by S. A. Lusher
And, very likely, here was an agent of such a branch walking ahead of her. She had a lot of questions, but she also realized that now really wasn't the time. When she was younger, Jennifer had often dreamed of being a member of such an organization. A soldier who investigated paranormal incidents or alien mysteries.
Maybe now was her chance to join them.
If she could survive this nightmare of mutated zombies, she figured that'd be a strong argument for letting her join. And it wasn't as if she didn't have a lengthy history of combat. Jennifer fell out of her thoughts as, overhead, a long, steady thrum of gunfire sounded. A loud roar tore through the air, followed by a series of heavy thuds. Then nothing for a moment, then the sound of heavy footfalls, receding. She wasn't looking forward to going up there. The good news was that, according to the map, they could come up directly into the room they were looking for. It was a data room where all the pertinent information should be stored.
It wouldn't all be so easy, but it was a nice start.
Provided it all worked out the way it was supposed to.
“Here,” Drake said, suddenly hooking a left through an open door.
Jennifer followed him into a small repair bay. Among the workbenches, shelves and lockers, a ladder was tucked into one corner. It led up to an emergency access hatch. Drake slung his rifle, mounted the ladder and began climbing up. He reached the hatch at the top, popped it open and stuck his helmeted head up.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“What?” Jennifer asked as he hauled himself up and out.
“Place looks trashed,” he replied. “Come on.”
Jennifer sighed and quickly climbed up the ladder after holstering her pistol. It was all she had. She hoped to fix that soon. A pistol wouldn't do much against a horde of the undead. She climbed up into the room and saw what Drake was talking about. The place was just off of the main lab and it looked like a slaughterhouse. There were five or six, (maybe more), corpses strewn about the room. The walls, which were largely made up of workstations and mainframes, were now nothing more than a collection of bloodied, dented, sparking metal.
The double-doors that led into the room were forced open, bent backwards. Outside, Jennifer caught a glimpse of a massive, open area. And a lot of blood, and corpses. It was quiet out there, save for the occasionally growl or clicking hiss. It sounded like the plan had come off without a hitch. Jennifer frowned as she studied the room. Well, for the most part. Drake told her to keep an eye out while he settled into the least destroyed workstation and tried to work it. She moved through the death and destruction, towards the door.
Reaching it, she peered out into the immense room beyond. It was about half the size of a regular hangar bay and the walls seemed to be made up almost entirely of stacked glass-and-steel cages. All of the doors were open and they were all empty. There were a lot corpses in white jumpsuits, (well, white, now stained red and black), smeared across the deckplates. She saw a few shambling figures. The zombies, either those left behind or those who had survived the initial slaughter and had since turned and returned from the dead.
“Fuck,” Drake muttered. He stood and joined her. “This room is trashed. We'll have to go to the backup room.”
“Where is it?” Jennifer replied.
“It's a little ways from here. Our best bet would be to go back underground and make our way there. Less traffic that way,” Drake answered.
“Okay, I'll follow your lead.”
He grunted and moved back over the hatch, then jumped down it. Jennifer quickly climbed down the ladder and followed him out of the repair bay. As they stepped back out into the corridor, they heard a not quite distant enough clicking sound. The sound sent shivers of fear and anticipation down Jennifer's spine. The Rippers. They were down there in the underground with them. Fun. She took her pistol back out of its holster.
Drake led the way as they plunged back into the network of corridors and interconnected chambers. For about five minutes they moved uncontested. Then it happened. They stepped out of a corridor and into a larger chamber, what might have been a heat exchange, judging by the large pieces of equipment mounted on the walls. A pack of Rippers had gathered in the center of the chamber. And now they were taking notice of Drake and Jennifer. The pair responded to a wave of growls and turning of undead gazes appropriately.
They leveled their weapons and opened fire.
The first two Rippers were dropped, bullets piercing their brains and spraying them through the air like a black mist. The other four scrambled. Jennifer tracked one of them, opened fire once, twice, three times, missing each time, then on the fourth shot the round punched through its right eye and exploded out the back. She let out a startled sound as another Ripper leaped for her and she sidestepped, narrowly avoiding its enormous razor claws. She could smell the reek of infection as it sailed by her. Tracking it with her pistol, she emptied the rest of the magazine into it. As she hastily reloaded, she saw that Drake had put down the remainders.
“Well,” he said, reloading his rifle, “looks like we don't have this place to ourselves anymore.”
After reloading, they jogged the length of the chamber and moved through the open door at the back, plunging once more into the tunnels. They managed to make it another minute or so before running into another problem.
“Shit...” Jennifer muttered, staring at a collapsed section of tunnel ahead of them. “Now what do we do?”
“We go back up,” Drake replied unhappily.
They began searching for a way up.
* * * * *
“I'm impressed,” Eve said as the final Lancer fell.
“With what?” Greg replied as he slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle. They'd been moving underground for a little while now.
“You. These things are brutal and vicious. The fact that you woke up in the middle of nowhere and kind of just stumbled into these things and managed to survive all that crap is seriously impressive,” Eve replied.
“Well, it wasn't so difficult back when I was on Dis. I mean, for a while there, it was pretty easy. Just me and Kyra...” he hesitated.
“You never talk about her,” Eve said. He hesitated further, looking at her. “I mean, it's okay if you don't want to, it's just...she must have been great, for her to have meant so much to you.”
“It's not that...I mean, no, she was, but I think a lot of it was that, for all intents and purposes, she was my first real love. She was great. She was a lot like you. Tough, independent, very no-bullshit. She was a bit slower to trust than you and maybe not so...casual with everything. But I still miss her. It doesn't hurt as bad anymore, but something Allan told me was that it never stops hurting. It becomes...kind of like a scar, an old wound that still flares up occasionally when something hits it in just the wrong way.”
“Yeah, we've all got a few of those,” Eve muttered.
“What about you?” Greg asked. “What's your scar?”
She sighed. “Fair question. Before I wound up on Syberia, I was in love with my partner. He was kind of shy, kind of awkward, but he was a great person. We were in a relationship and had been for over a year when Rogue Ops killed him because we got too close. That one...hurt. It still does. But I've been hurt a lot in my life and the only thing I've really figured out that works was to mourn the dead and move on, because if you let it, pain will run your life.”
Up ahead, something growled.
Low and deep and menacing. Greg recognized that growl.
A Berserker.
“Oh shit,” he whispered, their conversation derailed. Greg began creeping forward, trying to move as stealthily as possible. He reached the end of the corridor and peered cautiously into the crossroads chamber ahead. Nothing inside of it, but another deep growl came from the left. Greg sighed softly. Of fucking course. They had to cross the chamber, and it seemed like a Berserker was just out of sight in the corridor to the left.
“Come on,” he murmured softly. “We need to go, fast and
quiet.”
Eve joined him at the end of the corridor. They hurried through the crossroads chamber. A warning grunt sounded from their left, followed quickly by heavy, plodding footfalls. Greg cursed and started running with Eve.
They'd been noticed.
The Berserker entered the corridor they'd plunged into and let out a furious roar.
“Go!” Greg screamed.
They ran. Greg began fumbling with the rocket launcher. Probably not the best place to put it to use but hey, a Berserker was a Berserker, regardless of where it was. He quickly ran through the procedure to activate the foot-long tube, told Eve to keep running, dug in his heels, spun around and shouldered the launcher.
“Greg, wait-” Eve began.
He sighted the towering behemoth and loosed the rocket. It crossed the distance in nothing flat and hit the thing dead center in its broad chest. There was a tremendous explosion that shorted out Greg's audio and visual sensors for a moment, then they snapped back online and he was given a view of a corridor sprayed with the flaming remains of a Berserker.
“That was effective,” he said, slinging the launcher across his back.
“That was stupid,” Eve replied.
“Stupid gets the job done a lot in this line of work, I've noticed,” Greg said.
Eve laughed. “Come on, we might as well head up. If I'm going to be facing down these horrors I'd rather do it upstairs than in the basement.”
“Fair deal.”
They found a ladder that took them up to a hatch that, when opened, admitted them access to what appeared to be a medical storage room. Greg moved forward, towards the only door in the room, and opened it up. He was granted a view of an infirmary, white tile and blood, spilled medical supplies and a few shambling figures. Just zombies. He raised his rifle, carefully aimed and put down all three of them with quick headshots.
“Clear,” he said. “Now what?”
“We get into their radio network,” Eve replied. “Listen in, figure out where Enzo and Matheson are hiding out. If we're lucky, they'll be in the same area.”
“And how do we get into their radio network?” Greg asked.
Eve walked over to a corpse, a man in a black jumpsuit that was sprawled across the bloodied tile floor. She reached down and pulled an earpiece comms unit from his right ear, wiped it off and then attached it to her suit.
“Got it,” she murmured. “Give me a moment.”
While she did that, Greg moved over to a medical workstation against the far wall, away from the examination tables and medical cabinets. He decided he should be doing something worthwhile as well. Working quickly, he booted up the console and sorted through the menus, taking a moment to try and find anything of value among the database, but most of it just looked like a bunch of boring medical reports.
Ultimately, he called up a holographic map of the outpost and determined where they were. By the time he did, Eve had something.
“I know where Enzo is,” she said, joining him.
“Where?”
“A command center they have set up...” She leaned in, studied the map he'd called up. “There,” she said, pointing. “That's where he is.”
“That's a little ways away...what about Matheson?” Greg replied.
“Dunno, haven't heard anything on him yet. But if we find Enzo, good bet we'll find Matheson,” Eve said. “Come on, let's go.”
* * * * *
His control was slipping.
Reports were coming in from all over the place. How the fuck could this happen? An hour ago, everything was running along, smooth as silk. Well, mostly. Enzo groaned and rubbed absently at his shoulder, staring at the variety of screens before him, showing him all sorts of information that he really didn't want to see.
“Squad F is reporting heavy causalities.”
“We've just lost Lab Delta.”
“Squad B is down to half-strength.”
Enzo couldn't think. It was all collapsing so fast. Too fast. He'd seen this happen before. Looking around, he caught eyes with Natalia, who was consulting with one of the techs. He nodded his head towards the infirmary. She nodded, finished up her conversation and then hurried to join him in the other room.
As soon as they were both inside, Enzo shut the door, closing off the hectic spray of voices, leaving him blessed silence.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” she asked.
“I want you to take a couple of guards, go through the underground, get to the hangar, prep the emergency evac shuttle,” Enzo replied.
She looked at him for a long moment. “You think it's that bad?” she asked.
“Yes, it's looking that bad. We could still turn this around, everyone here is a trained professional, but these things, these fucking monsters, are dangerous. And those people who showed up...”
“There's just three of them!”
“Those three people were part of a very, very small group that took down the entirety of Rogue Operations,” Enzo replied. “So don't underestimate them. Just...please, get the shuttle ready. We'll leave if we have to...figure something else out.”
“I...okay,” Natalia said, her features firming up somewhat. She hesitated for a moment, then she leaned in and kissed him. “Don't do anything stupid...please?”
He laughed. “Yeah, that really sounds like me, huh?”
“You know what I mean. Please.”
“Just go, I'll be fine.”
“Okay.”
He watched her go, then, as soon as the door was closed, he turned to look at the experimental device lying on the counter to this right.
He stared at it for a long moment before going back out into the control room.
CHAPTER 14
–Decisions–
They had found a way up out of the underground.
Unfortunately, they found themselves in the middle of a warzone.
Jennifer squeezed the trigger and put a three-round burst through her target's face, taking him down in a spray of blood that beaded on the chrome wall behind him. She switched targets, shifting the rifle she'd picked up ten minutes ago from a cooling corpse in the underground and put another burst into a second enemy trooper's head, killing him instantly. Beside her, Drake put down another trooper in a dark uniform.
The last man fell and they both waited, but no one else came.
Distantly, something shrieked.
“This is fun,” Drake muttered. “No wonder Greg was so messed up for a while.”
“What do you mean?” Jennifer replied.
They resumed their journey through what might have once been an infirmary but had obviously been transformed into an area for experimentation.
“The other guy on my team, he faced these things down before,” Drake replied.
“So those are his credentials...what about you and the woman, Eve?”
He offered a short, grim laugh. “I faced down a collection of Cyr experiments. Lizard guys that ate brains, things with holes in their chests that could melt flesh in an instant, a walking collection of swords...it was pretty bad. Eve fought mutant things. Slugs that crawled inside of you and turned you into a monster, kind of like these things,” Drake replied.
“I guess these are my credentials then,” Jennifer said.
“Yours? You thinking about signing up?”
“Yeah. You think that's a bad idea? Do I have a shot?”
“You survive this, you've got a shot,” Drake answered. “My boss...he doesn't really care where you come from, so long as you're loyal and you get the job done.”
“Well, that's me.”
“Prove it and I'll vouch for you. We could use more help.”
Jennifer couldn't help but smile at that. A chance to do some real work in the galaxy? To see something that was actually interesting? All the more reason to get out of here alive. They crossed the length of the bloodied infirmary and moved through the door beyond...only to pause, frozen in place at what they saw.
It was another spe
cimen storage area, the walls made up of racked and stacked steel-and-glass cages, all of them open. Up ahead, pacing the deckplates and chewing on corpses, were things Jennifer hadn't seen before. They looked like dogs, like beefy, bloody dogs with jaws that seemed oversized and stuffed with teeth. There were about eight of them and they were all noticing that fresh meat had appeared.
“You ever seen these before?” Drake asked quietly.
“No, news to me,” Jennifer replied, raising her rifle.
Drake did the same. The dogs had all started growling. It was a low, deep, vicious sound that stirred some hidden, primal part of Jennifer. She shouldered her rifle and zeroed her sights on the nearest creature. It was already moving. She squeezed the trigger. The first barrage of bullets shot towards it, two of them narrowly missing, the third glancing off its thick skull. Jennifer cursed, swapped back to single shot, adjusted her aim and fired once more. This one punched a hole through its forehead and dropped the beast. Drake dropped another two in quick succession and then the others scattered.
They approached all at once from different avenues.
Jennifer felt panic begin to set in. These things were dangerous and fast and this was getting out of hand very quickly. She tracked another one with the barrel of her rifle, squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. They were moving fast now. The first two shots went wild, the third buried itself in the thing's chest, which didn't seem to slow it down all that much. The beast reared back and then launched itself at her. Jennifer let out a small scream of surprise and dropped. The dog-zombie sailed overhead and she could hear its jaws snap shut as it tried to take a bite out of her. She heard Drake grunt and more gunfire, but there was no time to help him. She had two of them coming for her now. Jennifer rolled, aimed and fired.
Four shots were popped off in quick succession at the one she'd already injured. The final two shots hit in the face as it circled back around to get at her and it dropped. She rolled over and let out another scream as she saw how close the other one was. It was far too close for comfort. It lunged at her. Jennifer brought her feet up and managed to get them up under it, planted on its chest. It was now suspended over her, pushing with its bottom two legs to overpower her. It was remarkably strong. The thing's head was just over her face, jaws snapping shut repeatedly as it tried to bite her entire face off. Her rifle was useless.
