...Unexpected Guests
Justin quickly ran inside while Bill and Ken took their places on the igloo's Southern face. Justin glanced over the shoulder before running further in, the shotgun held tightly in his grasp. He cleared the atrium then slowed to a walk. Before entering darkness, he confirmed that the other two would be hidden from the Northward attackers. His grip tightened along with a hard look to the heater room ahead. There in total darkness was the vent pipe. He waited for his sights to adjust. The outward steel grate had been mangled beyond repair by the creatures that were somewhere below, perfectly silent and patient. The improvised barricade was still wedged inward, but it was now to be undone. He had prepared himself for the worst of consequences, then with one swift jab of the butstock he dislodged the heater unit free of the gaping hole. Deep inside, from down under some place where the vent pipe descended to, he heard a swift clamour of movement, then a clack!
A flutter of adrenaline originated from somewhere in the pit of his stomach and his body exploded with speed.
On his way out of the heater room, Justin grabbed hold of the door and slammed it shut with running momentum alone. He sacrificed not a fraction of a stride as he stormed toward the entrance.
The rough, rank air of Traxus IX reached his nostrils as he emerged, and he was somehow thankful he got the pleasure of its odor once again. He glanced to the North. He felt he couldn't have been seen at this distance, then took his place with Bill and Ken further back. A brief moment went by as Justin regained his center, and he peered around the corner of the igloo's Southernmost tip, bringing the binoculars back for a final assessment: on the horizon were four Mongooses. Two of them were doubly occupied, a total of six riders. Six to four—and these riders were undoubtedly better supplied.
Surely outmatched, just as Ken predicted. At fifteen-hundred meters and closing, Justin could make out a variety of firearms sheathed inside holsters mounted to their vehicle frames. They approached at full throttle, Justin knew the sound of a wide-open manifold.
Justin, Bill and Ken each jockeyed for a view around the igloo.
"This'll either work well, or we'll die fighting." Ken surmised as he gauged their numbers.
"It has to work." was Justin' only reply.
"Why so sure?" Ken asked, reaching for the binoculars.
Justin handed them over. "It's fucking idiot-proof."
"Overly simple, that's for sure. We're putting a lot of faith in those creatures showing up again. And their timing has to be spot-on."
"True, but they're hungry. This is just an ordinary bait and hook." Justin smiled.
Ken grunted as a sign of approval in the leader, or his faith in their leader, then returned the binoculars. He glanced towards Chris, who remained on the Mongoose in the open, ruminating over his practiced routine again and again as the enemies sped ever closer to the igloo. Ken couldn't be sure, but he felt as though Chris' determination to live would certainly outweigh his own fear for the moment, but his hands were shaking. For now, he saw Chris tightly wrap them tightly around the handle bar.
The incoming vehicles were now fully audible, echoes of high-pitched exhausts registering about the barren lands. The combined dissonance of noise and dust emanating from the Mongoose quartet gradually became louder and clearer until they were only a Gravball field's distance—Chris' point of no return. A prisoner to fate.
Justin and the others crouched lower and slowly withdrew out of sight.
Chris sat perfectly still as they approached, closer and closer. He donned a helmet and flipped down the tinted visor to conceal his frightened eyes. "I can do this." he muttered.
He could now make out the whites of their eyes.
They finally pulled up to the igloo on a hot vector. They didn't engage any brakes until just shy of the entrance, each of them skidding to a brisk halt.
Four of them dismounted, leaving engines idling. A pair of them remained behind, standing at pillion. The leader of this pack strolled to Chris, removing a pair of mirrored, full-faced sunglasses as he neared. He was very big and very tall, even by grown-up standards. Chris could not have mistaken this man for any other; it was the one Sergei called 'Paulie'. It was the same thug, the same massive-framed ogre that attacked him a fortnight ago with the crippled, old man. Chris swallowed hard, thankful for the fact that it didn't show through his thick parka. He had a vague idea of the strength that a man this size possessed, but the mere sight of him on approach was blood-curdling.
Paulie placed one hand on Chris' handlebars, steadying his colossal weight on them. "I know you." he said in a high-pitched voice.
Chris was taken aback, almost losing sight of the plan Justin set forth. If Chris had no eyesight, he would've thought this giant was a young boy merely by the sound. Unbeknownst to Chris was the fact that his unusually soprano tone was resultant of consuming too many anabolic pharmaceuticals. Steroids, either injected or consumed metabolically had profound effects in nearly all physiological traits.
Paulie smiled, showing a slight amount of rotten-yellow teeth. He bent down and practically became nose to nose with Chris, revealing a close-up look of his puke-yellow scleras.
Over the years of steroid abuse, Paulie's liver slowly leaked bile into the rest of his body so much that it stained the very whites of his eyes. The combination of this, his freakishly high-pitched voice and his plastic-textured skin was enough to revolt even the creatures down below, Chris assumed.
"You're the kid from that one night."
Chris recoiled his hands and didn't answer. There was nothing he could say. He could only stick to the plan.
Paulie studied him up and down while licking his lips, didn't even try to hide what perversion emanated from his mind. He then inched closer and placed his hands on Chris' helmet, removing it slowly, revealing Chris' own eyes. Paulie tossed the helmet to the ground carelessly. Next, he ran a gargantuan paw through Chris' hair and slowly caressed it downward to the side of his tender neck, exposing an even wider, more perverted smile across his face.
"Damnit!" Chris screamed "Why does everyone touch my head? Get the fuck off me!"
"Well, you do have very nice hair. I remember when I was a boy your age. I had hair just as nice as yours, but this place sort of wears on you after a bit of time. I didn't catch you going somewhere, did I?"
"Yes." Chris managed to say. He wasn't sure at this point whether to run or cry or just hit the man as hard as he could. Every square inch of him was aggravated, his skin crawling, but any of his desired reactions would only worsen the current predicament, surely ruin the plan. "We were just about to head to the factory."
Paulie instantly withdrew his hand. Suddenly, his smile disappeared. "Don't think so. Not today. Where is your man, Reid?"
Chris pointed the way into the igloo like he had practiced, putting on the most sincere face he could. "Through there. In the heater room. The farthest door. He's not happy, so you'd better be nice."
The large man gave Chris a queer smile before placing his glasses back on, saying, "Thank you" before he preceded his three cohorts into the entrance. The typical loud, groaning noise signaled Justin and the others in hiding beyond the corner that the enemy had entered, but the two standing silently pillion remained where they were.
Chris silently cursed. Two of them were still outside, and they were armed. That meant complications, of which Justin was utterly unaware of. Already, things weren't going according to plan.
Now, Paulie and his goons were inside, unseen by Chris anymore. All he could hear was the sound of their footsteps pattering against the dirt floor of the atrium. It would be any moment now. The creatures would come out from somewhere underground and begin their merciless mutilation like they had done to Pete. Chris frowned for a moment. He rather enjoyed what little time he shared with Pete.
He placed all his attention ahead to the igloo. He had to be ready.
Clanging sounds rang out as Paulie and the others ransacked the place. Faint, white glows emanated. They had turned the lights on. After another moment of them rustling around, all grew silent. Chris waited, conscious to keep his breathing steady and in check, readying himself for what was to come.
Nothing happened.
Paulie emerged from the doorway, a bitter smile on his face. Not like the perverted, grotesque smile from before. No, this one spoke of anger more than anything else. His search turned up inconclusive. The creatures could probably smell his filth half a klick away, figured he wasn't worth consuming.
Now Chris was all alone in Paulie's sights. "You lied to me, kid. I don't know about you, but I don't like being lied to. Why do little shits like you always have to make things hard? You can't just understand who's in charge. That's not hard to do at all." He stood there in the doorway, casually waving his hand around. "So which way did he go? If you tell me the truth this time, I promise I'll go easy on you."
Chris had to think of something in the midst of his colossal failure. Justin's colossal failure. Hopefully, Justin and Ken would rush out from hiding and blast Paulie to hell.
It wasn't to be, though.
Paulie strode forth towards Chris, the most gut-wrenching smirk on his face. Chris flinched in terror on his seat. The rest of Paulie's men mirrored his move, the most menacing body language as they closed in on him. Then…
A single bang erupted from inside the igloo. So robust a sound that it cast a single, reverberating, chest-rattling echo unto the plains.
Paulie spun around and faced the structure. "Well, what the fuck was that?" He then glanced at his partners.
"Sounded like something fell. I think I bumped into it in there earlier."
"Bullshit."
The man's shoulders shrugged in reply, and Chris could sense his fear.
"You said you checked the whole place!" Paulie shouted.
"I did!" another replied.
It resounded again, this time even louder.
"Well, go see what the hell is making that noise!" Paulie ordered.
Paulie's subordinate started out towards the entrance with baby steps. He could only manage a few rearward glances, then Paulie leveled a gun at him. He then advanced quicker inside.
Before he could continue on, a series of staccato rattles reverberated deeper beyond. It tickled the metal walls and pounced over the dirt floor. The entire igloo, it seemed, was buzzing with innumerable activity. The noise only grew louder. It was almost deafening the longer it went on, the plains becoming just one, single echo. Until everything surrounding them came alive with reflected noise.
Everyone but Paulie lost their bearing in the pandemonium. "I said get in there!"
The other clenched his jaw, turned around and hesitantly made his way to the entrance.
He accomplished exactly two steps.
Then a tidal wave of multi-legged creatures materialized into view past the entrance and swarmed over him. He was engulfed in a fraction of a second. Nearly every creature had a go at him, stabbing at every inch of his body with their tentacles. He stopped moving as they swept by. Paulie's mouth dropped, then his body twitched into action. By instinct, he backpedaled and took aim.
Chris was awestruck at how many there were—much more than before. He wasted not even one more second knowing full well what they were capable of; he bolted to Justin's position. Paulie and his remaining men outside tracked him with their gun sights, but the other sights and sounds from the creatures scrambling for the closest human being within reach pulled their attention away from him. They fired their handguns and they fired their assault rifles full-auto at the creatures in some futile effort to survive, but their panicked aim accomplished little. The two men at pillion exchanged glances then took the driver seats of the ATVs; without so much as a glance back to that horrific scene, they fled in the direction of the city.
Paulie, too busy fending off the flood of critters to notice two of his men cowering away, backtracked and gave up some of his ground that the creatures instantly accepted. They were an act of God, a flood of flesh and tentacle. He fired round after round as they continually rushed him, those creatures still living crawling over their fallen kin. His shots were well-placed compared to his lesser-disciplined men, who were now in short supply. The creatures popped like balloons each time he scored a hit, taking two or three extra to hell. He looked beyond the swarm of them, to where his first man went down. He was now standing.
Chris reached Justin. Bill and Ken were there too, watching this spectacle from around the container's corner. It was horrifying to watch as the creatures overran Paulie's men, taking them down with ease. It wasn't a quick death as each of them could make out Paulie's men twitching and thrashing around in the clay. It was only a matter of time before they claimed Paulie.
"As soon as he goes," Justin said, pointing to Paulie, "we're gonna clean up. Shotguns are just what we need for this kinda work." He gave a thumb's up and Ken replied back with an identical gesture. "Bill and Chris, wait here. If we go down," Justin looked to Chris, "frag us. I'm not going out like them."
Chris nodded, then his eyes widened in the utmost of horror as he looked ahead. At a loss for words, he pointed.
Justin, Bill and Ken wheeled around to see that one of Paulie's men, who had fallen, was now upright and transformed into something strange and horrific beyond anyone's imagining.
At first, the once fallen thug reminded Justin of how Pete looked after the creatures had their way with him. Because the man ahead was distorted beyond recognition, the skin bubbled and blotchy, oozing with puss. Vine-like appendages shot forth from the swollen extremities. But the face was still barely discernable, still barely human even though it became twisted in pure agony, the likes of which Justin, nor any of them, had ever known. None of them could believe their eyes.
It looked around and laid its eyes on Paulie—the last man standing. Then, it did something that chilled all those still living to the core.
The monster that was once a human let out the most awful, horror-inducing shriek unto the planet. A roar that filled the plains with pure, unimaginable terror for miles in every direction. In perfect, pointless rage, it charged. Paulie turned in its direction just before it was right on top of him, temporarily stunned by the speed it possessed, his eyes widening in shock. What was to follow was the most ghastly experience anyone had ever witnessed—even Justin. The humanoid monstrosity reared one of its upper limbs far back, formerly a human arm, stretching it so far aft that the ball and socket joint of the shoulder popped out of place, only necrotic tissue holding it together. Instantaneously, the arm elongated into several whip-like tentacles as if whatever creature took a hold of this host body could rearrange DNA as it saw fit. The whips shot forward in a blur of violent motion like tree branches in a thunderstorm, impacting the side of Paulie's chest. They slammed into Paulie with a thwack! They tore right through his thick over garments, right through every layer and lacerated the skin underneath. Blood spurted out of the gashes. As if more machine than living organism, the humanoid then created a similar appendage out of the other arm in a split second, soon whacking away at him in double-time, over and over again until Paulie lost about a gallon's worth of blood from the rib cage. It all happened in a span of ten seconds. Paulie could barely cover his face from the blows of the many tentacles lashing out at him, much less stand his own ground.
Bones started to crack.
It was a one-sided fight.
Justin, Chris, everyone, actually sympathized with Paulie as he literally got mauled and pummeled to death. Another moment went by, and gradually he sank lower and lower to his knees, the lifeblood of him steadily draining out from his ever-widening wounds. His face was now the target. Soon, he didn't possess the will to keep his guard up in his punching bag-like defense. On the other hand, the creature carried on at the same pace and furiously hacked away at Paulie's flesh as if preprogrammed to do so.
It was quite clear that Paulie was on the verge of death. As if he knew it himself, he let out his last words unto the world…
"Why?"
His cry was disheartening. Ken even had the gumption to run out and try to rescue him. It was too late.
Paulie slumped over and fell to the dirt, motionless.
The creature craned its neck high into the air, howling some sort of primitive, animalistic cry to victory. It then settled into a gurgling growl, satisfied with its destruction to life.
Justin and everyone else behind the igloo kept still and silent, their eyes glued to the lone humanoid and the carnage all about the ground, spellbound by the aftermath. Lifeless bodies, severed limbs, splattered blood and pulverized organs were strewn everywhere in chaotic arrangement, a blood bath gone insane. The whole slaughter took less than two minutes. The group just stared blankly at the scene and tried to make any sort of sense out of what happened, though that was impossible. No human could be so strong. Everything happened so fast. All they knew was that once the creatures assimilated a body, they morphed into the perfect killing machine. They possessed superhuman strength, could form weapons out of their own flesh and they could take a counter-attack quite well and shrug it off. They were deathly fast. It made Justin think twice about jumping out from hiding and cleaning up. He began thinking of alternate ways to still come out on top.
He turned to face Chris. "Give me the 'nade."
Chris handed it over quickly, his dilated pupils ever fixed on the monster standing deathlike still. About a dozen of the crawling variety milled about around it. It almost looked as though they were dancing; they pulsated in unison. "Strange." Chris mumbled.
"Alright," Justin whispered, "here's the plan. Me and Ken are going to rile them up, get them to follow us a bit. When all the bastards are tightly grouped, I'm gonna give them a shrapnel surprise. Everyone stay down and get some kind of cover. This frag has a wide kill radius to it. Just stay here when it happens. Ken, let me know when you're ready."
"I just need one minute." Ken replied, still calming his nerves.
Justin peered around the corner again, satisfied that none of the creatures noticed them. "Just let me know when."
They all kept their places, watching the monsters lingering about as if they had no purpose. No purpose, other than to kill. Violently.
Everything was relatively calm for the moment on the verge of their last, desparate act...but then another misfortune befell the group.
The two remaining bodies that were still thrashing about on the ground instantly rose to their feet. Another pair of the fallen had just joined the ranks of the superhuman killing machines. Within a matter of seconds, their bodies changed. They nearly doubled in size. The dermal tissues tinged a sickly, glistening greenish-brown. And the same, dreadful tentacles of all the others sprouted from their limbs as well. They were now tainted by the parasitic creatures. And just like the humanoid that destroyed Paulie, they observed their world through fresh sets of eyes, and then settled into gurgling growls, no function for the time being.
It was a tranquil sort of violence they held, able to transform it into a hail of death and disfigurement in a fleeting moment if they so desired. It was awe-inspiring in its own right. But now, those still living had a challenge greater than before; they were dealing with a threat far more dangerous than just six men with guns. They now had to somehow kill three superhuman zombies bent on total destruction to anything that moved. Just then, as if things couldn't have gotten any worse, one of the crawling creatures tore a hole into Paulie's back, inviting itself inside his torso one tentacle at a time. It soon disappeared inside his corpse. He twitched for a moment. It soon led to brutal, sadistic thrashing. And in the next instant, he turned as well.
The once-human Paulie rose to its feet, its back broken from the intense convulsions just a moment ago. How it stood upright was a mystery, one better left unsolved.
Four ferocious, cruel, unyielding superhuman monsters now ruled the immediate area around Justin, Bill, Ken and Chris. Their misfortune had just compounded four-fold.
Justin turned from the sight and assessed the others. Ken was still solid by the look of it, right on the same page as Justin and strictly concerned about survival. Chris? Justin couldn't really tell. The boy was surely afraid, but who wouldn't be? Only time would tell if Chris was up to the task of survival. And Bill…Bill would have to be looked after. His fighting skills were about as useless as tits on a boar. In fact, they were non-existent. Poor bastard, Justin thought.
"Alright, Ken, you ready?"
He nodded at Justin. Shaken at first, but he grabbed a hold of reality, mentally prepping himself in his own way for whatever was next.
"In three…two…one. Go!"
The foursome of zombies jerked in their direction as they blasted form cover. Atrocious roars nearly made them think twice.
Justin racked the shotgun and leveled it at the torso of the one that claimed Paulie. He squeezed the trigger and a hail of buckshot slammed into it, staggering it back. But that was all it did. It was still standing. The other humanoids rushed to meet them halfway.
"Get point-blank shots if you wanna make this work!" Justin shouted over Ken's gunfire as the distance closed.
"I know!" Ken simply responded.
Justin flanked left, tracing a wide semicircle around the zombies and the critters beneath their feet. This momentarily drew attention to himself, leaving Ken mostly unabated to cut right into the fray and blast a multitude of them from their unmonitored flank. It worked…for the most part. The critters down below weren't all that quick, but the zombies rushed Justin all too fast, and soon he was on the retreat, blind-firing over his shoulder as he sprinted fast back to cover. Watching this frantic maneuver, Bill and Chris assumed the inevitable. Justin, with zombies in tow, was on a straight path to their hiding spot. Shit.
Bill and Chris rose to their feet and bolted in any feasible direction other than where Justin came from. They turned around and maneuvererd to run the perimeter of the igloo to get the hell out of the way; for they had no weapons at all.
Ken followed the horde of zombies as they chased after Justin with flailing limbs. He shot off about three rounds, scoring hits on two of the zombies' backsides. They became temporarily stunned, stopped themselves, and turned to face Ken. The zombies paused in that position for a moment, and Ken could see that the critters had embedded themselves in the center of the torso, taking up a permanent residence there. He fired two sequential rounds at point-blank in their stupor, right towards their hearts. They each fell one after the other, ribbons of puss spewing everywhere and bodies crumpling to the ground with a series of thuds. Ken reloaded as he ran after Justin yet again; there were still two zombies and a clutch of critters after him.
Justin ran his way around the perimeter of the igloo, soon on Bill and Chris' heels. The zombies were right behind, unrelenting in their murderous chase.
"Don't follow us, Justin!" Chris shouted, barely any wind inside him as they rounded the north side of the igloo. They'd inevitably do a complete 360. Soon, they'd be right back where they started, and they couldn't keep this up forever. They were only human, and the zombies were powered by something other than life; only pure hatred from what it seemed. Sooner or later, some kind of decision would have to be made.
Ken gave up his sprint and trotted his way back to the east side, realizing by the sounds emanating from around the igloo that everyone and every thing would work its way around to him regardless. He made sure his shotgun was fully reloaded and prepared for what was to emerge from the corner.
Chris appeared, followed by Bill. They made their way to Ken and took up shelter from behind him. Next was Justin, his strides fluid and powerful like that of an Olympic sprinter. He reloaded as he ran. Then, two zombies with flailing limbs came into view, and a horde of critters far behind them. The humanoids stumbled upon the fallen weapons they once carried before they turned. For a mere instant, they paused their chase for Justin, the move barely noticed by the riled up humans. They momentarily studied the firearms on the ground with seemingly thoughtful looks, and then they bent down and picked them up.
"Holy shit." Ken mumbled to himself.
Justin deftly retrieved the grenade from his pocket as he ran. With a series of swift motions, he pulled the pin and lobbed it over his shoulder, never looking back. "Keep going!"
The others turned and ran.
There was a loud WHAP!
A concussion wave of heat and pressure enveloped them all, shoving them forward and to the dirt. An instant later, chunks of necrotic tissue and boiling puss rained down and pelted them.
No one was hurt as they came to, and the shock from the blast soon wore off, but Justin looked up just in time to see that the slower critters were now passing up the shallow depression the grenade left, unaffected by the blast and gaining on them.
"Keep moving!" Justin shouted. He dragged Chris upright by the collar and gave him a swift boot in the ass. "Move!"
Justin fired as he backpedaled, doing nothing but peppering the air in front. The critters had just overtaken the impact site, so they were too far away for buckshot to have any effect. Maybe one or two of them exploded into fleshy tendrils. "Shit!" Justin said. "I'm out!"
"Me too!" Ken replied.
Bill began to pray, "Father who thou art in heaven…"
"Shut up with that!" Justin ordered. "Think!"
"We are faster than them." Ken declared with just an inkling of breath. He collected himself a few heartbeats later. "If we split up, we can get to the ATVs.'
"Alright, you heard him." Justin said. "Split up!"
Everyone stole their own vectors, which momentarily confused the conglomerate of parasites skittering across the clay plain. But they soon adapted, split off into groups of two or three to pursue each man. At this point, Justin had about enough of fear and bolted straight to a vehicle. After a five-second dash, the creatures lost interest in him, too far.
They turned around and now joined a twosome of their kin that were fixated on Bill—the least capable of maintaining a high-speed sprint. "Shit." Justin murmured.
Three parasites slowly stalked Ken, inching ever forward. A strange maneuver at first, they spread out, spanning an interval of roughly two human strides.
"God damn, these bastards are smart as hell!" Ken shouted.
"If your enemy can make tactics, you have to be smarter!" Justin shouted across the way as he mounted a Mongoose.
Ken dashed out towards the middle creature, then instantly reared back. This stunned it for not even a hundred milliseconds, the blink of an eye. It also drew one of the others closer in to make up for lost ground. This left a hole open to Ken's far right. He acted instantly and stole it. Ken juked his whole body to the right, barely missing a tentacle swipe to the calf muscle as he sped on by. He was safe and made his way to the pool of ATVs.
This left Bill and Chris, who now faced nearly a dozen in total. The two reeled in close to one another as the numerous tentacles tickled the ground, inching closer.
"God is with us." Bill said softly.
"I know." Chris replied.
A pair of Mongooses zoomed forth, headlights blazing the way. The carpet of parasites was trampled in a bursting death by churning tires. Each one of the creatures exploded alongside one another, casting vile liquid all over the ATVs' treads. Justin and Ken skidded to a halt beside Bill and Chris.
"Get on!" Justin shouted.
Chris instantly complied, grabbed pillion behind Justin while Bill mounted the back of Ken's vehicle. Justin led the way full throttle and they each sped back a short distance to the igloo, halting just outside the outer door with unrehearsed panic stops.
"Bill and Chris, grab that 'Goose."
There was one last ATV left behind by Paulie and his men. Bill took to the handlebars of the already-idling quadbike and switched the headlight on as Chris rushed to the bootpad. The boy suddenly looked over his shoulder to where Paulie's corpse lied mangled and beaten in the small depression his massive frame left in the hard clay. "That's what you get for touching a boy, you son-of-a-bitch!"
Justin smiled. Something then robbed his moment of revelry through the corner of his eye. Another wave of crawling parasites burst out of the igloo's atrium and scurried straight for them the instant the light of day bathed their slimy forms. "Move!"
The three Mongooses took off from Justin's home at full speed ahead, zooming straight into a Northern sunset.
They could make it into the refuge of the city. That much was certain. Lucky for them because it was never a good thing to be caught out in the middle of the night. And now, the parasites were loosed. And being as animalistic and savage as was seen, they probably had their scent trail. None of them thought it out of the question for the little bastards to follow them all through the night as they sped across the dimming plains.
The ground had lost all its color, the sun quickly fading. Unlike the morning earlier, the clouds were low-flying all the way to the horizon; the sun was still imprisoned, which meant it might as well have been dark. What little light there was did nothing to guide them. But Justin found the one, true rut in the clay that ran all the way to the Admin courtyard. He positioned the Mongoose's wide track directly over it, the knobby tires straddling it as they all glided top speed in tandem. The headlight filled its shallow depression, with the first and last quartiles of its reassuring glow permeating wider outward. And they each had three vehicles between them, a small fortune in their favor.
Even as they rode to safety and rest ahead, the parasites—seemingly in never-ending supply—had escaped the confines of Justin's igloo.
The three ATVs slowed. Justin, riding at point came to a stop. The other drivers—Bill and Ken—pulled up alongside at the ominous fork in the road and idled for a moment.
Justin asked, "How is your fuel?"
Bill peered into the gauge. "I'm at a half a tank."
"Same here." Ken echoed.
"Alright," Justin directed, "We're gonna go into the city and stock up on as much fuel as we can. Get extra canisters too. I don't care what you have to do to get them. If you want to survive, get all the fuel you can possibly carry."
"Thank the Lord we'll no longer ski." Bill quipped.
"Are we going to Solomon's?" Ken asked.
"Maybe. Not yet. We're gonna try and beat these fuckers back and retake the igloo before we give up."
"Okay…" Ken agreed warily. "Should we try to get more weapons?"
"Two shotguns can handle the little ones. Did you see the way they pop when they're hit?"
"Yeah."
"So then we only need shells. Lots of them. And I know where to get some."
"So run the whole plan by me." Ken said.
Justin took a deep breath. "Okay, we're gonna go in there, get as much fuel as we can carry, go to the stockyard and steal some shells, and then ride back in the morning and clean house. We'll spend the night here. Any questions?"
"I have one." Chris said.
"What the hell is it?" Justin asked.
"Can I come with you?"
Before Justin could answer, the sky lit up above them. It was as if a new sun suddenly turned on and began fusion after a billion years of collecting gas, only this sun was inside Traxus IX's atmosphere.
"Atom bomb!" Ken shouted.
Justin slapped him on the back of the neck and pointed to the sky. "It's not an atom bomb, stupid. Look."
Something plummeted fast to the surface. Even from the ground, Bill could see it part layers of clouds high above them. "It's a comet or something. It's falling pretty fast."
"…It's falling this way!" Justin screamed. "Move!"
The sky grew brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter as each rider gunned the throttle and took their own vector away from the soon-to-be impact site. And they barely cleared it. The massive, flaming projectile cleared the last layer of cloud with the speed of a lightning bolt. The ground all around shook as it smashed straight into the mine entrance just beyond the road, the draft in its wake sucking a few squalls of chemical vapor downwards. Plumes of white-hot metal shards and crimson-colored liquid rock jettisoned outward from the collision like a Fire Lily in bloom. A few molten pebbles pelted everyone—Graveball fields away from the crater by now.
In the midst of all the dust and falling debris at the crash site, the flames were slowly smothered and the air cooled again. A moment later and the dust and smoke cleared fully. And jutting out from the immediate proximity of the small crater was the tail end of a vessel, its bottom side charred from the ride through the atmosphere. Justin grabbed a hold of Ken's attention across the plain with frantic waving. He waved back. Then together, they both attained Bill and Chris' attention from far away. As if spurred by telepathy, they each crept their Mongooses towards the vessel at a gentle roll.
Upon a stone's throw away from the craft, their headlamps lit it up to reveal that indeed it was an aerospace vehicle with strange markings on its bleach-white composite skin. Clearly, it wasn't designed for atmospheric flight. It had stubby wings spanning from a thick fuselage. And the thrusters were clearly some kind of liquid fuel rocket/ramjet hybrid. The entire dorsal surface was the cabin, bulbous and level—making the ship look more like a sleek, smooth torpedo fashioned out of pure porcelain.
Justin hopped off and slowly made his way to the vessel—heat still wavering off it. "I thought this place was done with surprises."
He reached a gloved hand out to the ship, but the entire hull was heat-soaked. He withdrew it instantly. Even if there was someone inside, the cabin was raised too high off the ground for Justin to open it. But the dorsal hatch popped open anyways, much to his surprise. He backpedaled a few steps as wisps of vapor curled out of the canopy, sinking downwards to the belly of the hull and the charred turf. Justin could feel the cold from it. The cool air descending mixed with the hot air rising, and a misty cloud of condesning vapor was what resulted over the ground.
A shadowy figure emerged from behind the mist, clearly disoriented as it found balance with an outstretched limb over the canopy rail. Justin could make out the twinkling of different colored lights from the inside, casting eerie shadows all around. The occupant swung a leg over the side and rappelled them self down by an internally-mounted cable, soon reaching the last few inches and jumping to the ground with a thud and a grunt. A deep, throaty grunt. Justin could tell it was a man who piloted the vehicle.
This man brushed some sort of debris off him and turned around to face Justin. "Thank God. Where am I?"
"Traxus Nine."
Justin sensed he was unharmed. The man was coherent and lucid—incredible from the fact that he just survived an impact like that. "How are you still alive after that crash? And what's that shit all over you?"
"Restraining foam, I think. Cabin fills up with it during a crash-landing. I never heard of this city. What's it called again?"
"Traxus Nine. It's a planet, not a city."
"Okay…what day is it?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know what day it is?"
"I haven't known what day it was for ten years."
"How do you live your life, man?"
"I have no life."
"Well, tell me how far I am from Earth."
Justin laughed. "You were headed to Earth?"
The man clenched his jaw. "Yeah."
"You're a long ways away from it, there, Mister…"
"Hendricksson. Joseph A. Hendricksson. Commander of Alliance Forces, planet Sirius Six-B."
"Yeah, I don't know what all that is, but you just crash-landed on one of the outer colonies, bud. If I was to guess, and I'm a pretty good guesser, I'd say you are about twenty light-years from Earth."
Hendricksson slumped. "You're kidding."
Justin shook his head with an ill-mannered smirk. "You must've missed that left turn at Albuquerque."
"Fucking God damn it!" he shouted, kicking his ship's hull one good time.
Justin smiled, perhaps more coldly than empathetic. "Well…at least you're down to Earth. Welcome to Traxus Nine."