Chapter 18: Svenson

The crack of a gun firing came from the other side of the chamber just as they were about to enter it, the members of Fireteam Delta took cover at the sides of the looping hallway that was identical to all the other hallways in this maze of a facility.

O'Hale leaned close to the door leading into the chamber and she shouted. "This is Sergeant O'Hale of Fireteam Delta! Stand down!"

Svenson wasn't so sure if what had shot them was human until he heard a response. It was a frail voice.

"Alright," the human called, her voice shaking, "I'm putting the gun down."

O'Hale turned the corner and entered the room, the rest of Delta followed. Across the room was a woman in recon gear with her back against a locked door. There was a hole in her hip that she'd stuffed with enough bandages that it wasn't bleeding. Her face was very pale.

"Hanoi, medkit," O'Hale said as she crouched in front of the woman.

Hanoi lifted her backpack off her shoulders and set it down on the floor. She reached in and pulled out a canister of biofoam, and tossed it to O'Hale.

"What's your name, soldier?" O'Hale asked as she removed Larsen's bandages and pressed the biofoam into her.

"Private Larsen," she said with a pained groan. "I was here with the second squad. Everyone… Everyone was killed by those things."

"Including the Captain?"

"I wasn't with the Captain, I didn't see."

O'Hale removed the canister after Larsen's wound had been filled in. She tossed it back to Hanoi and she put it away.

"Well we figure the Captain's dead," O'Hale said and reached down to help Larsen up. "Whether or not he is, we still gotta get out of here."

"I… I can help," Larsen said with a grunt. She reached up and took O'Hale's hand.

Svenson turned away and looked between each door. The monsters could come for them at any moment. And they did. But not from where Svenson expected. He heard a cry of pain from behind him and turned around. What looked like the bones in Larsen's arm were sticking straight out of the flesh, and they had pierced O'Hale's shoulder.

Larsen's face was twisted with pain. She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but only a wordless groan came out. O'Hale grabbed the bone and pulled it out of her shoulder, and Larsen launched toward her without even taking the time to stand up.

Without thinking, Svenson squeezed the trigger of his rifle and shot Larsen through the stomach. Every member of Delta turned towards the woman who was being turned into a monster, and they fired. Including O'Hale who had grabbed her M6D magnum from her side.

It took way more bullets than it should have to finally put Larsen down. She fell over into a pool of her blood that was more black than it was red.

"What the fuck?" Kamal said after the event, his eyes were wide.

"So… People are being turned into these things," Svenson said. It was more of a statement than a question. He could tell everyone had been thinking it when they saw the monsters that looked like deformed humans.

O'Hale squeezed her shoulder with her hand. "I'm gonna need that medkit back," she said through gritted teeth.

"Sarge…" Arceneaux said slowly, looking her dead in the eyes. "If people are getting turned into these things… How are they getting infected?"

The blood left O'Hale's face. She slowly let go of the wound on her shoulder and looked at it. It didn't look like it was much more than having been clawed at. But the thing that had clawed it was the problem.

Any other person would have said that they were fine and then they would try to play it down. O'Hale was better than that. But she still had some fight left in her.

"Get me the medkit. If I say I'm feeling like shit, you shoot me right in the face," she said. "After that, you're in charge Arceneaux. It'll be your job to get out of this hellhole."

"Yes sir," Arceneaux said. There was a sadness in his voice.

Svenson wasn't new to Fireteam Delta, but he hadn't been there for as long as everyone else save for Faraday. He hadn't known O'Hale as well as the others, but even he was feeling disheartened about this.

O'Hale grabbed the canister from Hanoi and shoved the biofoam into the wound on her shoulder. Biofoam was never a permanent fix, but it was always a fix that lasted long enough for someone to get an actual permanent fix. O'Hale wasn't going to last that long. She handed the canister back to Hanoi.

"Let's move, Marines," O'Hale said, taking point.

Sir, yes sir everyone had said as they followed her. Larsen had been the only monster they'd encountered since the first group the Grunt had warned them about. Svenson knew there was more based on the call they'd gotten from Rizo, but he hoped that they wouldn't run into any more. At least until O'Hale became one.

Svenson glanced at the back of Kamal's helmet as they moved through the dark rooms. He wasn't entirely sure how getting infected by those things worked, but Kamal had gotten some of one's blood on his face. He tried to push the thought away, but he couldn't. It was all he thought about as they entered the next chamber, and encountered another one of the monsters.

The thing they were looking at looked like it had been an Elite that had been enveloped by some other kind of creature. Tentacles protruded from its chest, and from its back. Its head was split open and there was a huge lump of rotting flesh jutting out of it, and the lump of flesh looked like it had a mouth of its own.

The horrifying beast slowly banged on the tank in the middle of the chamber. Its hands were deformed into sharp claws, and it used them to pierce the glass. O'Hale didn't wait to see whatever the thing was trying to unleash.

"Gun it down!" she shouted.

Everyone formed up and fired at the thing. It stumbled with each shot and wailed. It pulled its claws out of the glass, and whatever liquid was being kept in the tank began pouring out. It turned towards them and shrieked, aiming its second mouth towards them. It twitched and the mouth opened, what looked like shards of bone shot out.

One of the shards pierced O'Hale's hip and hit the wall behind her. Another hit Clarke in the shoulder. Svenson didn't think their bullets were actually damaging it until it fell forward onto the floor. The sound of the flesh smacking against the metal echoed around the chamber.

"Sergeant?" Arceneaux asked. Hanoi sat Clarke down behind a wall.

O'Hale slowly turned to Arceneaux. She looked terrible. It hadn't been that long since Larsen stabbed her, but it looked like her skin was sticking to her bones. It was like they could pop out of her body at any moment and stab someone, like what happened with Larsen.

"Corporal," she said, "I think it's time you put me down."

Arceneaux nodded slowly. "Everyone keep going. I'll catch up with you."

The Marines nodded. They moved, but they didn't go far, they were only on the other side of the leaking tank.

"I didn't think this was how it would end," O'Hale said. "This is so damn far from it."

"Yeah…" Arceneaux said. "I'm sorry, Sarge."

"I'm sorry too."

Then there was silence. Arceneaux was hesitating to pull the trigger. Anyone would.

"Do I need to do it myself? Come on, pull the-"

The shot rang out around the room. O'Hale fell onto the floor. Svenson looked around the tank, he could see her there with the hole in her head. He fought himself to hold back a tear. Not just for her, but for everyone. He knew they weren't going to make it out alive.

Arceneaux walked around the tank and pointed to the door they were waiting by. He didn't need to say anything to tell them to move.


It didn't take long for things to get worse. They'd encountered a locked door at the worst possible time. Lopes was hard at work trying to get it open while Delta crouched behind cover. The monsters had somehow learned how to use their guns.

One of the things clung to the ceiling, holding on with its claws stabbed into the wall. In its free hand it held a DMR, and it shot Kormanyos straight through his head. Svenson aimed his assault rifle at it. It was very effective at long ranges, but he shot anyway. He managed to snag the creature with some of his shots and it fell onto the floor.

They'd encountered a bunch of new kinds of these monsters as well. Tiny ones that could crawl on any conceivable surface that popped like balloons when they were shot. Lumpy spherical ones that were so top heavy it had to be some kind of alien magic that kept them moving on their stubby legs. They popped into a bunch of the tiny balloon-like ones whenever they were shot, and that made them the most dangerous of them.

There was another one that looked like it had been a human with its chest burst open with a tentacle coming out of it. The usual pointy claw on its left arm was crab-like pincer. The thing jumped up to their platform and it almost grabbed him before Seguin put enough rounds in its arm to blow it off. Svenson finished it off with a salvo of bullets to its chest.

Then there was another one that looked like an Elite that had been so deformed that it grew to twice its size, and both of its arms were long spindly tentacles with razor-sharp blades for hands. No matter how many bullets Svenson put into it, it wasn't going down.

Svenson kept shooting it. He didn't know if the thing was invincible and he was just wasting his ammo, but he didn't care. The platform shook as it jumped up to them and landed. Svenson shifted his aim to one of its arms and shot at the joint. It was enough to tear the arm off, but it looked like it was about to stab him with the other. He needed to reload.

As if God decided he could live for a bit longer, Lopes got the door open. She shouted to everyone and they all rushed through. The giant monster Elite thing was too large to fit through the door, but it reached through with one of its tentacle arms. Lopes pressed a few buttons on the panel next to the door, and it slammed shut. Svenson could hear a squeal on the other side as the creature lost its arm.

"Fuck. This. Shit," Svenson breathed out. He collapsed on the floor, and then decided to take that moment to reload. He had four assault rifle magazines left, including the one that he had just slapped into the gun. He couldn't bring himself to ask any of the others for more ammo.

Svenson placed his rifle on the floor and glanced at the other members of Delta, who all joined him in taking a breather. He rested his head on the wall behind him and fought not to slap himself to wake up from this nightmare. He would have preferred this to just be a nightmare than what it actually was.

"There's an elevator back here," Lopes said from behind the wall.

Svenson looked to his side and saw there was a whole room outside the tunnel in front of the door. He and the others stood up and approached Lopes. Sure enough there was an elevator there, but there was no shaft leading up.

"It only goes down," said Roscoe, who hadn't said a word since all this began.

"Yeah, well I really don't want to go back through all that shit to find one that goes up," Lopes sternly replied.

A crash sounded at the door. Then another. And another.

"Corporal?" Lopes asked, looking at Arceneaux.

"We go down," he said.

There was a silent agreement between all of them. There was at least the chance that things were better down there. Even if things were worse, they weren't prepared to keep fighting the horde of things that were trying to break through the door.

Lopes accessed the controls, and the elevator began to move down. Just as it did, they heard the crash of the door breaking down, followed by the high-pitched shrill that those creatures made.

Once they were down there, they already knew they made a mistake. A bunch of those creatures were already surrounding the elevator as they arrived, and most of them were holding guns.

I didn't think it could get much worse.