Kyra's tram was almost to the point in the glass-and-steel tunnel where it forked, right path leading to Research, left to Utilities.
That was when it happened.
That was when her radio chattered to life in a haze of static.
She was nearly napping in the driver's seat, waves of lethargy crashing relentlessly on the shores of her fortitude. The trams had a false sense of security to them. She knew the tram was clear at least, or as clear as she could be certain, but there were so many crazy-ass things happening that she no longer took even the most basic things for granted.
"...God's sake, is anyone picking up this fucking transmission!?"
Kyra jerked awake at the sound, her heart spiking painfully in her chest as she automatically activated her radio.
She recognized the voice. "Garret?!"
"Kyra?! Oh thank fucking God, I thought you were dead! Where are you? Uh...over." She had never heard someone sound so relieved before, and she felt about as relieved as he sounded just then. Finally, another person!
"I'm in a tram heading to Research, where are you? Over."
"We're in the Utilities building. Over."
Kyra looked up ahead and saw that she just had time to make the adjustment. Fingers flying across the control pad, she readjusted the tram's course, setting it to break left and pushing its speed even faster. "We? Over."
"Yeah! Uh, I'm here with Ross and Banks, and a scientist who survived this mess. We're on the move right now, pretty deep in. Over."
"I'm coming right now. Do you know where any of the others are? Over."
"Some of them. I saw Whitley die. Lance Corporal White and Private Finch are dead, too. White got swarmed by those zombie fuckers and one of the big pig demons took Finch's fucking head off. I haven't seen any of the others. Over."
Kyra sighed heavily. "Reed, Meyers, Peters, and Erikson are all KIA. Over."
"Jesus fuck," Garret whispered, his voice heavy with anger and fear. "We could really use your help, Staff Sergeant. I think-"
He cut off suddenly as something roared and machine gun fire came onto the airwaves. Someone screamed, a voice she didn't recognize, maybe the scientist, and then it all went to nothing. "Garret? Garret?! Talk to me!" she snapped.
But there was nothing.
She kept trying to raise them until she hit the airlock of the Utilities building, then gave up. She had to find them. The tram finished its gut-wrenchingly slow crawl through the airlock and settled into place at a platform of dark metal. Kyra stepped out through the doors as soon as they were open, shotgun in hand. A lone zombie was moving around the platform, and something about it made her hesitate.
It wasn't wandering.
It almost looked like it was...patrolling.
She shouldered her shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The slug shell rocketed from its dark metal nest and blew the awful thing's head off its shoulders, cleanly knocking whatever parody of life still lingered in its decaying frame out of it. She swept the corners and niches of the area, noting the more utilitarian nature of the building, and then made for the far door. She hit the access button. A red light flared and it buzzed angrily at her.
Kyra tried it once more and got similar results.
She ground her teeth together in mounting frustration as she stared at the unresponsive thing, resisting the urge to just shoot it. All at once, inspiration struck. Or rather memory. She looked around and up, quickly spying a ventilation grate. This one was big enough for her to fit into. For whatever reason that these were designed that way, unlike some of the other buildings, she took the opportunity presented to her and hurried over to it. Working fast, Kyra shoved a nearby silver crate, stamped with the ugly UAC logo of course, beneath the grate and clambered up on top of it.
Slapping the access button, the grate slid open and she hauled herself inside, scrambling to get into the confined space. She was alone, she surmised, and began a quick crawl. All she had to do was find her way to a security station or even just a terminal. Maybe she could jack into a local comms network and boost her signal, or maybe even get access to some localized LifeScan. Fucking anything would be useful right now.
It was tough to move fast in the vents, and made a lot of noise, but it was tougher still to force herself to slow down and take it easy. The first ventilation grate she came to was stuck closed, clearly damaged in all the fighting. It looked over a bloody but vacant entrance lobby with the traditional security checkpoint waiting for her. She considered bashing her way through, but then just pressed on. It took another twenty meters before she found her next opening. And it was here that Kyra bore witness to a new atrocity.
At first, she felt another spike of hope as she spied a new figure moving hesitantly through a large room, beset on either side by huge metal cylinders. She almost called out to them, but something made her stop. The zombie she'd seen on the docking platform. She had the suspicion that they were somehow getting smarter, or at least able to mimic some form of intelligence. She resolved to study the unknown figure for a bit longer. They were wearing a Space Marine uniform and armor, but she couldn't see their face.
They seemed scared.
Kyra had just decided to call out, as they were close to leaving the room, when it happened. A bright red-orange light flared into being from one corner of the room. Her immediate thought was: Fiend. But something was wrong about the light, about the way it was moving. And then she saw what the problem was. Except there was no way she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Kyra stared in befuddled horror as the survivor let out a cry of pure fear and twisted around, raising a pistol and popping off several shots that went wild.
It was a skull.
A goddamned flying skull, that was on fire.
What was she seeing?!
The flying skull let out a shriek that sent a chill down her spine and made a beeline for the survivor, who was screaming now, firing more shots, backing up. Whoever it was, they tripped, and the skull dive-bombed them. Kyra expected it to bounce off or maybe even take a bite out of them, but that wasn't what happened at all. The skull disappeared. It flew inside of them, as easily as a diver cutting the surface of the water.
There was a scant two seconds of silence.
And then the screaming recommenced, only it was louder now. It sounded like someone was getting their fucking arm sawed off with a chainsaw. They began thrashing around on the metal plate flooring violently, as though caught in the throes of a seizure. It was awful to watch, but she had to keep looking, had to study, to figure out what it was she was seeing, because some part of her, some deep, primal, gut instinct told her that this was important. This was crucial. So Kyra made herself watch, her whole body rigid, every muscle screaming.
Abruptly, the person froze up, holding the pose for a few seconds, then they slowly began to get back to their feet.
A groan sounded.
Kyra's stomach instantly froze up and her heart began to pound even faster. No. That wasn't...she had just seen a fucking zombie transformation. This was how people were turning into zombies!? That didn't even make any sense! How?! How was a fucking flying, flaming skull turning people into goddamned zombies?!
Then again, what the hell did make sense anymore?
She had to see this. The zombie was still moving sluggishly, groaning occasionally as it stumbled around, and it hadn't retrieved the pistol it had dropped in the transformation process. Now or never. Kyra hit the access button and the vent grate slid open. She dropped down as smoothly as she could, landing with a grunt on the floor, then rose up to a shooter's stance and aimed her pistol. The zombie heard her and turned.
Right as she pulled the trigger, Kyra saw the face of the person who had been transformed into an inhuman beast.
It was Private Mora.
The bullet she fired went right into his left eye socket, turning it into a geyser of dark gore. Mora's head snapped back and he went slack, hitting the floor with a hard thump. She waited, trembling from terror and adrenaline, to see if anything else would show up. Nothing came running or flying or scrabbling at the sound of her gunshot. Slowly, Kyra crept forward, intent on learning as much as she could from this latest atrocity.
She crouched by Mora's corpse and studied him slowly, carefully. This was definitely Private Juan Mora, the easygoing Mexican Marine who was always good for a laugh, was an excellent shot, and seemed to get along with damn near everyone he met. And now he was dead. He'd survived the crash and zombies and however many battles he'd endured on this hellhole, only to be turned into a zombie, then put down by his own Staff Sergeant.
"I'm sorry," Kyra whispered as she began rifling through his pockets. He didn't have much, just a few magazines of ammo and a pair of shotgun shells. Kyra took a moment to look around for the pistol he dropped earlier, but she couldn't see it anywhere, and couldn't muster the resolve to perform a thorough search for it.
Flying skulls?
Flying, on fire skulls turned people into zombies?
That was ludicrous. That was insane. That was like bugfuck, crock-of-shit, burned out hack sci-fi writer crazy.
Except it was real. It had objectively happened before her very eyes. And the ease with which it had happened...God, that suddenly made those flying skulls the most dangerous thing on this moon. At least so far. Kyra straightened up and looked around. She'd come to what had to be the water treatment facility. So where were the others? Kyra looked the way she'd come. Into the vents again? It was tempting in a sad kind of way, because right then she felt like hiding from the universe, but...but what if one of those flying skulls got in there with her?
Even as she thought it, as she was staring at the dark opening, a flicker of red-orange light appeared inside the vent. It quickly grew brighter, and suddenly a flying skull hovered into view. It froze, then twisted around and stared at her with empty, flaming sockets. Opening its mouth, it issued an awful shriek and began jetting for her. Kyra let out a scream of fear and surprise. She raised her shotgun and pounded out a shell almost without thinking. The slug shell hit the skull dead center and detonated it into a rain of bleached bone fragments, its flames extinguishing instantly. Okay...so they could be killed, and pretty easily too.
But…
"I am not going back in those fucking vents," Kyra whispered to herself. Not anymore, not with those things on the loose.
Instead, she began making her way through the water treatment area. It took a few painfully long minutes to hunt down an exit, shift through an antechamber, put down a pair of fiends and a lumbering zombie, and come into the next section of the Utilities building: oxygen processing. It was a collection of simple rooms stuffed with tanks and controls and other pieces of equipment she didn't care to identify. All she wanted was one thing, and she finally found it near the end of the processing center. A security center.
It wasn't very large, and it had been emptied out by those who came before her, but it had exactly what she needed.
A goddamned map of the building.
She studied it quickly as she began trying to get back in touch with the others again. She saw some storage areas, what looked like a small section begrudgingly allocated to the staff that maintained this place in the form of a bathroom, a break room, and a small emergency infirmary, but the biggest section left was the reactor bay. Where the power came from. Were they there? Or in the storage section? Were they still alive?
The radio suddenly crackled to life. "Kyra! Can you hear me?! Over!"
"Yes, Garret! I hear you! Where are you? What's happening? Over," she replied immediately.
"We're in the reactor section! We're getting swarmed by a fucking army of these fire-throwing bastards! You've got to back us up! Over!"
"I'm on my way. Where in the reactor area are you? Over," she asked, seeing that it was a decently sized area.
"I don't know...just follow the gunshots! Fuck!"
The radio cut out again. She snapped out a curse, finished memorizing the quickest route there and sprinted out of the security center. She had to get to them. Kyra didn't realize until that very moment just how much being alone in this situation was affecting her. She wanted, no, needed to be among the other survivors, among the living. She'd been knee-deep in the dead for far too long. Kyra passed through another antechamber as she left the oxygen plant and broke right, hurrying through a large metal door that led to the reactor bay.
It was more like a maze than a bay, she knew.
But even the complex layout of the map she'd studied just a few moments ago didn't prepare her for the dark, low-ceilinged corridors or the broad, equipment-stuffed rooms. Kyra stood at the beginning of a long passageway that bisected the reactor area, waiting, listening. Distantly, she heard gunfire, and roars, and someone screaming. She took off, boots banging hollowly on the deckplates as she sprinted away, towards the survivors, into the maw of madness. She checked each door with a quick glance as she passed it.
Most of them were closed, mercifully sealed off, but a few were open. Occasionally she would see a zombie milling about, and she ignored them for now. Kyra reached the end of the corridor and waited, listening again, trying to get her breath back. There. Left door was partially open, spitting sparks occasionally, and it led to another corridor where she heard another round of gunfire, someone rattling through a whole mag from an assault rifle. God, what she wouldn't give for one of those. Kyra bolted through the opening.
And nearly into the waiting, bulky, muscular arms of a pinky.
It roared as it made a swipe at her and she screamed in terror and anger as she raised her shotgun, stuck the barrel practically into the thing's mouth and squeezed the trigger. The back of its dark pink head opened up and sprayed another pinky behind it with a wave of dark red, pulpy gore. This just seemed to enrage the thing further and it began tearing at the now dead pinky to get to her. Kyra took another step back and repeated the action, with similar results. Two pinkies down, but then she caught sight of that awful, familiar red-orange glow.
A flying skull was coming at her from down the corridor.
No, more than that. She counted four of the awful things, and could see the bulky shapes of more pinkies beyond them lumbering towards her. Shit. Double shit. Kyra aimed and fired, pounding out three more shells, and popped three of the skulls, peppering the hallway with bits of bleached white bone. She missed the fourth one, felt her stomach turn to ice, and dropped on instinct. The skull screeched as it flew overhead and she heard it strike the partially open door behind her, rebounding off of it.
So they couldn't fly through other objects?
She twisted around violently, her back popping painfully, sighted the monstrous thing and blew it straight back to hell. More shouting now, and a lot more gunfire. And she could hear some of it over the radio, could hear Garret calling for help. On the verge of panic, Kyra emptied her shotgun at the trio of pinkies that were stomping toward her. She tore a portion of one's skull away, including one of its bony white horns, and then put it down with a shot right between its glowing golden eyes. Then her shotgun was dry.
She let it hang and pulled out her pistol, steadying her hands.
Had to do this right or she was going to end up as chow. She took aim and squeezed the trigger, trying to filter everything else out. She was no good to the others dead. The first shot hit one of the big bastards in its neck, doing apparently very little damage. The second took it in the mouth. That just pissed it off even more. The third shot, however, punched through its eye and that took it down. The thing uttered a strangled roar and fell into the other pinky, which apparently took great offense to this and began viciously tearing into its now dead brethren. Kyra took the opportunity to switch back to her shotgun, shove some more shells in and pump three quick shots into it, bringing the big bastard down once and for all.
Then she was off and sprinting, feeding more shells into her shotgun.
The gunfire was dying off. She didn't hear anyone screaming.
"Garret!? Can you hear me?!" she called, either trying to reach him through the radio or just by proximity.
No answer.
By the time she'd reached the end of the passageway, the gunfire had fallen completely silent. Kyra burst through the doors at the end and came into a large room packed with all sorts of equipment and monitoring centers and workstations.
And bloodshed. And death.
"No..." she moaned, her gaze immediately falling on a corpse clad in military fatigues. There was just one fiend still moving around, and she blew its head off almost without thinking about it. "Come on, someone talk to me," she begged as she moved forward, looking among the dead. There had to be close to two dozen fiends and zombies here.
The corpse she found was Ross. A young, pale Marine who'd been trying so damned hard to prove herself, eager to jump on any task given when they were back aboard the Icarus, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. She was covered in bullet wounds and scorch marks, and a shot had taken her in the forehead. Blood was leaking steadily from the lethal entry wound. Kyra found Banks just a few feet away, his skull caved in from a killing blow. The dark-skinned medic had been sullen, but very serious and able, always researching, always learning. Kyra had learned that he planned to try and get a job back on Earth in a prestigious hospital once his contract with the UAC expired. And now here he was, just another corpse on a forsaken moon.
And then she found Garret.
Corporal Evan Garret, his throat ripped out, his skin marred with a dozen wounds. The man she'd had an extended affair with. Garret, who muttered to himself in his sleep. Garret, who liked to massage her shoulders when they were in the shower together. He'd been good to her, good for her, she had slowly come to realize over the days and weeks. A safe, simple fling of fun that had now ended in bloody violence.
Kyra heard a groan.
She slowly, almost reluctantly, tore her gaze from Corporal Garret and settled it on a white-and-red labcoat that she realized was wrapped around a wounded man.
One of the scientists, a native to the wrecked UAC facility.
She felt a wave of anger come over her. They had done this. Whatever this was, she was positive they had some hand in it. Kyra marched over to the scientist and studied him as he swum in and out of consciousness. He looked about how she expected: pale, pasty, scrawny, his face red and irritated from over-shaving, his dark blonde hair greasy and twisted.
The man opened his eyes.
"Who..." he whispered, then coughed wetly, blood flying from his mouth.
"I'm Staff Sergeant Morgan with the Space Marines," she said flatly, "and you are going to tell me what in the fuck you were doing here."
The man laughed bitterly. "Doctor Henderson, at your service," he whispered, then coughed again and groaned.
"Don't you dare die on me. Not yet. Tell me what you've done here."
"What we've done? We tore a hole in reality itself," he murmured. "Research. We were researching teleportation technology, Staff Sergeant. Quite successfully, I might add. But we opened the door. The door we never, ever should have opened in a million, billion years. Because they were waiting on the other side. Do you understand? You've seen them. The demons. They can conjure fire and eat men alive, can turn us into mindless slaves."
"You stupid fucking morons," she whispered. "They're from another dimension? And you let them in?!"
"Yes. It was not intentional. We thought the dimension they're from was abandoned at first. Long abandoned. But then they came..." he devolved into a coughing fit again. She knew that he was very near death.
"How do I get off of this rock? There's no ships left and comms are fragged."
"Research," he replied. "Get to Research. The portal is still there, still active. You must pass through it. You must get to Io." Here he seemed to try to draw strength, his expression growing more stern, more serious. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a bloodied and battered PDA. "Take this, you'll need it. There is research on Io, on Obsidian Station. You must get to it, protect it, get it to the military. It will help in the war against the demons. But you aren't going to like how you get to Io. You're going to have to go through hell to get there..."
Henderson drew in another breath, opened his mouth to say more, exhaled, and then abruptly ceased moving. He didn't inhale again. His eyes lost their focus. He slumped to the deckplates, blood still slowly leaking out of him.
"Shit," Kyra muttered. A maelstrom of emotions was surging and swelling inside of her, but as she stood up and looked around at the death and destruction that surrounded her, her eyes locked onto something.
An assault rifle.
A DX-41 Taskmaster assault rifle, came with a thirty round mag of 5.56mm bullets, optional silencer, laser scope, single, triple, or full auto…
The information settled over her brain like a comforting blanket, and she felt some of her control return as she knelt and retrieved the abandoned rifle. Slowly, she began to check the corpses for more ammo and supplies.
She had to get to Research.