Screams reverberated off the metal walls of the USG Ishimura. The sounds of tearing flesh and strewn garments filled the corridors and wreaked the area with their pungent aromas from floor to ceiling. Mom, Dad, dead. We were lucky enough to be assigned in the same place for once.
"It's the trip of a lifetime," they told me before they left for deep space.
"Trip of a lifetime, ha!" I muttered to myself.
My throat burned from restrained tears. The urge to scream was not far off. That was a lifetime ago, though. Three hours of hell and I've survived this long. It was shocking; even to me. Communications were down. The bridge had been cut off from the rest of the ship, but there were still people moving around. At least I had hoped they were people. If there were survivors I couldn't say at that point. In the very far distance I can hear gunfire. It was intermittent but still there.
Should I stay or should I go?
I was not a fighter. The security forces must have been looking for others. Hopefully they would get to me before another one of those monsters found me. I don't know if I can keep up with this. My luck would finally run out when I needed it most. The scampering noises I heard from above didn't help the situation much, but I was so petrified with fear and anguish. Terror didn't sum up what's going on in my head at this moment.
I looked at the faces of my parents. Morphed and contorted. Those were not my parents. I didn't know how long they hadn't been. These things with their jagged teeth and scythe-like claws replaced what I knew of them.
"Oh fuck! What if I've lost it? What if it's me that murdered them in a fit of insanity?" The words trickled out with little doubt.
The room was in shambles. The walls were painted in blood and its rotting putrescent smell was inescapable. No matter how I inhaled it was there invading my senses. My body was racked with an insurmountable amount of pain as I slowly edged my way from the corner. My hands were coated in blood. Was it mine or theirs or a mixture of the two? I examined my jumpsuit. My blood smeared name tag barely showed my name.
Ondrea Markum.
Ondrea Markum was dead. She had to be. I felt for holes in my body and begged the powers that be that I came out of my attack unscathed. It was then that I noticed the puncture wound in my shoulder. I had been in fact injured; the only thing that kept me unaware was the surge of adrenaline surging through my veins.
I don't remember how I fought or how I managed to get away, but here I sat, frantically trying to control myself from placing the gun to my head to end it all.
"Ondrea, we need you to repair some couplings down on the flight deck." Beckett said, as he read off the roster for the daily maintenance. "After that you'll need to repair some of the interfaces in flight control."
It was a pretty standard day, if you'd have asked me. Being one of the only female engineers on the Ishimura was pretty interesting. The day crew was comprised of six men plus myself and made for interesting banter in the lounge after out shift had ended. There was a lot of competition between us, but it broke up the monotony of the work. I was a second in command, but still an underling compared to the other officers.
As roll call finished, we exited the room and parted ways. Today we were cracking the planet and everything had to be running just so. The tasks seemed simple enough. It would take me a good part of the day, but it was always implied that I got the more difficult tasks because of my scores and not my gender.
As I walked down the hallway I bump into familiar faces. Some cheerful, others less so, more distressed or they anticipated something. Probably popping the cork, I thought to myself. It was always a stressful time in the interim. The Unitologists were muttering about some relic pulled from the surface hours ago. I wasn't concerned, I didn't believe in that nonsense. The concept of transcendence and living forever was laughable. Heh. What a joke.
Others spoke of a "wrath of God" situation happening down on the colony below us. People were dying; violence was at an all-time high. Again, it didn't concern me. As long as it wasn't up here then I had nothing to worry about.
Famous last words now that I think about it.
Maybe they should have heeded the warning better. My shoulder continued to throb. The shock and nausea that appeared when the adrenaline dipped back to normal made my insides turn in knots. I tried to keep it together. Just for the sake of survival, for the sake of my own sanity. I grabbed my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one. It was something, anything to stave off the urge to puke; something to take my mind off the incessant whispering in my head.
Make us whole...
"Fuck making us whole!" I yelped. I looked around to see if out my outburst had been noticed.
I wanted to put a fucking hole in my head just to make it stop. It was subtle, but I could feel it; like a tingling at the back of my skull. I took a drag off of my cigarette and flicked it at the corpses laying just feet from me.
"You need to move," Mom's voice cut through the voices on loop.
"I can't," I muttered.
"You have to," Mom's voice became more insistent.
"What am I supposed to do? I can't go anywhere," I grumbled.
I'd given up; resigned myself to death.
"You need to make it to the flight deck," she said.
"And do what?" I ask.
There's nothing no response. Just the sounds and whispers again.
I glanced around the room one last time and stood, dusting off the fine lint from my flight suit. The windows were shattered out of my once quaint domicile. The thought of crossing the ship to get to the flight deck was a joke. It was a suicide run at best.
"I thought you were stronger than that," Beckett's snarky tone made me jump.
"Fuck you, Chris," I remarked.
"Is that the best you can come up with?" He retorted. His jabs fell on deaf ears. "It's not that bad."
"Which part? Getting impaled, brain fucked, or losing my mind?" I asked caustically.
"Take your pick," Chris snorted.
"I don't have time for this."
"Then go," he whispered. I knew he wasn't there, but his voice and stale breath hit my ear as if he was. "Make us whole."
That damn phrase again. Insistent, annoying and droning. It was like dealing with that obnoxious doctor earlier.
The cold sterility of the medlab was blindingly bright. I sat on a gurney, my hand draped in gauze, waiting for the doctor to come in. The blood slowly dripped from my wound, splattering on the floor and splashing tiny sprinkles on the deck. I could see the small trail leading from the door to where I was. It wasn't that bad, just an accidental gash with a tool.
The lights flickered once and the room went black.
My head throbbed and ached but the pitch dark incredible. The lights returned and I reeled at the shocking pain that pierced my skull. I shut my eyes tight, and hoped that my shift would hurry up and end so I could rest again in solemn confines of darkness.
"So what happened here?" A female in a cheery voice asked.
"What's it look like? I cut myself," I answered without opening my eyes.
"Let me take a look," she responded without skipping a beat.
She lifted my hand and pulled away the gauze. She paused and sighed.
"How'd that happen?"
"I was working and my hand slipped across the blade," I answered. "It's not that bad really."
I opened my eyes and watched her shake her head at me.
"You're going to need something to stop the bleeding," she remarked. Her cool and calm demeanor reminded me of my mother from when I was a child.
She pulled up a tray and stool and sat down in front of me. She slowly wiped away the blood with a noxious astringent. The tingling and burning made me bite my lower lip.
"So, you're new here. How do you like it?" she asked.
She picked up a new piece of gauze and continued cleaning.
"It's interesting, I'll give it that much."
"You're an engineer?" she questioned. "There aren't many female engineers here." Her attempts at small talk were grating my nerves, but whatever got her to finish up and let me get back to my job, I was willing to acquiesce and answer. Anything to take the pain from my head. She looked at me for a moment and then at the needle on the tray. "I need to give you lidocaine for the sutures."
"Just stitch me up. I don't need to be poked more than necessary," I spat.
Reports were scattered about hostiles on board and the utter insanity that was taking over the crew. The medlab was one of the first places to fall. Communication was scant at best. A lot of static and buzzing broken up by "shoot them in the limbs". It was an absurd declaration to be made over the system, but with visuals down worse than audio, I was lucky enough to get that out before being attacked myself.
I rubbed my shoulder, the blood oozed from the wound seeped into the bandage in my hand. I poked my head outside. There was no noise. No screaming, no gunfire, no hissing and slithering through the ducts. The entire area was an eerie scenario filled with horrific silence.
"Ishimura... Kellion... respond," the crackled voice called over the comm and shattered the dead air. I had completely forgotten that I had tuned in my radio to the receiver for testing.
"Yes we're here," I harshly whispered into the radio. I dialed the volume down to keep from attracting more undesirable attention. The message repeated once then twice.
They couldn't hear me. I had to go to the flight deck. I had to tell them to leave. Flee. There was nothing for them here. I grabbed my pistol and opened the door. I slowly stuck my head out of the broken portal and looked down both ends of the corridor. Nothing. A warning klaxon blared in the distance but it was coming from the opposite direction that I intended to go in.
"Bye Mom and Dad, I'll be back later." I told them as if it were anything but routine.
Talking to corpses.
Maybe I was more insane than I thought I was. I took my first steps out and stopped. I thought I heard something. Whispering? Scrapping on metal? I needed to escape with as little noise as possible. I had limited bullets and limited time. Even if I didn't have the option of saving myself from this hell, I would make sure that they didn't enter it either.
A jolt of pain wrapped around my brain. The shrieking and wailing slammed to the front of my mind.
Make us whole... Make us whole...
I fell to my knees, overcome with pain. My mind was dizzy with agony that overshadowed the violent pulsating in my shoulder. A cold breeze hit my back and I quickly turned around. I noticed the cold sliding down the side of my back. I couldn't worry about it now. I'd have find a first aid kit when I got to the flight deck.