For all Disclaimers: See Chapters One and Two.
Note: If you don't read this story from the start, it won't make much sense. You know you want to... Also, this symbol denotes radio communication.
CHAPTER FIVE Lost Souls/June 8th, 1996, central Iraq/
Chris had picked up on the fact that Serena and Stamper were discussing things that were not for his ears, from the fact that they'd both been talking so quietly that he hadn't even caught a whisper. He'd worked out a large part of what they were discussing, though, when Stamper demonstrated his theory of how the door had received such massive damage. He hadn't caught the details, but Serena had been nodding as though she agreed with his suggestions, which was a very good sign even given just how little he knew of the mysterious soldier-if she even was one. He had a feeling, had since he'd seen her, that she was something he didn't want to know more about who was, for whatever reason, exceptional at her job...
HHH
However, when Stamper had told everyone to hold on then gone into detail about what he believed had happened, even with Serena's silent backing, Chris had seriously wondered whether he'd wandered into an episode of "The Twilight Zone" by mistake. His scepticism must have been obvious on his face because he saw Serena glance at him, but a quick smile drifted across her face for some reason at the sight. Webb's reaction, however, managed to annoy her with very little effort-he burst out laughing.
"God almighty, I have to stop laughing before I die... Sorry, I really am sorry, but I seem to have lost forty odd years and any semblance of reality here somehow. That's impossible and my five-year-old could tell you why, though he hasn't even seen the monster movies of the 50's yet. What do you expect next? A Rain of Frogs? The Creature of the Black Lagoon to crawl out of Toxic sludge and eat us while were not looking?! Good God alive, Stamper, but this time you've taken something which disagreed with you to make that weird little brain work in a way us mere mortals can understand" said Webb, still chuckling as he slowly shook his head from side to side.
"Webb, if I subtracted everything you know from everything I know and used a bucket to hold what was left the remainder would be flowing over the rim. You have less than no idea of what chemicals make up a Truth Serum, let alone anything more complicated than pure water, wouldn't recognise a truck if it ran over your feet twice while the driver shot at you and would die tomorrow if you resigned today because you couldn't survive in the real world.
You are stupid, pathetic as regards everything but military skills and tactics and no doubt get your wife to do your taxes because the forms have long words which are too complicated for your attention span. If you actually have anything intelligent to say I suggest you submit it in writing first so that I can check the spelling. Apart from that, Stamper could run rings around you from now to Eternity in every way except fighting if you did nothing but study for the rest of your life and we all know it. Shut up, or else, am I clear?" asked an annoyed Serena.
Webb's face turned dark red in fury as veins stood out on his neck and head, making everyone but Serena take a step away from him, convinced that he was going to loose it and smash Serena into the ground, literally, at any moment. Chris thought that Serena would slice the mans head clean off his neck without a moments hesitation before mounting his remains on a sharp stick rammed right through the remains starting at the Anus and coming out of the neck. No-one, however, not even Webb, knew what was going to happen next, so they all waited with baited breath...
Webb slowly ground his teeth audibly, then practically snarled at the dead calm Serena. "Oh, your very clear, Miss Enigma, so let me be just as clear. I don't like you, don't trust you and don't know what the Hell it is your actually up to, so I will at no point show you my back and I /strongly/ suggest that everyone else takes the hint. Apart from that, I don't wreck missions on purpose, so I'll say this" said Webb, stalking closer until he was right in Serena's face. "We finish this later, and I will remember /every word/, clear?" he hissed.
Serena didn't even blink an eyelid while staring Webb straight in the eyes. "I'll wait for you at the Gates, Webb, we'll both pass through them at some point. Until then, absorb the fact that you are not always right and that half the people here are a Hell of a lot smarter than you and you may live long enough for it to matter at some point in the future. Chris, get over here" replied Serena, her expression cool, the look in her eyes glacial. Neither of them looked away until forced to by Tom slamming his boot heel into the steel floor so hard that the sharp clang echoed around them for several seconds, startling almost everyone.
Webb wheeled away to take in Aaron and Tom, his selected team, while Serena gave Chris the once over before staring at Stamper until he stood up straight and looked as though he was a man on a mission at the very least, even if he didn't, necessarily, act like it. Once he was, apparently, ready, she glanced back at Chris and looked at him in a way which he read as "Stay close" before turning back to face Webb and the others.
"Alright, everyone, clarification time. This facility is almost certainly a mess, but that does not mean that no one is alive, nor does it mean that the Security systems are not working, so these are now our guidelines. You see anything in uniform you don't recognise shoot first, ask questions later, what happened here is irrelevant beyond as far as it directly effects us and the mission. You see anyone out of uniform make an attempt to capture and interrogate them if you consider it a viable possibility, but if they see you they do not escape. Clear? Good. Finally, you have standing orders and mission objectives, but from now on we communicate only by Call Sign. Any questions?" asked Webb, looking around at everyone, his anger clearly under tight control despite his brief glares at Serena and Stamper.
No-one spoke, although Chris considered asking whether or not running like Hell was acceptable as a choice if confronted by a victim of the plague or whatever it was that was being held down here that they were after if the thing had somehow been released or had escaped. He decided not to with the help of one look at Webb's face, the man was clearly ready to exercise extreme violence on anything or anyone with even the slightest excuse. Worse than that, he strongly suspected that Serena would cripple Webb if he did anything to any member of the team, she and Webb had barely even met and clearly wanted to kill each other already. Never a good sign, let alone a good start on a mission like this one.
"Good, then lets go. Aaron, find a way to shut this door again before we do..." said Webb, his voice trailing off as Tom totally ignored him in favour of watching and listening to Serena. There were three ways out of the location they were in, a corridor almost straight ahead and to the right, a second to the direct left that went off into the distance and a last one which went into the wall behind them six feet to the doors right, a place where light was totally lacking. The flickering lights where they were made seeing where they were and what they were doing far from easy, but that was worse. He sincerely hoped that she wouldn't choose that one-all the while, of course, expecting her to.
Later, he would wish that she had.
The centre of the facility was where the most secure area would be, that took no guesswork. That that was where the trouble would almost certainly have started was also a given, in her professional opinion, that was the way these things tended to work. It all simply meant that they were going to have to do her job for a while, which meant walking into Hell with the eyes wide open and a smile on your face while you killed as though you had nothing better to do and wanted to pass the time. Chris would manage, in her opinion, Stamper wouldn't, but they could cover for him until they didn't need him any longer.
A plan was easy, they simply took the most direct route to where they wanted to go, did their best to go in a straight line and dealt with the situation as it presented itself. She liked plans like that, they were straightforward, clear-cut and precise with no need to make extensive Backup plans to cover for every possible Contingency and catastrophe that might even possibly occur. In other words, she expected everything which could go wrong to do just that and the only thing that she could definitely count on was that she would do her job as professionally as she always did... Well, that made this just like every other mission, then. The door straight ahead it was.
Serena drew both her pistols, knocked off the safeties and strode forwards with fearless ease, moving with a Panthers fluid grace, diamond-sharp blue eyes piercing every shadow, twisting round every bend, missing nothing. Stamper kept his Glock holstered, glancing around nervously, but Serena's sharp ears didn't miss the "Click" of him quietly taking the safety off. Chris drew his Desert Eagle, took off the safety and fell in behind Stamper, who was behind and between Serena and him, the safest place for him as far as Chris was concerned. He didn't doubt for even a second that Serena was supremely capable at whatever it was she did, but that didn't make him any less nervous. After all, if something or someone got the jump on him-well, by the time Serena could pull whatever off or kill the attacker, he would most likely be dead regardless...
The long corridor they were walking along, slowly, had no obvious end in sight. Long, grey steel walls, ceiling and roof were the only constants, along with the steady electric lights that lit up everything like Flash photography from Hell. Occasional doors appeared on either side of them, but most of them were locked using computerised locks that needed Key cards and they didn't have any. Chris strongly suspected that Serena could have bypassed even electronic locks given time, but she didn't seem to be inclined to try. All that she did was physically ensure that all of the doors actually were secure, the blood-red locking lights clearly on, before moving on, slowly but surely.
Something which puzzled Chris was the total lack of people and bodies, however, even any traces of remains-or violence, come to that. From what he understood, this place should have been filled with either dozens of people or-horrifically as may be- their remains, in pieces, burnt, injured or not. There was no-one and nothing around, at all, the complex seemed as quiet and as dead as a tomb, as though it was a crypt and everyone in it was already dead and buried-he /really/ wished that he hadn't thought of that...
The only constant was the low hum of the electric lights, the slow but steady thump of three sets of boots on steel, Serena's slow but steady, measured breathing, his own slightly fast breathing and Stamper's fast breaths-the man was very nervous. What a surprise, Chris couldn't help but think. The problem was, did he have reason to be? /Good/ reason, even?
They were underneath a complex run by the military in Iraq, where even the civilians would cheerfully mutilate them to death given half a chance in most cases if they saw the uniforms, a top-secret facility which had been developing-or /was/ developing-some kind of biological weapon, or at least that was his best guess. There were no guards, the first thing they'd found was dead bodies, both victims having sustained horrific injuries which weren't easily explained, even... Worse, the complex had clearly been shut down by a Security Alert of the highest order, the only feasible reason for all of the interior and exterior doors being closed and locked in an alert situation, and /no-one/ was around to be seen, anywhere. Had the weapon, whatever it was, gotten loose in the complex? Had the complex personnel evacuated because of that only not all of them had gotten out? He took a deep breath, then forced himself to calm down. Getting himself into a right state over this, which he was doing the way he was thinking, would do no-one, least of all him, any good...
"Damn..." came a muttered comment from Serena, just ahead of them. Chris looked around and noticed, to his annoyance, that they'd reached a T-junction and his attention had been wandering since he hadn't noticed. Then he thought about it, followed Serena's gaze up towards the roof-and abruptly felt as though he'd been sucker-punched in the guts with a Crowbar as his legs shook. His nose caught the stench before his eyes took in the sight, but he didn't need to see anything to know the sickly-sweet stench of fear and death combined.
Blood drenched the walls on all sides of the T-junction corridors, bits of what looked like flesh being mixed in with thick other fluids as well. The awful stink of human effluence was everywhere, letting Chris know whoever this had been had known terrible fear before they'd died. Huge dents in the walls smeared with blood showed evidence of a fight, a completely one-sided one, but what had ended it was obvious. By the largest dent, a huge impact which had evidently imprinted the body right into the wall, traces of hair, flesh, skull and-Serena would later tell him-brain were evident where the head would have hit. Such an impact would have been instantly fatal, even notwithstanding the numerous other injuries such a beating would have caused.
Up high, however, just above their heads, was the worst. A ceiling area had been beaten almost completely out of shape, then torn loose before being replaced. Blood was /still/ dripping slowly down around the edges, so /something/ was up there. Worst of all, this had been done very recently for fresh blood still to be moving like that, even Chris, with his Schoolboy knowledge and basic First-Aid training for treating wounds in the field of combat, knew that...
Serena grimaced, then stepped forwards and stood underneath the battered panel. She reached up and shoved it, her height allowing her to reach it easily. Something shifted with a dull thump atop it, something heavy-maybe more than one something…
"Stand back, you two. /DON'T/ argue" she snapped, as Chris opened his mouth to suggest, loudly, that she should leave whatever was up there the Hell alone forever and a day. He stopped, then followed her Order, even though instinct told him to physically restrain her rather than let her pull down whatever was up there. He didn't even try to do anything else, he knew better than to think he could stop her doing anything she wanted to do.
She reached up and shoved again, the panel shifting more with a heavier thump-then she heaved up with all of her strength. The panel came free-then /things/ began to fall down from it, battering Serena even as her arms instantly shifted to protect her head, thumping down and bouncing or rolling around all over the place, some just landing with dull thumps. Something bounced down and around until it somehow ended up right at a startled Stamper's feet-he began to scream...
Chris lunged forwards to shove Stamper out of the way, to see just what the Hell was going on-then nearly fainted when he finally got a good look at what had fallen down around them. At Stamper's feet was a human head, a severed human head with a deaths-head grin, blood still pouring from the torn stump of the neck, one eye out of the socket...
All around Serena were bloodied hands, feet, arms, legs, torsos, even fingers and toes. Shattered and torn flesh and bone stuck out in all directions from everywhere, tied around mangled and ruptured veins, arteries, even internal organs. Men and women, every part of them exposed, from abused sexual organs to mangled brains, were obvious everywhere one looked...
Some things just weren't meant to be seen, or ever known, yet now Chris was seeing them all. His legs trembled, his knees went weak as he felt terrible shock and horror shutting down his brain and cutting conscious control of his limbs out of the chain in his mind. He felt his bile rising, couldn't stop it, doubled over and threw up over his boots, again and again and again until he reeled away helplessly and slumped against a wall, left unable to move at all.
His last conscious image was one of the most disturbing things he would ever remember, however, despite everything that would happen to him in later years. A "snapshot" of Serena's face, even as the human filth and blood-drenched remains toppled down and over her again and again as she just stood there, unmoving. Despite the cold anger in her eyes, a strange smile almost lit up her face, as though something she'd always known had been proved right and the scene straight from Hell didn't really matter at all...
Webb, Aaron and Tom had taken the passageway to the left initially, but had run into a significant problem after little time. That problem, after about fifty metres and a sharp right turn with no other entrances or exits visible, was a door. A big, heavy door made of thick steel and numbered "Room 101". The only way in was via a computerised Keypad lock that showed a definite red "locked" symbol and a huge portal lock that had to be wound open and shut as though the heavy door was a primitive airlock.
Tom didn't doubt even for a second that the door was designed to keep things in the area beyond the door rather than those on the outside out, which always made him check his guns for killing use, but that didn't change the fact that they were probably going to have to find a way past it if Webb was as bloody-minded as he suspected he was. Not at all to his surprise, then, was Webb staring very closely at the digital lock the moment he saw it.
"Aaron, can you get around this thing?" asked Webb, looking over at the hulking Engineer, who shrugged. Aaron didn't want to go into that room, no matter what, but orders were orders, and he'd gotten into enough trouble for punching out his previous C.O. for ordering him to do something both impossible and illegal then threatening to shoot him in the leg when he'd refused. He'd do what it took to get back his Commission-all Moralto had said he had to do to get it was live through this mission, if successful, after all.
"With a Laptop, no problem. Without one, I'd feel more comfortable blowing it, but we don't have enough in the way of explosives. So its my computer know-how against the machine. No guarantees, especially since I've no idea how this system works after all" replied Aaron, with a helpless gesture.
Webb sighed, very audibly, then nodded at the panel. "Alright, get started-what the Flaming-?!" exploded Webb abruptly, as the door abruptly unlocked with a sharp electronic "snap" that echoed all around them. The door shifted slightly, then swung partially open...
Tom sniffed the air and felt his stomach turn at just traces of what must have been in the room. The sickly-sweet stench of rotting meat and putrefying flesh, trace stinks of smells that only issued from deep inside the human body unless it was sliced open to release them, so foul the mind refused to recognise them. The sharp tang of terror, the awful aura of pain inflicted by those who enjoyed it, the dark taint of madness underlying everything...
Tom was a regular "Go-To" man for Black Operation missions of every kind for anyone who needed things done, he more often than not worked so far off the books that even the people who gave him his orders didn't know his name. He'd done Covert Wetworks jobs for the US Army all over the world on every Continent, killed without a thought, slaughtered, destroyed and ruined countless numbers of people, organisations and places.
He'd forgotten his reason for joining up to in any way "Do the right thing" years ago-but enough of the man he had been had remained to make him completely loose his temper when flawed intelligence on a mission in Cambodia against the remains of the Khmer Rouge had, added to incompetence and outright stupidity from superior officers who honestly seemed to think they could control Fate, left over half his team dead, with the rest scattered to the winds running for their lives. With him left looking
down the barrel of a gun a madman then used in an attempt to shoot off his kneecaps and emasculate him, he'd been tempted to recite the Shiloh in the moments he'd had left-then a sound had distracted his attacker. Five men with guns against him with a nasty knock to the head had been all he'd needed. When he and his surviving men got back he'd proceeded to put the commanding officer in a Wheelchair and then a Coma in short order, leaving him looking at serious time in Fort Leavenworth Military prison. After what had happened he hadn't cared in the least, but Moralto had made a better offer. After all, Tom did love his job...
The problem was, every bit of experience his time in the forces had gained him, every scrap of know-how he'd picked up along the way, told him, along with his instincts, not to go into that Damn room at any price. Death was just waiting for everyone in there, he knew it, maybe even Serena, who was the coldest, toughest, most lethal individual he'd ever met. The other problem was that he knew he was going to regardless, since Webb was too stupid not to and there was no way he was going to miss out on a good fight...
"Oookay, does anyone else here think that, just maybe, that's not normal?" asked Aaron, staring at the abruptly open door as though it had the words "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" literally burnt into the frame over it. Tom smirked, apparently the big Engineer had better instincts than Webb, surprise surprise.
"Only if "normal" consists of the sun only rising every two days, Aaron... Oh, for Gods sake this is ridiculous, were soldiers, not Asylum case nut jobs. Call it a fluke, call it an Act of God, call it a bad joke by someone who cares, we need to know where this leads. Follow me, and stay close" said Webb, stepping forwards into the Abyss, or at least that was the only appropriate description that Tom could think of. He knew that Serena had read "1984" by George Orwell, he wondered if Webb had, or if he had even the slightest idea of the possibilities that existed here, in a room designated what this one was...
Webb stepped inside, chambering a round on his M-16. Aaron double-checked his Combat Shotgun and followed, Tom by his side, AK-47 ready and waiting for anything odd which so much as twitched in the place. After a second to look around, Tom came to two conclusions: first, that he'd been right, they really should not have come in here, no matter what Webb said, did or ordered. Second, that he'd seen less pain, blood and slaughter in a Butchers Abattoir when the killing had been occurring.
Steel tables were set all around the walls of a room which was at least thirty feet wide by twenty long, the roof rising a good fifteen feet, with a steel door at the far end which appeared to open into a smaller material and drugs holding area fronted by a massive pane of likely shatterproof glass. In the middle of the room four vertical stretchers were raised, facing out into the rest of the room using the four points of the Compass, while a single huge stretcher hung over the four vertical ones, suspended by chains linked to all four corners. The room was the same as the rest of the complex in that it had featureless grey steel walls, panelled ceiling and floor with brilliant white electrical lights illuminating everything, but that was where anything to do with sanity ended.
Very few sights could make Tom's jaw simply drop, let alone leave him completely speechless, but this did. Thirty-five "beds" existed, including the suspended stretcher with the invisible occupant and the four upright stretchers, being placed in equal rows leading from the entrance to the storeroom. Between him and the storeroom, however, every kind of surgical abomination that the Devil himself could ever have imagined had been practised, even some that the eyes simply could not take in.
Men, women and children of all ages were strapped with heavy-duty iron and leather restraints to the surgical tables, as were animals such as horses and dogs. All of them had been sliced open, apart in some cases-various body parts were missing, bloody stumps being wrapped crudely with bandages through which a pools of slick red blood often streaked the floor-and worse. Mutilation seemed to have been the order of the day for almost everything in that place, stripped skin, broken bones, pictures drawn in living flesh with knives, acid burns melting the muscles of arms, legs and chest, even one entirely flayed body ghastly in its ever-silent writhing, screaming position since the victims horrific death. Spikes had been rammed through hands and feet, while at least one victim of the sick abuse of everything to do with Science that had occurred here had had their chest opened up and filled with glass, the posture and injuries making clear that the victim had suffered this before death. Bloody whips and chains decorated the room around and about the surgical tables while used Syringes had been discarded carelessly all about, even having been left in the veins of those assaulted in some cases.
Torn, ruptured flesh, arteries and organs amongst the bodies were all about for everyone to see, blood having sprayed the walls and floor, even the ceiling in some cases. Some of the bodies had started to decompose, parts rotting slowly away as there had been no apparent effort to preserve or move them in some time, but the indescribable smell of putrefying flesh slowly liquefying into something unspeakable came from one place only, the raised surgical table where whatever had once been there was concealed from view.
Tom had been sent to the former territories of the state of Yugoslavia in 1994 and 1995 to gather information and deal with some of the more "enthusiastic" dealers of death to those whom they considered inferior, such as anyone not of their ethnic type. He'd seen hundreds of dead bodies piled atop one another like a stack of wood just waiting to fall over, men, women and children mixed in amongst dead animals and anything left of their lives before it had all been thrown in a mass grave and buried. He'd seen a thousand bodies strewn through the quiet woods outside towns taken and retaken by all sides, where everyone was dead or just gone, fleeing in a frantic attempt to escape the insanity, seen blood and guts strewn all over and everywhere. He'd seen bodies literally torn apart into pieces one could hold in the hand and thrown in all directions with no more than the dull "Whump" of a mine going off, seen people turn into no more than a red mist as several machine guns and then Mortars fired on them at once, shredding them into something so small no-one would ever find it...
He'd seen the face of /Hell/, but he'd /never/ seen anything as concentrated, as purely, simply evil, as this. Whoever, or rather /whatever/ had done this, had been enjoying themselves...
Aaron's face lost all colour on taking in the scene and his legs shook, but he'd seen a few things in his time and pulled himself together slowly but surely. Tom's face simply lost all expression, but otherwise the sight didn't seem to mean much to him. Webb's face curled in an expression of disgust, but that seemed to be the limit of the effect of the horror's in that place on him.
"For the record, Holy Freakin' Moses! Now, does anyone have any good reason we should not leave here so fast our feet hurt for the rest of our lives?" asked Webb, glancing around at Tom and Aaron. Tom noticed, for the briefest part of a split second, a very odd look in Webb's eye that he couldn't quite make out, but it was gone just as quickly. What was going on in Webb's head? He had to wonder.
"There might be a remote computer terminal in the storeroom, we need to check it out" rumbled Aaron, not looking in the least bit happy about his own suggestion. Webb rolled his eyes, then shook his head as though he'd known he'd hear something he didn't like if he just waited long enough.
"I know, that doesn't mean that I even possibly want to go in there for any reason other than what we need will be in there, but what does that really matter? We have to go in, no matter what. Guns ready, if it even twitches load it with lead. Aaron, no matter what keep an eye on the main door" said Webb, walking slowly forwards into the room. Aaron followed him, with Tom gritting his teeth and falling in behind the two of them...
They walked slowly through the room, staying close and ready, nervous trigger-fingers on a razor edge, jumpy with a sensation that made the hairs on the back of their necks prick up as though something was walking across their graves even though nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary beyond the obvious. Tom's instincts were screaming at him, everything that mattered to him as far as his own survival was concerned was telling him to run like Hell out of the room and not look back, ever...
He noticed that Aaron's legs were shaking, stepped forwards sharply and nudged the bigger man in the back. Aaron nearly pulled the trigger before his head snapped around and caught sight of Tom, his eyebrows shooting up. "What the Hell-?!" he muttered, so quietly that Webb didn't catch even a murmur, but Tom put a finger over his lips.
"Do /not/ freak out on us now, Aaron, this deranged freak show is bad enough without those left alive going psycho on us" hissed Tom, glaring at the taller man in a way which made clear that the situation simply was not going to occur, one way or another. Aaron stared at Tom for a long moment, then took a deep breath, visibly composed himself and nodded.
/Chink/
Tom's head snapped up as he glanced around at the strange sound-had only he heard it? The squeak of strained metal grating against more, a strange sound beneath that he couldn't quite pin down. Aaron and Webb didn't seem to have heard a thing, not altering their step in the least...
/Chr-skrink/
It took Tom a moment too long to realise that the sound had come from directly behind and to his left. Even as he began to turn, he caught the sick stench of death and rot far closer than it should have been, so close that it overwhelmed him briefly. He caught a glimpse of a dead woman sitting upright on her steel stretcher-a second before her teeth met in the meat of his upper arm as her hands reached for him...
Webb and Aaron span in unison as Tom suddenly howled in pain, guns raised-Aaron froze, too shocked to act at the sight added to total disbelief of the situation. A corpse had freed its upper body from the restraints on a stretcher, sat up and bitten Tom on the arm. Thick red blood splattered on the floor even as Tom lurched forwards and sideways away from the thing, trying to wrench his arm free while only doing more damage as his wound tore open. Aaron went into automatic and aimed his shotgun at the things face, ready to blow its head off and kill it dead all over again, his mind unable to take in what he was seeing-Webb shoved him, spoiling his aim.
Webb smoothly changed weapons in the blink of an eye, slinging his M-16 and drawing his Desert eagle, barely seeming even to aim before putting a large-calibre bullet through the corpses face. The shot took half the head off at point-blank range, whipping the things head backwards with such force that the neck audibly snapped even as Tom was abruptly freed. He stumbled, caught himself, started to shout at Webb-then stopped and broke into a dead sprint for the exit door after a single glance around him. Aaron followed his eyes and nearly lost his nerve once and for all, even as low moans started to sound all around-/all/ of the things were moving, twitching, grunting, struggling to get free-to feed, Aaron automatically thought. He briefly, insanely, wanted to shriek that he was living in a George Romero movie and it was the end of the world as we know it-then he stopped thinking altogether and took off after Tom at a turn of speed that would have killed his old track coach from shock alone, Webb so close on his heels that only Aaron's greater bulk stopped him from running right over the other man to get out even faster.
Things started to happen very fast after this.
The doors green "Open" light abruptly shifted to amber and the heavy steel door started to close right in front of them. Tom, the closest and fastest, already travelling at frightening speed, put on a burst of speed and threw himself into the gap between door and frame a split second before it would have shut them inside. He braced himself instantly, but the muscles all over his body contorted in a second as his face went purple with effort, blood streaming down his wounded arm. He couldn't hold it by himself and he knew it, but he didn't leave people behind.
Aaron arrived a moment later, skidded to a halt and wedged his arms against the doors closing pressure, forcing as much of his weight and brute strength against the mechanism as was physically possible. It didn't make the slightest bit of difference, the door was weighted to close against a tons worth of weight if he was any judge, it would have taken a truck to force it open, and he had no time to improvise.
Webb skidded in by sliding low, coming in under the bigger Aaron, rolled to his feet and rammed his shoulder against the door with an expression which made clear he wasn't moving until his shoulder cracked. His footing wasn't holding, he immediately noticed, his boots scraping on the steel floor as he gritted his teeth and strained every muscle. He'd known it wasn't enough before he even started, though, all they could do was buy time.
"AARON-Get the bloody /DOOR/!" roared Tom, his voice almost a bellow of pain as it sounded over the moans of the living dead and the continuing whir of the electric motors sealing the room. Webb nearly punched Aaron in the face in frustration when he seemed to fail to react, but Aaron glanced up in the nick of time.
"Do /WHAT/?! If I move this thing will shut you maniac-!" Aaron shouted back-Webb's hand shot up, grabbed Aaron's head and forced him to look into the room they were trying to escape abruptly. Aaron's eyes shot all the way open in terror...
The dead were rising, literally, the apparently actually unsecured bodies pulling free of the restraints slowly but surely. Bits and pieces of torn skin, flesh and muscle were falling to the floor everywhere, some trailing behind the rotting remains of what had once been human beings. Exposed organs were black with rot, hearts weren't beating, ribs, finger and leg bones were barely concealed behind thin tendrils of meat, cartilage and ropy muscle, pieces were simply missing-one Zombie had lost an arm but was stumbling around regardless, the torn-off extremity still twitching feebly in the restraints. Men, women and children were coming to kill him and-judging by the increasingly violent struggles and horrific growls coming from the not-human creatures ruined throats, the product of blood, rotten flesh and decaying lungs trying to make sound-it was only a matter of time until the animals were loose, too...
"OH JESUS! OH CRAP-!" screamed Aaron, wrenching free of the door so fast part of his uniform tore loose. He found a panel by the door in seconds, one built into the wall that needed to be unscrewed. No time. He pounded it frantically with his fists, beating it weirdly out of shape with merely a few massive blows, twisted it, wrenched at it-it came loose enough for him to see behind it. He glimpsed the insides and almost screamed in frustration.
"Hell! Hell Hell Hell! Goddammit all to /HELL/ twice over-! Tom, Webb, get off the door, were SCREWED! We need a computer specialist to get round this thing and I AM NOT ONE!" roared Aaron, standing up and grabbing Tom, literally wrenching him out of the closing doorways path just in time to prevent him from being crushed. Webb went over backwards, just avoiding getting caught by the door as it slammed closed himself, only to find himself staring straight up into a Zombies rotting face. He yelped, span around and up onto his knees and landed an uppercut with such force into the Zombies gut that it folded up around the blow and was thrown three feet backwards by the sheer power behind it, although the manoeuvre left bits of human body parts, internal and external, all over his hand, things he didn't want to think about...
"EVERYBODY /DOWN/!" roared Aaron, unslinging his automatic shotgun and levelling it even as he set it to fully automatic. Webb's eyes were as wide as saucers at the sight a second before he dived flat, Tom throwing himself flat a moment later, hands over his ears. It was a moment longer before Aaron opened up with the huge gun at point-blank range, screaming "DIE! DIE! DIE!" at the top of his lungs...
It sounded like the end of the world combined with the wrath of God. The devastating, roaring blast of the heavy shotgun going off at close quarters seemed to shake the world and threatened to punch in Webb's eardrums even as the massive pressure of the gun going off so close seemed to pick him up and repeatedly slam him against the floor.
Somehow glimpsing the scene through bright flashes of gunfire, hearing the boom of the big gun and catching bits of Aaron's almost hysterical howls in between shots as the huge man let off a stream of invectives, screaming like a crazy man, Tom and Webb glimpsed the worst sight in the world get even worse. Bits and pieces of human bodies, huge chunks and tiny shreds of flesh, fragments of bone, other parts, were blasted left and right, up and down all over the room, things flying all about as hot metal bullets sparked off of steel surfaces in all directions.
Limbs were torn off, heads exploded, chests were shredded, faces disappeared, whole bodies were physically wrenched off of their feet and thrown backwards over tables and into groups of others who were blasted backwards by the awful impact of the heavy shells slashing through and slaughtering everything in sight. Blood flew all over the room in sprays and whips torn straight from hideous wounds that erupted all over the Zombies bodies-but even so, not all of them fell as Aaron's first clip ran dry. Worse than that, some of those who had fallen started clawing their way back to their feet even with pieces of them and even entire limbs simply missing, while one, torn almost in half with guts trailing on the floor, unable to stand, kept trying to claw its way forwards until, with a dreadful finality, its battered and broken upper half simply tore loose of the shreds of flesh connecting it to its lower body, hands like claws dragging it forwards regardless.
"/VERY/ bloody clever, Aaron, want to kill us too while your at it?! This place has steel walls and doors, moron, you /DO NOT/ fire a weapon like that at that range in closed quarters like this! IDIOT!" shouted Tom, scrambling to his feet, his ears still ringing even as he made ready his AK-47.
"Catch you later, Aaron, but only if you maybe TRY and maintain fire discipline-?! Oh, the Hell with it! Storeroom! NOW!" shouted Webb, even as the first dog finally slipped its restraints and hit the floor with a scratch of sharp claw on steel, blood-red sick eyes staring unblinking at them, horribly evident in the devastating silence left by Aaron's barrage. Webb raised his M-16 and dropped the dog with a single three-round burst that stitched right across its head over the eyes, the three bullets shredding the things brain in a second.
Tom moved for the storeroom-paused and stared at Aaron, who wasn't moving except for a slight twitch of the lips. "Oh, what now you..." Tom muttered, feeling increasingly angry at the insane situation they were in that could have been avoided except for Webb's-he abruptly caught what Aaron was slowly repeating, over and over and over again.
"Their dead, their dead their dead their dead their dead-" Aaron was saying, over and over again. The big man wasn't in shock, Tom knew what to look for, he just couldn't cope with the situation at the moment, and they didn't have time for this...
Tom stepped in close and slammed a punch into Aaron's stomach so hard he hurt his hand, the impact leaving him feeling as though he'd punched rock. Aaron had the muscle to match his size and apparently worked out to make sure, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be hurt. He almost staggered, then stopped speaking to stare at Tom in genuine shock...
"/RUN/ man!" Tom bellowed into his face, then span and took his own advice, smacking Zombies out of the way with elbows, kicks, gun butt and even head butts as necessary as he ploughed through the recovering Zombie horde, Webb right beside him doing exactly the same, both men fighting like the fate of the world depended on their survival. Aaron took a split-second to think about it, then charged in with a roar, sweeping his arms left and right to clear a space, smashing Zombies over like bowling pins with his superior strength and bulk even before he laid about himself with his shotgun like a club, Zombies falling with every blow as vital parts were broken, crushed or ripped clean off.
It took them seconds to reach the storeroom without much real opposition, a moment after they were all inside Aaron, Tom and Webb had slammed the door, grabbed everything heavy within reach and rammed it against the door to jam it shut, using everything from a filing cabinet to piled books. It was a long minute after that before any of them even began to think of anything but fighting for their lives as though Demons were trying to drag them down into Hell...
Aaron leaned against the door to add his weight and muscle to keeping it shut, then closed his eyes, breathed in deeply-and almost gagged as he caught the indescribably awful stench coming closer, coming in increasing waves from the rotting bodies of the living dead. Tom ripped off his uniform sleeve and bandaged the bite wound in his arm using his teeth to hold one end of the rough bandage before tying it off. The wound continued to bleed freely, the loose blood streaking Tom's left arm, but the flow was mainly stemmed and he judged that he was no longer likely to pass out from loss of blood or drop anything he was carrying in his left hand. That, at least, was some small relief.
Webb checked his weapons and gear, double-checked them, then turned to look out the window. Zombies were pressed up against it and more were pressed up against them, dull thumps echoing as the Zombies struck the glass repeatedly in an effort to beak through and get at the warm flesh and blood the other side. Webb really did hope that the glass was shatterproof, since if it wasn't he wasn't going to live long enough for it to matter...
"Somebody please tell me that that did /not/ just happen?" said Tom, very quietly, so quietly that the two other men barely heard him over the moans of the living dead outside the glass window and steel door. Webb didn't bother saying a word, on the basis that some things just didn't require explanation in his opinion. Aaron, running on edge already, battle nerves leaving his temper and self-control frayed at best, had other ideas.
"If you want me to tell you that dead and rotting men, women and children as well as animals did not just rise from the dead to attack us, that a dead woman did not just take a bite out of your arm, that there are things that one can only call Zombies, the living /DEAD/ to you and me, not currently laying siege to us in a storeroom with only one entrance or exit in an underground complex lost under Iraq apparently run by the Devil-SORRY, but I /CAN'T/!" Aaron practically shouted, earning him an angry look from Webb and an irritated one from Tom. He didn't care, the situation they were in was already so insane that his going a bit mad seemed perfectly well warranted to him.
"The question was rhetorical, Aaron, so DO NOT go Postal on us just yet if you have the willpower to make a decision like that. Anyway, we have to move, so give me a minute" replied Tom, checking his gear and weapons. Aaron automatically did the same at the sight, slapping a fresh magazine into his shotgun a second after ejecting the first one, which he didn't bother to pick up as regulations stated one should if possible. None of them said a word.
Tom reached up, tapped his Headset to activate it to send/receive rather than just receive, looked out at the moaning horde of rotting, living dead just outside the window once again, then spoke.
"Reaper, this is Iceman. Are you out there somewhere? Come back" he called out.
/End of Chapter 5-Its started... Reviews please? All comments welcomed/