The dash of light quickly appeared and faded as the final plasma beam was placed on a spastic arm of a crawling, now deceased, Slasher. The shot was well placed as the chance of missing would create the need for close quarters combat with the creature, not something you want to do with a Necromorph, but because the shot landed and did its duty of amputation that previously stated need was not required, for now.
Jeremiah lowered the Plasma Cutter and sighed. He wasn't sure how much of this he could take. He's heard of hell and believes in it, but this whole paramount event he is experiencing gives him a new definition of hell.
A glowing, large, two-dimensional, blue box filled with smaller boxes appeared in front of him. The box comforted Jeremiah: mainly because it gave a small amount of light in this eternal abyss of darkness. He looked the box up and down, figuring out which weapon he should use now and which weapon he should save for emergencies. He only had three weapons stored in his RIG, but one was now out of the battery that charged it. The Line Gun and the power tool saw, The Ripper, were his remaining choices. He thought back at what he had experienced and thought ahead at what he has yet to experience. He had 35 racks for the Line Gun and 29 Ripper blades. He released another sigh and stood up more straight while trying to make up his mind.
Jeremiah closed his eyes, to rest them, for a second then opened them back up and produced the Line Gun in his hands and reluctantly trekked forward. He was well off on health and med packs, but ammo is where he was lacking. Ammo and batteries were scarce, too scarce for anyone's comfort. Well, besides the Necromorph's.
As the lone man ambled forward the undead creatures could be heard, scurrying through the vents and clambering around distant rooms, in all directions. It was enough to drive anyone paranoid and paranoia was starting to commence.
A low humming noise appeared behind Jeremiah and he spun around in shear fright, but nothing was there. The hum was produced by the sound of his stasis module replenishing itself for an extra use.
In all of his time on The Sprawl Jeremiah had never heard of Patrol groups being allowed to carry stasis modules everywhere, or even kinesis modules for that matter.
The man shifted in his suit, trying to adjust to the feeling of it. He had picked up the suit from a dead patrol officer whom he had seen fall and die upon hitting the floor; so the suit was still intact with all of its mechanics working, as the officer's death was caused because he broke his neck when he hit the floor.
When Jeremiah regained as much composure as he possibly could in this situation he began forward again, keeping his hands on the triggers of his weapon at all times.
When he reached the end of the lightless hallway he reached forward to activate the door to open it. As the door registered and started to open the air vent above Jeremiah's head busted open and large pieces of shrapnel fell and pinged off his armor. He quickly dove to his right and landed on his back and abruptly brought his Line Gun to face the vent, but nothing was there. The sound of some creature could be heard crawling through the vent. It would stop, scratch at something periodically, and continue its mission without a goal.
Jeremiah stood up slowly and strode over to the door again. It had deactivated because he had moved away from the front of the door so he reactivated it with frustration.
The gears and the cogs turned and the door finally opened. When the wide door opened about half way something darted past the opposite side of the door. Jeremiah stepped back from the door, eyes wide, and hoisted up his Line Gun. When the door opened all the way, boxes and suitcases were being tossed in every direction behind the wall separating him from the monster on the other side. He heard a vent bust again from the other hallway and whatever was in that hall scrambled in the vent and scurried away.
Jeremiah stood there for a minute, gaining courage to keep trying to survive. When he eventually did he sprinted past the door and scanned the side of the hall where the Necromorph had clearly been.
Nothing, like always. The busted vent was there but the Necromorph had left. Jeremiah lowered his weapon and as soon as he did that he realized that was a mistake.
A high-pitched scream erupted behind him and he heard footsteps rapidly grow behind him. He spun around and was immediately knocked backwards with enough force to easily break his bones if he was not wearing the suit.
A Stalker loomed over him, moving in the bird like fashion they always do. His Line Gun had been knocked far away from him and he couldn't find it. The Stalker eyed him, looking him up and down, tilting its head back and forth in jerking movements.
Jeremiah looked up at it in shear terror. He looked around the room after peeling his eyes off of the grotesque creature's torn muscles and flesh that had combined into one and the ribcage that was cracked open and pushed apart. On the wall opposite of Jeremiah laid a broken pipe with sharpened ends honed enough to slice through steel.
The Stalker had finished eyeing its prey and let out another screech, bringing its head up in the process to bring down its beak, formed of fragmented pieces of the former human's skull and teeth, to strike the pinned man.
Jeremiah lurched his hand towards the pipe. A glowing, blue beam of light connected his hand to the pipe and brought the pipe towards him at a high velocity. He looked up at the Stalker, which had started bringing down its beak, and the light produced from his kinesis module illuminated the undead form, revealing its macabre apparel even more.
The pipe raced towards him, trying to beat the Stalker's beak. When the pipe was about six feet from him he released it, deactivating the kinesis module. The pipe, still containing momentum, soared through air fast enough that it created a high-pitched scream, as if it were mocking the Stalker.
The Stalker was bringing down its beak as fast as the pipe was flying at her. The Stalker just managed to land its beak on Jeremiah's face plate when its head suddenly exploded in chunks of rotting flesh and gore galore. It flew off of Jeremiah and continued the ballistic trajectory with the broken pipe that was now a javelin spear. Sparks lit up the area as the metal pipe sheared through the metallic walls, impaling the Stalker to the wall.
The Stalker squirmed and tried helplessly to squeal, but was unable to free itself or call for help. After about ten seconds of struggling it gave up and died.
Jeremiah, with his back on the floor, sighed as the creature died and laid there for a moment, and he stared at the ceiling. He noticed that directly above him was an air vent and past the slowly rotating fan something moved: something that wasn't supposed to be there.
Jeremiah's eyes widened and he started to roll to the side, but it was too late. A Slasher broke through the vent and landed directly on him. Its scream shook Jeremiah's ears and blood dripped from the opened torso of the creature. It brought its blades down on Jeremiah and he lifted his hands to catch them and keep them from slicing through his body.
The Slasher screamed as the two of them wrestled: one wrestling for life, the other for death. The Necromorph, Jeremiah realized, was propping itself up with its feet. So with his two free legs Jeremiah kicked out the Necromorph's legs from underneath itself and quickly pushed the nightmarish creature off of him. He then quickly rolled to the opposite direction and stood up abruptly and ran. The Slasher also quickly gained footing and chased after him.
As he ran Jeremiah looked for his Line Gun and saw it lying on the ground to his right. He changed course on the dime and the Slasher followed suit. It was catching up with him and he knew it, but Jeremiah kept sprinting. When he reached his Line Gun he slid to grab it and kept sliding forward then spun his feet underneath him to stand up from the slide and turn around at the same time.
He pulled the Line Gun up to fire and fired two racks into the pursuing Necromorph that was no more than four feet behind him. The first rack entered the creature at the level of its naval severing the monster, spilling its scorched insides on the floor. The second rack severed the monster's head and two bladed arms as it fell to the level of the shot from its bottom half being taken out from underneath it.
Jeremiah clenched his savior in the form of a weapon with enough force to crush a brick. Every muscle in his body was tensed beyond what it should be and he realized he also was not breathing. He exhaled a large breath and inhaled. "My God," he muttered under his breath and leaned against the cold, metallic wall behind him and let his body drop to the floor. This was beginning to be too much. Adrenaline was constantly entering and exiting his body which was quickly tiring the poor soul.
Jeremiah began to think of his wife and two children, whom had all been brutally mutilated in front of his eyes.
Three days ago, when all of this began, he was doing his normal duty as a male nurse in the medical station in the Sprawl. His wife, Marina, and his two children; Mark, an eleven year old boy, and Sarah, a fifteen year old girl, were with him, which they were not supposed to be. They were supposed to be on a flight on a commercial cargo ship to visit Marina's mother, who was close to death, but not as close as they were, but they were delayed from the flight for a medical cure. Mark had been born with asthma and that had hindered his dreams of becoming a zero-gravity basketball all-star.
Jeremiah, being as benevolent as he is, decided to postpone the flight until the next day and bring Mark and the rest of the family to his work because a new cure to asthma had been developed, but it wasn't a 100 percent sure-fire cure. It needed a test subject. The cure had a ninety-seven percent chance of working and Jeremiah had studied it by close inspection. He knew it would work. But this was a once in a life time chance to get this readily available and for free. So he took it.
Mark was strapped down to the table, the operation was about to begin. He was nervous, of course, and the doctors grabbed the tools necessary, including a large syringe so Mark wouldn't feel a thing, for the operation. Mark had taken the medication needed to cure him, and the medication was about half the cure while the other half is the operation, and the medication made him a bit loopy.
He looked at the syringe. "Wow! That's a huge syringe! Is that going into me?" He laughed at the thought, the drugs obviously talking.
The doctor flicked the syringe. "Yes, it indeed is Mark."
Mark continued to laugh. Suddenly the lights went out in the medical station. The doctors and nurses, including Jeremiah, looked around. How could that happen? It was almost impossible for the power to go out in the medical station. The emergency lights revealed everything in the room and the hallway outside.
Marina leaned close to Jeremiah. "Is this supposed to happen?" She knew the answer to it, but she asked anyways.
Jeremiah shook his head. "No."
Glass shattered down the hall from the operating room they were in. Everyone turned towards the door that led into the hall.
Screaming erupted from the origination of the shattered glass and so was another noise, a noise that was quite clearly being made by a living being, but not a human. The noise resembled a gurgling, screaming, outrageous mumble. The human screaming suddenly stopped their yelling and so did the other creature.
Marina took Jeremiah's hand; Sarah took Marina's and they stood there, the doctors and the family that should be heading towards a dying woman just stood there.
A vent broke in the hallway and it sounded like whatever that thing was in the hall crawled inside. The lights went back on and everything seemed fine. Jeremiah took a step into the hallway and looked down it.
His expression changed from alarmed to horror. He snapped his head towards the doctors. "Call Security! Call them right now!"
The lead doctor tilted his head. "Why? What do you see?"
Every person in the room, except for Mark, headed towards the hall to see what Jeremiah saw. Their expressions followed his in suit. Sarah's hands flew to her mouth as she let out a terrified gasp. A bloody mess was splattered against the wall. Limbs violently torn from their body rocked back and forth on the floor, meaty chunks were scattered everywhere, and the body was barely recognizable as a human, and the thing was that no human, given the world's most powerful Ripper, could create something this gruesome in a matter of ten seconds or so.
One of the nurses rushed to the phone and dialed Security's number. The phone started to ring.
"Whatever did that," Jeremiah shifted from foot to foot, "went into the vents. It could be anywhere." And almost on key the lights went out again and a pitter-pattering of fleshy stumps were heard clambering over head, through the vents. Everyone looked up and followed the noise. No one spoke a word but Sarah was whimpering behind her hands and shut eyes. The crawling noise stopped above the operating room. No one moved, no one talked. The nurse using the phone covered the ear piece of the phone, but the ringing could still be heard through muffled sound waves.
"Hello?" A voice blurted through the phone, disrupting the silence. "Hello?"
The pattering noise started again, this time crawling quickly and stopped above a vent in the ceiling of the operating room.
Mark looked at the nurse holding the phone. "Are you gonna answer that?"
Jeremiah lurched a small distance towards his son. "Mark!" He whispered. "Be quiet!"
Mark laughed. "No, don't be rude answer the phone!"
Jeremiah looked up towards the vent; the vent was directly above Mark, who was shouting through drug induced dialogue.
"If you're not going to answer it hand the phone to me. I will!"
The creature in the vent started pounding at the vent, trying to break though. It pounded harder and harder, just trying to break it.
"Hand me the phone!"
Jeremiah's heart was pumping too fast and the stress he had was putting him over the edge. He lashed out. "MARK! Shut up! Now!"
Mark stopped talking and the creature continued its frenzy against the vent. Mark looked coldly into his dad's eyes with pain, at the fact his own father yelled at him in such a way. No drug could seduce that pain.
The pounding stopped and still, no one moved or spoke. One minute passed, two, three. Five minutes passed and nothing happened. Everyone had almost calmed down, Sarah had lowered her hands, and Jeremiah straightened his posture and looked at his son with sympathy. He began to apologize. "Mark, I'm sorr…"
Every person reeled back in horror as the vent above Mark busted, and the hideous, mangled body of some reanimated corpse, with blades jetting from its back, landed on top of the poor test subject, and lashed out mercilessly on the poor boy.
"Maaaarrrrkkkk!" The boy's mother yelled as Mark screamed and tried to thrash about on his metallic bed and grave. Eventually he stopped squirming and once the boy stopped showing signs of life, the bloodied creature lunged at the next living human, the nurse with the phone. The nurse brought the phone to his mouth and shouted, "Operating room 5-2-B. Send Security personnel to operating room 5-2-…" He was cut off short as a blade entered his body, entering through his collar bone and exiting through his hip. The blade of the monster hit the ground and the monster lifted it back up, letting the body slide off the blade leaving trails of blood streaking down the blade.
The undead creature looked at the group of bystanders through bloodshot eyes, its mouth torn open so the cheeks were ripped down the middle and dripping a mixture of blood and saliva. It lunged and started to impale and mutilate the lead doctor, picking it up with one blade while tearing the body to ribbons with the other. When it finished it struggled getting the body off of its blade and the remaining survivors took advantage of the spared time and ran, leaving the three bodies to rot in a puddle of their own bloody grave.
Jeremiah, his wife, and his daughter were huddled next to an elevator. The hologram in front of the elevator showed that it was being called. All three humans were breathing heavily and shaking a bit, Sarah especially. They were all covered in blood from both humans and the undead creatures. The other doctors and nurses and any other survivors they had seen had fallen to the hand of Death. The dark hallways made the group nervous and every noise made them flinch and their heart pound with fear.
The elevator reached the family and Sarah walked up to the door. She was always the first to get in, then Marina, then Jeremiah; it was safer that way.
The door struggled to open.
Sarah stood impatient with fear and turned to her father. "Is it broken?" She questioned. Then, almost as if to give a response to her question, the elevator doors flew open and the girl turned towards it with a gleam of happiness, as well as her parents, but their smiles turned to horror as a body, mangled by death, lunged through the newly opened doors and grasped the teenage girl with both hands, bent her backwards, and started spewing some sort of bile on her.
The girl screamed in wretched pain as her skin dissolved and revealed muscle and bone.
"No!" Her father yelled in retaliation but he knew he could do nothing, but watch as his own child dissolved; skin, clothes, muscles, bones, and all; before his eyes. The sight made him sick to his stomach as Sarah's organs spilled across the floor, half dissolved, as the skin and muscle holding them in place quickly vanished and her screaming stopped.
Marina was in tears and vomiting, almost just like the creature, spewing yellow bile everywhere.
Jeremiah tugged her arm. "We have to move! Now!"
Marina just shook her head, moving the path of her tears. "No."
"Yes! NOW!" He started to run as the puking creature started at them and Marina reluctantly obliged.
Jeremiah brought down the steel pipe down on a small child's head just before the child's claws penetrated through his skin and emptied his bowels across the floor. That was the last little child. A whole pack of small children, obviously part of the undead hoard with screeches like a banshee and long claws in place of fingers and pale skin, had attacked them out of nowhere.
He looked at his wife. They had been trying to arrive at an emergency escape transport, but being at the starting point of the outbreak did not help them.
"How're you holding up?"
Marina shook her head, her eyes closed and her hands shaking with the Plasma Cutter. "I can't do this, Jerry. I… I just can't do this. This is too much. Imagine… What if one of those kids were Mark, Honey. Imagine that! We just killed Mark, our own son! We just killed twenty Marks." She started to weep.
"No, no," Jeremiah walked up to his wife and pried one of her hands from the Plasma Cutter to hold it. "None of those things were Mark. We would have recognized him if one of them were. And other than that they all were trying to kill us. So, we had to fight for our own survival."
Marina just shook her head. "No. I can't do this. I can't!" She looked up at her husband. "I miss our children. And we won't make it to the transport alive." She started to laugh a bit, from hysteria. "We won't live much longer and I'm not going to die by the hands of those things!"
Jeremiah swallowed, afraid of what she was getting at. "Listen, Sweetie, we ARE going to make it out of here alive and…"
"No! We won't!"
"Well, we have to try!" The husband pleaded.
"See?" She looked up at him. "Even you show doubt. And if my own husband shows doubt…" Her voice trailed off. "I believe you can do anything, and if you don't think we can do this then…" She looked down at her Plasma Cutter.
"No, no! We can do this. We can." A tear streaked down his cheek.
"No, my dear, don't lie to me. I miss our children, Jerry. I…" She let out a sudden pout. "I want to join them, Jerry. I want to see them again."
"No! Honey! You have to keep going, with me, your husband." Jeremiah smiled and cried at the same time.
Marina shook her head and looked up at her husband and smiled. "I loved you, I always have loved you." She slowly lifted the Plasma Cutter to her neck.
Jeremiah; too shocked, too afraid; just stared at his wife in disbelief.
And with a flash of light her body and head fell to the floor separately. Jeremiah stood there, in the same position he did when his wife was still alive. He was still holding her hand too and he thought: If I had let them go like they should of, they would still be alive. I'm the reason they are dead. And the man broke down, fell to his knees, held his head in his hands, and wept.
Jeremiah's mind swept back to the present. Tears pooled the inside of his helmet and he loosened the neck to let the tears drain and continue their journey, rolling down his body and onto the floor. He sniffed and sighed and looked around. "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I'm either gonna survive or die trying or…" He looked down at his Line Gun but quickly dismissed that thought.
"Nope."
He stood up.
"Gotta keep going. I can make it to the emergency evac ship."
The man started forward again, making sure he stepped over the soup of organs he had created.
Earlier on he had fought his way to one of the control decks in The Sprawl. When he got there he hoped to find some detail that there was still a way off this spawned hell; and there was. He found an emergency evac ship still docked at a station not too far from his current location at the time. He knew his way around The Sprawl and decided his only hope of survival was to leave on that evac ship. The only problem was that he only knew one or two controls for an evac ship and that wasn't enough to fly it, but he decided he would cross that bridge when he got to it.
Jeremiah walked up to another door and activated it. While he waited for it to register and open he thought about where he was compared to his destination. It would take, he figured, another half hour with only a few interruptions to get there, but only a few interruptions?
"With my luck…" He muttered to himself as the door slid open.
Dark, metallic hallway after dark, metallic hallway only lit by a distant super nova through the glass, glowing in the distance of the universe, the weary man walked endlessly, it seemed. For three days he had been fighting this undead horde, fueled by nothing but adrenaline and a few breaks to eat and drink whenever necessary. Not once has he slept, but he has been trained to work more than adequately without sleep with his previous job of Special Hazardous Operations.
About halfway to the evac ship, with not too much time left till he arrived there, he reached a hallway. This hallway looked and was like every other hallway, don't be mistaken, but Jeremiah heard a faint sob coming from a side route. Filled with joy at the possibility of finding another live soul he quickly dashed towards the crying, but what he found he would have rather not have.
A woman was sitting on the floor leaning against the cold, hard wall cradling a small boy.
Now, that may not seem too bad, but only about half of the boy was there: being sliced from his right shoulder down to his left thigh and also being semi-decomposed.
Surrounding the woman too was a mob of dead, mutilated bodies with organs thrown everywhere. They looked like streamers, made of intestines, and blood used for red paint and more decorative organs; almost as if someone was throwing a surprise party, and it was all for Jeremiah.
After holding back a gag, the sickened man slowly moved towards the woman. "Hello?"
The woman did not acknowledge his existence and started caressing the boy's head, smearing his blood across his face and peeling back soft and loose flesh, and muttered something like, "It'll be all right. No one is here to hurt you. I called for help. Help will come. Help is coming. I'll call again in a bit. Shush, it's okay." She brought her finger to his lips, chafing the dry flesh.
Jeremiah, now undecided about whether he should try to help this woman, leaned forward a bit and reached out his hand and made a small wave with it. "Hello?" He said a bit louder.
The woman's head jolted in his direction, her eyes locking onto his mask. "Are you…" She looked the man up and down. "No, you're not help."
Jeremiah stood up straight. "No, but I'm the best help that will come for a long time."
"No! You can't help. There's no way you can help. But I will call for help again. They can help you too."
Jeremiah didn't follow what she had just said at all. "Listen to me," he pleaded, "I can help you. I have weapons, I'm a nurse so I can treat wounds to the best of my abilities, I. can. help you.
The woman looked at him, "No! You can't help. There's no way you can help. But I will call for help again. They can help you too."
"You just said that!" Jeremiah raised his voice a little, aggravated.
"I will call for help again. They can help you too."
"Stop saying that!"
"It won't be hard, don't worry. Help is everywhere. Help is seen walking around; help is heard in other rooms and crawling through the vents. They'll come quickly, like last time! Only hopefully they will help me too and not everybody else, like last time." The woman turned her head and looked at all the dead, mangled, macabre decorations of human gore, limbs, blood, and the like. "Why did they get all the help?" She muttered under her breath.
Jeremiah stood in his spot, utterly confused, and tried his best to think of what to say. Then it dawned on him. It dawned on him what the description of the so-called "help" was. He sprang his hand towards her. "Who are the help?" He asked desperately.
"Why," the lady looked back at him, "they are who can help, they are who you call for in a time like this, but they only appear at a time like this and cause everything that's happening. It's almost ironic; isn't it? Yes, yes it is."
She nodded her head and then slowly opened her mouth.
"No! Don't call for help! Who are they? Who are the help?"
But the pleading was too late. The woman continued to open her mouth until it was wide open and she let out a scream that wasn't a scream, but more like a screech; a screech that you would hear a Banshee of old Irish folklore make, only higher pitched.
This didn't seem humanly possible, but for the past few days nothing has. Jeremiah cringed and every muscle tensed to the un-Godly noise. He knelt to the floor after retracting his helmet in order to cover his ears.
The woman screamed and screamed and didn't seem to stop, and it seemed she wouldn't stop, but the more and more she screamed her face seemed to grow a blue tint to it and it was not too long after that when her face became totally blue and her screech stopped abruptly and she collapsed and fell to the floor with limp limbs.
Jeremiah slowly dropped his hands from his head and looked around.
"Hmmm…" He muttered and brought his helmet back up around his head.
He walked up to the woman to check on her. She was still alive, of course she was. If she wasn't something would be horribly wrong, obviously. She was breathing at a quick pace but gradually returned to normal.
"Okay," Jeremiah exhaled. "I should probably get her to a safe spot. Drag her out of here and towards the ship." He wrapped his arms around hers and began to drag her, with the Line Gun attached to the magnetic holder on his right thigh. As he dragged her the door on the opposite side of the room began to produce a noise: a banging noise. Something was trying to break through.
Then something could be heard crawling through the vents; every vent in every direction.
Jeremiah started to panic, but still had the ability to make out logical reasoning and moves. The man knelt down and wrapped the limp body around the back of his neck, like a human boa. He quickly switched his weapon to the Ripper. It was more compact, more powerful, more convenient for CQB, safer. He then dashed into the hallway and started to run towards his destination as tens of Necromorphs broke through vents and doors and darted at the two live humans. In the hallway Necromorphs were slowly walking towards the source of the scream they had heard and when they saw Jeremiah they picked up their pace and sprinted at him.
With the woman draped around his neck Jeremiah sprinted at them as well and pointed his Ripper at them. When the single, glowing, blue dot positioned itself on the closest Necromorph, a Slasher, the man who was surrounded by death fired a saw blade and it ripped through the first Slasher, then guided its way into the three behind it before cutting a few inches into the steel wall, sporting sparks and shrapnel in all directions.
Two of the Slashers fell to the ground, dead, while the other two fell as well, but looked up through their mask of death and began crawling towards the surviving humans.
Jeremiah ignored them and pointed his Ripper at the Pregnant on the right of the hallway. He fired carelessly and the blade tore open the Pregnant's stomach and let two Lurkers crawl out of their twice deceased mother. The man fired two more blades, one for each of the undead babies, and cut the both of them in perfect halves.
Jeremiah continued to sprint forward still and it was starting to wear him out. No sleep, only adrenaline, and carrying an adult woman caused much fatigue, but he kept pushing. The Necromorphs behind him just made their way into the hall and Jeremiah spun around and threw his left hand at them, as if he were trying to use the force, and three condensed blue balls soared through the air and disintegrated as they hit the party of Necromorphs and they all turned a shade of glowing blue and slowed down. He had used three of the four stasis uses on them and he turned forward and used the last one on the nearest crawler or at least he was about to. He was about to when a piercing yell erupted from the other end of the hall and a Leaper lunged out of the darkness and careened in the air towards the hopeless survivor of this story.
Jeremiah pointed his hand at the Leaper and used his last stasis on it. It did as the others and slowed down and began to glow.
At this point one of the crawling Slashers was directly in front of Jeremiah and the Leaper had taken attention away from the threat of the Slashers. As Jeremiah looked forward a Slasher lurched itself off the ground with its blades and pierced a blade into Jeremiah's left flank while the other blade kept itself propped up.
Jeremiah yelled as the blade entered his skin about three inches and he lifted one leg up and forced the Slasher away and shot it and the other Slasher with the Ripper.
He made his way to the nearest elevator in the hallway, arrived at the door of it, and called it just as stasis began to lose its effect.
"Come on, come on, come on!" The impatient fighter screamed as the hologram on the door glowed and mocked him saying, "Please wait as the elevator is called."
Stasis wore out and the Leaper hit the ground where Jeremiah had been. Its tail flailed upwards and it turned its head towards Jeremiah. It then lunged through the air at an un-holy speed at the couple who were waiting for the elevator.
Jeremiah lurched his right hand at the monster and pulled the trigger of the weapon, but it just clicked. There were no more blades in the weapon, it needed reloading.
Jeremiah set the lady down quickly and pulled up the Ripper to restock it with saw disks and just as he finished the doors behind him chimed and opened.
He looked behind him with surprise and dashed into the elevator and dragged the woman into the lift with him. He looked for the button with the floor he needed to get to and spammed it when he found it.
The other Necromorphs could be heard closing in on the elevator, but the Leaper was gaining ground and speed as it screamed and flew through the air.
Jeremiah looked out the doors just as they began to close and felt a sharp pain in his left thigh as the tail of the Leaper entered the elevator and punctured through the Patrol suit and twisted itself inside the man's leg.
Jeremiah screamed in pain as his leg was nearly ripped apart at the thigh as the doors slid shut and severed the tail from the behemoth that lived to kill.
"Gaah!" Jeremiah threw himself against the back wall of the elevator in pain as blood poured from his thigh, but the bleeding quickly stopped as the suit sealed itself shut and locked the blood in. He grunted in pain and tears rolled down his cheek and he closed his eyes and did not open them again from exhaustion.
He inhaled suddenly as he sat up and took in his surroundings. He was alone in a dark room, but… How did he get there? Yet more importantly: Why was he still alive?
The man looked at his arm and checked it. It was perfectly fine even though it had nearly been torn apart, but wait… No, not his arm. His arm wasn't almost severed. What was it? His leg? He looked down at his right leg. It was fine, then he checked his left and that answered his question.
His left thigh had a near circular hole in the suit where metal had been pried away and replaced with cloth where the suit had sealed itself. His leg gave him the worst pain he had ever felt and burned at an insane intensity. He tried his best to stand up, but he couldn't keep himself up once he got to a standing position.
All I need is a splint of some sort he thought to himself and looked around the room for a possible make-shift splint. On a table a little ways away was a conveniently placed role of duct tape. On the other side of the room laid two metal pipes on the ground that had broken off from a busted vent.
After about six minutes the man stood himself up, a bit wobbly, but he could stand. His walking wasn't perfect either, but if limping was the best he could do then that's what he would deal with.
He limped to the nearest door and opened it and it revealed a hanger on the other side; and in the middle of the hanger rested an emergency evacuation ship. He had reached his destination.
He began to walk towards it with a raised heart, but a woman spoke up behind him.
"Wait." The voice sounded shy.
The man spun around and leaning against the wall on the other side of the room stood the woman the man had rescued earlier. She stood there looking halfway between her feet and the man and she was grabbing her left arm with her right hand and was rubbing it up and down.
The man walked towards her, cautiously.
When he was about six feet away she looked up at him. "So, your name is Jeremiah Karson?"
Jeremiah nodded. "How did you know?"
"I accessed your RIG. And…" her voice trailed off.
Jeremiah shifted his feet with a struggle.
"I wanted to apologize." The woman raised the inside of her eyebrows a little. "I'm sorry for calling for those, those things, back there. I went crazy and hadn't slept and I wasn't accepting the fact that my son was dead. I'm sorry." A tear rolled down her cheek.
"It's okay." Jeremiah took a step forward with his good leg. "Come with me. We can leave now."
The woman looked away. "I… I can't. I'm sorry. I can't live with what I've done in the past couple of days. I should be dead anyways."
Jeremiah tilted his head. "Please don't."
But again, it was too late. The woman brought her hands up to her neck and began clawing her way through the flesh, the muscle, the nerves and all.
The lone survivor couldn't watch. He turned his head and cringed. When he heard everything stop he looked up and the woman was laying there, with half of her neck missing, in a pool of blood and flesh and muscle and bits of flesh hid itself in the crevice of her nails.
Jeremiah gagged and brought his hand to his mouth. He activated the trigger to bring his helmet up. A noise of something scurrying across the floor broke the silence and he quickly spun around and brought up his ripper.
Nothing was there, but why was that a surprise.
He turned back towards the dead woman's body and he was brought to the floor by a body tackling him.
A Slasher roared in his ears through its neck, well, the half of the neck that was still there. It lurched its head to the man's shoulder and began to gnaw through the metal.
Jeremiah abruptly kicked it up with his right leg and pointed his Ripper at it and a saw blade appeared in between him and the newly animated dead body.
He reached his arm out and began to saw through the creature's torso, slicing it in two. As it fell to the floor Jeremiah brought the blade beneath it, obliterating what was left and a red mist sprayed in all directions.
The victor released the blade and dropped his head to the floor and laid there. Just walk into the hanger and it will all be over.
Jeremiah sighed and picked his head up, but he swiftly brought it back down, avoiding an Infector's horn by an inch.
The Infector rested on top of him and looked at its prey.
Jeremiah brought his hands up and caught the horn as it came back down at him.
It was difficult to keep back, but not as difficult as he had previously thought. Jeremiah mustered up some strength, with the strength he had left, and swung the horn down and into the Infector itself. The horn made its way out the other side of the Infector.
The Infector leaped off the human and started to shake as its tentacles jumped out and started swinging in every direction.
Jeremiah threw himself away from the spastic creature and ran, well it was running for a limp man, out of the room and towards the evac ship.
When Jeremiah reached the ship he tried the doors to them, but they were locked. He examined the doors and tried to figure out a way to unlock them, but the only thing that would unlock it would be if he had an access card to it, which he didn't.
Jeremiah balled his hand into a fist and slammed it on the door of the ship in frustration. He screamed as loud as he could as he felt that all his work had been for nothing, everything had simply been a futile action.
"Hey," a voice reached Jeremiah's ears and he spun around, but this time with no hope or joy, he was now void of all emotions.
A man stood several yards away in a Riot Control suit and cradling a Seeker Rifle.
"You tryin' to get into that ship?"
Jeremiah nodded his head. "Yeah."
The man rocked from foot to foot. "I know how to get in there. If you have a bypass panel it will override the security lock and let you in." He turned around and pointed at a small metal cube, a building, sitting in the hanger. "There should be one in there. I jut started to make my way over to it when I heard you." He laughed. "Good thing I'm not trigger happy or I would have shot you." He bounced the Seeker Rifle in his hands.
The two men made their way into the cube and Jeremiah stood in the center while the other man began to tear apart the room, looking for the bypass panel.
"So, you got a name?" The man tore a cabinet out in hopes of finding the panel.
"Jeremiah. Jeremiah Karson. You?"
"Yeah, my name's… Got it!" The man held up a small square like object with buttons and a screen on one side and magnets on the other. He then walked to the door of the cube. "Come on."
Jeremiah obliged and began to walk towards the door as well until another Slasher appeared, sprung through the door, and sliced apart the man, flinging the bypass panel at Jeremiah.
Jeremiah stretched his arm out to catch the panel, but at a price. In return to catching the panel he lost his balance and fell, then the Slasher leaped at him, then it was a bloody mess from there.
The Slasher brought down one of his blades and sliced off Jeremiah's left leg at the thigh, cutting through the pipes and tape.
Jeremiah yelled and cursed the monster and kicked it off of him before slicing it to ribbons with the Ripper.
He rolled in pain as the suit sealed itself yet again. After he gathered himself he gripped the bypass panel in his left hand and crawled out of the room, grabbing the man's Seeker Rifle and putting away the Ripper at the same time.
Jeremiah held the rifle in his right hand as he used his arms to pull himself towards the ship.
When he was about three pulls from the ship a Lurker jumped into view on the other side of the hanger. Jeremiah stopped moving and hoisted the rifle until a blue dot rested on the baby. He fired. The Lurker rolled onto its back as its legs gave out as it died.
Jeremiah pulled himself again and another Lurker appeared. It was quickly shot and dispatched.
Jeremiah repeated the process as he pulled himself again and another Lurker appeared.
When he reached the ship he slammed the panel on the ship and activated it. The screen then read: 00:01:30. One minute and thirty seconds would have to pass before the doors would open.
Jeremiah sat down, leaning his back against the door of the ship and waited.
After about five seconds passed the doors opposite of Jeremiah opened and three Slashers and a Stalker sprinted at him. He lifted up his rifle with one hand and fired three shots into the closest Necromorphs leaving a Slasher alive.
Jeremiah brought down the rifle, reloaded, and shot the final Slasher.
00:01:08
The doors to the right of the room, behind the cube, opened and revealed a Tripod and a Divider.
Jeremiah lifted his Seeker Rifle and shot the arms off the Tripod and shot the Divider three times before it fell apart and the head, two hands, and two feet separated from the body and scattered around the hanger.
Jeremiah dropped the Seeker Rifle into his hands and reloaded it again.
00:00:47
There were only 25 shells left for the rifle. The doors on the left side of the hanger slid opened and revealed a Leaper and a Brute while the doors to the right opened and revealed four Slashers. Jeremiah pulled out his Ripper and put it in his left hand. He dispatched the Leaper first as it soared through the air and separated into two parts. Jeremiah then lifted up his rifle and dropped the four Slashers. Then he picked up the Ripper and fired until the Brute's left arm fell off. Jeremiah quickly reloaded and fired again until the right arm followed the suit of the left.
00:00:17
Then every door in the hanger opened and every type of Necromorph flooded into the hanger. Jeremiah dispatched every Necromorph closest to him that he could. Yet no matter how fast the Necromorphs were dispatched they would come at the man more quickly than they would die.
They closed in quickly as Jeremiah fired and reloaded his Ripper with one hand and the Seeker Rifle with the other, but it wasn't enough. In about ten seconds every Necromorph in the room would reach him and brutally rip apart the desperate human.
00:00:01
The door opened and Jeremiah fell backwards and quickly rolled onto his stomach, crawled inside, sealed the door shut, and crawled to the pilot seat. Necromorphs quickly congregated around the now sealed doors of the evac ship.
Banging on the door the Necromoprhs would soon break into the ship and maul the survivor of this story unmercifully.
Jeremiah quickly turned the engine on and lifted the ship up. The Necromorphs stopped trying to break in as they couldn't reach the ship and stood beneath it and screamed at it.
Jeremiah smiled. He beat them. He beat the Necromorphs. He beat Death.
He propped himself up in the pilot's seat and slowly flew the ship into space and looked around for something that he knew how to use or looked familiar. He then saw a button that read "Auto-Pilot."
How convenient, he thought and smiled.
He hit the "auto-pilot" button. A screen appeared and asked him where he would like to go. "Nearest Medical Station," was what he typed and the destination was set.
The ship set off and Jeremiah laid his head back and closed his eyes.
Auto-pilot, Humans are so clever. He laughed and began to drift into a slumber.
He floated into sleep from lack of sleep and energy and from the exhaustion phase. And if you know anything from the exhaustion phase after continuous adrenaline you would know that death is a huge possibility from exhaustion, especially from the large amount of adrenaline that Jeremiah had experienced and the loss of blood from losing his leg, even though the suit had sealed the blood loss off.
Jeremiah drifted into space, as he drifted into sleep, and drifted into an eternal abyss.