Somehow, through some miraculous set of circumstances, Jack managed not to have any nightmares that night. Or, at the very least, he did not remember any upon waking. As he opened his eyes to sunshine and warmth and perhaps the greatest thing in the entire solar system to wake up with, two naked, attractive female Marines in his bed, he felt nothing but good. Well, good and sore, at least. Jennifer was already stirring, he realized. She threw back the blankets off of her and sat up, then put her feet on the floor.
"Hey," Jack said, reaching over and running his fingertips down her bare back.
"Hey," she murmured, shivering at his touch. "Good morning."
"Yes, it is," he agreed, and she laughed softly. "We should be getting ready. I imagine there's a metric fuckton of shit we need to be doing." She stood up and popped her back. "I'm going to grab a shower. Don't make me wait too long."
She turned around and he caught a brief but apparently meaningful exchange of glances between her and Kyra, who had since come awake at Jack's other side. He rolled over and looked at her as Jennifer went into the bathroom.
Kyra looked at him a little awkwardly. "So...something I probably should've mentioned last night. As much fun as you both are, and I mean you are really fun, I'm not looking for anything like...serious," she said.
"Oh!" Jack said, relieved. He thought he'd fucked something up. "That's fine. That's totally fine. I'm not really either. I'm, uh...still figuring things out with Jennifer."
"You two make a good couple," Kyra said, relaxing as well.
"Thanks. I hope we do. I've at least figured out that I want to be with her." He laughed after a few seconds. "I can't believe last night happened."
"Really? After all the insane shit you've no doubt gone through since hitting the demons, this is what you can't believe?" she asked, pulling the blankets back and getting up. She began doing a few stretches and Jack found it hard to look away from her.
"I mean, yeah. I've never fucked a Staff Sergeant before," he replied.
She laughed loudly. "You always fuck lower ranks?"
"Lower or equal," he replied. "Officially I don't fuck any rank because that's fraternizing. But unofficially..."
"Unofficially you're just like most of the rest of us who are single and untethered and frightened: you fuck anyone that catches your eye and is willing to hop into bed."
"Not anyone," he replied, getting up.
"Fair enough. But last night was a lot of fun. And although I'm not looking to be your or Jennifer's girlfriend, I am totally willing to do this again if we survive whatever it is that's no doubt headed our way like a goddamned asteroid."
"Same," he agreed. "Though I hope Jennifer will be, too."
"Oh," Kyra said with a smile, "she will be."
She headed for the bathroom.
Jack stood and joined her.
As the morning wore on, Jack's good mood began to erode.
After a shower and breakfast, he and the others inventoried their supplies, (after double-checking that they were still alone), and found that between them, they each had a pistol, three magazines, and a StimPack. Jack was grateful that they at least still had their armor. From there, they managed to locate a flatbed truck that was still functional and decently topped off with power in its fuel cell, so Kyra hopped in back while Jack got behind the wheel and Jennifer got into the driver's seat. All they had to go off of was that Kyra had managed to see a city, a big one, coming down, to the north. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
So they drove until they were out of farmlands, heading northbound.
"What'd you grab?" Jennifer asked.
"What?" Jack asked, startled. They'd been on the road for almost fifteen minutes without a word passed between them as they kept a sharp eye out for hostiles. They'd already passed some zombies and Imps on the way, but save for the occasional fireball thrown their way, nothing had actually responded meaningfully to their presence yet.
"Before we left, I saw you in the dining room. You grabbed something from off that dresser thing in the corner that had a bunch of stuff on it. I was just curious," she said.
"Oh." He chuckled, feeling a little embarrassed, but if there was anyone he wouldn't mind sharing with, it was Jennifer. Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached into one of the more unused, armored pockets on his armor and passed what was inside to her.
She took it and studied it. "Oh, wow. That's...surprisingly cute, Jack."
"Come on, don't make it weird," he muttered.
"No, really! It is." She paused. "I'm sorry, I'm not making fun of you or anything. It just seems...odd, an odd thing to take."
He glanced over at her. She held one armored hand out in front of her, palm up and flat, the small token he'd taken perched there. It was a duck. A little carved and painted wooden, white duck, with a vibrantly yellow bill, its wings smooth and tucked up against its back, feet tucked up beneath it. It was maybe an inch tall.
"It just felt right," he replied. "Probably stupid, but after everything that happened...I don't know. I still think ducks are awesome, and it just felt like...a good luck charm, I guess."
"Especially after last night," Jennifer murmured with a smile. She passed the duck back to him and he replaced it securely in his pocket.
"Yeah," he said. "You're...still good about that?"
"Yes, Jack," she replied. "You don't have to worry about me freaking out or secretly being pissed off and resenting you or anything. I had fun too, if you'll remember."
He chuckled. "Yeah, you did."
"I'm okay with sharing every now and then, provided it's the right person. And last night was a lot of fun. And I feel like we needed some fun after...everything."
"Definitely."
"Besides," Jennifer said, smiling again. "Kyra's a redhead, and I love redheads."
"Who doesn't?"
They drove on.
Kyra's northbound city turned out to be the real deal, and they saw it long before they reached it. Getting to it began to turn into a nightmare, as Jack kept having to find alternate routes. The streets soon became clogged with abandoned or burned-out vehicles, and soon even side or practically hidden roads became congested with a metal snarl of cars.
The closer they got to the city, the more cars had bodies. Some were bullet-riddled, others were burned beyond recognition. Some cars had had their windows smashed in and all that remained of the occupants were shreds of bloody flesh caught on the ring of glass teeth.
Eventually, there didn't seem to be anywhere to go in the vehicle, and they were forced to go on foot. As it was, they were just into the outskirts of what seemed to be a vast metropolis.
"Where do you think we are?" Jennifer asked quietly.
"I'm pretty sure we're in Kansas. I think this is Hayden. Don't know how the fuck I missed that when we were coming down," Jack replied.
"Good chance you were just facing the wrong way," Kyra said.
"Hayden? That's...like the state capitol, right?" Jennifer asked.
"Yeah."
"It is?" Kyra asked.
"Yeah. The city used to be Wichita. They rebuilt it back during like 2087, after the first of the super-tornadoes hit," Jack murmured as they made their way slowly through the vehicles, approaching what looked to be an outlying neighborhood. It was eerily silent in the immediate area, though distantly there was a lot of gunfire, and an unthinkable amount of fires burned, spending pillars of smoke into the air.
"The super-tornadoes..." Jennifer murmured.
"I remember hearing about those in class. Fuck. Wasn't the first one the biggest in recorded history? What was it, an EF-8?" she asked.
"EF-9," Jack replied. "Destroyed Wichita wholesale. Killed one million people. Fucker was almost five miles wide, wind speeds of like six hundred miles an hour. They didn't even think it was physically possible for such a tornado to exist."
"You wouldn't have been born by then," Jennifer said.
He shook his head. "No. Not even close. My parents were kids at the time. Neither of them saw it, but they both heard about it. It did like tens of billions in damage, maybe even a hundred billion credits. Something crazy like that. I think that woke America back up. They rebuilt, renamed the city, and now we've got Hayden. Population was fifteen million last time I checked. And the biggest starport on Earth is built here, too."
"Oh yeah. Haydenfield. Supposed to be like five miles across or something," Jennifer said.
"If there's any kind of evacuation effort, you can bet Haydenfield's involved. Maybe we should start making our way there..." Jack said.
"Before we make any plans, our first objective is to link up with local forces. We have crucial information to share, and they're going to have use for us," Kyra said.
Jack nodded. She had a point.
So they all shut up and hurried on as they crossed the threshold into the metropolis. Signs of fighting were everywhere, and Jack was having a hard time digesting it all. Fighting all over Phobos and Deimos, and then Mars City, had been horrible, to be sure. It turned his stomach knowing that probably thousands of people had been brutally tortured, eviscerated, and murdered by the demonic entities that had poured out of the gateways.
But this…
How many millions were dead?
Hundreds of millions?
Billions? Could billions be dead? What percentage of the human population remained alive? How many more would be dead before the end?
Was this actually the end of the human race?
Jack felt like thinking something along the line of 'not if I have anything to say about it', but fuck, what could he do in the face of such destruction? It was like having a staring contest with the sun, or trying to wrestle a hurricane, or bench-press a mountain. What possible hope did they have? He shook his head angrily as they crept among the bullet-riddled, bloodstained houses and past dozens of corpses, shredded by gunfire or claws, and strengthened his resolve. He was going to have to have a will of tungsten, because every single living human, regardless of national origin, race, religion, economic background, or any of that shit was going to be needed to fight this. They were all going to have to get their shit together if they wanted to endure the coming darkness.
As if to remind him of this fact, a zombie lurched out from between a pair of houses up ahead, to the left.
"Contact," Jack said, raising his pistol.
He squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot rang out, catching the zombie in its temple and snapping its head to the side, a thick spray of pulpy, brainy gore escaping its ruined cranium. It dropped like a rock to the soot-and-blood stained sidewalk. Elsewhere, he heard several alert groans, and a few warning hisses of Imps. Great. Nothing appeared, though. Were they lying in wait? All across Phobos and Deimos, and through Hell, (he still hated thinking of it like that, but it was the most apt name, sadly), it had become obvious that the zombies were getting smarter. They'd gone from drooling, stumbling idiots to being able to employ tactical military knowledge.
Of course, it was only the Z-Secs who had been able to do that, but even the technicians had gotten faster and smarter.
Jack continually surveyed the way ahead of them as they moved swiftly down the street, sticking to one of the sidewalks. He saw broken windows lining the houses like dead demon eyes or bloodless wounds. Anything could lurk in the shadows beyond. An unnatural twilight had fallen across the land due to all the smoke rising into the atmosphere, giving an already surreal scene an even more unnatural feel. There were growls, and that odd gurgle-clicking sound the Imps for some reason produced, and they were getting louder.
They made it to an intersection, and then the hammer dropped.
To the left, Jack spied a contingent of former humans, moving among the wrecked cars and destroyed houses with a shocking purpose, like they were searching for something. Searching for survivors, no doubt.
"Hostiles!" he heard Kyra shout from behind him.
"More hostiles!" he screamed. As he opened fire, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw a contingent of Imps in the opposite direction.
Fuck!
He opened fire, shouting for Jennifer to help take on the Imps, given they were the more threatening group in this scenario, and he kept firing, popping off shot after shot as he ducked down behind an abandoned two-door. A hail of gunfire returned and it was then he realized that all the zombies were armed. Jack fired his last shot and caught one in the eye, turning the socket into a bloody crater and dropping the bastard. He crouched and reloaded. This was bad. Definitely bad. He only spied a pair that had on green military fatigues, the rest looked like civilians! How the fuck could they all be armed and all be this good at shooting?
This was practically like a real firefight.
Moving to the other end of the car, he popped up and fired off another string of shots. He managed to bring down three of the bastards and spray their coagulated blood and brains onto the air. Six to go. He crouched, waited for the hail to stop as the car shook and shuddered, then leaned out and fired again. As he dropped them, he thought about his ammo situation. It was bad, but maybe these sons of bitches would be able to help with that. All he had to do was murder them, help Kyra and Jen clean up the stragglers on their side, and-
A fireball seared overheard and he felt the heat of its passing even through his armor. He finished reloading his second to last magazine and twisted in that direction, eyes wide as he spied a flotilla of nearly a dozen Cacodemons.
"Fuck! Cacodemons!" he screamed.
"What-o-demons?!" Kyra roared.
"Floating fucks that shoot shit!" Jennifer screamed.
"Oh fuck!" Kyra snapped, looking around frantically. She looked at Jack, then over his shoulder, past the car he was crouched behind. "Fall back! That way!"
And they were off and sprinting. The surviving zombies went down under a hail of gunfire, and Jack snapped out a curse as he realized he wouldn't even get a chance to snag a gun in passing. He, Jennifer, and Kyra ran. They sprinted between cars, leaping over corpses, and trying not to get murdered as a rain of fireballs chased them. Jack ran, sliding across the hood of a car, hitting pavement, and continuing his cold sprint.
"Left! Between the houses!" Kyra snapped.
He wheeled and bolted, hitting the alleyway between two of the nearest houses first. After making sure nothing was down it, he stopped and provided cover fire for the other two, firing off several shots and peppering the Imps, who were the nearest in the pursuit, and downing one of them. As soon as Jennifer and Kyra were past him, he didn't waste another second and plunged into the alley with them. Then they were running. Jack knew that he didn't have the ammo for a sustained firefight, none of them did, and the city seemed to be coming alive around them. Of course, what else had they expected? Maybe they hadn't thought this one out.
He saw a number of horrors as he ran for his life. Dead families, blood painting walls and pooling in the streets, severed limbs and heads everywhere, just fucking everywhere. So much blood and death and suffering, and he had no idea how bad it was. This must be happening everywhere. How had it become this widespread this quickly!? Surely the UAC couldn't have made this many fucking portals all over the Earth…
It must not be them, he realized as he kept going, lungs burning, muscles aching. They simply opened the vault. The demons must have had a way to get out en masse, some method of creating portals anywhere they liked.
God. What a nightmare.
Suddenly, Kyra skidded to a halt. Jack and Jennifer did the same, pistols raised, panting as they looked around. Even with the miniature vacation he'd had on the way back home, his body was still battered and bruised from everything endured out in space and Hell. He wondered if he was up for this particular endeavor.
Like he had a choice.
"There," Kyra said, and began running.
They seemed to have lost their pursuers. Up ahead, across the street they'd come into, was a little grocery store. The sign over the front read FEDERAL FOODS GROCERY. Most of the front of the store was plate-glass, though most of the windows had shattered, but inside, it looked like someone had stacked up heavy bags of dogfood and birdseed and anything else that vaguely resembled a sandbag. A field of dead zombies, Imps, and Demons lay bullet-riddled in the front parking lot, but the front doors were ripped open and there didn't appear to be any movement inside. Nonetheless, it was as good a place as any to hole up for a bit.
They made their way across the parking lot, and Kyra hit the front entrance.
"I'll keep watch, you two see if there's anyone inside," she whispered.
"Affirmative," Jack said, raising his pistol and flicking on the flashlight mounted on the barrel. Jennifer did the same. The atmosphere inside the Federal Foods building was dim and stank of blood and death, the air thick with it. As they stepped inside and played their lights across the interior, it became obvious that a squad of Marines had indeed set up an outpost here, if a very makeshift one. Makeshift or not, wrecked or not, it was an eye in the midst of this blood maelstrom. Although seeing the dead Marines scattered across the floor, in their bloodied green armor and shredded fatigues, sapped much of his relief.
He and Jennifer split up, making careful but quick progress around the store, first checking the perimeter and any rooms they found along it. He found a single zombie lurking in the manager's office, and put it down with a quick bullet. Jennifer apparently found an Imp hanging out in the bathroom, and she put it down before it could get a single fireball off. After securing a back storage area, another bathroom, and a break room, they cleared the aisles, grabbing anything and everything they could along the way.
"Clear," Jack reported.
"Okay. Weapons?" Kyra replied.
"Some, yeah. Mostly pistols, and some shotguns and SMGs," Jack replied. He'd grabbed a Raptor SMG, a pump-action shotgun, and a decent amount of magazines and shells for himself. Jennifer had snagged an SMG for herself.
"We found an intact radio rig in the back storage room," Jennifer said.
"Perfect. Find every last bullet and shell you can, I'm going to see if I can get in touch with anyone," Kyra replied, and hurried off.
Jack and Jennifer immediately got to work. They knew that this peace would only last for so long. Jack felt his frustration beginning to mount as he hastily began patting down pockets and rolling over corpses. Everything was a goddamned time limit, a burning fuse, and they almost never knew the actual length. Could go off in an hour, or three seconds from now. He'd gotten used to working like that, but the last week had tested him to the goddamned limits. He tried to focus more on the task at hand, but that was just pissing him off, too. It was obvious that a contingent of local Marines had set up an emergency outpost here, and had been overrun. There had to be thirty corpses in here, over half of them Marines.
Given the sheer amount of dead demons laying around, at least they'd made them pay for it. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough, it seemed.
By the time he and Jennifer rejoined Kyra, he'd managed to snag half a dozen magazines for his pistol and his SMG, each, and two full loads for his shotgun. As far as hauls went, it wasn't bad, but he felt like it was going to go fast, given the demonic presence in the city.
"Understood, Lieutenant. We're oscar mike, over."
"Good. We'll be waiting. Out."
"What's happening?" Jack asked as he passed her some of the ammo he'd found. She stood up from the table the radio gear was perched on.
"Got into contact with a squad of Marines under the command of a Lieutenant Anderson. They're about six blocks south of here, in an apartment building. They're preparing to head for an exfil point, but they're willing to wait for us. We gotta haul ass, though. This city is basically lost," she explained as she pocketed the ammo.
"Fucking great," Jennifer muttered.
"We're ready," Jack said, making sure his submachine gun was as ready as he was.
"Good. Let's kick some ass."