Shadow of the Old World
The morning came all too soon, and their admittedly large breakfast was finished even sooner. Paul had taken them to see Commander Wolfgang again, the Kommandant had told them which vertibird to board, and before they knew it they were airborne and heading North. The vertibird they'd boarded was a VB-04/76, one of the heavily armed gunship types. The side doors were much bigger, and had large windows on them. Against his better judgment Hans stood by one, looking out.
The view, while terrifying, was also breathtaking. He could see miles and miles of the German Wasteland. Of course the main attraction, and their destination, was the BMW facility. A production plant, corporate headquarters, and museum all on the same grounds. Almost all of the facility was shrouded in a black-brown cloud of smog, fed by the coal fire. It was hard to tell where the fire originated, or if there was more than one. The good news was that the shroud clung close to the ground, leaving the towers of the corporate headquarters and the oddly bowl-shaped museum mostly clear.
"I'm not sure what's uglier. The cloud of smoke, or the museum building" Klara said, standing next to Hans, one hand holding onto a ceiling strap. The pilot was circling them around the facility, letting them get an overview of the grounds should they need to leave the towers of the HQ building. The plan called for them to stay inside the corporate HQ and just look for files and documents proving the presence of high-power engines, fuel or fusion based, and then track them down if they could.
"Look there," Hans said, pointing out the window. "The ceiling isn't level. Half of the museum's roof is taller than the other half." Klara took a closer look and grimaced.
"I'm almost hoping the fire ends up spreading to the museum and burning it down. I'm no architect, but I certainly prefer a more traditional, gothic style than whatever repulsive design they call this."
Hans nodded and took a step back from the door, and unslung his rifle. "I don't see a roof access door on the corporate offices" he said, and one of the pilots looked back at him.
"It looks like there's a door on the roof of the bowl. We'll drop your team there" the pilot said, and Hans gave him a thumbs up. He turned back around to face the team, sitting on the vertibird's bench, as the aircraft banked and began to descend.
Hans blew out a breath, his eyes on Hilda. She looked up and smiled at him, her Erma SMG in her lap. It looked like she was starting to get used to riding on these things, unlike Hans. Either that or sitting made it easier. He wondered if he should talk to her about the unexpected cuddling. Hilda had been her usual self during their breakfast, though she had woken up before Hans had, primarily to change back into her pants for the mission. Assuming she'd still been spooning him when she awoke, then there was no doubt she was aware of her feelings for him. Question is, would she act on them first? Or wait for him? And, how did Hans feel? Did he feel the same way?
Hans didn't know, and the answers to the other questions would have to wait as well. For now they had a job to do. Hans tightened his grip on his G11 as they continued to descend, the morning sky giving way to the decaying urban sprawl all around them. The vertibird touched down on the roof of the museum and Klara pulled the side door open, the first to drop from the aircraft. The rest of them quickly followed suit, the wind whipping as the vertibird rose back up into the sky and peeled off. Paul produced a radio from his belt and held it up to his mouth, his thumb on the transceiver.
"Ground team to VB, communications check. Do you read?" he said, turning up the volume on the radio.
"Ground team, this is Maximilian One, we hear you loud and clear. We'll remain on station for the next six hours to provide support."
"Very good, thanks" he said, and stuffed the radio back into his pouch, turning his attention to Hans. "So. What first?"
"Take the tour, hit up the gift shop, and then take the first bus back to our hotel" Hans said, the others smiling. "Of course, there's no tour guides, and the building's been smashed to pieces, and I'm betting the gift shop has already been looted."
"Who cares about souvenirs now?" Klara asked, and Walter raised his hand.
"I do. I can't wait to see what kind of treasures are still here."
"Same here, friend" Paul chimed in.
"For now, let's stay focused. Engines, fuel, parts, in that order. Let's keep our eyes open for threats, too. If there are abominations here I'd like to not be caught by surprise" Hans said, and the others nodded. The five of them headed for the roof access door, already slightly ajar. The heavy steel door was bent outward, away from the frame, pretty significantly at the top. One of the Wasteland's millions of mini mysteries.
The team filed into the door and began their trek down the narrow spiral staircase. It went down maybe ten or twenty feet, ending at another steel, the pushbar jammed in place. The door was jammed open a few inches, the bulk of it dented and warped. Klara was first in line, M30 Drilling in hand. She used the muzzle of the combination gun to push the door open and the team rushed into the room, weapons at the ready.
While the outside of the museum had looked mostly intact, the interior was a different story. The walls were all dented, warped, and cracked. The floor had buckled in spots, and pipes and beams had smashed through the ceiling when the shockwave from the nuke had hit the building. As far as Hans could tell the building's steel construction was what had saved it from complete destruction. Worse still than the damage were the bodies. Dozens of them, strewn about the room. Car bodies, that is. Priceless one-of-a-kind prototypes and limited production models, all smashed to Hell. Their windows shattered, their frames crumpled and rusting, their tires flat, and their paint coats stripped and flaking. Sedans, coupes, roadsters, all destroyed beyond repair.
Walter and Paul each took a few slow steps forward, their weapons lowered. "Jesus..." Walter whispered, his gaze lingering on the vehicles. Rows and rows of them, ruined. Walter stopped by one that had been smashed in when the ceiling lighting above it had collapsed and caught fire, the left half of the car a blackened, slacking char. The right half of it had been dented, warped, and crushed. As best as Hans could tell the car had once been orange, but it was hard to tell where the paint ended and the rust began. The front license plate was still intact, though also slightly dented at the corners. 'M1' it read.
"A tragedy. An honest, modern tragedy. Like any of Shakespeare's greatest works..." Walter said, his head hung. Paul was on the opposite side of the room, crouched next to what had once been a blue-and-yellow open-top roadster, literally smashed in half by an I-beam. He ran his hand along one of the car's smooth fenders and shook his head.
"Valuable pieces of our nation's history, the pride of our automotive and engineering genius, all reduced to scrap metal. A tragedy indeed" he said. Hans looked around at each of the easily two dozen plinths upon which the cars stood, each and every one of them completely ruined. He could understand what Walter and Paul were feeling, being that the vehicles were legitimate pieces of German history. And yet...
"They're just cars" Klara said, and the men turned to look at her. "Millions of them were made, right? We see them everywhere, just stopped in the middle of the streets. What's so special about these ones?"
"You don't understand. These aren't your typical Volkswagen or cheap electric Highwayman that only some inbred tribal would drive. These are priceless vintage cars, some of which are older than the five of us combined. Before The Bomb and the Resource Wars, Germany was an industrial powerhouse. Everyone everywhere came to us for automobiles. German engines could not be beat" Paul said.
Walter pointed at the M1. "Only 450 of those were ever made." He turned and pointed at a red car in the far corner, lying on its side. "That 3/20 PS was the first car designed entirely by BMW, 160 years ago! This is the past we're walking through right now. I imagine that few alive today have ever seen any of this. They don't know what Germany once was, they can only see what she's like today."
"Cars like these will never be made again, and there's nothing we can do to preserve the ones here. Take the time you need, but otherwise let's keep moving. The past is complete, but we still have a future to build" Hans said, and the team got slowly moving again. There was a pair of double stairs at the end of the hall, leading down, and the five of them split up and began to descend the steps.
"They're just cars..." Klara whispered.
The team reached the bottom of the stairs, the floor wrapping around to the left and right in a circular shape. Along the wall were more cars, all of them just as smashed and ruined as the ones upstairs. They slowly proceeded around the hall, weapons at the ready, watching the vehicles for any signs of movement. They went through four or five floors of car exhibits, not a single one of them intact, until they eventually reached the ground floor. The floor was wide and open, various signs and glass cases displaying all manner of memorabilia. There were a few bathrooms and a food court, but otherwise the place was empty. Outside, through the glass doors and windows(how they were still intact Hans couldn't tell) the morning light was completely blotted out by the shroud of smog, making the building rather dark.
"I'd rather not go outside and through that smoke to get to the corporate offices. Let's see if there's another way there, like a basement tunnel or something" Hans said, and the others nodded. They split up, spreading out across the lobby and searching the area. Hans and Hilda took the right side of the room, dominated mostly by the food court. Almost all of the tables and chairs were overturned, trays and plates and bowls littering the ground. There was one table still upright, two plates and a drinking glass still on it. The food had long ago decayed away and the beverages had long ago evaporated, but the dishes remained, sitting exactly as they'd been left, twenty years ago.
Hans just stood there a moment, reflecting. He'd been just six when the bombs fell, the day a horror unlike any other. His father rushed out to get Hans' aunt and uncle, and never returned. His mother, God rest her soul, cared for him until she died of Typhus when he was fourteen. So many who survived The Bomb died like that. Disease, starvation, thirst, violence, even accidents. Hans remembered encountering his first ghoul, a woman, and swearing she was a zombie. She was the first person he'd killed, so afraid of what he was seeing that he shot her without thinking, even after she screamed at him to stop.
Hans saw Hilda walk behind the counter of the food court and shook the memories away. He hurried to catch up with her as she stepped through a threshold and into a kitchen, the room visible through a large opening in the wall where the cooks would set the food for the wait staff to pick up and bring out to the customers. The kitchen had been thoroughly ransacked, the walk-in freezers and coolers left open, their shelves completely bare.
The kitchen had a door across it, hidden from the customers behind a partition. A breakroom or office, most likely. The two of them walked up to it, Hilda at the ready. She pushed the door open, the room empty, and relaxed. They walked inside, the room an office. There was a leather couch to the right as they entered, a desk with a terminal on it to the right. It still had power, a fact which gave Hans pause. Just how many buildings before The Bomb had backup generators, and how were they all still running? Even if they were running on fusion generators, fusion cores didn't last forever. Just another one of the Wasteland's mysteries.
He sat at the desk, curious about the terminal. There were some employee notices('remember to always label your food!', 'Johann, stop clogging the toilet!', 'Bertha, remember that I need two breaks per shift because of my gout. Sound good? -Phil.') Worthless garbage. The terminal also had schedules, some training memos, and some log entries from the manager. Hans decided he'd take a look, to see if there was anything worthwhile.
October 21, 2077
The weekend rush is coming, and my God are we not ready. BMW is hosting some kind of corporate meeting on Saturday, followed by a tour of the museum. In addition to the usual tourists(who the fuck still has money to spend on museum tours?!) we'll also be expecting to handle increased traffic from the suits. BMW has been on us for years to accept their buy-out, because they're tired of only getting a 40% cut from our sales, and because their marketing department wants to rebrand us. Buy a BMW car(or, more likely, a bomber plane) and then come down to the restaurant to buy a BMW burger. Instead of Bayerische Motoren Werke you'd be shopping at Burger Meat Werke. Or worse, Beemer Burgers! I don't even like BMW but I swear on my life if I hear one more tourist call their cars 'Beemers' I'll wring their neck. I hear they even want to get the buns to look like the BMW logo with food coloring. Gross!
Hans frowned and clicked on the next entry.
October 22, 2077
Manfred called off tomorrow, the lazy shrimp-dick, leaving me the only opener for an hour. This little prick KNOWS we're going to be slammed. The weekend rush plus the corporate visit means only disaster. Oh, and it's not even a corporate visit, really. It's representatives from the Bundeswehr who want to see the museum after their meeting with the BMW execs. I can only imagine what monstrosity they want BMW to build for them next. I'm going to steal his lunch next time he leaves it in the fridge. That's what I get for hiring some executive's son. Uppity hellion acts like he's some Prussian nobility; you work in a FOOD COURT, ASSHOLE. YOU'RE NOT THE RED BARON, WHAT THE FUCK?!
Hans had to smile at that one. He clicked on the final entry.
October 23, 2077
The morning rush came, and thank God it was actually easier than I thought it'd be! For whatever reason there haven't been as many tourists today as I thought there'd be. Usually we get hit pretty hard on the weekends, but not today for some reason. What's more, the corporate meeting has been moved to later this evening, and I'll be off by then. Things are looking up for old Otto here! I even have tomorrow and Monday off! Gonna make the most of this time off, maybe take a stroll in the Olympia Park. It's going to be great. Nothing could ruin it!
-ADDENDUM
My God... I had just fifteen minutes to go before my shift ended when... The flash. They did it. They really did it. Those dirty fuckers, they blew it all to Hell! Damn them! The whole country, the whole WORLD, has been hit. According to the news America has been completely obliterated by nukes. I'm sure the same happened to China. THEY deserve it, not us! That flash... I'll never forget it, for however long I live, which won't be long from the looks of it, I'll never forget that flash. The chaos, the pandemonium, when the shockwave hit the building. I don't know how the building survived, let alone the windows and the glass doors, but it's a good job they did, or we'd all be dead. Worse, there's this black smog rolling through the air. It's broad day outside and it's pitch black, the smoke is so thick... We can't stay here, but we can't leave.
I don't know what to do.
There was nothing more, and Hans frowned. There were no skeletons in the building that he'd seen so far, so everyone who'd been in the food court must've survived, at least at first. He switched the terminal off and stood, Hilda waiting for him by the door. "Anything that tells us how to get to the other buildings?" she asked.
Hans shook his head. "Just some log entries from someone who worked here. They were here when The Bomb came. Not a happy day, for any of us..." he trailed off. "Let's go see if the others found anything." Hilda nodded and they made their way back through the kitchen and back out into the lobby. Walter was standing by the wide staircase that led up to the exhibits and waved them over.
"Over here. Come take a look."
Hans and Hilda walked over to where he was standing and followed him as he walked around the stairs. Tucked into a narrow hallway under the stairs was an alcove, a door tucked further inside it, standing open. Paul and Klara were by it, keeping an eye on the hall beyond. "Look at what I found. There are stairs leading down. The entryway's too narrow for storage, so it must lead to a utility room. Maybe there'll be a tunnel that leads to the corporate offices" Paul said.
"How are you the one that always finds these escape tunnels?" Hans asked, and Paul gave him a look, his eyebrows dancing.
"I have much experience in finding hidden holes and tunnels" he said, and the girls rolled their eyes. One by one they all proceeded down the stairs and into the basement, the hall lit by dim lights. Hans gestured to Hilda and she nodded, and took her spot at the front of the line. They all kept close to the walls, their weapons at the ready. The hall quickly ended in a T-shaped junction, heading right and left. To the right was a door, closed. To the left was another hall that again ended in a T-junction. The basement was going to be a maze, no doubt about it.
Hans went right to check the door and found it firmly locked. It wouldn't budge even an inch, and he frowned. Without a map they were going to get lost pretty quick. He walked back and joined the team at the intersection, the four of them watching him. "Well, I guess we'd better get walking. If we can keep our sense of direction intact we can at least make our way towards the general area the corporate offices are. With luck these basement halls connect the two buildings."
The others nodded and they moved on, Hilda once again at the front. They followed her down to the second T-junction and, after a quick look, followed her to the left. The hall turned right some twenty feet down, a closed door in the corner. Hilda peeked around the corner before stepping up to the door, finding it locked as well. "At least all these locked doors mean we only have to keep following the halls" she said, and Hans nodded.
"Let's keep moving."
Down the hall they went, the hall lined with another two doors, both locked. At the end of the hall was another turn to the right, the corner a little darker than the rest of the halls. Whether the lights were out or broken Hans couldn't tell, but from the glow around the corner he could tell that the lights beyond the corner still worked. They reached the turn and Hilda eased up to the corner, weapon at the ready. She peeked around the corner and Hans watched the color drain from her entire face, her eyes widening. She put a hand over her mouth, barely stifling the short cry of surprise, and she quickly scrambled back from the corner. She looked at Hans, her face covered in a sudden breakout of sweat, and shakily jerked her head at the corner. Hans eased up to the edge and took a peek for himself. He swore on his life all the blood in his body turned to ice and his heart stopped as he saw what was in the tunnel.
Halfway down the hall, facing away from them, was an alien. An honest-to-God alien. There was no other way to describe the abomination standing before him. It was black, its body as smooth as glass and dully reflecting the dim floor lights. It turned to the right and it had no eyes as far as Hans could tell, its mouth lined with hundreds of razor sharp teeth. It had no arms to speak of, just two waving tendrils, long and powerful-looking, and a stubby tail to provide counterbalance. It was crouching, its tendrils feeling along the wall, and then it stood. And stood, and stood, rising to easily the height of two men as it did so. It 'looked' up at the ceiling for a few moments before slowly plodding off and disappearing around a corner, its heavy footfalls echoing in the corridor. Hans pulled back from the corner and looked at the rest of the team, who looked back with worry in their eyes.
"Coming here was a mistake."
"We're not going outside into that shroud. Even with the gas masks we wouldn't make it. Visibility is zero out there. All we'd do is end up getting separated, lost, and killed" Walter said once they were back in the lobby of the museum, assembled by the stairs that led up to the exhibits.
"You didn't see what Hilda and I saw. That thing is not from this earth, believe me" Hans said.
"Alien or not, if it bleeds it can be killed. You said it was big. Too big to move easily in the tunnel?" Walter asked, and Hans nodded. "Then we have the advantage. We can light it up, lob some grenades, and then we'll be good to go."
Hans rubbed his chin for a moment. "If there are more we're going to be using a lot of ammo just to get to our destination, never mind dealing with what might be in the office towers. There might be more weapons around here, though, since BMW did work for the Bundeswehr during the Resource Wars" he said. "Very well, let's go back down and try to kill it."
The five of them went back down into the basement halls and made their way back to where they'd first seen the alien, the creature nowhere to be seen at the moment. They moved forward, Klara in the lead with her M30 shotgun at the ready. The hall the alien had been in ended in yet another T-junction, an open door to the left. The team headed for the door. The room beyond was some kind of utility room, a pair of empty bunk beds in it to the left. From the empty tin cans on the ground and the metal plates it looked to Hans like people had been living in the basement at some point. On the right side of the room was a control console and some switches, but nothing that looked useful.
"Well, I have good news and bad news," Paul announced. "I found a receptacle for a map, but it's empty. Guess we'll have to map the place out ourselves." He started rummaging through his gear and Hans went to stand by the door, to keep watch. Not even five seconds later the alien returned, hunched low to the ground. His knuckles went white, gripping his rifle, as the alien plodded off in the other direction and disappeared around a corner.
"Maybe we can just avoid the damn things" he said.
"Fine by me," Hilda said. "Someone else can come down here and kill them. Or just cave in the entrances and let them starve to death."
With nothing of interest in the utility room the team got moving again, keeping sure to avoid following the alien. Down the halls they went, checking the doors as they went. Almost all of them were locked, the ones that weren't being devoid of anything of use. As they went Hans began to wonder just what was in the locked rooms. It was easy to see why they were still locked, since the whole facility was covered in black smoke and the basement had an extraterrestrial monster living in it, but what was worth keeping locked up in the first place? Tool closets and generator rooms, sure, but those doors were labelled and usually unlocked. The locked doors had no labels at all. If the Bundeswehr had been working with BMW, like most of Germany's companies during the Resource Wars, then it would've had to have been vehicles. Trucks and utility vehicles, most likely, but it stood to reason they'd have been working on airplane engines as well. Hans wasn't expecting to find any of the engines in the basement, but that was the reason they were there.
The team was passing by a pair of thresholds, likely bathrooms, when Klara stopped. She slung her shotgun after a moment and turned to face the rest of them. "Need to duck in for a moment" she said, and the others nodded.
"Me too" Hilda said, and the two of them went into one of the bathrooms. Walter backtracked a bit to cover their rear and Paul went on ahead to do the same, leaving Hans as the door guard. He waited, rifle in hand, pretending not to hear as the girls did their business. He was glad he'd picked the G11 instead of a more traditional rifle; the extra firepower would come in handy if they did end up facing off against one of those aliens. There was no way to know for sure, yet, but Hans prayed that there was only one. If there were more or, God forbid, a whole damned nest then they would die down here.
"So what do you think I should do?" he heard Hilda say, and despite himself he edged a little closer to the bathroom, curious.
"Our lives are far too short and violent to wait around. If I were you, I'd go for it. I've learned in my short time with you all that every day could be your last, what with all the horrible places we go and terrible monsters we see" Klara replied.
"OK... Thanks. By the way, I was looking at a pre-War magazine the other day, and I've gotta ask: did women really shave down there before The Bomb? There's no way in Hell I'd ever put a razor anywhere near that part of my body. Do men really like that sort of stuff?"
Hans had heard enough, and he really didn't want the girls to know he'd been listening in. He walked a safe distance away from the bathrooms and a few minutes later the two of them came out, weapons in hand, looking as if nothing had happened. Klara briskly walked past him and took her position at the front of the group, and they got moving again. Hans was right behind Hilda, the five of them crouched low to keep the noise down, and he looked her backside up and down. She really was pretty, in a way that Hans hadn't considered before.
The team reached the end of the hall, a locked door at the end. The door was labeled 'Firmenbüros.' The corporate offices. A smile spread across Hans face, knowing that they'd reached the corporate offices without incident. Of course, getting through the locked door was going to be a problem.
"Five of us and not a single one knows how to pick a lock" Paul grumbled, crouched by the door. He was looking at the keyhole, set flush against the door. "No screws, no rivets, not even a plate. The whole thing is built into the door. Getting through this is going to require the key. Nothing else we have could bust through, and even if it could, making a whole bunch of noise with an alleged alien lurking around is not a good idea."
"I know," Hans said. "So we go key hunting. Nothing's ever simple for us, it seems."
"DHM was pretty simple. That was a long time ago, but it still counts, right?" Hilda asked, and Hans and Walter nodded.
The team went back the way they came, past the bathrooms and back to the first junction. Down the hall to the right was the utility room; to the left was another hall, the one the alien had gone down. The five of them got moving, going even slower. They rounded a corner, no sign of the alien. The hall wasn't very long, just thirty feet, and had three doors. A closed one at the end, a sliding utility door to the right, and a wide open threshold to the left. It was tall enough only for a man, but the alien could've easily fit through it by crouching. Klara peeked into the room, her eyes widening. She nodded shakily and pulled back. "Yep. Definitely not from this planet."
"There's no way in Hell I'm letting any of us walk by that threshold, but this utility door is one of those types that slides into the floor. If it's unlocked, and we open it, that thing is going to hear us" Hans said. He reached up to the handle and pulled, and it turned without effort. It was unlocked. He looked to the others, and they all nodded at him. He pulled the handle the rest of the way, spun the valve, and the door slid down into the floor with the usual metallic scrape.
There was a short, shrill squeal from the other room and the team quickly scurried through the open door, guns trained on the threshold. Hans watched the alien slowly plod into view, facing him. The tendrils at its side waved, its teeth bared. It started pacing back and forth, low to the ground. Clearly it was smart enough to recognize it was at a disadvantage.
"Grenade, grenade, quick" Hans said. He felt one of the girls tap his rifle and he opened his left hand, keeping his right firmly on the grip. He plucked the grenade from his teammate's hand and set his rifle down. He unscrewed the cap, yanked the pull cord, and lobbed. The grenade soared through the threshold and into the room. The alien squealed and turned to watch the grenade as it flew by it and detonated, the blast shaking the whole basement and showering the creature in shrapnel.
The smoke cleared and the alien let out a long, sharp squeal and rushed forward, slowing down by the threshold. Hans opened fire, a short burst from the G11 at the creature's large head. Five rounds of 4.7mm ammo struck the alien in its large, smooth head, with no effect. It crouched low to the ground, the top of its body brushing against the threshold as it awkwardly passed through the opening, and Hans fired again. Another five rounds hit the abomination, again with no discernable effect. He scurried back from the door as the alien passed through the threshold, its tendrils waving wildly. The rest of the team had found cover in the room, guns trained on the door. Hans joined Walter by an overturned desk and watched the alien stick its head through the door, one tendril wrapped around the frame. The team opened fire, an overpowering din of gunfire that peppered the doorframe.
The alien screamed, all of its teeth visible, and Hans ran dry. He yanked the empty magazine from the G11 and fished out another, frantically reloading. They weren't in danger yet, but if that thing got into the room it'd be all over. The doorframe was just a little too narrow, thankfully, meaning the creature had to slowly squeeze its way in.
Another scream came from the alien, drowned out by the blast of Klara's shotgun. The abomination recoiled as the buckshot hit it in the mouth, splattering the doorframe and wall with green blood. It let out another horrifying, powerful shriek and tried to push into the room again. Bullet after bullet hit it, tearing into it. Hans had just stuffed another magazine into his rifle when the creature finally dropped, its tendrils limply splayed across the floor, seeped in green blood. Just like that the room was silent, the air thick with the stench of sulfur and blood.
For a few moments none of them moved, too dumbstruck by what they'd just seen. The alien had easily taken over a hundred rounds to kill, its body absolutely riddled with bullet holes. Hans was the first to stand, checking his ammo. They each had plenty, no doubt, but what was 'plenty' when it took over a hundred rounds to kill one of the things?
Paul slung his STG and slowly began searching the room. It was some kind of systems room, from the look of it. There were a couple desks, but most of the room was dominated by consoles, terminals, and control panels. The rest of the team began to search as well, opening drawers and cabinets and lockers.
"I found some keys" Hilda said, her voice low. She was standing near the door, by a small locker mounted to the wall. Inside were twenty or thirty pegs, each labelled, but only a couple keys on each. Hans walked up to her and looked the open case over. On the second row was a peg labelled 'Firmenbüros', the key thankfully dangling from it. He picked it up and put it into his pocket.
"Let's go..."
Getting past the large and heavy corpse of the alien had required some effort, but eventually they'd gotten out of the systems room and back to the door to the corporate offices. From there they followed a staircase up to the first floor, the door locked. The door to the second floor was unlocked however, and they'd stepped through and into a dilapidated hallway.
The corporate offices, much like the museum, had been slammed pretty hard by the shockwave of the nuke that had hit Munich. The few remaining lights cast large shadows throughout the hall, only faint amounts of sunlight visible through little gaps in the shroud outside. Hans thought back to the terminal entries and really had to agree; the shroud made it look like night. The good news was the shroud only rose as high as the third or fourth floor, so if they ended up going up that high they'd be seeing daylight soon enough.
"Spread out and start searching. Check the drawers, filing cabinets, desks, terminals, anything and everything" Hans said, and the team fanned out. The hall was lined with numerous wood doors, most of them hanging off their hinges or completely gone. The walls, barely still standing, were crumbling. Chips of stone and plaster fell to the floor with the slightest shake of the building, piles of debris here and there on the floor. With the state of the building the way it was Hans knew there were going to be floors inaccessible, hazardous, or just outright missing, which meant navigating the building was going to be a major pain in the ass.
He stepped through an open doorway into a cubicle farm, the walls in pieces on the floor. Hilda was picking her way through the mess, checking the drawers as she went and pulling out papers, pencils, and knick-knacks. Hans joined her, looking the desks over. "So many bottlecaps in all these drawers. Ugh, and gum, too! People were slobs before The Bomb" she said, and Hans snickered.
"You don't know the half of it."
He was about to say more when there was a heavy plodding from the floor above, and the two of them looked up, their faces pale. The footsteps faded as fast as they'd come, leaving them in silence again. As much as he didn't want to admit it there was a good chance the building was crawling with aliens.
"What do you think that thing even was?" Hilda asked.
"An alien, like I said."
"What does that mean?"
"A creature not from this planet. I've seen plenty of mutant abominations in my time, but I've never seen anything like that monster before today. There's no way it came from Earth as a mutant animal. It's from another planet. Has to be."
Hilda looked scared and...a little excited? "But...why?" she asked. "How? And just where exactly did it come from? The moon?"
"I don't know, and if I never see another again then I'll die very happy." He focused back on the desks, looking through their drawers and the nearby filing cabinets. So far all he'd found were financial statements and memos. Very boring, even before The Bomb, he was sure. Other than the papers the desks were filled with the usual trash; bottlecaps, pencils, folders, ashtrays, and cigarettes. He left them where they all lied and took one last look around the room. "This room's a bust. Let's move on."
The two of them went back out into the hall and across the way to another office. Walter and Klara were there, poking through the desks. Walter looked up as they entered and shook his head, another dead end. "Where's Paul?"
"Around. Stuffing his pockets. You were right, the guy can't help himself" Klara said, and Hans smiled. The ceiling shook again as another alien, hopefully the same one, walked by on the floor above, and he bit his lip. "This place is a death trap" Klara hissed.
Hans agreed. "Just stay focused. The halls here are pretty narrow, and the offices are filled with enough debris to slow them down, if they ever learn we're here."
"'They', 'them', I wish you'd stop implying there's more than one. I really need to believe there's just the one up there" Walter said, and Hans nodded. He and Hilda got moving again, heading down the hall to the next set of offices. There was a short squeal from one of the aliens on the floor above, and Hans listened to the thumps of its footsteps as it walked away. The whole damn place put him on edge.
Hans pushed open the door to the next set of offices and quickly shut it, feeling his throat tighten and skin flush. The windows in the room had been shattered, the heavy black shroud swirling around, hemmed in by the walls and door. Little wisps of it had leaked out when he opened the door, lingering in the air. It was smoke, no doubt about it, but he had to wonder. According to Kommandant Wolfgang the smoke came from coal fires, from the production plant on-site, but according to the terminal entries at the food court the shroud had formed the day The Bomb fell. Could coal really burn for twenty years?
"Let's try another room" he said, and Hilda nodded. They went further down the hall, a staircase at the end of it, and passed a pair of water fountains. There was a wood door by the fountains, partially closed. Hans slowly pushed it open and the upper half of the door just fell straight off, crashing to the floor with a heavy slam. He heard a shriek from upstairs as the alien responded to the sound, but the way it slowly plodded off told him it wasn't quite ready to investigate.
He and Hilda proceeded into the room. It was another cubicle farm, though the floor here was carpeted and all the desks were made of wood. An office for executives, maybe? The two of them spread out and began searching the area. The room actually had another room inside it, in the far corner, the wall lined with glass. Some kind of manager's office, Hans guessed. Hilda made her way over to it while Hans searched the desks. There were some internal memos and notes, inter-office correspondence and that sort of thing, but nothing particularly important.
He looked up from the desk he was searching and saw Hilda by the door to the manager's office, waving him over. He made his way through the debris-strewn room and followed her into the office, the room just as dilapidated and messy as all the rest. There were papers all over the desk and floor, a terminal on its side. Hilda picked up one of the papers and handed it to Hans.
The first subject arrived from our friends at West-Tek today. Project Elwetritsch is set to begin. Messerschmitt has already created the platform, and Rheinmetall is finishing up their work on the delivery system, leaving the power plant to us. The Elwetritsch subject is massive and heavy, meaning the production engines will need to generate a significant amount of power. Enough to carry at least five of them in the bomb bay Messerschmitt has placed in their prototype. This kind of work won't be much of a challenge at all, once we finish analyzing the Elwetritsch subject and get an idea of its average weight.
There was nothing else on the paper. Hans frowned and set it down. What the Hell was Project Elwetritsch?
"What did it say?" Hilda asked.
"Some kind of project BMW was working on with Messerschmitt and Rheinmetall, before the war. A bomb, from the sound of it, but there's another company mentioned here, West-Tek. I've never heard of them before" Hans said. He looked through the rest of the office and even tried the terminal, though it wouldn't turn on. There was nothing else there about what Elwetritsch was.
"Let's go see if the others have found anything" Hilda said, and Hans nodded. The two of them left the offices and headed back out into the hall. The stairs leading up were to the left, and with the second floor a bust there was no choice but to head up to the third floor, where another one of the aliens was. There was a utility door across from the executive offices, the door open. Hans was sure that the door had been closed when they'd gone into the offices, and he approached it slowly, weapon at the ready.
Rather unsurprisingly it was just Paul, shoveling junk into his pack. Wrenches, hammers, bobby pins, scrap metal, scrap electronics, circuit boards, keyboards, cutting boards, game boards, just where the Hell did he put all this stuff? It was honestly impressive, in a way, that a man could carry seemingly hundreds of pounds of worthless crap and have room for more. He looked up at Hans and smiled, shoving an egg timer into a hip pouch. "Want anything?"
"Find any ammo or meds?" Hans asked, and Paul nodded.
"There were some Stimpaks and Mentats in the bathroom" he said, and reached into one of his pockets. He handed the Stimpaks to Hans, who took them.
"What bathroom?"
"You didn't see it? Don't worry, I picked it clean."
Hans rolled his eyes. "We didn't find anything here, so we're going up to the next floor" he said, and Paul stood up. He unslung his Sturmgewehr and nodded, and a moment later Walter and Klara joined them. The five of them slowly proceeded up the stairs to the third floor, guns at the ready. The third floor was in a similar state to the second floor, except more walls were missing. Hans could see the tendril of the alien waving through a nearby door, the bulk of the creature's body obscured by the wall. He gestured to it, and the rest of the team nodded. Klara moved up to the door, gently pushing it open with the barrel of the M30. As it opened Hans saw that the alien was brown, not black, and much smaller than the one in the basement, but undoubtedly the same species.
*BAM!*
Klara fired once, the buckshot hitting the alien in the leg and nearly tearing the limb off. The alien squealed and shrieked, its tendrils flailing wildly. Klara fired again, the second shell tearing the creature's head into ribbons, but it was still alive. She flipped over to the M30's third barrel and fired, the heavy 9.3mm rifle round thundering even louder in the enclosed space. The bullet punched through the alien and through one of the walls, silencing the creature. Its tendrils dropped limply to the floor, green blood oozing across its body.
A trumpeting, vicious scream echoed from somewhere else on the third floor, as well as on the fourth. Followed by another, and another. Hans watched Klara reload all three barrels of the Drilling with shaking hands and another alien stepped out into the hall, its tendrils waving and teeth bared, followed by a second.
The building was completely infested.