by Allen Ivers
It stuck into his riot shield, tearing with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible. That was an inch and a half of acrylic and that arm was sawing through it like it was rotting pine wood.
Jericho laid his pistol against its head and pulled the trigger in one smooth execution, spraying Locklear’s shield with copper dust.
These weren’t people; hadn’t been for a long time.
Jericho helped Locklear to his feet, pointed at the door. The steel was already giving way to the furious assault, and Jazmin was busy tossing pieces of EVA kits to Raines, who slid them into duffel bags.
Locklear looked at the dangling panels of his shield. He kneeled on the hanging edge, and lifted hard enough to rip the useless weight off. His riot shield was more riot buckler now, but still better than nothing.
Jericho sparked up his torch, moving for the door.
“No time! Drop the cans!” Locklear ordered. “Grab the kits and let’s go!”
Jericho nodded, dropping his oxyacetylene torch to the ground with a thud. He moved to help Raines to her feet, taking over her part of the assembly line.
The torch itself still glowed against the metal floor.
Locklear had gambled with Piotr exactly once on the cruise over, damn near lost his shirt. But right now, he could feel a full house coming on.
The door cracked open, stone fingers pawing through, human pry bars. More banging, this one coming from the Airlock entrance -- a second group. This was a proper horde. There was no guarantee they weren’t completely surrounded. All they could do was run until there was no more road.
They needed artillery. Cover the retreat. Or they’d be run down.
Jazmin and Jericho slung the packed kits onto their shoulders, inching for the next door out. Jaz shouted back, “Lock, what is your malfunction?!”
Locklear took a few good steps back, waiting for the door to crack just a bit further. He had to let a few of them get right on top of it. And then he had to not miss.
And of course, the requisite chain reaction would actually have to work. If it didn’t, he was dead in some rather painful way to be devised on the fly by a mob of rock monsters.
But if it worked…
The door broke like a dam, and it sighed out a groundswell of hungry critters just as it pulled on him with the vortex of a maelstrom. The torch flickered with the wind, the cans sliding unrestrained along the ground right into the pack.
And Locklear took his shot.
The sparks said he hit the canisters. The burst of white gas implied he’d successfully punctured the pressurized container. And for half a second, he thought he’d lost his shirt, his head, and a quiet retirement.
Until the gas found the end of the lit torch and engulfed the horde in a vicious fire. This was no explosion; this was applying an accelerant to open flame, and giving it fuel to burn.
The entire first wave of the beasts was reduced to molten slag. Or rather various pieces of them were. The squishy organic bits burnt to a cinder, black carbon chunks mixed with crispy stone.
For himself, he was close enough he might’ve lost some hair to go with his blood-red eyeball.
The fire didn’t last long and the surge was on them again, as the horde tried to claw through what remained of their spearhead – but the muck was slowing them down.
Locklear scampered back to his team, just in time to see the Airlock Hallway burst open, spewing its own batch of former colonists. The twist in the air tunnel nearly took Locklear off his feet, having to press his hands to the ground to keep his balance.
Stone darts flicked out with no real focus or target, as though they were involuntarily expelled from the shambling bodies.
One dug into Locklear’s back, able to dig in just a few inches before it clicked against his shoulder blade. The pain made him stumble, but the force of the blow carried him across the threshold. Jazmin slammed the door shut, buying them precious seconds.
“Bleed on your own time!” She shouted, pulling on his arm, refusing to let him fall.
They staggered down the hallway, the percussion of stone on metal never fading from hearing. A tight set of stairs wrapped back and forth upward to the Operations Tower above them -- just three stories, not really much of a tower, but he didn’t write the name placards bolted to the stairwell.
Their feet hadn’t hit the first step yet, when they heard the dam break behind them. And that awful wind picked up its howl again.
Locklear dropped his empty magazine where it fell, leaving it to bang its hollow glum tune back down the stairs. If they went one shot one kill, there’d still be several dozen of these assholes ready to shred all four of them. And a violent death would likely be a kindness compared to whatever fate they had suffered through.
They reached the top of the stairs, where a small landing allowed a worker to collect themselves and straighten their shirt before heading into work.
The door was closed now, and no obvious control.
“Get it open!” Locklear ordered, as he presented his tattered shield to the stairwell, pistol ready. Jazmin looked at the wound in his back, not quite believing what she was seeing. He’d ask for a description, but he didn’t want it.
He leered up at her. “Is it growing or somethin’?” He asked, only half kidding.
She shook her head, no soothing words to offer. Just her own incredulity at the lunacy of circumstance. There was a chunk of rock spat into his shoulder.
The clatter had reached the stairs, that very complicated modern technology causing the coordinated mob to fumble and trip.
“Jericho?!”
“There’s no lever!” Raines snapped, angrier at Locklear’s tone than anything else.
Jericho wedged his shoulder against the door frame and heaved, trying to slide the door open, but with little luck.
Movement. Locklear had to hold his finger back, pressed against the trigger guard, lest he waste a precious bullet on anything less than a kill shot.
Sure enough, a shambling stoneman pounded his way up the last few steps of the stairs, accompanied by more ominous movement behind him.
“Make a lever, Doctor!” His retort sounded a bit more desperate than he meant it.
And he let his finger tighten around the trigger. Hammer fell, primer burned, and a stoneman’s face was given a new hole to breathe through. It slumped to the ground.
Raines placed her crutch against a pit in the door, finding anything to help get leverage. She braced her one foot and shoved with everything her atrophied muscles could give.
The door groaned. It wanted to open, it really did. But something was holding it shut. And not a bar or pin or lock. It was like trying to open a can of pickles with a gun to your head.
A few more shots, a few more kills, but each crisp forty caliber report signaled one step closer to their demise. These things didn’t need to breach the defenses. They just had to poke and prod enough times. Whether they were intelligent enough to use this tactic was up for debate and ultimately moot.
There were only so many seconds up for purchase, and only so much currency to pay with.
The door gave way with an exhausted groan, pulling in air to the sealed room. The sudden gust in the opposite direction nearly blew Locklear on to his ass. The room must've been compromised before the shutters fell, vacuum packing the room and effectively locking it shut.
“Inside! Now!” Jericho bellowed with his taciturn specificity. He stepped forward, producing Amelia’s confiscated shotgun. He popped the precious few rounds they had down at the horde, hammering away at the wall of angry fingers.
When that well ran dry, he casually dropped the shotgun and stalked back to safety.
Locklear backpedaled away from the stairs, unable to tear his eyes from the half dozen lidless glittering sets of eyes, like sparks over a flame. One seemed to sense the vulnerability of the moment and sprung forward, its one good arm outstretched. It collapsed into Locklear, rolling with him through the doorway.
This time, Locklear pu
lled a foot up, launching the creature off of him before it could get a solid grip. It crumpled into a console in the middle of the room.
Jazmin took no time to step up to it, popping two rounds into its chest. When it thrashed in response, her retort was a carefully placed round through what remained of its ear. It slumped backward, before sliding to the ground.
Jericho strained against the door, pushing it closed just before the rest of the horde arrived. They slammed against it hard enough to bounce him clean off the frame. But some cocktail of adrenaline and stubborn forced Jericho back against to brace it.
Raines had fallen through the door and had made no effort to move herself. Instead she stared at the prostrate man draped across the floor.
“Doc?” Locklear choked out of his dry throat, “You okay?”
She shook her head, more clearing her mind than a denial. “I knew him, is all.”
Jazmin didn’t need instructions. She dropped her empty pistol to the floor, useless to her now. She tilted a steel bench against the creaking doorframe, bracing for the storm. “Where to, Boss?”
More banging, from either side of them. The two other doors to the tower had their own minor hordes. And Locklear had maybe three rounds left. Combine that with whatever Jericho hadn’t fired off in the chaos, and they had just enough to make a last stand before a horrible end.
He looked up at Jazmin, no answers. And she knew it too. She blinked away the possibilities, and looked for more furniture.
“A silicon-based lithovore,” Raines whispered.
“Does that help us?” Locklear asked, not really sure what the hell she was talking about.
“No,” she lamented, “But it tells me why it took my suit.”
She looked up at Locklear, tearful eyes.
Of course. She was leaning into the data, trying to distract herself from the only possible outcome of this scenario. She was trying to cope. They all were. Denial, anger, deflection.
“It doesn’t understand carbon-based life. It doesn’t understand air or food or sunlight. It can’t be bought or reasoned with. It has no desire for protection… and it didn’t know why I needed it. It was curious if I would die, Sergeant. That’s all. It was just testing.”
The banging seemed to soften, or maybe he was just tuning it out. He wasn’t ready to lie down just yet.
The aliens had struck without using the front door, or there would have been some evidence. So what way had they used? Air vents, support structure? Did this place even have sewers?
Or was it so simple, really, that it flew in through the window?
Locklear glanced at the shutters that wrapped around the tower, and found exactly what he was looking for: “Suits on, now.”
“What’s your thinkin’?” Jazmin said, as though she was chiding him for optimism.
“Hark! What light through yonder window breaks?” he snarked, pointing.
They all followed his finger to see the one panel in the plexiglass panorama that had been reduced to powder on the floor.
Chapter 18
Mars
The Gods were angry.
In addition to the various hull breaches belching torrents of air and stirring up the dirt into a low red fog, a storm had formed on the horizon. All these earthquakes must’ve been causing all kinds of hell with the weather.
It wasn’t so much a climb out of Rapunzel’s tower, not really. This was more like several injured people leaping from a third-story balcony on a wing and a prayer.
The Operations Center curved outward from the tower itself, creating an inverted surface and a sheer drop to the ground thirty feet below.
Jazmin had gone first, to guide the others down. It was a safe enough landing, what with the reduced gravity, but still high potential for nastiness if done improperly. They couldn’t afford an ankle sprain or a broken knee cap right now. And Doctor Raines was in no condition to jump anything.
He had to admit, Locklear considered leaving her behind for a brief few seconds. Pure cowardice.
Jericho’s giant arms slung Raines over one shoulder, before attempting the most impressive feat of the amateur body building career Locklear was certain had to exist.
Jazmin stood ready to catch the Doctor; there wouldn’t be much she could do for the giant twice her size.
And with nary a steeling breath, Jericho took a flying leap out of a third-story window wearing a clumsy EVA kit with a human fucking being on his back.
He landed like a goddamn superhero, before one knee buckled and he collapsed into the dirt. Jazmin rushed over, giving him a quick once over before “They’re good!” crackled over the suit radio.
She spoke too soon. Two rockmen rushed her from the dense cloud bank around them. She heard them coming, dropping to one knee to open fire.
Two shots leveled the first blitzing monster, but the second tackled her to the ground. Whatever struggle she had with it wasn’t long, as Jericho plowed into it. He popped to his feet and slammed into it like he was a bull with a running start, lifting the attacker up and splintering it against the tower wall.
Locklear could feel the building shake all the way up above.
From the way Jericho staggered back, clutching his arm, that decision had cost him something. The spiky creature had been trying to impale Jaz, and he had forced himself on to that spike. His suit was almost certainly breached.
Locklear had wedged the blast shutters open with his pistol, giving them the narrow passage out. He had to remove it in order to prevent the rock people from giving chase, make them take the long way around.
The floor gave way underneath him, pulling him down away from the window. The grating dropped free on to a dozen pawing fingers, its spot welds snapped under the strain like they were made of popcorn.
Cold spikes reached, pawed and jabbed at Locklear through the small gaps, scrabbling for anything they could tear free.
They came in through the floor. Of course. The dead don’t need oxygen or heat.
“Locklear?!” Jazmin forgot she didn’t have to shout with a radio.
“Just go!” Locklear snapped as he punched the nearest face he could find, immediately regretting the decision to pit bones against slate rock. His hand screamed in quiet anguish, while the former colonist stared back at him with the permanently twisted pain of its last moments.
It vaguely resembled a young woman, her eyes empty and scarred. Her jaw unhinged from its left socket, but rather than dangle, stone growths had cemented it in its diagonal hang. Most of her rose gold hair had fallen out, but what patches remained made her look that much more sick.
The Beast killed her weeks ago. It was time to go.
Locklear pushed himself up, the corrugated grate underneath him swaying to and fro like a boat in a following sea. They were persistent creatures, but not wise enough to tilt him off of his platform. This was not a theory he wanted to put any more stock in.
He jumped for the window, awkward and graceless, his kidneys taking the brunt of the impact, narrowly avoiding a particularly thick shard of the plexiglass window.
Not to be outdone, the monsters spat their stone shards, a trio of darts finding their home in Locklear’s back. He cried out, feeling his toes tingle with a thousand tiny prickles. He could feel them, which he supposed was a relief in itself. But that couldn’t be a good sign.
He rolled forward, end over end, out of the window, slapping against the side of the tower. He hung there for a moment, dangling by his one-handed grip. The others looked on in horror.
Close the window, Lock.
He reached up, pawing blindly for the pistol that wedged the shield open.
Cold as the night sky above her, that woman’s face leaned out. Her empty eyes looked through him, at his pain and fear. Her fixed silent scream reflecting his own.
Her hand reached down to him, grasping his throat with piercing jeweled daggers.
And he wrenched the pistol free; or, rather he wrenched its collective parts out of the groove. And t
he shutter closed hard on the colonist’s chest, shearing the arm clean off and crushing the rest of her into a gooey mortar.
For a brief moment, Locklear thought her hand had closed tight upon his throat, a death grip that tore through his suit and into his neck. Weightless, carefree, distant from it all.
Until he slammed back first into the Martian dirt, driving the spikes further into his back.
Oh, okay. Right. Yeah, that hurt like a bitch.
Hands peeled him up from the dirt. “Let’s go, badass. We’ve got a bus to catch!”
And they ran, not daring to look back. The syncopated cacophony of their heavy breathing with each labored step beating on their ears. The storm approached like a monument to rage, swallowing the rolling plains with an insatiable hunger.
What if he looked up and the shuttle wasn’t there? What if they had run this gauntlet to discover there was never any finish line? Had the storm already consumed their only hope of escape? Spattered in alien mud and familiar blood -- what if there was no reward?
He wished he had looked up, as Locklear’s eyes fell on the fallen bodies of his own men, left in the dirt where they fell.
Chipper young Garner, his chest hacked open and now packed with windswept dirt. His head laid out on a soft pillow slid underneath his long and taxing burdens. The first casualty of a new war. Mercifully face down, Isen was propped against his little dune, his back bent backward at a decidedly uncomfortable angle. Further back were the bodies of Cally and Strauss, where the panic had set in and cut them down.
Shrines to Locklear’s leadership. Obscene reminders of a failure to act.
Every one of them, the sand had piled against their suits, as the wind conspired with the planet to slowly consume them.
If Jazmin noticed, she didn’t speak. Her hands did not tighten, nor did they clench on his throat. Rather, she kept Locklear on his feet, hauling him forward. Each footfall heavier than the last.
The wounds on his back burning, his hips creaking. The fall had done him no favors, and he was certainly losing blood. Would he even survive the trip home?
