by Mathy, Scott
“Got her!” Ellis announced triumphantly.
Geller seemed less pleased with the revelation, “She’s in the mass hall. There are at least six more infected surrounding her.”
Dwight looked at the screen. As promised, the remains of the Warden lumbered around the devastated cafeteria, her pallid flesh coated in the gore of her many victims. The others – the animated corpse of Grenn among them – moved in formation around their pack leader.
Geller began typing commands into the console. Through the feed, Dwight watched the doors surrounding the perimeter of the hall lower and lock; only the largest at the far end remained open.
“How far is that from us?” Dwight asked, preparing for the inevitable.
Geller pulled up a layout of the base on an adjacent screen, “The mess hall is half a kilometer from here. I have sealed every door between here and the Warden. If what I’m seeing is correct, your path is clear, besides the seven in the room.”
“Lovely,” Dwight said, flexing his legs. “Can we do anything about her entourage? I prefer to only have to run from one monster at a time.”
Ellis nodded, “Once you’ve got her attention, I can close the door behind you. It may take a few seconds, but it’s the best I can do.” She took a radio from the console and handed it to him. “Keep this on; we’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Bernard was waiting by the door, cracking his knuckles as he watched their conversation. “Sure you don’t want me doin’ this?” the giant asked as Dwight returned to the window.
Dwight smiled at the offer, feeling briefly nostalgic for their lost partnership, “Come on, B. You know I’m faster. I need you here to look after the Doc and Geller. I don’t trust him.”
“I can hear you,” the old scientist protested.
Bernard answered before Dwight could, “Yer damned fucking right you can! Jus’ you give me a reason to brain ya wiv ‘at pipe.” He lowered his voice, “Right ‘en, I only asked to be polite. You ‘ave fun runn’in fer your life. We’ll be wait’in.”
Dwight’s appreciation quickly dissipated. He exited the office as quietly as possible, back into the ruined prison halls. Creeping low, the hitman tried to avoid any of the windows of the sealed bulkheads. A lurking monster could easily alert the others to his presence with one of their agonizing cries. As he went, the frequency of the blackouts intensified and elongated. Several times, he found himself pausing to count the seconds before the lights came back, afraid that some horror would be facing him when he could finally see again.
Making his way down the winding passages, he spotted the wide entry to the cafeteria at the end of the corridor. He crouched just out of sight of the threshold, praying that his approach went undetected. Despite his best efforts, his harness still emitted slight mechanical whirring noises at each of his movements. There was a quiet chirp from his radio. Cringing at the noise, he adjusted the volume and held it to his ear.
The Doc’s voice came through the small speaker, “Dwight, she’s about fifty feet away, closest to the door, but the others aren’t far behind.” A camera mounted on the wall adjacent to his hiding place tilted up and down, waving at him. “From what I saw of her earlier, if I trigger the door to close the moment you get her attention, she should be the only one to make it through.”
“Do it,” Dwight whispered into the handheld.
Just as he was preparing to step around the corner and into sight, the entire base rocked violently. Emergency signs lit up every previously inactive monitor. All around him, every sealed gate began to rise.
Dwight immediately panicked, “Doc, what the fuck is going on?!” he shouted into the radio, no longer concerned with his volume.
She shouted back, the fear evident in her voice, “The reactor is unstable. Emergency protocols are opening every door on the station. Dwight, you need to go now!”
He did as instructed, stepping out into the doorway and hurling a piece of discarded debris at the monstrosity’s skull. The hunk of metal clanged off the woman’s cybernetic implant. The creature snarled and gnashed its teeth at the disturbance. She turned toward Dwight before letting out her horrible screech, wrenching the gaze of every other infected Power toward the intrusion.
Through a dozen other passages in every direction, the same wretched scream rang out. “Oh hell,” Dwight groaned before he started running back at top speed, assured that his target was aware of his presence.
Behind him, he heard the frantic pursuers scream as they clamored over the remnants of the mess hall and made their way through the door. All around him, the creatures trapped behind the rising barriers clawed at the metal, trying to force their way into his path. Every so often, a razor-sharp talon would sweep across the floor, grabbing at his legs. The doors continued to open as he sprinted past them.
One of the thinner creatures was already halfway under the door as Dwight leapt over her. She rotated with him, trying desperately to catch him in her vicious claws. Dwight landed without stopping, the awful cries chasing him as he went. Taking a skidding slide around the corner, he saw one of the things had managed to pull itself into the path and climb to its feet. Beyond the husk, he could see Bernard and Geller waiting in the lobby.
Bernard called to him, “C’mon, D, yer almost ‘ere!” Immediately, the creature spun to face the giant before dashing at him.
Cursing, Dwight activated the last of the serum in his arm. Even the half-canister of energy was enough to send his exhausted muscles into overdrive, pushing him to new limits in the harness.
Some feature of the harness must have detected the increased power flowing through its user; the mechanisms augmenting his speed increased their performance as well. He launched himself forward. The creature reached out to catch the speeding hitman, but his attack found its mark first. He caught up to the running husk in seconds. Grabbing the creature by the shoulders, he spun the monster around. Using their momentum, he pitched the husk into the side of the station. The creature fell to the floor, but was already crawling to its knees as Dwight reared back and planted his reinforced foot directly into its ravaged face. The pallid flesh and blackened bone gave way, leaving Dwight’s boot against the wall as the body slid to the floor.
Panting, Dwight had just enough time to look back and see the sprinting Warden and her posse rounding the corner before he resumed his mad dash through the horde desperately clawing their way into his path.
Ahead, Dwight saw the terrified faces of the others waving him in. The remainder of his sprint – all two hundred feet of it – was crawling with pale claws trying to force their way to the last remaining uninfected survivors of the prison. Dwight propelled himself forward, trying as hard as he could to avoid the monsters reaching for him.
Fifty feet from the waving men waiting for him, one of the beasts managed to gain a solid hold on the frame of Dwight’s harness, tripping him mid-sprint. He tumbled end over end, skipping across the surface of the hard floor. His velocity propelled him the remaining distance through the entrance of the lobby and into the graffiti-covered room.
Geller, who had been watching the chase from the center of the entryway, dodged to the side to allow the out-of-control hitman to pass. Dwight flipped and turned from the momentum until he collided painfully with the paint-spattered furniture strewn about the center of the room. The elder scientist, stunned by the display, paid no attention to the ravenous Warden thundering down the hall behind him. Before he could turn, the creature was airborne, screaming her hunting call.
There was no time to react. The collision of the bloodthirsty sprinter with the frail scientist utterly crushed the unaware man. One second, he stood, watching Dwight come to a stop; the next, he was nothing more than a mass of bloodied flesh. The creature straddled what was left of the body, flailing and tearing at the corpse with unnatural strength until there was nothing recognizable left.
Bernard, ignoring the monstrosity already in the room, rushed to the entryway as Ellis triggered the door with
her hacking tool. The double doors began to close from the sides while Bernard held the enraged horde back with his pipe.
Dwight shook himself, trying to recover his senses. The sounds of heavy fists striking meat and metal caught his attention. He righted himself and charged the Warden still kneeling over Geller’s remains. The infected woman’s entire body was soaked in the gore of what had once been her personal mad scientist.
Dwight’s rush knocked the Warden across the room and into the outer wall of the lobby, bashing a sizable impression into the dense steel. Dwight struck the creature across the face with his metal fist, but it had no effect on the reinforced cybernetics of the Warden’s superhuman body. The monster howled in his face, then the glow reignited in her artificial eyes. Dwight dodged to the side as crimson lasers slashed the room from floor to ceiling. The structure creaked and groaned, the atmosphere of the chamber threatening to violently decompress.
“Bernard!” he cried, “I need help!”
Bernard grunted as he looked back from the ghouls tearing at the closing door. He smashed one of the creatures with the pipe before kicking its shattered form back into the hall. His efforts to hold back the rushing tide of claws and teeth looked futile. Each push brought more of the razor-sharp hands between the doors.
Ellis appeared behind Dwight, forcing a silver tube into his hand. “In her neck!” she ordered. The creature lashed out past Dwight’s grasp and struck the Doc across the forehead with her claws. She cried out and fell to the floor, gripping the wound as blood ran between her fingers.
Dwight punched the Warden across the jaw, struggling to find an opening to use the Doc’s device. Finally, he found leverage and stabbed the tube into the creature’s collarbone. The silver tube buried itself in the mummified flesh and began to hiss. Dwight removed his organic arm from the creature’s throat, its skin instantly too cold to handle. He stepped back, pulling the Doc’s prone form away from the freezing Warden. By the time he got her to the center of the lobby, the monster was completely solid from the waist up.
Across the room, heavy locks fell into place, sealing the chamber. Bernard sighed, his arms covered with rapidly healing slashes. Outside, the frenzied horde slammed against the barricade.
Bernard stepped up to the frozen Warden, wearily dragging his tool with him. The bomb fixed to his chest blinked rhythmically. Ellis’s breathing was steady, but the scratch ran from her forehead to her cheek. Dwight tried to assess the damage to her eye, but couldn’t through the blood.
The brute snorted, “D’you know ‘ow long I’ve dreamed of this?”
Instead of answering, Dwight tore a piece of cloth from his sleeve and used it to wrap the barely-conscious scientist’s head. Bernard pulled back the massive pipe like a major league batter, then swung. The frost-covered head of the Warden exploded in a red mist of twisted steel and frozen flesh. The body careened to the side, crashing heavily against the floor. Bernard spit on the remains, a pleased grin on his lips.
Outside the chamber, the wailing alarms and monsters clawing at the door cut his triumph short. Ellis coughed weakly, trying to cover the damage to her face, “Get her hand in the scanner. We’re almost out of time.”
Bernard did as she said while Dwight helped her to the gates of the airlock. Inside, the elevator sat ready, waiting for a signal to leave the station. Back at the entrance to the facility, the hulking form of the plagued Grenn stepped through the scrambling masses of bodies trying to break into the lobby. Its thin, sharp talons slid between the seams of the huge double door as Bernard pressed the Warden’s lifeless hand to the scanner.
The scanner accepted the reading, but stalled as it tried to verify the identity of the sample. Bernard released his hold on the headless corpse and stepped over to the other survivors. Dwight watched as the wheel of the panel’s processing screen whirled around and around, deciding what to do with the distorted bio-signature. At last, just as the corrupted face of the reptilian monster forced itself into the room, the airlock opened. Dwight carried Ellis to one of the seats and buckled her in while Bernard braced himself at the entrance to the craft, preparing to fight back the flood scrambling into the lobby.
“Don’t worry about me,” Ellis whispered, “Flip the lever.” She pointed to the control console at the front of the elevator.
“Now or never, D!” Bernard shouted over his shoulder.
Dwight dashed to the front of the craft, searching for the controls. A single lever fixed to the center of the panel would activate the boosters. Beside it, under a plastic shield, a switch labeled “Emergency Launch” glowed faintly. He lifted the guard and flipped the switch, triggering the doors to close in front of Bernard without the usual pressurization and sealing of the lobby.
Dwight slammed the lever forward, launching the pod and knocking the two standing men to the ground while the craft jetted away from the prison. The exposed hole in the side of the entrance to the base sucked several of the racing monsters through it as the elevator rocketed up the lines. The infected careened and tumbled in the low gravity before falling into the lunar soil. For several seconds, Dwight and Bernard were pressed into the sealed doors at the far end of the shuttle.
Ellis yelled from her seat, “Cut the rockets or we’ll smash into the station!” A particularly violent tremor from the surface jarred the accelerating craft and its occupants.
His body pinned to the floor by the intense force of the boosters, Dwight could not bring himself to slow their climb. Bernard dug into the tiles in the floor of the craft, clinging on with all his might and pulling himself up toward the lever. His fingers clawed into the steel, ripping huge gashes through it. Fingers bleeding as quickly as they regenerated, face distorted from the effort and the g-force of the rockets, he finally lifted himself up to the console and wrenched the handle back.
The launch jets ceased, triggering the deceleration boosters to slow their ascent. Dwight skidded across the cabin’s floor, crashing into one of the short staircases that led to the raised operator’s platform. Bernard jerked forward from the sudden shift, knocking his face against the console. The warning signs disappeared from the array of monitors around the cabin. From her seat, Ellis breathed an exhausted sigh of relief, settling her back against the protective foam of the chair.
From the rear window of the elevator, they silently watched the moon and its nightmarish prison grow smaller. The screens switched to a timer signifying their imminent arrival at Acheron, the craft’s automated sequence already prepping to make its connection. At last, the pod slowed to a crawl and made contact with the airlock of the tethered station. The doors parted, revealing the deserted warehouse where they had first greeted the Warden and her minions.
Dwight helped Ellis to her feet. The woman groaned as she stood, her hand never leaving the bleeding wound on her head. Bernard led the way, taking stock of the numerous containers before them. He turned to face Dwight and the Doc, “Been a long time since I was ‘ere. Thought I’d never see the-” he stopped, looking out the enormous windows at the moon below.
Ellis turned and pointed at the lines connecting the station to the prison. Along the cables, scrambling with the same unstoppable drive, an army of the plagued monsters were climbing straight for Acheron.
“They can’t get through the portal,” Dwight said, his terrified mind overwhelmed with the thought of his world destroyed by the tenacious monsters dragging themselves through the thin lunar atmosphere.
Ellis took a step away before taking her hand from her eye. Dwight had seen enough injuries to know that she’d lost it, “They won’t,” she said, “I’ll die here before one of them sets foot in our world.”
Pushing away the material of Bernard’s shredded jumpsuit, she grabbed hold of the bomb fixed to his chest. “Emergency Code: Dalia,” she quietly whispered at the device.
Bernard winced in pain as the bomb released its hold around his heart. The puncture wounds sealed as she held the mechanism close.
She placed the bo
mb in one of Bernard’s oversized hands. “Put it in the elevator,” she pointed at a touchscreen mounted on the wall just outside the airlock, “You can send it back from that panel there.”
He did as instructed, setting the explosive at the center of the shuttle and returning to the group while they watched the creatures pass the halfway point between the prison and hanging station above. The shuttle launched down the line, jetting away from the base, its boosters burning brightly in the darkness beyond the station.
Ellis turned to Dwight, breaking his concentration on the speeding craft. She grabbed his prosthetic limb and placed it against her chest, over her heart. “Do it – until that bomb goes off.”
It took Dwight a moment to realize what she meant. He shook his head as he pulled his hand away, “No. No, there has to be another way. You don’t have some kind of remote to set it off?”
Through the blood running down her face, he could see remorse, “There’s no other way and no time to argue; if one of those damned things gets up here, our world could end up the same as this one. Now do it.” She reached for his arm and replaced the hand against her chest. “This is my decision.”
He hesitated, trying to think of another option, “Doc, I…”, but looked back through the windows at the monsters lumbering toward them. Turning back to the woman in front of him, he found the Doc’s one remaining eye staring resolutely up at his face. “I’m sorry.”
Dwight activated the electrical pads in his palm. As she fell, he caught the doctor’s twitching body with his other arm. The voltage travelled back into him, but he forced himself to ignore it as the woman cried out. Pressing the pads against her firmly, he increased the power as he desperately looked to the elevator speeding toward the enraged monsters.
Ellis screamed, the skin underneath his hand burning. She reached up, clinging tightly to the prosthetic hand that was killing her.
After too many agonizing seconds, the cabin detonated spectacularly just as it met the first of the horde. The explosion annihilated the plagued horrors and the lines securing the station to the prison. The falling pieces of the elevator struck the remaining stunned climbers as it hurtled toward the surface.
