The Closet
"Damn!"
Josh hammered his fist against the pipe. He had been working on a leak for half an hour and just when it seemed he was about to fix it, he broke a pipe seal.
"Just fucking great..." he muttered.
Josh Kenton had only been assigned maintenance duty at Mars City for a week and already he hated his assignment. The 34-year old maintenance technician wasn't bothered by the uncomfortable surroundings that were bound to be what he was offered at a space station, nor did he usually shy away from hard work.
But the situation here on Mars City was anything but comforting and bad had gone to worse in a matter of days. Josh was usually a jovial character, but somehow, this place affected his mood. Every day he woke up not feeling pleased about getting to work.
The demeanor of the other people at the base didn't help any. In fact, Josh realized he was helping create the general feelings of ill will on the base, but what could he do? The mood around here was contagious.
But that wasn't the worst.
He had only been here for a week and already he had become familiar with the nightmarish accidents that befell his co-workers. Freak accidents that couldn't easily be explained. Just yesterday, Josh had seen a fellow maintenance tech being carried into the medical bay. When asked what had happened, his supervisor told him that the tech had stumbled and fallen fifteen feet down from a platform. "Witnesses," he claimed "said it appeared he freaked out and backed away, tripped over the edge of the platform and plummeted to the floor beneath."
The man died from his injuries the same night, Josh heard later.
"That fucking pipe..."
Josh tried to focus his concentration on the task. He felt trapped and alone in the narrow maintenance passage. It was a bit like being stuck inside a closet, but surrounded by wires and pipes. The entry into this "maintenance closet" wasn't any better; basically a narrow crawlspace like a vent shaft. And here he was, working to fix a leak. The gas had been turned off so he could work safely, but Josh didn't feel safe.
Stories about other inexplicable freak accidents haunted him. Stories about machines starting up seemingly without anyone having activated them.
Josh hated to admit it to himself, but he was actually afraid that somebody would turn the gas right back on while he was here working on it.
He had just fixed the broken pipe seal, when the base seemed to shake from a distant explosion.
"What the...?"
He felt something heavy land hard on his head and a sharp pain welled up in his head a second later as his vision blacked out and he had the remote sensation of hitting the wall next to him.
But before his senses vanished, he thought he heard distant screams and cries for help.
-
Josh awoke slowly and painfully, his head throbbed.
The light inside the maintenance space flickered on and off. Josh looked about him dazed and confused, not understanding what he was doing in this creepy, narrow space. Then it slowly dawned on him that he had been performing maintenance.
His eyes fell on a pipe piece; undoubtedly the thing that had fallen on his head and knocked him out cold.
He crawled to his feet and tried to focus, when he heard a strained, hoarse, prolonged sound. It sounded like a strange cry of sorts, but it couldn't have come from any living being Josh had ever heard. If he didn't already know what strained metal sounded like, he'd have guessed that the sound belonged to something like that.
The sound gave him goosebumps and what was far worse: it seemed to emanate from somewhere within the maintenance tunnels.
I gotta get outta here!
Josh turned towards the crawlspace that had brought him here.
There was no crawlspace.
What the fuck is going on here?
Josh looked around in confusion.
Nothing!
The walls were all closed around him, as if there had never been a shaft that lead into this maintenance space. Josh felt panic well up inside him. And then he heard a deep evil laughter echo through his throbbing head.
I'm dreaming...a fucking nightmare!
He pressed the weight of his body against the southern wall, which he knew was all that separated him from a hallway. The wall wouldn't budge. Not that he had expected it, but he was growing desperate.
He heaved a heavy sigh.
Easy now Josh, you're only dreaming this up. You just sit down, try and fall asleep again and tomorrow you'll wake up and find it was all a stupid nightmare!
Something illuminated the tiny maintenance space around him. Josh looked up and saw a horrific, floating apparition just above him. It was a floating, transparent skull that seemed to be wreathed in ethereal flames.
As Josh stared horrified, the skull looked down and let out a shrill screech that froze the blood in his veins.
Before the maintenance tech knew what hit him, the skull was gone and he himself was lifted off his feet by a terrible force.
The force knocked him into a wall and he vaguely felt his body getting cut by sharp gadgets in the wall. But that sensation was a mere bagatelle compared to the rapidly exploding sense of dread that rose inside him.
He felt his body go numb with a terrible sort of coldness. He felt his body weakening, withering away and he was overcome with a terrible sense of nausea unlike any kind he had ever felt or imagined before. And yet, he didn't really feel any physical discomfort.
And then he somehow knew what was happening: his soul was dying and his body with it. He wanted to scream, but couldn't.
Death is only the beginning of your servitude, mortal.
The voice could be felt rather than heard and as their ominous meaning became clear to Josh, all sense of reason, of common sense vanished from his mind and all he could think of now was 'fresh meat'.
UAC Security Guard Private Rodriguez moved cautiously through the gloomy corridor, clutching his sidearm tightly, his heart pounding so hard, he wondered if it would burst out of his chest.
Rodriguez didn't understand what exactly had happened to his colleagues or why, he only knew that they had turned into these strange zombie things that spoke a creepy language and attacked anything still normally human.
He was alone, separated from any of the marines or any Security Guard colleague that wasn't "zombified".
Rodriguez had only been transferred to Mars City two days ago and he had not been prepared for the chaotic situation that the UAC Security Force on Mars was in. Security Force members had either disappeared, or been confined within padded cells because they had lost their sanity.
The presence of U.S. Marines at the base was not surprising to Rodriguez. He knew the UAC had a contract with the military and the military did evidently not trust the UAC's own Security Force. They wanted to make sure the UAC didn't sell their tech to the highest bidder.
But civilians, Security Force members and the Marines seemed to frequently go insane. Nobody was sure who would go next.
But even that was nothing compared to the present situation. Where did these monsters appear from? And the ghosts?
Rodriguez wheeled around when a loud metallic noise sounded just behind him and he found himself face-to-face with what had once been a UAC maintenance technician that was now blindly stumbling out from where there had been a wall a moment before.
The former human lunged at the guard with a strange moaning sound, but the guard had good reflexes and stumbled backwards, wildly firing his sidearm at the zombie.
The bullets penetrated the body of the undead creature with a sickening splattering sound and caused it to jerk from the impact shockwave of each bullet, but did little to actually slow it down. It moaned with each hit it took.
The standard issue pistol shared by both marines and UAC security guards was a powerful handgun. Normally, a single slug from this gun would easily kill a healthy, strong, full-grown man with a single shot. Even a wound in the foot inflicted by this weapon could potentially kill its victim in a matter of hours as a result of the shock and blood loss.
But this 'thing' was already dead and to re-kill it, the body would have to be thoroughly ruined. Its torso was already filled with gaping bullet wounds and the ragged, bloodied flesh of the zombie made the still living creature all the more frightening to behold.
Rodriguez squeezed another bullet into the undead maintenance worker, causing it to bend over, jerking its head limply downward, when another shot from the guard's pistol shattered the skull of the zombie, sending blood, grey matter and skull shards flying from the wound. The zombie was thrown back against the wall behind it, where it slid to the floor and lay still.
Rodriguez looked at it briefly, but felt sure it wouldn't get back up – He had already killed a few other zombies like this guy. He examined the "closet" that the former human had broken out from. It had been a narrow maintenance space, now it was like a hidden trap to surprise unsuspecting victims.
Rodriguez didn't understand where these closets came from – it didn't seem like they were really supposed to be there. It was as if some malignant presence had warped the layout of the base, reshaping it into a deathtrap.
Rodriguez kicked the body over and examined it. He could vaguely read the tech's nametag.
It read: J. Kenton.