Chapter Two: Zombies! No really, I mean it this time!
Disclaimer: You guys know the drill.
Author's note: Some of the characters will have an… expanded skill set. Just a heads-up.
Shepard leaned against the bulkhead as he ran his fingers over the engraving on the captain's pistol. It was truly an expensive piece. While the metal to craft it had been fairly standard, there was no doubt in his mind that the engraving was gold, which gleamed from the thawed layer of frost. The heat had gotten back up to normal levels quickly. He looked up as Tali called his name. "All finished Shepard. It's encoded pretty heavily, but we can figure it out on the ship." Shepard nodded. "Alright, lets get the hell-"
"Quiet." Grunt cut him off, aiming his shotgun down the hall as he sniffed the air. "There's more than ghosts on this ship." Dropping the pistol on the terminal, he pulled his shotgun, coming to stand next to the krogan, who was continuing to sweep the hallway with his weapon.
Ahead, A turian in a sealed suit turned a corner. He was followed by a pair of women, one heavily tattoed, one bearing a Cerberus logo on her decidedly nonstandard uniform. All had weapons at the ready. "Damn, Garrus," he lowered his weapon. The turian cocked his head to the side. "Jumpy much, Shepard?" the commander waved him off. "It's a creepy ship. What's wrong? Why are you three here?" "Making sure nothing had happened to you three. We didn't hear anything after the ship powered up, thought you might be busy." Shepard shook his head. "It's a ghost ship. One I'm more than ready to get off of."
The group, now six strong, headed back to the Normandy. "Joker, we're headed back." Joker's voice was slightly annoyed when he replied. "How many people are we rescuing commander? I'm not letting anybody up here with me. You can yell at me if you want, but I'm not smelling refugee for the rest of the trip." The six exchanged glances. "What are you talking about?" His reply was reminiscent of an adult explaining something to a small child. "The airlock just auto cycled eight people in and there's at least a two dozen more trying to go next."
"Joker, it's a ghost ship. There was nobody here."
"Oh, that's not good. Putting the ship on lockdown."
The team tore through the ship, speeding back to Normandy as fast as they could. They skidded to a halt as they rounded the final corner. "Keelah…" Tali breathed.
The hallway was packed, filled wall-to-wall, with people. Humans, asari, a few turians, even an elcor. The most visible, however, were the quarians. Close to fifty, seperated from the others by their ornate suits. "Shepard," Tali's voice was hushed. "Look at them. The bites." She was right. Without exception, every last one of them sported at least a handful of bites, large gouges where flesh had been ripped away. Jack was the first to voice their collective opinion; "Fuck." Unfortunately, he voiced through his helmet's open comm, spilling the word into the hallway.
Half a dozen zombies turned to regard the new arrivals. Tension built.
Shepard shattered the moment when he lifted his shotgun and fired one round into the crowd. The attention of the entire hallway shifted from the door to the team with alarming swiftness. One of the creatures closer to the rear flung himself through the crowd like a parkour practitioner and tore down the hallway towards the six. A hail of gunfire filled the hallway, reducing the first couple of ranks to mulch.
But there were too many, and they all new it. "Fall back to the bridge! Grunt, take point." Their weapons fired almost unceasingly, cutting down the horde chasing them relenlessly. Miranda shouted over the noise of feral screams and gunshots. "Why are only some of them running?" Shepard shouted back, still working his weapon. "No clue, but we'd be screwed if they did." They poured into the bridge, Tali already working the door's override. It slammed shut just as Jack threw a massive biotic shockwave down the hall, clearing the way for Shepard, who'd brought up the rear, to tumble through the door before it slammed shut.
Frantic beeps from Tali's omni-tool continued for a moment then, subsided. She let out a breath. "There, that'll keep them from opening it on accident." Shepard breathed deeply, then turned toward her. "Start decoding those logs. I want to know what the hell is going on." "Right," she said quickly, already working on the problem. Jack, however, wasn't keeping quiet.
"What the fuck was that? Fuckin' zombies?" Miranda's retort was sharp. "Zombies? Really? Can we grow up a little and get a hold of yourself?" Jack was quick to turn her aggression on the cheerleader. "Bitch, don't think I won't throw you out there with 'em! Then we'll see who's got a hold of themselves! Did you see their eyes? They ain't normal anymore, and no matter how crazy you are, you don't ignore wounds like that!" Shepard held up his hands. "Enough! We wait until Tali has the logs decoded before we jump to any conclusions. Until then, I want a weapons check and somebody on that door at all times." He keyed his comm. "Joker, sitrep." Joker's voice was decidedly nervous.
"Jacob got bit, but he managed to get some gear and get down the elevator with Kelly and a couple of others. They've got everybody from third and fourth decks camped out in the mess, and doctor Chakwas is patching up whatever needs it. I got a solid bulkhead between me and…whatever those damn things are, and EDI's working on something, but she won't tell me what. What's your eta?" Shepard shook his head. "It's not. We're stuck on the bridge of the Alice with way too many of them and not enough thermal clips. We'll get back in touch with you when we have something."
They didn't have long to wait. Tali announced 'got it' just as the main display came up. Looking at them was a striking woman with her dark brown hair pulled back in a ragged ponytail. A jacket was laid across the back of her chair. She was wearing a muscle shirt and had obviously just wiped away the last of her maekup as the message played. Her voice was tired, but steady.
"This is Captain Jacqueline Robin of the Alice. If you're watching this, listen closely." The captain looked tired and wrung-out, literally on her last legs. She wiped her face with her hands, one of which held the gold-engraved pistol. "A week ago, we reached our rendezvous point for a pickup of some unspecified cargo. Those Quarian eggheads that rented the labs wouldn't tell me what it was, only that the crew had to stay away from the containers. Hell, they even brought their own security to make sure of it. Normally I'd have thrown a fit, but they paid in advance. They put their own guards on the lab doors, day and night, and rigged it so it wouldn't auto-open from the outside. Approximately fourteen hours ago one of my crewmen noticed the guards weren't there. The dumbass was handy at locks, so he cracked the door and went inside. I found out about all of this when medical reported him laid up with a huge bite out of him. They told me where he got it. Two hours later they call again to tell me he's flatlined. Dead. Ten minutes later Engineer Davis calls up in a panic to say that the medical folks are in engineering, attacking people." She smiled, or rather, a corner of her mouth turned up. "I grabbed Renada and told her to meet me there. Nothing takes the fight out of people like an asari commando with a shotgun." She shuddered. "I'm so sorry Renada." Captain Robin, dropped her head for a minute or two, overcome. "Commander," Tali spoke quietly. "Records show that Renada was listed as limited duty and was stowed in the captain's cabin. The captain's personal journal also says they were 'expecting' something, but- Oh keelah, they were having a…" He nodded. "Looks that way."
Robin regained herself and continued. "So we get down there, and the whole place is chaos. Somehow, the quarians found their way there, too. They were….eating the engineering crew. Fucking eating them. Renada put two rounds into the crowd and we took off. Made straight to the nearest intercom and put the whole ship on alert. Had everyone with a weapon get down to engineering. I thought 'we can handle this, we'll stop this right here, then get into the labs and figure shit out'. I was wrong. Those things swarmed us as soon as the doors opened. Some of 'em ran, some walked. The runners screamed and screamed, jumping and punching and biting like some crazy beserkers. I blasted the sensor for the door with my pistol, got it closed while Rena covered me. She was terrific; well into showing and she never missed a beat. I think she was fighting for the baby. Anyway. We get to crew quarters. Taking out the door bought us a little time. We got a barricade up, put everybody behind it, made a couple of close up weapons. They came at us just like we'd thought they would, right down the hall from engineering. I almost ran when I saw 'em coming. All the folks we'd lost trying to kill those bastards in engineering were coming up the hall, too! So we cut loose. Burned out damn near every thermal clip we had pouring rounds down that hallway."
Robin took a breath, holding a small picture to her chest before continuing. "When the smoke cleared, we nearly wet ourselves. We hadn't even killed half of them! The runners went down easy enough, but the slower ones were still plodding along, moaning their heads off. People started panicking, getting ready to run and hide. Rena grabs my pistol and says 'look' and shoots one dead between the eyes, and damn if it didn't drop like a stone! The barricade held for a bit after that, but people were too nervous. Couldn't keep their hands from shaking enough to make a shot like hers. When the hit the barricade, though, it didn't matter anymore. Just as they hit the front, the rest of the quarians from the labs hit from the back. Rena grabs me- and she- she kisses me, hard, and tells me 'she would have been beautiful. I wanted her to be named Laneera Kestrel, so we'd both be happy. I won't let her be one of those things.' Then she burns through the last thermal clip she had and blows a path out with her biotics, then picks me up with 'em and throws me past the things. Last thing I see is her priming a grenade and holding it to her belly. There's- there's a flash, and I can't see nothing but I could find my way to the bridge in my sleep." Robin stops for a minute, to breathe or remember, the six people can't tell. She looks into the camera, seemingly straight into the watching eyes. "I got in here and sealed the door. Almost got a nasty surprise about an hour ago. Somebody was trying to hack the door lock. I hit a camera and saw one of those quarian bastards working an 'tool, but he was clumsy with it. Good thing, too. Barely got the top level override in in time to lock every omni-tool on the ship out. This is the one door they can't hack."
Robin put her jacket back on, sitting in the captain's chair and buttoning it up. "I'm leaving this log here, in case I fail. I'm gonna shut the ship down, cut life support. If that doesn't work, and my child, my love, and I all died for nothing, then there's something you have to do." She tucked the ponytail into her hat as she settled it on her head, creating a makeshift bun. "Kill the bastards." She put the gold-engraved gun to the side of her head. "Kill them all. Whatever it takes. This is Jacqueline Robin, captain of the ship Alice, signing out." She pressed a button, and the screen went dark.
Too much? Not enough? Let me know what you think.