A/N: And now…for the final chapter of this kind of exciting story! Well, I hope you all have enjoyed the ride. It almost saddens me that I'm finishing Charlie Company after nearly a year of working on it.

Zichalo: Well, I try, Zichalo. Last year, I barely updated, but all these reviews have really kickstarted my creativity.

WilltheWatcher: Well, I'm glad you've enjoyed it!

NoneAvailible: It's finished…all that's left is the Epilogue.

Dairokkan: That would take all the fun out of this, wouldn't it?

Lecter42: Heh…I've been in overdrive lately. A sniper rifle could operate with half the barrel, just not as accurately.

Warior: Like gravy…mmm…gravy…

THE MARINES OF CHARLIE COMPANY

CHAPTER 14:

Escape!

Cassandra couldn't believe it; Alpha Base was being overrun by hundreds, if not thousands, of horrible monsters. The M6D kicked against the palm of her hand as she emptied the clip at the wall that seemed to be moving toward her. They consisted mainly of Covenant looking creatures, but a few human-like forms were mixed into the snarling, writhing mass. The pistol ran dry with an aggravating click click click, and Cassandra frantically went about reloading the small weapon as the current clip was ejected and clattered on the ground. She slapped the next clip in and chambered a round, but it all seemed too slow; they were nearly on top of her now. Cassandra backpedaled and fired wildly; she didn't need to aim because the things were clustered so closely together that every round would hit something.

The bullets only seemed to be a nuisance to the sickly green creatures and they stumbled, leapt and crawled toward her as the clip ran dry again. Cassandra ejected it, fished around in her pocket, located her final clip of ammo and slipped it in to the receiver. A round was chambered and aim was taken, but it was unneeded; from out of nowhere, a plasma grenade arced through the air and landed in the midst of the creatures. It detonated with a loud bang and disintegrated the creatures closest to it and severely burned the others.

Worried, Cassandra turned on her heel and searched, but found nothing until she looked down. A Grunt stood behind her, armed with a Plasma Rifle it had probably taken off of a fallen Elite. The weapon looked strange in the Grunt's diminutive hands and Cassandra nearly laughed. It turned its head slightly to one side, like a confused dog trying to figure out what a strange object or behavior was or meant. Cassandra sighed and knelt down next to it.

"Can you speak English?" she asked.

"Me speak little English. Me understand lots, but no speak well."

She nodded. "Okay, little guy, you're going to come with me. We're getting out of here. My name is Cassandra, but you can call my Sally if it's easier."

"Me Kizkit. We go fast."

Cassandra nodded and observed their surroundings, trying to get her bearings; they were around the improvised barracks, which meant the landing platforms that had been set up were not too far away. Altogether, Cassandra was fairly inexperienced at close quarters combat on the ground or infantry fighting as a whole; she was a pilot and belonged in the skies. Despite this, she crept along, pistol clutched tightly in her white-knuckled near death grip as the little Grunt followed behind her and whimpered softly as they neared the door that would lead them through a long corridor that was probably crawling with Flood.

The pilot swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, pressed her back against the wall and inhaled deeply several times to calm herself. After a moment of hesitation, she stepped toward the door and brought her pistol to bear, but found nothing on the other side; no Flood, no blood, no bodies…nothing. Cassandra nearly sighed in relief, but began rationalizing at the same time. The Flood had been in every hall and every corridor before this one, so why was this particular corridor empty? She shoved those thoughts aside and proceeded extremely cautiously across the threshold and into the hall and watched every direction possible for any signs of movement. Nothing.

Cassandra turned left at the end of the corridor and continued on toward the hangar; she could now hear the sounds of a battle raging from not too far away. She pressed onward with renewed hope of finding someone, anyone or anything, that wasn't one of the horrendous creatures that swarmed everywhere. Cassandra made a sprint for the door that was straight ahead of her and burst through, right into the thick of a huge battle; directly ahead of her were dozens of Flood combat forms and beyond them was a mishmash of beings, both Humans and Covenant. Before she could even react, Cassandra heard the fizz and felt the heat of a Plasma Grenade rush past her head and saw it land in the midst of the Flood, who seemed not to notice; they were too busy firing at the survivors that had made a makeshift barricade out of supply crates, crashed Warthogs and other various pieces of equipment.

The grenade detonated with a resounding explosion and disintegrated the combat forms closest to it and severely burned the others. Cassandra was dumbstruck by the sights around her; blood, bodies, weapons, Flood…it was all so overwhelming that her mind just shut down; she couldn't move despite the fact that Cassandra could hear the little Grunt yapping in her ear and tugging on her shirt, telling her to move. Another few precious moments passed before Cassandra's constant mental shouting at herself to move and Kizkit's yapping finally snapped her out of her daze and got her muscles to work again. Cassandra and Kizkit made a mad dash for the barricade, firing wildly and blindly at the Flood that had survived the blast, and more were now coming through the door she had just exited and were gaining rapidly. Kizkit unhooked another grenade from his belt, activated it and tossed it behind them and caused the Flood to think twice about charging them; it wasn't much, but the Grunt had bought them the time they needed.

Cassandra leapt over the barricade without too much trouble, given her athletic build, but Kizkit couldn't make it; his stubby arms and legs were too clumsy to climb over the crates. Frightened, the little Grunt began to yap loudly, still trying to paw it's way over a to joining it's comrades. Cassandra and another Marine reached across and hoisted the little Grunt over, who immediately latched onto her leg.

"Me thought you leave me behind!" he bawled.

The pilot grinned and turned her head toward the Marine that had aided her with Kizkit.

"Thank you, Corporal."

"Not a problem, ma'am." He replied, his voice thick with a southern accent. The Corporal offered her a shotgun that he had slung over his shoulder. "You know how to use one of these?"

She nodded and took the shotgun gratefully and the majority of the shotgun shells the soldier had on him; the Marine had an MA5B and more ammo than he could ever need, he'd said. Cassandra watched the Marine head farther down the barricade to reinforce a weakened position. From what Cassandra could tell, there were five or six dozen survivors and four times that many flood. The booming sounds of shotguns and assault rifles mixed and muddled with the strange sound of plasma rifles and the like; for the first time, both types of weapons were pointed at a common enemy.

David let loose a cry as he brought the butt of the M90 down into the fleshy chest of a combat form. Presently, the small band of troopers was fighting through the mess hall. It was full to the brim with Combat Forms and Infection Forms, and Yaegar had already gone down. Fyodr was wounded badly and Franklin was covering him with his shotgun. David was back-to-back with 'Takamee, fending off a massive wave of attackers. A combat form that had just leapt into the air was torn apart with one simple squeeze of the M90's trigger. It landed at David's feet and writhed there before all life left it.

Once they had been beaten back far enough, David unstrapped his fourth and final grenade, primed it and lobbed it into their midst and blew most of them to whatever hell they'd crawled from. Whatever was left was quickly disposed of by the Elites in the room, and David moved to check on his squadmates. Fyodr was barely alive; several wounds in his chest were bleeding profusely and a trio of scars ran along the side of his face. David knelt next to him on the blood stained floor.

"Hey, buddy." David said quietly.

Fyodr coughed raspily and grinned. "Looks like…this is it, Comrade."

"Yeah…it does."

"Here," Fyodr began as he offered his tags up to David, "take them…leave me here. I'm no good to you now, Sergeant."

Carson frowned and took the tags. "I'm not leaving you behind, whether you like it or not. Franklin, gimme a hand."

The young private nodded and took Fyodr by the shoulders, stood him up, and carried the older Marine on his back. David stood, clenching the tags in his hand angrily, and made his way to the front of the group. He stuffed them in his pocket with the rest of his now 'collection' and stalked closer to the door that led toward the barracks, foregoing the M90 in favor of his energy sword. The door opened as it sensed his presence and the sword activated with a sharp crackle. He was greeted on the other side by a rather unhappy Combat Form. Before it realized it was there, however, he cleaved it in half with the Energy Sword and stalked across the door, repeating the process on any that came near him.

Slightly stunned, the surviving Marine and four Elites followed behind, carefully watching for anything that David may have missed; Franklin noticed that it wasn't much and also realized he was fairly defenseless while carrying his dying comrade on his back. Unphased, he continued onward with his comrades and tried to stay as close as he could. Up ahead, David had disemboweled another Combat form and stalked through the door directly ahead of them; combat was ringing loudly just behind it. A grin spread across his lips as he neared the door and tightened his grip on the energy sword that hummed softly in his right hand. Fighting meant survivors, and survivors meant there was still a chance to find Cassandra and get her out of this hellhole.

David stepped within range of the doors sensors and heard the gears beginning to click, whirr and hum softly…but nothing happened; the door had been damaged by some sort of explosive. He kicked the door in a frustrated manner…and the door still wouldn't budge. David began to feel defeated, but realized he had the universe's most powerful natural weapon at his disposal; pure, unbridled plasma energy focused to it's most perfect state…and it was right there in his hand. He brought the sword down diagonally from the top right corner of the door all the way down to the floor opposite that corner in one smooth motion. For a second, nothing happened. Then, with a simple nudge, the door fell outward with a resounding 'clang' that seemed to have caught the attention of everyone and everything on the other side.

Without hesitation or a second thought, David charged headlong into the massive horde in front of him, slicing, whirling and just plain cutting his way through, the Elites and Franklin right behind him. The Flood were apparently confuse by this new occurance and didn't seem to know which way to attack; there were enemies to the front and now to the rear. David plunged the humming blade into the chest cavity of one Combat Form, yanked his arm sideways and brought it down on another, cleanly bisecting it. Truthfully, David didn't know where this knowledge of CQC (Close Quarters Combat) had come from; he'd never handled a blade in his life, yet this came naturally to him. David realized this upon lopping the head off of one Combat Form, then jamming the blade right through the chest of another.

David ducked under a rather powerful swipe of a combat form, rolled to the side and swept upward with the blade, bisecting yet another Flood, but then realized the worst; the energy sword had run out of power and fizzled out. He clipped the cylinder back onto his belt and unslung the M90 from across his back. David pumped it once to chamber a round, dropped to one knee and fired as Franklin made his way through the fray with the wounded Fyodr across his back. David backpedaled and kept firing in an attempt to cover the pair as they neared the makeshift barricade and sidestepped another swipe from a combat form. He shoved the barrel of the shotgun flat up against the Combat Form's side and squeezed the trigger. The force of the blast was so powerful that it flung the 'body' a good fifteen feet before it tumbled to the ground with most of it's torso missing.

'Takamee and his Elites were over the barricade with Franklin and Fyodr before David even turned around. He sprinted over to the barricade, planted his hand on a crate and vaulted over with relative ease and was immediately greeted with a near-suffocating hug of female origin. David looked down and saw Cassandra smiling up at him.

"Thank God you're here, David. When we lost contact with the Captain…"

"Yeah…I know. Look, we can talk about this later; right now, I just want to survive."

Cassandra nodded and worked her way back to her original position. Pelicans were beginning to arrive to evacuate the survivors; all thirty five of them. The officer in command, a Lieutenant by the name of Jackson, gave the order to evacuate the wounded and medical officers that were left first. That was logical, given their current situation, and carried out immediately. David helped hoist the last of the wounded men, a female with a bad chest wound, up into the rear of the Pelican. Only one other person, a medic, was able to squeeze inside the cramped compartment; the rest was filled with wounded men and women. Carson returned to the barricade and unslung his shotgun as another wave of Flood approached.

"Stay calm!" he shouted. "Pick your targets! Shotguns, hold your fire until they're within range! Conserve your ammo; we don't know how long we're gonna be here."

Everyone seemed to agree with him (at least to some extent, anyway) and waited until the Flood were within effective killing range before they opened fire. Assault Rifles and Plasma Rifles erupted on both sides of him, spewing hot lead and sheer energy into the horde of pale yellow-green that was rapidly approaching them. Grenades thundered as they detonated and scattered dozens of the creatures at a time in every direction, sending some slamming into the walls and ceiling and some into others, causing massive pileups which made for even easier targets. Infection forms popped by the dozen as they were either crushed by their falling counterparts or torn apart by hostile fire. David set his sights on what appeared to be leading the charge; an Elite Combat Form that was wielding an Energy Sword and making a bee line straight for him. It snarled and leapt into the air with a howl that was cut as both legs and part of the torso were torn away by his M90. The creature landed well short of the barricade and was promptly trampled by it's charging comrades.

"Shotguns, open fire!" David shouted.

On cue, dozens of deafening booms from shotguns echoed all around him, tearing arms and legs and blowing torsos apart. A marine on David's left flung a frag grenade into the midst of the Flood, who immediately began to scatter. Fourteen or fifteen of them were caught into the blast and flung in all directions. One, however, made it through and leapt into the air straight toward David, who was in the middle of reloading the shotgun. By the time he took notice, it was too late; the creature was coming down on him and he barely had enough time to pump the shotgun before he felt the thing's crushing weight on his chest. David grimaced and grunted as combination of the creature's weight combined with his own slammed into the ground. His shotgun slid out of his unclenched hand and across the floor, just out of arm's reach. Typical.

The Combat Form made a swipe at David's head, but he managed to block the blow with his arm and cried out as the sharp tentacles cut through his uniform and into the flesh that lay underneath. It snarled viciously and raised it's right arm high above it's head, but suddenly began to convulse violently. Smoke rose from it's back and it collapsed, revealing one very unhappy looking Elite standing with two plasma rifles gripped tightly in it's claws. David soon recognized this Elite as 'Takamee and nodded his thanks, then found his shotgun and resumed his position at the line. The battle continued for another little while before another Pelican came in and picked up the second batch of troops, leaving a dozen or so combined Elites, Marines and Grunts to hold their own until a final Pelican could arrive.

David had since bandaged the wound on his forearm and was standing at the head of the barricade with the Lieutenant. Hundreds of Combat Forms lay stretched out, in pieces or in piles atop each other.

"If another attack like that comes…I don't think we stand a chance." Jackson had commented glumly.

"Oh, come on, El-Tee." David replied, "It won't be long before the next Pelican gets here. We'll be fine; you'll see."

David knew that low morale, especially among officers, could lead to doom for the entire unit; that had been proven both in his personal past engagements and engagements throughout history, on Earth and otherwise. If the men who were supposed to lead suffered a drop in morale, that would crush what little the men they were leading had left; everyone would lose the will to fight and just accept the 'inevitable'. That was something that Sergeant Carson was determined not to allow to happen.

"Lieutenant, we should close in the barricade; we're stretched too thin with the troops we've got left."

"Yes…yes, you're right. Sergeant, get everyone closed in; I want this barricade cut in fourth. Only enough room for us to move freely and have the Pelican land."

"Sir, yes sir!" David replied with a sharp salute before doing an about face and shouting the aforementioned orders.

He then moved and began to shuffle crates, supplies and help drag wrecked vehicles in position. Even though his physical body was on task, his mind was elsewhere; why were the Flood not attacking them? They were vulnerable, not only because of their numbers but their actions, too; they were all working hastily to prepare the barricade for another attack, so it would have been easy to catch the survivors off guard and easily overwhelm them…and, still, nothing came. That realization had apparently struck most of the surviving fighters, including Cassandra, 'Takamee and his team. Everyone began to move faster and the barricade was quickly finished in the proper fashion. All that was left to do after that was wait.

David then had a chance to observe those around him; all looked tired, haggard and like they'd seen more ghosts than Scooby-Doo in a haunted house. Most were covered in blood or wearing tattered uniforms…or both. Cassandra was talking to a pair of young Marines, both of whom were in the worst state out of any of them. One had a gash along the side of his face that had stopped bleeding, but only recently; he refused to leave aboard either the first or second Pelican because he wanted to stay behind and help as long as he could. His friend was in better shape, but only by a little; her uniform was cut to ribbons and little scratches and bruises lined her arms. One of her pants legs was missing below the knee and the reason why was obvious; a bandage wound around her calf up to her knee and was stained a dark crimson.

The marine turned away and faced toward the doorway that the Flood persistently poured through. He leaned on a crate in front of him and allowed the shotgun to hand loosely from his left hand at his side. The past week's events came to him almost at once, from the initial landing upon Halo to the first encounter with the Forerunners and now to yesterday…he shuddered visibly and rubbed his face at the memories; images of his friends would be burned into his mind for the rest of his life. A mental scar that would forever remind him of the days he spent in this hellish place fighting for not only his life, but for the lives of everyone around him. Just as David felt the tears welling up in his eyes, the radio he had on his waist clicked on.

"This is Bravo-Two-Six-Six to Alpha Base! Is anybody in there receiving me? Over."

"Roger that, Bravo-Two-Six-Six. This is Sergeant David Carson; I've got survivors here and we need immediate extraction. Over." David heard the pilot sigh in relief.

"Thank God. I thought I was coming back here for nothing. Okay, Sergeant, I'm in the pipe five-by-five. ETA, three minutes. Bravo-Two-Six-Six over and out."

David grinned and clicked the radio off.

"Hey, El-Tee! Extraction's coming in three minutes!" David called. Several heads perked up from where they were, and whoops of joy erupted from the six or seven Marines that were with David; they weren't being left behind after all. However, the nagging feeling that the Flood were up to something still persisted in the back of his mind. That feeling was realized as the Pelican touched down.

In a flash, hundreds of Combat Forms poured through the doorway David had used to enter the improvised hangar and were making a mad dash for the Pelican. 'So this was their plan all along.' He realized bitterly.

"Get aboard the Pelican! Now!" he shouted to his comrades, none of whom needed be told twice.

Everyone scrambled for the ship and clambered aboard at a frantic pace spurred on by fear. David, who was the closest to the door and front of the barricade, was walking backward and firing the shotgun madly into the Flood to try and buy the others some time to escape. However, the shotgun clicked dry far too quickly, and he dropped the spent and useless weapon to the ground. He turned on his heel and sprinted as quickly as he could the mere thirty feet to the waiting drop ship, gripped a hand hold and began to hoist himself aboard when a cry of 'Behind you!' came from inside the hold. David turned in time to see an Infection form latch onto his chest as the Pelican ascended. He could feel the creature burrowing into his chest cavity and cried out in agony. However, it suddenly stopped and David blacked out…