Authors: S. A. Lusher
This wasn’t the case, Greg found as he emerged in the next warehouse. The webbing was everywhere. Thankfully, it was higher and left the ground free and clear. Greg gave into his urge to duck and hurried across the warehouse floor. There was still no sign of the things that had spun this web, but he kept scanning ceaselessly anyway.
He managed to make it to the door and opened it up. The corridor beyond was decorated with more web, but not so much that he couldn't get through. Progress was rapid, as Greg began to feel the wear and tear of constant tension. The webbing began to thin out as he progressed down the lengthy corridor, ducking low. By the time he'd reached the end of it, Greg's back ached.
The webbing gave out, opening up the hallway. A vast sense of relief flowed through him. So maybe this place really
was
abandoned. The corridor ended in a door, through which he passed, and then stopped.
The entrance lobby housed exactly what they had come here looking for in the first place. He spied a few crates against the far wall, each holding different types of ammunition and one holding grenades. A pair of foldout tables held various weapons, haphazardly strewn about. A desk against the far wall housed a small communications apparatus. What disturbed Greg, though, was the absolute lack of bodies. Even more disturbing was the absolute lack of conflict.
No bullet holes. No blood. No bodies. No spent shell casings.
The first thing Greg did was walk over to one of the foldout tables, holster his pistol and take up a snub-barreled sub-machine gun. He checked the clip, found it full and gathered up a few spares from one of the crates. He then marched over to the comms station, set down the SMG and began to fiddled with the controls.
That's when he heard it.
A quick chittering sound followed by a low, hissing click. Greg snatched up the SMG and spun, looking around. The room remained empty, but...his eyes widened as he spied several vent grates overhead.
They were all broken.
“Stupid, fucking stupid-”
Something dropped onto the communications desk behind him. He spun and froze in pure, raw terror. A spider, easily a meter across, stared at him with crimson eyes. Eight of them. Its carapace, originally blue, now blackened with signs of infection.
Greg screamed and that seemed to break the paralyzing hold of terror the thing had over him. He squeezed the trigger. A stream of bullets exploded from the muzzle, lighting up the room in a series pulsating, staccato flashes and all but detonated the giant spider. Another noise came from behind him. Greg spun, operating on instinct now, and stitched a burning line of bloody geysers across the body of a second one that had just dropped down.
He heard more of them coming now. Was this a trap? Another dropped in, two, four. Greg ran out of ammo, knew he didn't have time to reload and pulled out the pistol, working as quickly and efficiently as he could. He knew that even one point of contact with one of the beasts would mean his death.
One of them leapt at him with a terrifying dexterity. He barely managed to dodge it, tracking it with his pistol and put two bullets into it. As his pistol clicked empty and more of them dropped into the room. He reloaded. He felt sure there was no way out of this. He was going to die alone and horribly, deep underground...
The far door opened up and Kyra came screaming and firing into the room, the rest of the team behind her, and within seconds they had mopped up the rest of the spiders. As soon as the room was cleared, the others gathered around him. Kyra had a look in her eyes, like she might outright punch or kiss him, but managed to contain herself.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice unsteady but relieved.
“
You fell down the elevator shaft and we were forced to retreat. Turns out this place was infested with Stalkers as well as the regular assholes,” Kyra replied.
“
We tried to find another way down here, but they had us at every turn. Finally, we managed to fight our way to the stairwell. Looks like you found the cache.” Billings’s gruff voice was a welcome sound.
“
Yeah, dumb luck.” Greg gave them a sheepish grin.
“
And a new type of the bastards,” Kauffman complained. “Fucking
hate
spiders.”
“
You and me both, now can we please get the fuck out of here?” Greg wanted nothing more than to just leave.
Billings nodded. “Everyone grab what you can, haul it topside. I'll phone for a ride.”
Chapter 17
Tired.
Greg was impressed with how quickly he could go from hard-wired adrenaline, keyed for instant response, to a lethargy so heavy it was an effort to prop up his eyelids. It helped that Kyra let him rest his head on her shoulder.
“What's that? Who?” Billings was clearly caught up in his own conversation via radio. Greg prayed he was going to be given a chance to sit down and relax. A two hour nap would go a long way right now. He knew that, if he had to, he could keep going, but...well, it had been a while. Billings heaved a sigh.
“
They're
what
...You've got to be shitting me.”
By this point, everyone focused on the Sergeant. When Billings was upset, it was often for a good reason. In their short time together, he'd been able to internalize this fact.
“All right, we're on our way back now.” Billings lit a fresh cigar, and then looked around the cabin. “Fantastic news, boys and girls. Disease-Investigation has just showed up and quarantined the planet. Seems like someone managed to get news out about our plight. Bad news is that they've co-opted the entire standing military, SI
and
Marines.”
“
For what purpose?” Kauffman asked.
“
Not entirely sure, though I imagine just more of what we were doing, containing the infection, evacuating civilians, consolidating our power base, you know. At least, I hope so.” Billings took a long draw on his cigar.
Greg straightened in his seat. “Well...what else could it be for?”
“Not sure, but I've stories about DI. Shady stories. You know. Cover-ups. Engineered viruses. Shit like that.”
* * * * *
When they landed on one of a dozen freshly-constructed landing pads, a terse voice informed them via their radios that they were all to be inspected. Almost before they’d even had a chance to leave the jump ship, they were approached by a half-dozen men in jet-black armor wielding sleek, just as black rifles.
The men covered them while one of them broke away and approached them, holding up a small handheld device.
“Hold still.” His face was hidden behind an opaque visor, his voice augmented by a mechanical filter.
Billings went first. He stuck a small needle into the side of the Sergeant's neck and Greg realized he was taking a blood sample. He pulled the device away once a small amount was taken, pressed a button and, when a small light flashed green, cleaned the needle and swapped out the tube with surprising efficiency.
He tested them each. They were all apparently clean.
“
Let's go.” He turned and walked away.
Greg and the others followed him while the rest of his black-armored squad dissipated across the landing field. The atmosphere of the base was startlingly different. What had once been crazed chaos was now tightly controlled military power. Men and women surged through the corridors, carrying weapons, supplies, and wounded.
“Damn,” Kyra whispered.
They were led through the hangar to a chilled briefing room. The door closed behind them, slicing off the muted din of the corridor. The man regarded Greg and his team from behind his visor for a long moment, then focused on Greg and Kyra.
“You’re Greg Bishop and Kyra Mercer?” The nametag on the man’s chest read: SGT. Stone.
“
Yes,” they both replied.
“
You both served in the Wasteland, and repaired major damage to Communications Relay Outpost A Fourteen?”
“
Yes. That was Kyra.” Greg stood a little straighter.
“
Excellent. I'm requisitioning your squad and sending you back into the wastelands. Comms are spotty in this region and we need the primary relay center repaired. There's also another matter to discuss. If you feel up to the task, we'll send a few cages with you. If you can manage it, capture some of them alive.”
“
Alive?” Greg cried.
“
We need some alive. It's how we plan to find an inoculation against the infection.”
“
How,
exactly
, are we supposed to capture one?” Kyra stared at the man.
Stone smiled and shrugged. “Use your imagination.”
* * * * *
They grabbed fresh sets of armor, replenished their weapons and ammo, and headed off on another jump ship with four cages lashed onto the sides.
“This is fucking ridiculous, how do they expect us to capture a live one?” Kyra muttered as they flew out into the night.
“
We shouldn't even bother,” Kauffman replied.
“
Well, I dunno guys...” Greg said. “I mean, they
do
need live specimens. We could really use an inoculation against this thing. It's rampaging out of control.”
“
Yeah, but they don't give a shit whether or not we die doing it,” Kyra snapped. “Let them do it with their full body armor that they won't share.”
Greg couldn't stop thinking about at least trying it. He had an idea, it was risky, maybe even stupid, but there was part of him that enjoyed those times he'd risked his life. Greg checked his watch. It was just hitting three in the morning. Now he and the others had to fight in the rain-drenched blackness of absolute night.
He'd drifted off against Kyra's shoulder again when the jump ship started to descend. He roused himself and rubbed his eyes as the ship settled down on the uneven ground of the wastelands. The back ramp lowered.
“
Up! Weapons free!” Billings shouted.
Greg was first down the ramp with Billings and Kyra right behind him. The powerful arc-lights on the ship illuminated the area, bathing everything in a bleak white glare. The base loomed ahead, much larger than the original outpost they had resided in, sporting enormous antennae atop the three-story structure.
No Undead lurked outside, as far as Greg could tell.
“
Baker, Kyra, want to give me a hand?” He headed around the side of the ship.
“
With what?” Baker turned and walked beside him.
“
This cage,” Greg called over his shoulder.
“
Oh, man, you're really gonna try it?” Baker was clearly excited.
“
Yep.”
“
Bishop, you're nuts.” Billings’s voice held disbelief.
“
How do you plan on doing this?” Kyra reluctantly offered her help.
“
I've got an idea.”
They unlatched the cage and carried it, at Greg's direction, toward the base and set it about ten meters from the main entrance.
“So what's this grand plan?” Kyra asked.
“
I'll tell you, later. We should probably clear the base, first.”
She looked like she wanted to press him further, but didn’t. Greg checked out the cage, finding it came with a simple operating mechanism. He hit the open button and the front wall split down the middle, creating an opening. He hit the close button and it slammed shut, smooth and quick. Greg opened it again and left it that way.
They made a circle of the base exterior, first, and found nothing. Several of the windows were broken, and shards of glass rimmed the window frames like jagged teeth. Unlike their original outpost, this one was a single structure. Greg and Baker took point and entered nice and easy into the main reception area.
They each covered half the room with their muzzles and flashlights, moving them in broad arcs. The lobby was clear, though one of the overhead vents was broken through and the back wall appeared to have been redecorated in human blood.
The team split up and made slow progress through the outpost. Everything spoke of brutal violence and nasty deaths. Flickering lights bathed bloody corridors in broken luminosity. Greg led Kyra and Baker through the second floor while Billings and the others covered the first. The second floor housed the living quarters, bedrooms, a mess hall, and a rec room. A pool table dominated the rec room. It was marred by a broken, headless body that lay atop it in a pool of blood.
There wasn't much in the way of resistance. A handful of zombies occupied the darker regions of the outpost. More often than not, Greg found them hidden behind doors in dark rooms. Their intelligence was more and more disturbing and obvious. He wondered what determined what they mutated into, or which ones mutated. Was there some genetic quality that helped decide? Or was it completely random?
It didn't seem as such.
All too often, he thought this whole thing was in no way random. It was too powerful, too quick, too ordered.
The abrupt arrival of the overly-efficient DI branch wasn’t lost on him, either.
“
What do you guys know about DI?” he asked as they finished clearing the second floor and headed up to the third and final story.
“
Next to nothing,” Kyra replied. “I always heard their name come up around outbreaks and the like, though. Traditionally, the outbreaks are more of the sickness variety and less of the undead, murdering kind.”
Baker glanced at him and Kyra in turn. “I've read up on them.”
“And?”
“
They're pretty...simple. Straightforward, I mean. They enact quarantines. They investigate outbreaks, viruses, diseases, and the like.”
“
And does everything we've seen so far seem...strange in any way?”
“
Yeah. To be sure, they're serious and professional, but the body armor, the tactical gear, the guns...not usually their MO. Typically they have Marine backup, but almost never their own special forces,” Baker explained as he swept his gun and light up the stairwell.
Greg wasn't sure what to say to that. Not that it mattered right now. As he came to the final floor, which was a single, broad, open room, ringed with expensive equipment, he found himself face-to-face with an exceptionally large zombie.
Greg let out a short shout of surprise and brought his weapon to bear, zeroing in on the thing’s skull. The thing slammed into him, sending him stumbling backwards into Kyra and Baker. He tried to keep his balance, but it was too late. The three of them went tumbling down the stairwell, a screaming, thrashing mass. Somehow, Greg managed to land on his back. He brought his rifle up with the zombie already coming down the stairs after them and squeezed the trigger. A three-round burst of lead took it in the skull, vaporizing a portion of its head and spraying the area around it with a fine mist of black blood.
“
Shit! Move!” Greg screamed as the creature rolled down the stairs toward them.
They barely managed to scramble out of the way before the body hit the landing where they had been sprawled.
“Everything okay?”
Billings crackled across their comms.
“Heard some fire.”
“
We're fine,” Greg answered.
“
Fuck, speak for yourself. I think I threw my back out,” Kyra groaned.
“
That's too bad. I was hoping for that honor myself.” Greg grinned.
“
What do you mean?” Baker looked confused. Kyra laughed and Greg was surprised to see her blushing.
“
Holy shit, are you
blushing
?” He cocked his head to one side.
“
Shut the fuck up.” Kyra punched him in the shoulder.
“
Why are you blushing?” Baker still appeared confused they ascended the steps once more.
“
Shut up,” Kyra snapped, but she still smiled.
The top floor was severely damaged. Like the other outposts, it looked like someone had taken a machine gun to it.
“Oh, wonderful.” Kyra heaved a sigh. “Looks like I've got my work cut out for me.”
“
Top floor is clear.” Greg made the call to Billings once they'd checked every shadow, every corner.
Billings came back.
“Good. I think we've got an unexpected guest down here. Something's been rattling around in the vents. Still got that plan of yours?”
“
Yes. Definitely.”
“
Then get down here. I'll send Powell up to help with repairs and Kauffman up for extra protection. I imagine he won't find much joy in the events to come.”
“
What are you actually going to do?”
Kauffman’s voice held a tremor.
“
Something that will make your skin crawl,” Greg replied.
* * * * *
They moved into position.
Kyra and Powell got to work on the communications array while Kauffman kept a fretful watch over them. Greg and Baker joined Billings on the ground floor. How smart were these things? Could they understand speech? Body language? Could they see a trap coming? He hoped not, otherwise this was going to get messy.