by S. A. Lusher
“Back up towards the door, take them out,” Ramirez murmured.
They began backing up and raised their weapons. As one, the pack of Harvesters began racing across the room towards them. Enzo took aim, zeroing the digital sights on the hideous face of the dog mutation nearest to him. He fired once, missed, cursed and fired again. This shot took it right between the eyes, causing its head to erupt in a plume of crimson gore. He could hear Ramirez firing three-round bursts beside him.
Enzo aimed and fired again, putting down a second horror as it raced for him. His hands were steady, his gaze sharp. He'd done this, (well, not exactly this, but something like it), hundreds, if not thousands of times at this point in his life. It was just a new enemy. The Harvesters growled and snapped their razor teeth together as they charged, navigating the layout of the room. One of them leaped at Enzo.
He tracked it with his pistol and shot it twice in the chest, then ducked as the inert body continued flying towards him. As he came back up, another one was leaping for him, its jaws open. Without any other recourse, he raised his right arm. The beast latched onto it, the teeth biting down into the metal. Enzo grunted as he was thrown onto his back, the creature coming with him. He aimed the pistol and fired three times in rapid succession, hitting it point blank in the face and reducing its entire head to so much free flying gore.
Shaking off what was left of its teeth, he let out a startled shout as he spied yet another flying through the air towards him. He heard a barrage of gunfire and the Harvester let out a howl as it was hit. Enzo rolled, barely getting out of the way in time. He scrambled hastily to his feet and reloaded, looking around, ready for more.
The Harvesters were dead.
“Damn,” he muttered, tossing the spent magazine aside.
“Yeah, you're telling me,” Ramirez replied.
They took a moment to make sure nothing else was creeping up on them, then moved through the specimen storage room and out of it, coming to another antechamber that led to several other sections of the underground research facility.
“Now what?” Enzo asked.
Ramirez pointed up, to an open vent grate overhead.
“This is how I came through, I...” he paused. “Do you...do you smell something?” he asked, then he staggered. “What the hell?” he muttered.
Enzo suddenly felt tired and lightheaded. He took a step, but his foot seemed to not go where he wanted it to. He became aware of a slight green haze to the room and noticed that the air was beginning to smell funny.
“Gas!” he snapped.
“I...” Ramirez abruptly collapsed into a heap.
Enzo heard a door open. His eyes were closing, his muscles failing to respond. The pistol slipped from his fingers, hit the floor.
Someone else had come into the room.
They were saying something.
Enzo collapsed as the darkness took him.
* * * * *
Enzo came awake with a start.
The first thing he noticed was that he was lying on his back. The second being that he had been secured to whatever it was he was lying on. There were people around, they were talking. His shoulder was hurting, a slow burning sensation, pulsing deep in the muscle. He wanted some more morphine, at least some painkillers, fucking something.
“I see our subjects are awake,” someone said, a female voice.
The voice sounded like cruelty came easy.
“Let me up,” Enzo replied.
“Shut up,” the woman replied.
He raised his head and looked around. The room he was in was medical in nature, a handful of examination tables taking up the center, shelves and counters running along the perimeter. Ramirez was similarly strapped down to the table next to him. Half a dozen people stood around. Four of them wore full-body black armor, their faces hidden behind visors. The fifth one, the woman talking, wore the same armor, but her helmet was off. She had a shaved head, pallid skin and brilliantly glowing white eyes. She was sneering at him.
The final person in the room was a tall, scrawny man in a white bio-hazard suit. His dark hair was long and unkempt, sticking up and out in places, his eyes a glowering electric blue. He was staring at an infopad, distracted by something.
“I can't believe we were lucky enough to snag one of you fucking jackoffs,” the woman said, now staring at Ramirez.
“Director Fielding,” Ramirez replied. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Continuing our research, obviously. What else would we be doing?” Fielding snapped her fingers. One of mystery men in dark armor turned and walked across the room. A moment later he returned with a squirming Slug firmly grasped in both hands.
He came to stand between the two of them.
Enzo saw that the other man, who looked like he might have been a scientist, was now playing extremely close attention.
“Which one?” the man asked, his voice coming through a mechanical filter.
“Him. The soldier,” Fielding replied with contempt. “I don't know what it is with you fucking Marines and the government, always sticking their nose where it doesn't belong.”
The Dark Ops man turned and began lowering the Slug towards Ramirez's mouth. Enzo watched in fascinated horror, his stomach twisting. He'd seen a lot of shit in his time, but nothing quite like this. He tried to break free of the things holding him down, but they wouldn't give. Ramirez closed his mouth firmly. One of the other men came over, grabbed his jaw and forced it open. He began screaming, which quickly was muffled as they introduced the Slug to his mouth. It slithered into the opening. His muffled screams became gags.
Enzo watched the young man's throat bulge and twist as the Slug forced its way down it. Ramirez thrashed around violently, fighting against his restraints. The two soldiers held his head down and kept his mouth closed after the Slug had fully disappeared from view. Ramirez continued struggling for several more minutes. As time wore on, his struggles began to cease, until he stopped moving entirely. The pair of soldiers stepped away.
“Fascinating,” the scientist whispered. “That never gets old.”
“Get him ready for testing,” Fielding snapped. “And bring me another one,” she said, her gaze shifting to Enzo.
If he was going to do something, it had to be now. He looked around, trying to find a way out. Maybe he might be able to use the extra strength from his artificial limb, but he wasn't sure. Maybe...something moved overhead. He flicked his gaze to it and caught it at a glance. Someone was overhead, in an open ventilation hatch. It looked like they were getting ready to drop something into the room.
Enzo readied himself, focusing on the Slug as not to give away the position of the other person. One of the troopers was bringing over another Slug. He began to lower it towards Enzo's mouth. Something landed in the room.
“What was that?”
There was a gunshot directly before there was a blinding flash of light and an ear-rupturing sound. Enzo felt his right arm loosen up. Whoever it was must have shot the restraining strap. Blinded and deafened, he brought his arm up and freed his left hand. Working quickly, he undid the straps holding his feet into place and stood up. His hearing began to return, but not before he smelled the ungodly stench of a nearby Mutant.
One or more of them must have gotten into the room. He stumbled about the room, hearing people shouting, a few gunshots going off through a muffled haze. He kept going until he hit a wall, then felt his way along it until he'd found a control panel. His vision and hearing began to return as he opened the door and slipped through. A hazy corridor was waiting for him. Enzo rushed down it, going through the door at the end and coming to a much larger, open corridor.
There were Mutants there, moving around, one of them dragging a corpse.
He turned in the opposite direction and sprinted away, leaving the sounds of combat behind. After a dozen meters, he found a door and opened it up. A small infirmary awaited his inspection. Enzo looked around, found no one and nothing else inside and closed
and locked the door behind him. He stumbled across the room to another door at the back. Opening it, he found vacant closet. He went in and shut the door behind him.
For a long moment, he did nothing, just waited. He was afraid, although he wouldn't have admitted it to anyone else. But the fear was like a mechanism, a machine terror that came when near death situations happened to him. Of course, this was a lot different than getting shot at. Having an alien organism forced down your throat was a pretty bad to way to go. He waited ten minutes for his hearing and vision to fully return. Whoever it had been had used a flash-bang and had saved his life. He wondered if they were still alive.
When he felt capable, Enzo stood and left the closet. There was still nothing in the infirmary. He stood there for a moment, wondering what to do next. He was back to square one, no weapons, no allies. No real idea of what to do. Even his radio was gone. Enzo considered the situation for a long moment, then his eyes fell on a workstation at the back of the room. He moved over to it, sat down and booted the thing up.
As he suspected, the workstation had an intercom system. He opened it up and looked through the list of other workstations he could connect to. Where had they said Eve was? In Command or Control or something...he finally found one labeled Control Room and accessed it. He called out and immediately received a response.
“Enzo? Where are you?” It was Eve.
“I'm pretty sure I'm on the research level. What the fuck happened? Where'd you go?”
“I'm sorry. Dark Ops has set up a transmission blocker. None of the radios work, only the hardwired, station-to-station intercom system. What happened?”
Enzo spent a moment bringing her up to speed on the situation, ending with Ramirez's death and his subsequent escape.
“Well...shit. Okay, let me think a moment,” Eve replied.
Enzo waited. While he did, he walked over to a medical cabinet, pulled out a medkit and extracted the morphine from it. His shoulder was hurting bad again, so he shot up with another injection. Not a full one, just half, he didn't want to get stupid and sloppy on the battlefield. He replaced the injector and clipped the kit to his belt.
“Okay, I have it. You there?”
“Yeah, I'm here.”
“Here's a map of the level you're on. I tracked your workstation and determined that you are on the research level. They had an armory right next to a weapons lab. They were developing some new kinds of munitions down there. If you can get to it, you should be able to find yourself some gear. Ultimately what I'm going to need is for you to come up here and get me out. I'm actually on the level above you, but I need some help getting out.”
“All right. We'll talk later, I'm going for those guns.”
“Okay...good luck.”
“Yeah.”
Enzo headed for the exit.
Chapter 08
–Guts & Gear–
As Enzo crept through the corridors, it became obvious that Level Five, referred to in a blanket term on the terminal as 'Research', had suffered the most damage. Which made sense, considering this is where the outbreak must have begun. All the creatures were stored here, harvested from the ship and brought up to the cages and the labs for the men with syringes and scalpels to experiment. The walls, floor and ceiling were all heavily dented, spattered with blood and liberally riddled with bullet holes. No bodies, though.
These things were thorough and efficient.
Like the hunters always said, no part wasted.
Weaponless again, only this time he knew the threat. At least some of it. So far, he'd seen four different incarnations of these hideous things. The Slugs, Mutants, Guardians and Harvesters. What else lurked in the shadows of the dying facility? What nightmares waited for him? Enzo looked down at his false arm. It was his primary weapon now. He'd liberated another scalpel from the infirmary, but knew it would do him little good.
He needed something heavily.
Currently, he was stalking down a side corridor that connected a pair of specimen storage bays. Not the most ideal place to be, but it was presently the quickest route to the weapons research area. Enzo had never exactly been a patient, or even cautious, man. But he was afraid. He could hardly admit it to himself. It had been a long time since he'd been really frightened, since he'd really tasted fear. In fact, the last time was when it had occurred to him that maybe the pain in his shoulder might not go away from the rest of his life.
After he'd come to accept it as a necessity, the fear had kind of faded. Objectively, he knew that was stupid. A mercenary needed fear to keep him alive, anyone who grabbed a gun and went to work did. Too much would get you killed, but too little would be just as bad, if not worse. It was easy to believe you were invincible when you'd live for so long, been through so much. He'd been shot a dozen times, stabbed six times, put in a coma for nine days at one point due to a particularly bad head injury, poisoned, shocked...
A lot had happened to him.
And he knew that at least half of it was unnecessary. How many times had he been wounded because of stupid risks he shouldn't have taken? Because he was tired of the agony in his shoulder and thought that maybe, just for a second, being dead might be easier, or better? But now, here, buried beneath a planet with a horde of mutated freaks, he was really feeling fear again for the first time in years...in decades.
It was like meeting a long lost friend.
Enzo came to the end of the corridor and hit the access button, dropping into a low crouch, staring through the door as it opened. The other specimen storage bay awaited him. These two were of a simpler design than the previous one he'd fought the Harvesters in with Ramirez. Just ranked rows of cages along the walls, a big, open floor in between them. Just one door on the far side of the room, closed, beckoning to him.
He studied the cages. Most of them were bloodied and empty. A few were still occupied by Mutants or Harvesters. They raged against the glass when they saw him enter the room, but were otherwise harmless. Enzo chuckled and walked over to the nearest occupied cage. It was ground level and held a Mutant, someone that might have been one of the prisoners he'd resided with aboard the transport vessel.
The thing howled and raged as he got closer, beating against the glass front with its fists, smearing blood. He grinned and flipped it off, pressing his finger right up against the other side of the glass. The creature continued to thrash around.
“Go fuck yourself,” he muttered, then turned and hurried across the chamber.
Enzo realized he hated these things. Hated that they'd given him his fear back. It might have been a rush at first, an old chemical reaction he hadn't been acquainted with in a long time, but it was also one he'd gratefully cut out of his life. He hated being afraid. It made him feel helpless. Made him want to hide in a closet and wait for someone else to deal with the problem. He absolutely hated people like that, passive people who just waited.
Because once, he'd been one.
Enzo passed through the next room and closed the door behind him, spending a moment locking it down. He took a step into the room and stopped dead in his tracks. The room hadn't been marked on the map, which had been a curiosity, and part of the reason he'd chosen this route. They only didn't mark rooms they really didn't want anyone to know what was in them. So he wasn't surprised as he might have been when he saw what he saw.
An enormous glass and steel container occupied the far wall. It was easily twenty feet high by ten wide. Over half a dozen complex workstations were hooked up to the container, making a small orbit around it.
It was broken open.
“Holy fuck,” Enzo whispered, staring at the immense cage.
What could have possibly been in there?
The fear came back, edged with a bit of blind terror. He found himself hoping that he never ran into whatever immense monstrosity had once been held within. Hurrying, he crossed the room and moved through the door to the other side. More than ever, he felt his lack of a weapon. The next door led to an antechamber that se
rved as a crossroads. He wasn't far now. Unfortunately, as he stepped out into it, he heard voices.
Mechanical voices. Dark Ops.
Enzo melted back into the shadows around the edges of the poorly-lit room, his fingers curled around the scalpel. They were getting closer. He listened to their conversation as they moved towards him, preparing himself for a fight.
“This is bullshit, I don't see why we haven't pulled out yet. We're down to, what, like fifty troops now?” one asked, sounding tired.
“Less, I think, after those fucking jackoffs hit us in the lab. Lost five guys there, almost lost Dietz and the Director.”
“Might not have been so bad...”
“Yeah, maybe. Then we could just pull out. I know they've got ships topside.”
They stepped into the room. Enzo swallowed, froze, didn't move, didn't breath. A part of him wanted to attack, but they were giving up critical information.
“Do we know who fucked us over and let them out?”
They stopped in the antechamber, their backs to him, taking a break.
“Yeah. You didn't hear? Little Miss Bitch up in the Control Room, the one coordinating with the Marines and whoever the fuck that guy with the fake arm is.”
“Ugh...fucking jarheads.” The second man paused, when he spoke again, a creeping malignancy had entered his voice. “So when are we going to go up there and meet Miss Bitch personally? Have a 'get to know her' session?”
“We can't, not with that fucking thing up there.”
“Oh, yeah...” The second man sounded glum.
“Come on, we've got to keep looking.”
Enzo listened to them as the headed off, but their conversation drifted towards uselessness, bitching about lost comrades and the creatures. He watched them until they were out of sight, then slipped down the left hand corridor.
So Eve was the one who started all this, then.
Or at least, that's what they thought.
Enzo was going to have to bring that up the next time they spoke. She was getting more and more interesting. The corridor terminated in a large, vault-like door. Enzo flashed the security card he'd picked up in a pool of blood somewhere along the way across the scanner. The scanner chimed gently and the door opened. He hurried into the room beyond, taking it all in at a glance. He was glad to see that it was empty.
