those repairs,” he said.
Jennifer sounded relieved. “Thank you, Mark. Be careful.”
“Yep, you too.”
He set off once more.
CHAPTER 06
–Apprehension–
“Three...two...one...now!”
Jennifer hit the button and a second passed, then the screen before her lit up green. Pristine blue text appeared: Bridge Lockout Ended. She let out a long sigh of relief and then slowly popped her neck, relieving the tension.
“We did it,” Megan said.
“Yeah, we did.”
She was glad the radios were working again. On the way to the second security checkpoint, she'd finally gotten a call from Mark. He was now on his way to take care of their leak. Still no word on Frost, though. She was worried the man might be dead by now. But there was nothing they could do about that.
They were very close to getting onto the bridge now.
“Meet me halfway,” Jennifer said as she stood up.
“On it,” Megan replied.
She left the security center and checked the area, but no more hostiles had arrived in the interval of time she'd spent in there. She made her way quickly down the corridor, towards the main checkpoint. She saw Megan and Ishi hurrying to join her from the other end of the passageway. They met in the checkpoint, then hurried down the final stretch of corridor to the large, imposing doors that would grant access to the bridge.
Jennifer was secretly paranoid that it wouldn't work, that she'd slide the card and the mag reader wouldn't work or the card was broken or some other bullshit would happen. But, as she pulled the security keycard out of her pocket and swiped it down the thin metal reader, there was a happy chirp and the lights had been red became green. With a sigh of relief, Jennifer pocketed the card and opened up the bridge.
Inside, the undead waited for them.
“Take them down!” Jennifer snapped, raising her rifle.
There were a good dozen of them.
Most of them, she saw, were regular zombies, but there were a few of the ones that launched shit at you were mixed in with the lot. She targeted them first, since they were the most dangerous. The sweet spot, she found, was right about where the top of the neck was. Given that their heads were tilted back at a pretty steep angle, shooting them through there also punched through their skulls. She still didn't know if these were the kind of zombies you needed to shoot in the head to take down, but hey, a headshot was a headshot.
She took down the first of the mutations and as she was sighting the second one, it launched one of its things at her. She narrowly sidestepped, away from Megan and Ishi, as not to get shot since they were peppering the zombies' position with gunfire. Jennifer adjusted her aim and popped off another two shots, bringing down the second mutation. From there, it was a simple mopping up exercise, as none of the others fired back.
When the last zombie fell, Jennifer reloaded her rifle.
“Close the door, wait here,” she said.
Ishi and Megan were, in their own way, eager to obey. Although Ishi was a good leader, he likely knew that Jennifer was a better one in this situation. He could very likely keep his head when something lethal and immediate went wrong in the operating room, but anything that involved gunfire and the undead were probably beyond him. They were a bit beyond Jennifer, too, but she thought she was doing okay so far. She moved around the bridge, checking out all the little recessed niches and potential hiding spots.
“Okay,” she said once she had completed her sweep, �
��we're clear. Ishi, get on the console, find out what the fuck happened to us.”
“Got it,” Ishi replied.
While he did that, Jennifer began the miserable task of searching the bodies. It was ugly work and she had to be careful not to touch any skin, but she managed it over the next stretch of time. There wasn't much on them and it didn't help that she recognized some of them. Among the dead were the captain of the ship and a couple of high ranking security officers that used to be her bosses. For a moment, it struck her how bizarre it was. Here were men and women she had come to believe were strong, sure individuals.
People you could count on to get the job done, people you could trust. And yet death had found them, in the end, just as easily as it had found everyone else on this vessel. This was something Jennifer had never comfortably been able to wrap her mind around. She suppose no one really could. In a way, to be human was a lack of true comprehension of death. Just like no one could fully comprehend the concept of infinity. Sure, you could understand it academically, but to truly know? It just didn't really seem possible.
They were dead, and she would be too, eventually.
But not here, not now.
Not if she had anything to say about it.
“Both of you, come over here,” Ishi said suddenly. There was a sense of urgency in his voice. “I've got Mark on the radio. This is something we all need to hear.”
“Okay, spill it,” Megan said as she and Jennifer crowded in behind Ishi, who had settled it at one of the workstations.
“It seems that, approximately two weeks ago, the ship was suddenly and without warning flooded with a gas that rendered nearly everyone onboard unconscious. When this occurred, another ship dropped in and linked up, depositing a crew of...I'm not sure. They seemed to be some kind of paramilitary organization. They, along with their accomplices on the ship, loaded almost everyone into stasis pods and began experimenting on them.”
