Authors: S. A. Lusher
Several days passed.
Greg got into a strange routine. Williams or a man identifying himself as Williams's assistant, would come for him periodically, several times a day, and they'd run more scans, take more samples, and ask him more questions.
Greg would ask to see his friends, but they were always recovering, in the medical wing.
In between these periods, Greg would sleep, eat, and work out. There was nothing else to do. Sometimes he woke up, certain that he heard strange sounds in the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the vents...sounds of
them
. The Undead. Grunts, bangs, or shrieks. Sometimes he felt they were merely products of his nightmares.
Others he felt positive they were real.
Greg supposed it would make sense to keep the creatures here...but it made him uneasy. The more time passed, the more his apprehension grew. There was something inherently
wrong
with the facility. It reeked of conspiracy and paranoia, of ill intentions and hidden agendas. Before long, the tests began to make him nervous. The way they handled him, how they stopped talking to him except to instruct him, as if a veil of false sincerity fell away.
He felt like a piece of meat.
And then it happened.
One night, while he was in the middle of a particularly bad dream, thrown back into the ruined ship once more, full of dead men come back to life, Greg was jerked out of sleep by the knowledge that someone had entered his room.
He still hadn't coaxed himself into sleeping with the lights off, managing only a dim setting, so he stared at the dark figure hovering by the doorway with uncertainty. It clearly wasn't a scheduled meeting. Whenever Williams or his assistant came for him, they'd taken to unceremoniously flipping the lights on.
“
Who goes there?” Lethargy was expunged from his system by adrenaline.
“
It doesn't matter,” a voice whispered harshly back. The lights went up a little, to half-capacity. The man before him was young and fidgety, wearing a white jumpsuit. His eyes were wide and his face flushed.
“
Listen, they're never going to let you out of here. They're going to extract all the information they can from you, and then put you on ice for safe-keeping. Your friends aren't even here. They escaped during transfer. Someone rescued them, don't know who, but they've been lying to you,” the man whispered.
Fear encased him, but also a sense of vindication. He was right. They were bullshitting him all the way.
“The cure?”
“
They've got it. They're synthesizing it right now for mass production. You'll likely be knocked out and iced within the next forty eight hours.”
“
Can you help me escape?”
The man hesitated. “I can try.” He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door. “When they knock you out, they'll pass you on to me and some others so that we can put you in cryo storage. I'll...I'll see what I can do.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“
I...some of the things I've seen...some of the things they've done in the name of research...I can't condone it, but I can't stop it, either. Not here, not now, but
this
is something I
can
do. I can help you. I have to go now. Oh, wait...I need a blood sample. Told the guard I came for one.” The man held out an empty syringe.
Greg allowed him to take some blood, thanked him and then watched him go.
As he lay back down, Greg began thinking of escape.
Chapter 21
An explosion, more of a deep rumble that shook the foundations of the building, tore Greg from his slumber. He woke to flickering lights and immediately flung the blankets back. After pausing for a long moment, wondering if it was a fluke or something else, a second and third explosion rang out. Greg stood and slipped into his combat boots. He'd gone to bed dressed. He quickly laced them and came to stand by the door.
Greg never actually tried to exit the door, instead opting to bide his time. There was a simple control panel on the inside, but when he pressed the exit button, nothing happened. He sighed and pressed the others, but to no avail. Williams's people must have disabled it. Greg moved around the room, hunting for alternative means of escape. After five minutes, the silence of his room punctuated by the occasional explosion and dimming of the lights, Greg surmised that there was no way out of the room.
He wasted a few more moments hunting for a weapon of some kind,
anything
, but there was nothing. It occurred to him then that Williams had been very meticulous in his design of Greg's quarters. Finally, he settled for waiting to the left of the door, hunched, ready for whoever would come for him.
They wouldn’t take him easily.
Time passed. He thought he heard gunfire and screams, but it might have just been his imagination. Greg’s skin crawled as he imagined the door opening and some Undead horror stomping him and feasting upon him. Time marched on with a merciless lethargy and thoughts began to seep into his skull.
He imagined all sorts of things. What if he was trapped here? What if the creatures had broken out and were overtaking the facility, consuming all those left within? An image, unbidden, flashed through his mind: himself, paralyzed but in unthinkable pain, suspended from a web in a basement somewhere, slowly mutating into a zombie. He tried to shake the thoughts from his mind, but the longer he waited, the more powerful they grew.
Without warning, the door opened.
A soldier in black armor stumbled in backwards. Greg prepared to attack, but then the unexpected happened. Kyra leapt atop the soldier, who had gone down onto his back, and drove the blade of a combat knife into his neck, punching through the softer armor there. A geyser of blood spurted, staining her neck and face.
She looked over, her eyes wide and wild.
“
Greg
,” she breathed.
Abandoning the knife, she stood, crossed the distance between them, grabbed him and kissed him. A figure appeared behind her. Greg felt her tongue, probing, demanding.
“We don't have time for this,” the figured said. His voice was familiar. Kyra finally broke contact, stepping back.
“
Um, hi,” Greg managed, breathless. Kyra laughed.
“
Come on.” She regained control of herself, turned, knelt, and retrieved the knife from the guard's neck. She grabbed the pistol in his holster and tossed it to Greg, who caught it, checked the clip automatically, found it full.
“
Bishop,” the figure greeted as Greg moved to kneel over the corpse, recovering a handful of spare clips.
“
Cage.” Greg had just realized who the figure with Kyra was. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“
Long story. Now let's
move
,” Cage replied, an unusual urgency crept into his typically monotone voice.
“
Is he dead or alive?” Billings’s familiar voice questioned.
“
Alive,” Kyra called.
“
Damn, guess I owe you.”
“
You bet that I was
dead
?” Greg stepped out into the corridor. Billings, Powell, and Kauffman were gathered in the hallway. A pair of black-armored corpses, one of their faceplates shattered, lay on the ground.
“
Hey, I know the odds when I see them.” Billings smoked a cigar, grinning around it.
“
Here.” Cage passed Greg a rifle and some ammo from the corpses.
Greg grabbed a holster as well, slipped his pistol in and checked the rifle over. Once he was certain it was ready for murder, he switched it to three-round burst and set off. Cage led the pack, Billings, Powell, and Kauffman brought up the rear. He and Kyra occupied the middle. Kyra spoke as they made their way through a stark network of corridors. The floors were occasionally broken by fresh corpses, but for the most part, the area was empty.
“When they shot you, we tried to fight back,” she began. “They knocked us out. Billings and Powell took hits, but they're okay.”
“
Ha,” Billings said behind them.
“
Oh, shut up. They ended up transporting us by land. Cage found us. Rescued us...” She trailed off, glancing at the silent sniper up ahead. The group came to a T junction. Cage paused, glanced both ways, and then hooked a left.
“
I got suspicious when DI showed up and started to run the show. It stank, so I jacked into their radio network, the private one, and figured some things out right away,” Cage told him without looking back.
“
Like what?” Greg asked.
“
For one, they're not Disease-Investigations. They're Dark Ops.”
Greg didn't know what Dark Ops was, but the name chilled him, nonetheless.
“They're a top-secret branch of the Galactic Alliance, our governing body.” Cage stopped and held his fist up. Ahead, around another corner, something growled. Cage leaned around the corner, raised his rifle, and fired twice. There was a sharp squeal, followed by the slump of a corpse. Cage disappeared around the corner, indicating for the rest to follow.
“
Dark Ops intercepted the transmission sent out before the comms blackout, when the infection had just started. They're here for the Undead and the infection. I can't be sure, but it seems that something like this has happened before, and they fucked it up. When I heard they had you, I tracked your location and my squad and I hit the truck,” Cage continued.
“
Your squad?” Greg asked.
“
They're dead. All died in the attack on the transport. We were lucky they didn't airlift you guys out of there, but the skies were overwhelmed with the Banshees. I managed to get everyone but you, Greg. They fought harder than hell to keep you. We had to retreat. Then we planned an attack on this place once we traced you to it. Powell managed to release at least half of the specimens they're keeping here and Kyra and I planted some explosives topside.”
“
So what are we doing now?” Greg was amazed at all they’d done for him.
“
We're hitting the labs before heading up to the motor pool. We need that cure.”
Greg wanted to argue, but decided against it. They came to one door among many and Cage opened it. It led to a narrow stairwell slanting deeper into the earth. The squad moved in a single file down it. There were more sounds now, the chaos of battle as Dark Ops soldiers clashed with the malignant Undead.
Greg thought over Dark Ops. It sounded creepy, but it helped explain a lot about the past couple of days. They came out into another corridor, this one painted a light blue, bathed in brilliant white light.
“
We aren't far now,” Cage murmured.
Greg felt strange, dislocated. This was such an abrupt transition from the quiet of the dormitories, the medical bay, and the hush of the corridors. Up ahead, a section of wall was painted in black blood. How many creatures had they locked up here to study? Conspiracy theories, laced with paranoia, haunted Greg's mind.
What were they planning for the Undead and the virus? Control? It made sense. Having an army of these things at your beck and call would make you a power to be reckoned with. Greg's mind flashed back to Kyra telling him about a recent war, a big one. The...what had Cage called it? Galactic Alliance? They'd be weakened, presumably. He imagined politicians and generals in shady back rooms, looking for any magic bullet to give them an edge.
Greg's train of thought was derailed as someone screamed. It was a wretched scream, the wail of a man fast approaching the black abyss of death. They hesitated near an open door. A moment later, a man in a blue jumpsuit limped out, clutching his arm. He was crying, oblivious to Greg and the others. A Stalker leapt out, smashed into him and began to tear bloody mouthfuls of raw meat away from his neck and shoulder.
Cage raised his rifle, put two quick shots into the Stalker's head, splattering its black brains all over the floor, and then put a third shot into the bloody scientist. They cleared out the room the pair had come from, as it was the lab holding the Cure. Billings and Kauffman guarded the door while Powell, Cage, and Kyra spread out across the room.
“
I don't suppose you know any more about this than I do, huh?” Greg asked.
“
No. Only that it has something to do with your blood...but it's more complicated than that. All I know is that they figured out how to synthesize it without you, which I suppose is a good thing, because if not, you'd have been hooked up to a machine, constantly being bled out,” Cage explained quietly.
Greg wasn't sure how to respond to that.
“Got it,” Powell said. He stood before what looked like a mini-fridge, only this one was locked down. He worked at a small keypad attached to the front for a moment. There was a short chirp and the door opened.
“
Found some shockproof containers,” Kyra called, coming over from across the lab.
“
Hurry it up, guys, I hear people coming,” Billings said.
Greg felt useless. He made himself focus harder, try to get into synch with the others. Powell quickly filled up the six containers. They were small, blue-white rectangles that opened to reveal soft, plush interiors.
There were two indents in the material, each meant to hold a glass tube.
“
Each one of these tubes holds ten hits of Cure,” Powell murmured. “Best method of delivery is direct neck injection.”
“
Got it,” Cage replied.
Once the containers were filled and secured, Cage passed them out to everyone in the room. Greg took his, slipped it into one of his pockets meant for ammo and zipped the pocket shut. A question, one he hadn't even thought of once, abruptly occurred to him. Could he even
get
infected? It was something he didn't want to test.
They left the lab and were thrown into a firefight. Greg and Billings were the first ones out. A quartet of men in black armor, ever-hidden behind their opaque visors, waited for them. The corridor was bare, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to duck. It was now or never, do or die. Greg raised his rifle and opened fire.
He got lucky on the first shot, punched three holes through the faceplate of one of the guards, shattering it, sending the man flying backwards in a spray of blood. The lucky shot seemed to distract the others. Billings got one of them in the neck, sending him stumbling backwards. Greg finished him off with another two shots.
Cage leaned out from the protection of the doorway. He fired off a pair of three-round bursts, taking down the final two soldiers. The next few seconds were spent gathering up spare ammo. Greg yearned for combat armor of some kind, the battle making him realize just how exposed he truly was. These uniforms weren't any good at stopping bullets.
There were no words as the group hurried down the passageway. Somewhere, something roared so loud that a nearby window cracked.
“
What was
that
?” Kauffman hissed.
“
Nothing good. Keep moving,” Cage replied.
Fear pull
ed at Greg. What were they
doing
down here, so far beneath the earth? Had they found something new? Or, worse, had they
made
something new? He tried not to think about it, tried to focus on escaping. They came to another door that led to a stairwell that went up for several levels. They began to ascend.
“
What's it like outside?” Greg asked.
“
Bad. Dark Ops dropped the veil. They've quarantined the planet. They're killing everyone who tries to leave. There's a fleet in orbit. It's been chaos...I slipped away from Fort Jackson a little after they showed up. Started finding other survivors in the city, convincing them of the situation,” Cage explained.
Greg was impressed. Cage had been busy. He couldn't imagine doing something similar himself. Something came back to him then, something Cage had said. Stop worrying about who you were, start worrying about who you're going to be. Who was he? Who was he going to be? Greg wanted to be someone who was brave and knew what to do. In the narrow stairwell, he gripped his rifle tighter, his knuckles whitening.
They came, at last, to the surface. The smell of smoke and blood hung on the air. Gunfire was constant and the screams of the Undead or dying provided a wicked background. Cage seemed to know the best way out, so they continued to follow him. The base was in chaos. Blood, red and black, soaked the walls and pooled on the floors. There were signs of conflict everywhere.