Been a while since last update, but a genuine thanks to everyone who's tolerated my sketchy release pattern for the past six chapters. Additional thanks to anyone that's picked up the story since then. The story's within a chapter or two of a conclusion, and I've a decent idea of how I'd like it to end. So without further ado, here's chapter six.
PFC Jared Wallace chewed a mouthful of 'wake-ups,' as the Marines had dubbed them, as he smashed an armored fist into the control panel of a malfunctioning door. The age-old repair method worked, and the door's maintenance failsafe forced it open. Wallace pushed onward, with the door having cut only a few seconds into his movement.
"McNeal, you got the rear?" Wallace asked, taking a two-handed grip of his Grinder once more. No reply came.
"McNeal, you need to stay sharp," Wallace looked around, noting that there was no one behind him. He stared into space a few moments, as if listening to a voice that only he could hear.
"Right, forgot. Left, departed, gone," he muttered aloud to himself, resuming his walk, "Unreliable under pressure, didn't shoot, fire, discharge weapon. Carrying corpse, body, cadaver…wouldn't leave it."
He paused, bloodshot eyes darting upward as a clamor sounded from the ventilation shaft overhead. With one smooth gesture he arced the Grinder upward, firing off a long burst that swept down the length of the duct. He was rewarded by a feral shriek, followed by a weak gurgle, then silence.
Wallace grunted as his HUD flashed, bringing the red ammo counter to his attention. His hand hovered over the spot where he ordinarily had a spare ammunition box, but found it empty. He briefly remembered having loaded it into the Grinder what seemed like a lifetime ago. He'd spent the better part of his other box tearing apart the armored brute that had opened passage from the mess hall.
He glanced along both lengths of the corridor, then stepped into an adjoining room. It was a crewman's quarters, from the look of it: a small, twelve by ten compartment with a bed, dresser, and desk. Taking care first to seal the door, Wallace swept his free hand across the desk, knocking off the assortment of data slates and hard files, then dropped his Grinder onto the newly-vacated surface.
Wallace removed his helmet. His ear-length hair was matted with sweat despite the suit's internal cooling system. He flicked off the lid from a bottle drawn from his waist pouches, pouring a few of the square pills into his hand before popping them into his mouth. The 'wake-ups' were stimulants designed to keep soldiers alert in prolonged combat situations or guard duty, but intended to be a step down from the adrenaline stims that their suit's autoinjectors could supply.
With a new mouthful of tablets, Wallace set to work on the Grinder. He disconnected the power lines, then the ammo box, and finally turned his attention to the most troublesome portion: the servo-arm.
The mechanical limb was meant to take the majority of the weight off his own arms, as well as compensate for the Grinder's formidable recoil, but it had been malfunctioning ever since a blow from one of the creatures clipped it. Now, it sparked periodically, and the joints were leaking the blue ichor that served as both a lubricant and a cooling agent. Wallace disconnected the weapon easily enough, but it was more difficult to detach the arm from its mounting on his chest.
Wallace tried unsuccessfully to force it off. The warped material proved too strong to break with anything but the creature's superhuman strength. He reached up to his left pectoral and unsheathed his combat knife. The blade was unlike the laser-blades that were becoming increasingly common in that it was pure metal, instead relying on its monomolecular edge.
Wallace shoved the tip of the knife underneath the servo-arm's moorings, working it back and forth until he heard a pop. With a deft twist, the arm clattered to the floor.
Next was his Jackhammer. Wallace unslung it from across his back, half-wondering where he'd gotten it. McNeal had had a Jackhammer, but…
The haze brought on by lack of rest (and the drugs that kept him moving in spite of it) caused the thought to drift away. Wallace didn't bother trying to reclaim it. The only sensations he attached to the shotgun's origins were pain and anger. It was easier to accept the good fortune of having a backup weapon besides his sidearm.
Fortunately for maintenance purposes, the Jackhammer shared the pulse rifle's hardiness comparable to a Kalashnikov, meaning Wallace had to do nothing save shaking off a few stray flecks of gore and slide in fresh shells to top off the drum cassette.
A noise caused him to jerk his head around, tracking the sound upward. Three fingers wrapped themselves around the slats of the wall-mounted vent, uselessly tugging against them as the creature attached to them slobbered on the other side. After a few seconds, the vent gave, spilling the creature onto the floor at Wallace's feet.
She couldn't have been much more than sixteen when she was turned. Her fingers had fused into three long claws, and her lips had long since been stripped away to expose her new fangs. Past the horrors of her mutation, Wallace was dimly reminded of the girl he'd shared his first time with.
With one calm movement, he raised and fired the Jackhammer, blasting her left arm off at the shoulder.
The creature howled, thrashing in an effort to regain its footing. A second echoing shot took off her right arm, this time just below the elbow. Wallace planted a booted foot atop her chest, pinning her in place despite her leg's spasms and snapping jaws. The Marine leaned over, cocking his head with curiosity.
The way he'd remembered it, they had both been happy. Nervous, to be sure, but when it was all said and done, happy. But like an afterimage superimposing itself over the sight that had created it, his recollection became clouded. He saw flashes of the girl from years ago, but she was crying, begging him to…stop? He was older, too, bigger and stronger than he'd been at her age.
He let the Jackhammer hang from its strap as he drew his knife again, his left hand pressing against her forehead and forcing the snapping head in place as the combat blade came to rest against her throat. Another afterimage, just as fleeting as the first, and another knife pressed against the sobbing girl. Wallace furrowed his brow, trying to remember properly even as he slashed across the neck so deeply that he scraped the spine.
Standing from the corpse, he wiped the knife clean on the nearby bed's sheets. Another sound came from the vent. He strained his ears, but he couldn't tell if it was the cry of his victim or the ravings of another creature.
"One way to find out," he murmured, grabbing his helmet. Leaving behind his Grinder and its bone-dry magazine, he grabbed ahold of the ruptured vent and pulled himself up, finding just enough room to squat or crawl inside.
He upended what remained of his wake-ups into his mouth, discarding the empty bottle. For a moment, he thought of a second bottle, one that treated something important, but the thought floated past unheeded. He slid his helmet over his head, letting it lock into place as the pneumatic seal took hold.
Wallace kept his Jackhammer slung, but drew his sidearm and kept his knife in his left hand. The countless hours he'd spent in the claustrophobic tunnels of Vietnam had been with nothing but a blade and a pistol, and the vents were wider and taller than the Vietcong tunnels had been.
Or were they? For a moment, he was watching another man crawl through those hellish tunnels of a nation he'd never known, but that moment passed as quickly as it came. With his pistol and dagger, he began his hunt.
Yes, that's what it was: a hunt. They relied on their foes remaining on the run, on the defensive. Their only strength was as hunters, stalking frightened prey. But Wallace would take that advantage away from them, hunt them and kill them with fury that they could not withstand.
The first lay dead in the quarters, nearly decapitated and partially dismembered.
The second he caught miraculously unaware, slamming it against the walls of the vent as he hewed it asunder with his blade.
The third roared when he found it eating the remains of a crewmember. Then it screamed until he finally hacked its head free of its neck.
After the fourth, Jared Wallace's fracturing memory simply lost count.
"Alright, here's the quick version," Sherman shouldered his Jackhammer, opening his free palm as a floating schematic of the Ishimura lit up above it, "We're here…" One point blipped on the schematic.
"…and we need to get to here." Another point, still a sizable distance away, blinked.
"You said that there were still undamaged shuttles, right?" Sherman looked over to Hark. The large crewman nodded.
"I know that the colony's evacuation brought in a bunch of extra ships. Mostly small shuttles, but more than large enough for us."
"Good," Sherman nodded, "We've got a few ways we can get to the launch bay. Which is the fastest still intact?" A few regions of the ship were glowing red, indicating either a catastrophic hull breech, or some other form of obstruction that they couldn't transverse.
"That, right there," Hark traced a finger along the flickering hologram, "Takes us through one of the mess halls. It's a straight shot through, and a few corridors away from the shuttle bay." Hark saw the three Marines share a look.
"Something I'm missing here?" he raised an eyebrow. Sherman shook his head.
"It's nothing. We just haven't had a great track record with mess halls so far."
Bass and Dean, meanwhile, held their positions looking down opposite ends of their corridor, pulse rifles at the ready. With Bass' concession of command to Sherman, he readily accepted sentry duty alongside his former subordinate. Sherman whistled to them, calling both back into the group.
"We heard it already," Bass saved Sherman the trouble of reiterating the plan. He felt a momentary pang of guilt as he looked at the ragtag team. Not a day ago, 3rd platoon had been over thirty men strong. Now, he had no reason to believe there were any left beside the three of them.
"Then let's move." Sherman took point once again, and the corridors passed them by with eerie silence. They passed only one body, a man with his throat cut and a bloody boxcutter in his limp grasp.
The silence was deafening. Their footsteps echoed like cannon fire, their breath wheezed like bellows. More than once, they froze mid-stride, weapons all aiming in different directions as a new and disturbing noise arose, but nothing ever came of it. It only served to push their fingers closer to the triggers and drive their nerves up that much higher.
A downward ramp led to the mess hall door. Sherman heard a sloshing, and raised a closed fist. The group froze, and Sherman realized that his own feet were the source of the sound. He glanced down with a growing sense of dread, only for his fears to be confirmed.
"Shit," he cursed. By the time the ramp would have reached the floor, there was water that would reach up to their waists should they enter it. The others saw the source of Sherman's grief, each cursing their luck in his own way.
"Are we going to-" Dean began, but Sherman cut him off.
"I don't know, damnit," he snapped, "Let me…let me think."
"I'm not questioning your command, but we don't have much time to spare," Bass spoke up, "Viktor, you said this was the best route?" Hark shrugged.
"It was, but I didn't guess it'd be flooded."
"We'd need to take it anyway," Sherman finally said, "We were lucky enough not to run into trouble on our way here. I won't have us backtrack and take additional risk." He glanced back at the squad, grinning behind his helmet.
"Unless you ladies are worried about getting your feet wet, that is." Dean barely held back a laugh. Hark chuckled, shaking his head. Bass smiled, both in mirth and satisfaction the he'd chosen the right man for command.
"Last one to the other side buys a round once we're off this hellheap," Sherman lifted his Jackhammer enough to ensure that it was above the waterline, then walked into the murky water. The others followed, and soon they were pushing through the waist-high water. The door to the mess hall was miraculously still working, opening and allowing them inside.
Most of the lights in the mess were long since burned out. The Marines activated their helmet lamps, while Hark lit a clip-on light attached to the breast of his shirt. The four beams swept across the brown water, illuminating the occasional plastic tray or table. The mess hall itself was almost thirty meters across, designed to accommodate hundreds of people.
"Wait," Bass placed a hand on Sherman's shoulder, speaking slowly, "Hold perfectly still." He turned his head to Dean and Hark, indicating that they do the same. The men stopped, letting the ripples around them slosh and settle.
"What's wrong, gunny?" Sherman whispered, ignoring his command in favor of Bass' soldier sense. Bass didn't reply at first, returning his left hand to the tri-barrel of his pulse rifle and scanning the water with slow and deliberate sweeps.
"Something…" he murmured, dedicating little effort to the words, "There's something…"
"There's something in the water."
Dean was struck first. A fleshy whip lashed from the murky water and coiled around his neck, all over the course of an instant. He barely had time to gasp before being violently pulled beneath the surface.
Hark reacted first, swinging his contact beam toward the churning waters. The weapon charged, but Bass shunted it aside, sending the beam firing off into the ceiling.
"You'll hit Dean, idiot!" Bass shouted, tossing his pulse rifle to Sherman and pulling out his combat knife, "Just cover me!" With another word, he plunged into the water where the surface was the most disturbed.
Sherman looked in the direction they'd come from not a moment too soon. Several clusters of ripples were moving quickly across the water's surface, betraying whatever was swimming below it. Hark saw them, too, and brought his weapon to bear against this new threat.
After a moment of charging, the C99 howled, belching a lance of white-hot energy. It carved a shallow furrow across the water before it struck, flashing water to vapor. Whatever was beneath the surface was blasted to pieces.
But that was only the first of several. Sherman trained his newly acquired pulse rifle on another of the ripples, opening fire in the same moment Hark fired a second time. The assault rifle cut a swath through the water, darkening it further with blood. Sherman shifted the stream of fire to a second target, just as it broke the surface with a leap.
Like all its cohorts, the creature was hideous, but not so much that it could not be identified as having once been human. Its jaw hung low, as if it had unhinged during its mutation, and the inside of its mouth was lined with fangs. The most prominent feature was its tail, of the same variety that had ensnared Dean: it had no legs, but from below its waist was a flexible tail made from its lengthened spine and what appeared to be intestines. It ended in a vicious blade, which Sherman had no intention of letting near him.
Its leap did not last long. Sherman had already been tracking it, and revealing itself simply made it easier for the Marine to see where to shoot it. One arm was torn off at the shoulder, and its head burst under the firestorm. It fell back into the water, floating on the surface with a few final twitches.
Another managed to lurk around Hark's killzone, leaping from the water when it was a few short meters away. The crewman brought up his contact beam out of reflex, squeezing the trigger as the creature's snarling mouth was practically touching the muzzle. The ensuing beam pulverized its head, tearing through its torso and leaving it in two nearly symmetrical pieces.
Sherman caught more movement out of the corner of his eye, but not that of more hostiles. Bass finally surfaced, and Dean along with him, the younger Marine's arm slung over Bass' shoulder. Bloody water cascaded off their armor, and Sherman feared that not all of it was from the slain creature that bobbed to the surface alongside them.
"Almost there, Dean-o," Bass drew his sidearm from its holster, firing off several shots one-handed as he began pushing toward the exit, "Just stay with me."
Sherman fired off another burst, then tapped Hark's back. The crewman got the message, and both began pushing through the water once again, firing all the while. More corpses floated to the surface, either shredded by Sherman's assault fire or dismembered by one of Hark's withering blasts.
The pulse rifle's ammo counter turned red. Sherman cursed, slinging it and switching to his Jackhammer with practiced smoothness. Without the rifle's range, the creatures began to close in. Hark's contact beam may have been more powerful shot-for-shot, but its rate of fire couldn't hope to compare to the assault rifle's. Undaunted, Sherman continued to fire, the scattergun making short work of anything that tried to close the distance.
Bass reached the door first. He punched the blue 'open' indicator, and the thick door ground open painstakingly slowly. Hark followed second, and Sherman took up the rear. One creature made a final bid to make it through the door, but received a Jackhammer shell to its face for the attempt. Finally, with a screech of tortured metal, the door thudded shut.
As soon as they had climbed the stairs out of the water, Bass wasted no time in tending to Dean. The young Marine was in poor shape, to say the least. The creature had done a number on his armor while they were under water, scouring it with countless gashes, some of which had cut through to skin.
The worst injury, however, was to his left arm. It had been severed at the wrist, and even without medical training, Bass could tell it would be fatal without proper treatment. Bass removed Dean's helmet. He was deathly pale, and his vision was unfocused. Bass started to authorize a combination of painkillers and adrenaline to stave off shock, but Hark stopped him.
"Hang on," he aimed his contact beam down the corridor away from the others and fired off a charged shot. With the bolt spent, he gritted his teeth and pressed the barrel to Dean's wrist. With a hiss and the sickening smell of burnt flesh, the bleeding subsided. Dean furrowed his brow, only feeling discomfort through his delirium.
"That woulda hurt like a bastard if you'd shot him up first," Hark smiled grimly, "Go ahead." Bass did so, clearing the haze across Dean's eyes, but not curing him of the results of his bloodloss.
"Gunny, I…" he groaned, blinking as his pupils dilated, "My hand hurts, gunny. Is it busted bad?"
"You're fine, private," Bass's faceplate retracted into his helmet, "One ride on a medivac, and you'll be sipping drinks on the outer rim for three months. You're one lucky sonuvabitch, know that?"
"You know it, gunny," Dean smiled weakly, then frowned, "I think I lost my gun. I'm sorry, gunny."
"Don't sweat it, Dean-o," Sherman crouched next to his comrade, "You pulled more than your weight. Just stay awake, alright? That's your job."
"That an order, sir?"
"Damn straight," Sherman nodded, handing the empty pulse rifle back to Bass, "And don't tell me you came this far for an insubordination charge."
"Sir yessir," Dean slurred, abruptly grimacing as the adrenaline brought him to greater awareness of his condition.
"Can you stand?" Hark glanced down for a moment before resuming his lookout. Dean first tried to support himself on his wounded arm, but Bass hastily shifted his weight to his right arm, bracing him as he stood shakily to his feet.
"You can't join the Corp if you can't even walk, sir," Dean smirked, reaching for his helmet, only to see that the hand he was reaching with wasn't there. Hark winced. He'd lost his own arm in the midst of combat. He didn't have time to feel shock until much later, but Dean was making the horrible discovery immediately after the fact.
"Huh," he raised his eyebrows, turning the stump over a few times, "That's rotten luck," he looked up at Sherman and nodded toward the Marine's two missing fingers, "Sorry to outdo you, chief."
After a long moment, Sherman started laughing. It started as a chuckle, but quickly built to full-blown guffaws. It spread infectiously to Bass and Hark, while Dean managed to crack a wide smile.
In spite of everything, they laughed. In spite of Dean's lost hand, in spite of Sherman's missing fingers, in spite of the echoing voice in Bass' head, and in spite of the wound on Hark's leg, they laughed. The laughed at the improbability of the whole situation, at the horrors they had been exposed to, at the friends they had all lost. They laughed because they had fallen so deeply into despair, they had come through the other side to hope. If Dean, barely more than a boy and the least experienced of 3rd platoon, could joke at his own expense, then what right had Bass, who could not silence a dead man's voice? What right had Sherman, a fellow veteran of Tanith and a reluctant leader? What right had Hark, an aging militia veteran who traded his youth and his right arm for a weak pension?
For nearly a full minute, they could do nothing but laugh. And had the creatures that infested the Ishimura been capable of it, they would have trembled in fear, for nothing is more unnerving than the laughter of men who were neck-deep in hell.
Just as a side-note on Wallace: if you caught the reference to a second set of pills...well, yeah. The Marker plays hell with perfectly sane men, and Wallace's preexisting condition is making his mind break apart more quickly and more violently. Consider anything he remembers to be potentially unreliable. I think I established that fairly well, but I'm playing it safe after I noted how Clarke's cameo as the Reaper was rather difficult to decipher.
Otherwise, the usual policy stands. Anonymous reviews are welcome, though registered users make it easier for me to answer questions if there are any.