Descending the building seemed to take forever and a day. Nobody kept track of how many flights of stairs they had to go down, or how many floors the building seemed to have. Either way, by the time everyone reached the main floor, they were tired of stairs. Especially Rommel, who had on multiple occasions had to stop due to being very disoriented.
When the double-doors to the main entrance opened, everyone immediately plowed through it. Miller and Almec were at point, Findish and Rommel bringing up the rear. Machines of all types were lined up like an army of one-armed bandits. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that these contraptions still existed in the twenty-sixth century, centuries after their conception.
Humans never did change much.
More alarming, however, was the fact that a lot of them were heavily damaged. Many were toppled. Some areas looked like they had burned up. The less promising was that the ceiling had actually collapsed in at some areas. It seemed strange that this area would have more structural damage than others, but there could have been a hundred thousand reasons for that. The most likely culprit was that the ceiling was made out of cheap materials. It was high enough to not make a huge difference anyway.
Least promising of all was the fact that directly in front of the door was what appeared to be a heavily mutated severed arm. The fingers were curled into tentacled appendages. The veins were bulging, blue lines that streaked all across it. The flesh appeared rather... Sickly. Rotten.
Rommel half-expected the thing to use those appendages to drag itself across the floor and launch itself at them.
Miller approached it slowly, and prodded it with the tip of his boot. When it didn't respond, he cocked his leg back, and punted the thing toward the door.
This turned out to be a bad move, apparently. There was suddenly a high-pitched roar, and plasma rounds filled the open air. Brilliant blues and greens occupied the space around their heads in a matter of seconds. It would've been beautiful to watch, if the things wouldn't burn a hole clean through on contact.
Cutting down the ones with the weapons was easy. Cutting down the ones that flung themselves out from around corners to attack was not so much. Humanoid figures ran at them in a clumsy gait, arms flailing in all directions. They had been Human at one point; they were far from it now.
They weren't military, either.
What had once been ordinary people, civilians, ran at them frantically, seeking to destroy them... Or whatever it was their overall intended achievements were. An overweight man in what had once been a suit was at the front. He was backed by two far less recognizable forms, and a third that was easily recognized as what had once been a woman. She had no clothing, but the features were all gone, only rotten flesh. Her chest offered the feathery stalks that all of them seemed to have. Her left hand was missing.
They had their candidate for who had lost.
But the rotting of these... Seemed worse. They'd degraded over the past few hours, turned into the true forms of the undead nightmares they truly were. They were no longer anything like regular people; they were mutated, changed. Any reservations anyone might have felt about shooting them earlier were completely gone. They were not people anymore.
So they gunned them down, bit by bit.
However, as before, they never went down easy. If shot in the arm, the arm fell off without any repercussions. If shot in the legs, they scuttled. If shot through their torso, they dragged. They would not be stopped until they were fully dismembered, and even then, that was a task easier said than done.
As the fat man fell- And he was the last to fall, being slower than the others- his gut suddenly swelled up. The buttons on his suit popped, and with a little bit of a groan, his stomach exploded, filling the air with green fumes... And spores.
"Make sure everything's sealed!" someone exclaimed, and everyone's hands immediately went to their throats, checking the seals of their suits. The suits only provided fifteen minute's worth of air, but it could pull in air from the outside. It just filtered out most of the toxins. Still, Rommel subconsciously felt that they'd probably need to be careful about the air they were breathing.
The spores proved harmless, as did the fumes. The spores did, however, settle onto their armor. No one thought much of it, though attempts to scrape them off proved more difficult than expected.
They seemed to be rooted. They also seemed to be spreading slowly across their armor, a sign he didn't care for one bit.
Rommel fired off a couple extra rounds from his rifle, and pressed the smoking barrel against the little pests that were rooting themselves to his armor. They immediately stopped spreading, shriveled, and burned away. "Heat's definitely the trick. Burn the fuckers, they ain't gonna stand it."
Everyone followed suite in that matter, and then proceeded for the door.
Rommel, however, lingered a moment longer. He wasn't in any immediate need of ammo, but he thought better of the situation. He proceeded toward one of the bodies of a dead something-or-other, which had a weapon tightly gripped in its hands. Bright blue and silver, the weapon was of Covenant origin. He wrestled the Type-25 DER out of the tentacled fingers of this weird thing- Which he decided was an Elite- and inspected it closely.
It worked when the mutant was firing it. Must have had enough juice to be worth keeping. Hopefully. At least it would be able to fire.
He heard footsteps behind him, and turned to face the source. There stood Dom, arms crossed. "Seriously? You can't be in that bad a need..." Almec said, a bit patronizingly. He wasn't scorning, so much as trying to figure out behind the logic of the decision. It was a well-known that fact that Rommel hated Covenant weapons with a passion... Or at least, most of them. He'd expressed a liking for the Type-51 before, but the fact that it fired radioactive rounds, exhausted possibly toxic fumes, and ejected the magazine on its own directly into the face of the operator did not make it an ideal weapon.
Rommel shrugged. "If they don't like being lit up," he said, hooking the thing up to his thigh holster- It was big, but it fit- and then adjusted the rifle he was holding. "So, we'll see how they settle for searing hot plasma in the face." He moved past Dom towards the doorway with that having been said, seeming to settle the matter quite simply.
He could see Dom shaking his head behind him. He didn't care.
Stepping out through the door, Rommel checked the ammo counter on his rifle. Thirty five in the magazine. He had a couple more in his combat webbing, and a good deal in his rucksack. About half of those were loaded with depleted uranium "Shredder" rounds. He'd come prepared with plenty of spare magazines, but he hadn't figured on having to hold out against enemies who didn't care if they got gunned down.
He hadn't figured on having to fight a whole Goddamn city full of what amounted to zombies, either.
They'd travel underground. If one knew the right paths, they could take the sewer practically straight to Kovcheg. Assuming all the routes were still intact, and that they hadn't been completely sealed off. Proper access codes should have been able to get them in without issue.
The key was stealth; A small group of black-clad, heavily armored men with lethal weapons walking about in a winter wonderland wasn't exactly stealthy. They moved from cover to cover, though it might not have been very effective given most of their cover only had one side to it. A wrecked car here, a mass of rubble there, a dumpster, a demolished military vehicle, alleyways, through other buildings.
The major point of the issue was that there weren't many places to go, and the enemy could be anywhere. For all they knew, it was everywhere, waiting in the shadows. They had no idea as to what they were fully capable of, what their thought processes were, what their goals were, and what their intelligence level was. There might have been something even more horrible than they had already witnessed in store for everyone.
That was a horrifying thought.
On more than one occasion they were forced to lay low, and get as low to the ground and out of sight as possible, as an infected convoy rolled past, or footmobiles shuffled through. More than once, they were forced to ambush a group that came too close for comfort, gunning them down as efficiently as they could manage. Everyone understood the secret to taking them down was to put as many holes through the center mass as possible, directly through the chest.
Between hard work, time, and patience, they managed to get to one of the city-owned facilities that led into the storm drains, the sewers, and whatever lay beyond. It was a small, ramshackle building with little to notice about it. It was a little concrete structure, with a big, steel door and a few windows. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire blocked off the structure, set out about thirty feet from it on any side. There was an old building on either side of it, and a warehouse behind it.
As the group approached the chain-link fence, Rommel noted the aged signs. "KEEP OUT- PROPERTY OF NEW POPLAVA," said one. "NO TRESPASSING, TRESPASSERS WILL BE-" The rest of the sign was gone, faded and broken. Rommel could guess what the rest of it said anyway, something to the extent of being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Or shot. Depending on whether or not it was a humorous sign.
The gate to the little shack didn't exactly reinforce the idea of law enforcement and keeping out all intruders to be necessary. It didn't even reinforce the idea that the shack was important. It was a gate held in place and locked only by a rusted old padlock and a length of equally rusty old chain. When they stood directly before the gate, Rommel glanced at the padlock, and back at Miller.
Though Miller wouldn't see it, Rommel was wearing the smuggest grin on his face. He half-expected the man to start complaining about locked doors again, as he had back at Ember Tower. The man looked at him, somewhat expectantly, but said nothing. Shrugging, Rommel took the padlock in both hands, examining just how rusted it was. He was half-surprised the thing didn't disintegrate in his hands.
Drawing his pistol- Favoring it for the fact that it was silenced- Rommel put a single slug through the padlock and chain. The chain shattered, and what was left of it rattled to the floor. The padlock hit the ground with a loud thud.
He glanced around to be sure that no hostiles in the area might have been alerted to their presence, then proceeded with caution. He swapped out the M6S in favor of the MA2B again, which he was almost tempted to drop in favor of the plasma rifle strapped to his thigh. It wasn't indecisiveness, it was a matter of not knowing what he was truly up against.
Either way, he proceeded across the remaining thirty feet to the station, with the rest of Ion in tow. When the door that led inside the station proved to be locked, as he expected it would be, he considered his options for a moment. He could shoot through the door again. Or he could bust the windows and climb through. Breaking the window would be noisy, but would conserve ammunition and be potentially quicker. Shooting through the door would waste ammo, but be more direct and less noisy.
Of course. The door was made of steel, so shooting it wouldn't be the best of plans, heavy-caliber rounds or not.
Then a new thought occurred to him. He brought up his boot, and snap-kicked the door with as much force as he could. The door made a terrible sound, but sure enough came off its hinges. It hit the ground with a loud, metallic thump. It might as well have been folded in half. It probably had made just as much noise as breaking the window would have, but he didn't care. It meant they didn't have to crunch through more glass.
The room was dark, but since the city was in a state of twilight, it didn't really matter anyway. He saw a few rats scurry off into the dark, undisturbed by the outside ordeal. Cobwebs everywhere hardly seemed bothersome now, in comparison to anything else they'd seen today. Either way, it seemed that this place hadn't seen traffic, maintenance, or anything along those lines in a long time.
Switching on VISR mode, Rommel gestured for the others to move in through the room. Almec and Miller moved into the room and towards the massive door on the other side. It was another steel door, but it was more akin to a vault door than a conventional one. There was a large wheel to turn that would remove the locks, and the door could then be pulled open. It was safe to assume that the door probably wouldn't want to open.
He gestured toward Findish to take the wheel and start turning it. He got a nod in return, and Findish got to turning the massive wheel. Miller and Almec took positions in front of the door, waiting for it to open. Then they would move in, and they would be on their way.
Rommel briefly had the realization that, being in the middle of the freezing winter, melted snow and ice might have filled up the storm drains. If that was the case, then they would be having issues. He tried not to think about that fact, since they'd come so far, and spent all this effort getting here.
There was a loud clunk as the door's technical lock came out, and Findish stopped turning the wheel. There was a slight hiss and a loud creak as the door opened itself a little. Findish moved toward the door itself, gripping a handle on it, and began to pull with all his might. The door creaked open, revealing the darkness behind it. A stairwell.
They waited a moment. Then Almec and Miller moved into the darkness. Miller was on point, Almec behind him. Rommel moved in next, and Findish was last in line. They were single file for the purpose of moving down the narrow stairway, which spiraled down into the dark depths of the city's underground levels.
The movement down the stairs was silent, as was to be expected. It was also dark. Once in a while the ground shook, as though something big had happened on the surface. It could have been anything. Rommel subconsciously reminded himself that they needed to make sure they were headed in the right direction. If they went in the completely wrong direction, they'd run into the Supercarrier, which would cut off a great deal of the sublevels.
That brought a new threat, in reality, that Rommel didn't want to think about. He found himself wanting to think even less than he usually did. The more he thought, the less things made sense, and the more he wished that reality would just shut itself off. Reality, however, was very persistent, and very insistent of itself.
It would not be ignored.
There were benefits and problems with moving into the sublevels, as it turned out. As they moved into the exit, they found that the power was actually on. Dim lights at regularly spaced intervals lined the main stretch, which was not completely flooded with water. If they stayed on the main catwalk, they'd have to slosh through about about seven inches of water. Two feet if they didn't stay on the catwalk. This far underground, it was also relatively warm, keeping the water in a liquid form instead of freezing to ice. In fact, it was somewhat humid.
The reason for the humidity could be attributed to the fact that the walls were completely coated in some form of... Well, he wasn't sure exactly. It reminded him of the latrines after a deuterium-laced meal. The walls were coated in a downright disgusting substance, which reminded him of a mixture between rotten flesh, vomit, and diarrhea in color. In texture, it, too, looked like rotten, putrid flesh.
He recognized the material as being like what those blasted zombie things seemed to be turning into.
Mutated forms lined the walls. Most of them were so dismembered to the point where they no longer had any limbs. Torsos and severed limbs were pasted to the walls, rotting and decaying at a rapid rate, adding rotten flesh to rotten flesh. Massive, bulbous, pustule-like objects were clustered about on the walls and ceiling, and even a few under the water. They were the egg-like things they had seen.
It was a cave of flesh. And oh, good Lord above, it stank.
Somebody coughed. It was Miller. "What in the name of screaming shit is this?" the man managed to choke out. He sounded like he was on the verge of vomiting. Rommel couldn't blame him.
"Shut up and ignore it," Rommel responded, pushing past the two and into the main chamber. His boots squished or clanked depending on where they landed, whether in organic pile or metallic grate. He tried not to focus too hard on the organic bits. It was hard not to, however, when some of the growths on the walls seemed to shake violently for no reason. That sent a shiver down his spine.
He realized briefly that they were all moving a little bit. Jiggling, as though there was something inside them. He wanted to think about this fact even less.
He subconsciously held his breath as he himself took point. He checked his magazine briefly. Full magazine now, thanks to the ambushes they'd staged. He was working with a magazine full of Shredder rounds now, but he had a thought. The Shredder rounds shattered on impact, which essentially turned a single round into shrapnel. With these targets being fleshy, he figured it would be as effective as any fully-automatic shotgun, fougasse, or grenade would be.
As long as the targets weren't armored, they worked supremely well.
The weapon was maybe three quarters of a klick from where their current position was. "Keep moving, boys," Rommel said, his voice quiet as he said it.
And so they did. One step at a time, creeping through the storm drain. They avoided the pustules, the bodies, and everything else the sublevels of the city had to offer. Occasionally a catwalk would branch off into some other area, but those areas seemed... Even less hospitable. That was fine, they didn't need to approach those areas anyway.
Finally, they reached a corner. There was a brief thump, as though something massive had taken a step. They couldn't see it, since it was around a corner. But it was there, they could hear it... It was making low, somewhat bleating noises. It was a curious sound, but it didn't sound like it was getting farther.
Rommel gave the signal to start backing up, and get ready for combat.
Suddenly, there was the sound of something lashing through the air, quickly followed by a series of loud pops. "Oh, shi- Get it off me!" somebody yelled. Findish was being held to a wall by a great many tentacle-like objects, their origins clearly of flesh and bone. One was held around his waist, another around his right wrist, a third around his left ankle.
The creature that the tentacles extended from was a corpse with no limbs, melded with the wall. The tentacles were at least fourteen feet long, and they all extended from different parts of the corpse. The chest, the neck, an arm... The body had been hollow, housing only the violent appendages.
Worse yet was that some twenty something-or-other pods were now ruptured open... And hundreds of the little parasites were swarming all over the walls, closing in.
From around the corner came something worse.
