Chapter 19 – Evictionem
August 18th, 2552 - (09:13 Hours - Military Calendar)
Epsilon Eridani System, Reach
Viery Territory, Eposz
New Alexandria, Csillagos éj Hotel
:********:
Erica kept her hand near her sidearm though not quite on it. She wasn't ready to go so far as to draw it, although she knew she might need to in the next minute.
Ever since she'd sent out her last alert, the fate of her hotel had been hanging in the balance. People were moved into rooms, herded into saunas, secured in arcades or locked up in broom closets. Thousands were sealed in place throughout the hotel and yet there were still plenty who hadn't gotten themselves to safety.
Floor 71 was crumbed with stragglers. Many of the rooms had become too packed for them to find refuge. Some of them had even been at a loss in the general panic that her announcement had caused. She felt guilty about that. Still, she tried to help where she could. Where the soldiers couldn't find any room, she took over, leading families and associates to supply closets that hadn't been used. Mitchell and Turner helped as well. They kept the guests together and guided them to what spaces were available. The three of them became a much-needed boon to the troopers who were freed to turn their attention towards the defenses. Lieutenant Walker and his company were pulling out all the stops. They established cordons, barricaded corridors, sealed off stairwells and set up firing positions in the outer lounges. The same thing played out on each of the other floors where guests were being concentrated.
For Erica, seeing them tear her building apart in order to protect it seemed a contradiction. A necessary contradiction. Better they dismantle a bar or two than leave her guests undefended.
She was escorting a mom and daughter towards a four-way when they stopped to let a squad of troopers pass. Two of them were hauling a chaingun. Coming out behind them, Erica saw that they were running it to a sandbag wall at the end of the passage. Past the wall was one of the floor's outer lounges, a wide space with a glass enclosed vista that ran the full width of the hotel. Why they'd chosen it became painfully obvious. Hardly a second after they'd mounted the gun to a tripod, a dark purple shape edged into view.
Erica's blood ran cold at the sight of the alien dropship. A 'Phantom' she believed it was called. The strange, manta ray like ship hovered past the windows of the lounge with the leisure of an old man on a stroll. The soldiers saw it too and rushed the last of the setup for the chaingun. Once it was ready, they leveled its triple barrels and tracked the aircraft with it. Still, they held their fire.
Erica realized the mother-daughter pair she was with had stopped to look as well. She hurried them across to the next corridor and took them to a supply closet. It was dark inside. Once they'd found their place between the shelves, she pressed the switch for the doors to close behind them. The last she saw was of the two huddled together at the back of the room, the mother hugging her child close as the latter started to cry.
She steeled herself to get moving again. She headed further along the passage towards the last place she'd seen Mitchell and Turner. If the three of them were done then the last thing they needed to do was find shelter for themselves. That presented a whole new problem. With all the good spots taken, only three options were left for them. They could scrounge some of the less well-hidden spots, they could try to hide on the less secured floors or they could take their chances out in the open. None of them were desirable though at least one was feasible. But a thought popped into her head that made her reconsider.
Noah.
Was he okay?
Had he found people to hide with?
Was he all alone?
The last place she'd seen him was in front of his school with Daniel and Tommy. He'd at least gone with them, hadn't he?
The lack of solid answers made her hesitate. She was halfway to the other side of the hotel when she spotted movement. At the end of the corridor was another outer lounge where troopers were dashing into place. They took positions behind thrown over furniture and hastily constructed cover, all placed in opposition to the windows.
"Boss!"
Erica rounded on Mitchell and Turner who jogged up to her from an adjoining passageway.
"We just got the last family." Mitchell said. "The floor's clear on our end. Yours?"
She nodded. "That should be everyone then."
Turner frowned apprehensively. "Not everyone. What about us?"
"I'm...still working that out."
"Maybe we can go back to that room you showed us and hold up the-" Mitchell froze, his face going pale at something behind her. Erica looked back to find the same Phantom from before now cruising in front of the lounge. Whatever leisure it possessed melted away once the cannon on its nose shifted in their direction.
This time the Phantom fired, destroying the windows with a broadside barrage as it flew by. The explosions lit up the outside and sent glass flying across the room. Erica felt her bones rattle with each reverberation. A firm knot tied itself in her stomach.
Somehow the soldiers who were much closer to it were able to quickly recover. They aimed out again as the Phantom moved on, only for something else to take its place. What at first looked like a long, purple soda can began to ascend from somewhere below. Her brain didn't recognize it right away for the dropship that it was: a Spirit.
A trooper raised a rocket launcher and squeezed off two rockets. The Spirit seemed to anticipate them and dipped back down, allowing the two balls of fire to zoom over it. It raised itself up again until its forked frame was aligned with the windows. The side walls of one of its prongs split apart and plasma fire spilled out.
What was in truth a troop bay opened to disgorge over a dozen armored monsters. Frog-like beasts and avian abominations shot at the lounge and everything in it. They hopped out of the troop bay and through the shattered windows even as troopers returned fire. They landed on the floor, some collapsing in their own blood, others charging forward and others still staying put behind wrist-mounted shields. One of the aliens stood in the bay. The towering, white armored creature with ghostly pale slits for eyes held up a shoulder-mounted weapon. Though its barrel was a sallow yellow, it burped out blasts of brilliant green plasma. Even brighter explosions engulfed the room, overwhelming human screams with what sounded like ocean waves crashing against a pier.
Something cold was tugging at Erica's arm. Before she realized it, she was being pulled along.
It was Mitchell. She hadn't reacted to his calls for them to run so he'd chosen the next best option. Once he was sure she was out of her daze he let her go and used his robotic hand to steady his shotgun. Turner was already a few meters ahead of them, dashing headlong towards the nearest intersection.
Running under her own power, Erica peered back at the lounge. Much to her shock there was still a firefight going on. However, by the sounds of it the fight was fast becoming a slaughter. She wanted to shut her ears to it or at least have the strength to look away.
"Over here!" Turner said at the four-way. "We can get by this way!"
Despite her wish to live urging her to follow, a spark of intuition told Erica it was a bad idea. A stronger compulsion pointed her to the door of a nearby stairwell.
Noah.
She needed to find him or at the bare minimum make sure he had gotten away. She needed to know he was safe.
"No, there's nothing that way! Over here!" She dashed ahead of Mitchell and turned off to the stairwell. She pried the door and swung it open. "Come on!"
Mitchell skid to a stop. "You sure!? There's no telling if-"
"We used up all the spaces here for the guests! There's nowhere to hide, we need to go further down now or we'll get caught up in what's going on back there!"
Mitchell and Turner looked at each other uncertainly but a new explosion from the lounge put speed in their steps. Turner hustled in first. Erica went after her, leaving Mitchell to guard their backs with his shotgun until they were safe. Then with soldierly grace he slipped inside and shut the door behind them.
:********:
Noah ran for his life. He knew he would need to if he wanted to keep it. The far-off explosions sounded not so far off anymore; the gunfire was creeping closer. Yet he, Daniel and Tommy were no closer to being safe than they were when they started. And there was nothing like the gasps of their ragged breaths as they ran behind him to remind him that it was all his fault.
He'd told them he could do it, that he could find a vent for them to hide in. He was sure of it too. But things didn't turn out so straightforward by any means. After they snuck away from everyone else, they first tried a vent inside a men's bathroom. He knew it well. What he didn't know was how much the screws had been retightened. Apparently, the workers on Floor 60 had had enough after his last trip ended with a few of them getting drenched in paint. They'd practically sealed it shut, or maybe the screwdriver he had just wasn't up to the task. Either way, the first one was a dud.
He quickly rushed them back out. They snuck around groups of passing soldiers on their way to their next option, a vent near one of the stairwells. That ended about as well as the first. They encountered the same problem of the screws being too tight. It was around then that he really wished the three of them hadn't used the ducts for pranks. Maybe then the hotel staff wouldn't have battened down the hatches like they had. He had to squelch the thought seconds later. The last thing they needed was to hear his regrets when it was his idea that had gotten them into this mess.
Daniel and Tommy still hounded him for it.
As they rushed around a corner, Daniel vented his frustration in an angry whisper. "See? See? I told you this was a bad idea. I told you from the start."
"No, you didn't." Noah growled.
"Yeah, well maybe I should've. Then we wouldn't be out here, hiding like-"
Noah held up a finger. Footsteps sounded from the hallway they had just left. The boys flattened themselves against the wall as a team of Army troopers jogged by. None of them turned to the hallway on their left or glimpsed the three out the corner of their eye. They charged on towards one of the outer lounges with a look that made Noah's chest boil with fear. They were afraid. Something was happening.
As to what, the echoes of gunfire reached his ears from somewhere in the hotel. It wasn't regular gunfire either, not bullets but something else. There was a strange high pitched whining noise unlike anything he'd ever heard before. Then a single frightening idea made him shiver:
Was that really what plasma sounded like?
His dad would know. More than anything he wished he was here right now.
"I want to go home, Noe." Tommy murmured somberly.
"I know." Noah replied. "And we'll get you home. Come on."
He made a dash for the door to a close by stairwell. He quietly flicked it open and ushered them over. Daniel and Tommy followed cautiously after him. He led them up the next couple of flights before peeking through an exit.
Floor 62 was eerily quiet. Except for the clothes and other items left strewn about, there was nothing else to be seen. No people, no soldiers, no problem.
Noah pushed the rest of the way through. He'd chosen the place because he remembered how to access the vents here better than those on most of the floors. It was the same one where he'd first met Sará too. That reminded him that he hadn't seen her in awhile. He wondered if she was still okay.
The three of them scampered over to a corner that acted as the wedge between one of 62's lounges and a long hallway. There they found what they came for, a vent in the wall about twice their size. It was less than an inch above the ground, making it mercifully easier for Noah to get a handle on it. He started working on the screws.
The first came out surprisingly fast and with next to no trouble.
"That's one." Daniel said hurriedly. "Come on, three more."
Noah started on the second and stopped halfway. He heard footsteps. At first, he thought they were coming from overhead. He figured it was a soldier walking by on the level above them. But as he twisted the second screw, the sound grew closer. So close that there could be no doubt as to its source.
Someone was on Floor 62 with them.
The footsteps were too light to be an alien yet too heavy to be a regular person. Tommy parroted his thoughts with a fearful whisper that was perhaps louder than it should have been.
"I think a soldier's coming. Hurry up, Noe. If they find us, they'll put us in with everybody else, right?"
Noah nodded and sped through the second screw.
The footsteps suddenly stopped. The three of them paused skittishly once they noticed it. Then the footsteps came again, this time slow and deliberate.
Noah gritted his teeth and got to work on the third, doing his best to stay quiet. The soldier must have heard them and was coming to check. At this rate they were sure to be taken back and trapped with everyone else.
He didn't want that. He didn't want to get dragged somewhere where the only thing between him and a bunch of monsters was a bedroom door.
He redoubled his efforts and earned a concerningly loud squeak of metal for his trouble. Prying out the third screw, he practically stabbed his tool into the last.
"He's almost here." Daniel said, backing up from the corridor just a few steps away. The footsteps were coming from there. They had become a lot slower yet had drawn close enough for Noah to feel a presence.
The soldier was right on top of them.
A fiery angst turned his fingers into a machine. He undid the final screw with lightning speed, pocketed his tool and wrapped his hands through the cover. He pulled. It refused to budge.
The footsteps sped back up. The soldier knew they were there.
Abandoning all silence, Daniel rushed to his side and grabbed ahold as well. Together they pulled until they yanked the cover out of place.
At that moment the soldier dashed out of the corridor, but it wasn't a soldier.
Noah didn't find that out until he heard the same high-pitched whine from before, only much closer.
Tommy let out a whimper.
Noah whirled about to see his friend falling back as if someone had pushed him. He was like a porcupine, his chest studded with needles that brightened into a pink flash. Something hard threw Noah clean off his feet. He crashed into the wall and hit the floor, knocking the breath out of him. Something wet splashed him all over and took out his sight. His ears, though ringing, told him that a new set of footsteps had just rounded the corner. He needed to move. They needed to move.
He peeled himself off the floor. Daniel had staggered to his feet first. Because of that, he shielded Noah from whatever it was that splashed into him with so much heat that Noah felt it himself.
Daniel screamed.
Before he could fall, Noah grabbed him by the belt and hurled them both towards where he thought the vent would be. It was. They toppled through the opening. Still blind, Noah didn't waste a second. He pulled Daniel around the sharp corner in the duct that experience reminded him was there. More heat came lashing at their backs as something shot through the opening.
There was a loud, frustrated squawk and a roar of anger.
Neither of them scared Noah more than what would happen if he stopped. He hauled them down the length of duct, turning this way and that. He pulled them so deep into the maze of metal that he no longer knew where they were. He didn't care. They just needed to get away. That was all he cared about. The need to run overwhelmed Daniel's cries as he forced him to hobble on, pulling and pushing him even as pained shrieks became the background noise to his own desperation.
Then that too faded.
Noah was left to tug his friend along who grabbed onto his shoulder with less and less strength.
"N-...Noe."
Noah didn't listen and brought them through another tight corner.
"Noe-...N-"
Daniel tripped over, nearly taking them both down as a coughing fit made him convulse. Noah took the chance to wipe away the stuff on his face. His palms came up red. So were his clothes, his shoes, his skin even. He saw that they were at the end of a long duct. A trail of spotted red followed them before stopping at Daniel. He was on his hands and knees, coughing up more of the same.
An alien screech echoed into his ears from far away. He moved to pull Daniel along again but he brushed him off.
Through his hacking fits, Daniel sat himself up and rested his back against a wall. Noah took in the sight of him. Despite his pained breathing he could hear his friend sizzling like a pan, crackling like a fireplace. Steam wafted from his side. Noah crawled over to check.
Parts of his shirt were burned off, revealing the charcoal skin beneath. It still glowed, still hissed as if fire itself had stabbed him in the gut.
He tried to touch it but the heat from it singed his hand and he pulled away.
Somehow Daniel seemed to feel none of it. His coughing stopped. He laid his head against the wall, his eyes shifting lazily from place to place, searching. He cracked his mouth open to let out a raspy voice.
"Noe, whe-…" He paused to hold in another trembling fit. "Where's Tommy? I don't see him."
Noah didn't know. Then he realized something. They were both soaked in blood. None of it was his but it was too much to only be Daniel's.
"Noe, where's Tommy?"
"I don't know. He-, he vanished back there somewhere. There was this big flash and-...and-… I don't know, I just didn't see him after that."
"Noe, where-, where's Tommy?"
"I don't know."
Daniel's voice wavered. "Nnn-...Noe?"
Noah didn't know. He didn't want to. He clawed at his face in an attempt to get the last of the blood out of his eyes. "Just shut up, okay!? I-don't-know! I don't know!"
The questions suddenly stopped.
Noah took the opportunity to wipe with what clean parts of his sleeves remained until his vision was finally clear.
"I don't know." He admitted. "If I did, I'd tell you. You know that."
There was no reply.
That was just great. They were already having the worst day of their lives. Now he'd hurt his feelings enough to earn the silent treatment.
"Look, I-, I'm sorry I shouted." He said as he turned back to him. "I don't-"
Daniel wasn't moving.
He stared up at the ceiling as if it had all the answers that Noah didn't.
Noah crawled back to his side and poked him. "Danny? Danny, hey, you listening?"
He didn't answer. Noah winced and looked at his chest. It sizzled but nothing else. He wasn't breathing.
"Dan? Danny come on." He grabbed ahold of his shoulders and shook him. "Danny? Danny, hey, wake up. Wake up! Come on, wake up!"
He didn't.
"Wake up." Noah's voice cracked. His eyes burned and hazed. Already quaking on the inside, he burrowed his head into what was left of Daniel's chest before the first cries slipped out. The sounds of it echoed all around in the vents.
An idea suddenly came to him and gave him the hope he needed to try it. He pulled himself together and looked Daniel in the eyes again.
"I-...I know where Tommy went." He insisted. "I-, I know. I saw him. I can tell you. Just wake up, we can go back and find him. That's it, Danny. That's all you need to do. Just wake up. Just wake up. Please."
He tried to shake him again only for Daniel not to budge an inch. The emptiness in his gaze went beyond anything hurt feelings could muster.
Then Noah finally stopped.
His chest filled with the grief of realizing that his friend didn't need answers anymore. He wrapped a hand behind his head and pulled it to his shoulder, hugging him tight as he screamed.
:********:
Lieutenant Walker remained utterly still as a massive boot stomped in front of him. The giant, two-toed foot was clad in white armor and as it passed it left behind an impression on the corpse-strewn ground of Floor 65.
He held his breath. He kept his arms close to his sides, his legs unmoving while he grasped a pistol beneath his stomach, ready to pull it out at the drop of a hat.
There were other noises too. Other footsteps from Grunts and Jackals sounded all around him. The former were the least careful and tread freely over the bodies of dead troopers as well as their own. The latter were cautious in comparison, stepping nimbly here and there so as to avoid getting tripped. But the Elites were more like the Grunts in that they cared not one bit. They strode where they pleased as they fanned out from room to room.
Doors were kicked down. Screams rang out and plasma fire silenced them.
The same pattern repeated itself again and again without end.
Walker did nothing to stop it. There was nothing he could do. He'd been reduced to nothing but his M6 after several Covenant squads had shot his rifle to pieces as well as his men. With little aside from his sidearm, the most he could hope for was to take out a Grunt or two before an Elite put him out of his bravado. That's all it was, he told himself. To act now would just serve to soothe his own conscience before the end. He thought maybe that might have been better as he listened to whole families being discovered and wiped out. He made a mental note of where the screams were coming from. Those who were being found were among the stragglers that his troopers had had a difficult time hiding. They had had to lock them in closets and suites that possessed minimal security at best, none at worst. A single kick from a gigantic boot could and continuously did prove sufficient. Once that happened, the slaughter was swift and immediate.
He hated it, the methodical nature with which the Covenant kill teams approached the hideouts. The Grunts would melt away the locks with overloaded bolts or let their Elite leaders break open the doors. The Jackals went in shields first and gunned down whoever they found. Rarely did anyone shoot back. Whenever they did, they were usually one of the men of his shattered 3rd Platoon. They put up a short fight from behind beds or desks before they were mowed down. If they really stumped them, the Elites would move in to shoot them or hurl plasma grenades to burn them out. Resistant or not, none of them ever lasted more than ten seconds. The civilians didn't even last half of that.
And how could they when there was no one there to help them?
Except there was and Walker was reminded of who whenever he glanced into the hollow gaze of his sergeant. The corpse lying closest to him in the lounge was one of his oldest and best NCOs. The middling Sergeant Fischer lay on his side. The left half of his normally stoic face was like melted candle wax. The half that wasn't horrifically distorted stared quietly at his former commanding officer.
His last remaining eye was piercing, convicting, condemning.
In it, Walker saw his own reflection. Clean shaven, buzzed, tough, everything an officer of his rank should have been. That image no longer translated to what was raging on the inside.
Was he afraid of dying? No.
Was he afraid of living on like a coward? No.
The answers popped into his head as quickly as the questions did. What he was really afraid of was dying for a lost cause.
He didn't want to die fighting for those he couldn't possibly hope to save. If this was it for him then he wanted to make it count. The heroes among 3rd Platoon could and often did have their last stands, however short lived they were. He didn't care for it himself. He wanted to be sure those he fought for had a chance. Otherwise, what was the point beyond delaying the inevitable?
Floor 65 was overrun; it was as simple as that. That too was inevitable. It fell the moment his rearguard was wiped out on the opposite end of the floor. Their demise allowed an onrush of Covenant to sandwich his squad between their numbers at the back and those hopping off a Phantom at their front. The massacre that ensued wasn't a matter of motivation but math. Everyone left on the floor was dead after that point, whether they realized it or not.
He and Fischer were the last to fall. A bolt struck him in the shoulder and knocked him over between a pair of service desks. Fischer cried out to him before the Elite that was engaging them singled him out. Once the sergeant fell, Walker refused to get back up. Instead, he dabbed his hand in some of the sergeant's wounds and smeared the blood over his own face. Then he shut his eyes and played dead.
He waited.
The Covenant troops in the area mostly moved on to the corridors, the Grunts with their blowhard glee, the Jackals with their observant opportunism and the Elites with their genocidal zealotry. A few lingered behind. One of them, an Elite judging by the sound of its footsteps, came to check on him. Thankfully his act satisfied its bloodlust. His shoulder wound and the maimed wreck of Sergeant Fischer convinced it that they were no longer a threat. The alien drifted out of the lounge and before long the space was quiet again.
The howl of the wind passing through the shattered windows made for an unsettling ambiance. The room was dead. He needed it to be anyway. Any unwanted activity could attract the wrong sort of attention. If he was to regroup with his 4th Platoon on Floor 71 like he planned, he would need things to stay the way they were. The Covenant would eventually move to other floors. Then he would be free to sneak off to the next defense.
If only.
A loud CLUNK filtered through the lounge. In a busier, more normal time it might have gone unnoticed or been mistaken for the building itself settling. But the silence seemed to amplify it across the whole floor. Moreover, the creak of turning metal told him it wasn't the hotel.
The origin was close.
He listened. The creaking commotion stopped then started several times. Each helped him pin down where it was coming from. He looked to a small vent set in the wall behind one of the service desks. He saw the last screw fall out of one of the corners. The cover was then pushed out of the socket.
He noticed a small pair of hands holding the cover delicately. Their owner shuffled forward at a crawl.
Walker inwardly gawked at what he saw next. His eyes half closed; he witnessed a blood-soaked little boy, perhaps no older than his own, wiggle out of the opening like a worm. He came close to falling out. He managed to turn himself around at the last second and slid the rest of the way. He had the utmost misfortune, however, of landing on a stack of papers that caused his feet to slip out from under him.
Walker came back to life and caught him out of the air. Immediately clamping his hand over his mouth, he pulled them behind a corner of one of the desks. The kid gasped with surprise. His fear ebbed once he saw that he wasn't being taken by an alien. That didn't stop him from taking one look at Fischer's body and almost outing himself to the whole hotel. The lieutenant quickly clamped his hand down tighter. He used his freehand to put a finger to his lips.
The boy caught himself after a while. Calming down, he nodded emphatically though his gaze still flickered to the sergeant.
Walker felt his blood freeze over as heavy footsteps reached his ear. Something was coming.
"Play dead." He whispered. "Can you do that?"
The boy gave another nod. He risked raising his hand off his mouth and was relieved that he kept it shut.
With the footsteps getting closer, Walker shut the kid's eyes and inched away from him before closing his own. They both lay still while the newest predator marched into the lounge.
Walker made out the wary groan of an Elite. The thing had to be scanning the bodies for movement. It found none, not out in the open at least. It crossed the lounge, stopping at the gap between the desks.
Keeping his eyes open a crack, Walker saw that it was the white-armored Elite. The same Ultra that had come close to stepping on him a minute earlier.
His heart raced at remembering that the boy hadn't been here the last time it paid a visit. He waited anxiously to see if it would notice. A single step took it halfway through the desks. It made a passing observation of Fischer, looked over at the lieutenant then paused at the boy.
It did notice.
Walker kept his sidearm hidden behind his back. He clasped it tighter. Despite what had happened before, what he had let happen; he wasn't about to see the kid get killed. Not right in front of him, not when he reminded him so much of his own flesh and blood. Seconding his conscience was the pure math of the moment. If he tried, he could buy him some time. He could rush the Elite and give the boy a chance to run. There was a stairwell nearby. If he was smart enough to crawl into the ventilation then he had to have some idea about the other exits.
The consideration ran through his head in the same second that it took the Ultra to round on the smaller of the three humans. It cocked its head and tentatively raised its plasma repeater, as if it was weighing whether it should confirm the kill or not. The kid was good. Even the lieutenant started to wonder if he was still breathing. He had yet to find out where he'd gotten so much blood from or how much of it was even his own, if any. The Elite seemed to be on the same wavelength.
After a few seconds it lowered the weapon. It turned and walked off, heading out of the lounge to secure another area of the floor.
The two of them stayed put a while longer. Walker waited for the footfalls to fade entirely. The second they did, he scrambled towards the kid. A quick check-over left him bewildered. There were no wounds on him. The boy was fine.
Walker spoke to him in a whisper. "What were you doing in the vents, kid?"
The boy took in a shaky breath and let it out like a bad secret. "Hiding."
"You were hiding up there?"
He nodded.
Walker winced. At least he was thinking out of the box. That explained how he was still alive but not why he looked the way he did. His face was drained of the very same stuff that left his clothes damp. He refused to blink as if he were afraid to, staring at him and yet also through him to some distant place, or memory. Walker knew that stare. He'd seen it plenty of times in the faces of soldiers on whom the frontlines had left their mark. To see it on a kid was haunting.
"Why didn't you stay in the vents?"
"My friend's in there..." He murmured.
"Friend? You're not alone?"
The kid tried to nod, stopped himself, moved to shake his head then stopped again.
The lieutenant dared ask another question. "Whose blood is this?"
At that, the boy's mouth seemed to seal itself shut. Without further explanation his eyes glazed over, and the first sniffling sobs made him shudder. Still, he kept his hands over his mouth to stop himself from making too much noise.
Walker took the hint. He felt sorry for him. He shouldn't have had to live through any of this. Then again, how many displaced children of dead parents and dead colonies had he thought the same of? The lives they should've lived didn't matter. The Covenant could care less, or not at all.
As for him, he began searching for their way out. He remembered the door to the closest stairwell was right around the corner from them. If they were careful, they could use it to sneak out. They could make their escape to Floor 71 and link up with his 4th Platoon. He wished he could've found out the situation there beforehand. Sadly, his personal comms were dead. So was his datapad that he'd used to stay in contact with the hotel manager. Both were lost to the close call that blew his rifle out of his hands.
That left him with one option.
He patted the kid on the shoulder to get his attention. "What's your name?"
The boy moved his hands to talk, pulling away the sad webs of tears, snot and spit. He was fighting his sobs so much that he was gritting his teeth.
"N-...Noah."
"Noah?"
The kid clasped his mouth again like the act of talking itself was painful. He gave him another nod.
"Okay Noah, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take you somewhere safe, where there's more soldiers like me. Would you like that?"
A hushed "Yes" escaped his fingers.
"Okay, good. Now I need you to listen to me, it's not going to be easy getting there. You need to do everything I say when I say it. Don't talk unless you have to and only whisper. Make sure to watch your step along the way. Can you do that for me, Noah?"
Noah swallowed the last of his cries and wiped his face clear, inadvertently replacing his tears with blood. "I-…yeah."
"Good." Walker got up and crouched over to Fischer. He holstered his pistol and grabbed the sergeant's fallen DMR. His shoulder was too busted to fully support the weapon, forcing him to hold it one-handed.
He stood up a bit and scanned the lounge. Save for a few dozen dead Grunts, Jackals and some of his troopers, the space was empty. He grabbed Noah and hoisted him up. Weapon raised; he led the way out from the desks. Noah grabbed onto a part of his utility belt and clung closely behind him.
They stealthed towards one of the connecting corridors. Walker stopped them at the entrance and edged his head out.
The passageway was also empty, just a one-sided version of the slaughter that had unfolded in the lounge. Maimed bodies lay partly outside the room doors, spilling their blood into a collective pool in the corridor. Experience told him what he was looking at. The Jackals, the scavengers they were, had dragged out the civilians once they were dead and searched them for goods and trophies. The signs were clear: ruffled shirts, torn jackets and ripped pants. Just another way the Covenant loved to add insult to butchery.
None of the perpetrators were in sight. The floor was quiet, deceivingly so. He spotted the entrance to a stairwell on the left, only several doors down. A couple quick strides could see them out safely. But he knew better than that.
His suspicions running high, Walker ventured inside. His first few steps stole warily down the corridor. Noah followed him which merely raised his angst to new heights.
Then his anxiousness skyrocketed when a door swung open at the other end of the passage. Human screams rang out. There was a scuffle that ended with a loud smack and the distinct CRACK of bones.
Walker froze. He felt Noah tighten his grip on his belt.
With greedy screeches, a trio of Jackals emerged from the room carrying a woman between them. Her head hung limp as they dragged her out. They laid her in the corridor to let one of their number crouch down and run its hands through her clothes.
The sight twisted his stomach. He felt sick. More than that, he wanted to kill the creatures where they stood. But the sound of Noah's muffled breathing forced him to reconsider. He bit down on his teeth so hard that he thought they would break. He pushed back his rage, pulled Noah more securely behind him and took slower steps forward.
The Jackals had their back to them. The two standing guard were pointing out different spots on the woman's clothes for their third member to investigate. They were too caught up in their trophy hunting to notice the human that could have easily blown out the brains of at least one of them. One however was not three. Two survivors were more than enough to kill him. Being completely exposed like he was didn't help matters either and who was to say they were working alone?
He kept his rifle trained on them regardless, namely on the one running its scaly hands over the body.
They were almost to the stairs. Just a few more steps and they would make it. He reached out for the door handle.
The sound of a foot hitting a bag made his heart stop. He felt as Noah used him to stop himself from tripping over a suitcase.
One of the Jackals perked up.
Walker stopped short of the handle. He sighted down his scope as the buzzard began turning his way.
A loud gasp stole its attention at the last second. Horrified, Walker watched their victim shoot awake. She had been unconscious, not dead. She renewed her struggles and pulled frantically at the hands that held her down.
The Jackals screeched.
She screamed.
In the midst of the tussle, one of the aliens pulled out a plasma pistol and shot her in the head. At that range, the bolt blew clear out the other side in a spray of green and red.
By the time she slumped to the floor, the door to the stairwell was already closing and Walker, with Noah in hand, was already running up the steps.
:********:
Erica sat upright in her chair, one of many that lined the workstations of the hotel's main beauty salon. The place was remarkably clean compared to the mess she'd seen on her way here. Both the upper and lower areas were swept, the beautification chairs were intact and the mirrors set before each one was clear. She might have enjoyed her reflection under better circumstances. However, there were neither salon workers to help fix her up nor the time to ask for any. If they were still alive then they probably had their hands full trying to survive in the depths of the hotel. She was no different.
She took one last look at the entrance. Mitchell was standing guard there with his shotgun, staying just in the blind spot of anything that might break through.
She refocused on her datapad and the call that was now beginning to connect. The gruff face of her Director of Security appeared on her screen. He was at his desk. His expression was marred with worry lines and eye shadows that his chronic caffeine addiction could hardly account for.
"Corseaga, what's the situation in the security room?"
"Bad but it could be worse. A couple of Walker's troopers got here fast enough to seal the place off. They're using it as a base of operations now, trying to keep all their guys on the other floors connected. Apparently, no one's able to get in contact with Walker himself. Word is that he was running things up on '65 when it got hit."
Erica bit her lip. The news wasn't promising. "Explains why he hasn't been responding to my calls recently. Alright, do you know what's going on with the other floors? How far have the Covenant gotten?"
"One sec." Corseaga rolled back in his chair to type away at one of the many screens surrounding his station. "Okay, here's the summary. So far as our sensor systems can detect, aside from the ground floor lobby the Covenant have taken control of seven other floors including 5, 23, 37 and, hold on...yeah, 48, 65, 87 and 120. Those are just the ones I can confirm. The number of those going dark goes up every other minute. That's not even mentioning the fact we lost contact with the evac site on the rooftop. Everything's going downhill faster than I can finish my sentences, boss."
The update left her feeling worse than she did after hearing about Walker. Much worse. "Wait, some of those floors were ones where people were gathered. Were they-…"
Corseaga answered her with a grim look that said it all. Her chest tightened. She sat back in her chair and tried to focus on taking the next breath. That seemed to be the most she could do.
She slowly recovered her thoughts from the swirling storm of horror and guilt. "Have you been able to contact any UNSC forces outside the hotel? Maybe we can get some backup."
"I've been working on that with one of their radiomen. Sad to say, nobody's in the area. The closest units are a couple kilometers out and they're not even able to move. They're too busy asking for help themselves to send any our way."
"What about the Air Force? Anything?"
"Not exactly but I did hear that there's a plan in the works. They're trying to use buildings for some incoming evac wave. It's supposed to be passing over the city in the next hour or so. Bad news is those birds are only going to places that have already been secured. That rules us out right off the bat."
"And it's not like anyone can come to help us pull that off." She murmured. "That's just great, they'll be passing right over us."
"What do you want to do now, ma'am?"
What could she do? What could any of them do without support?
"Sit tight, Corseaga." She replied. "The best we can do is survive. We'll ride this out until someone comes to help."
"If they ever do...no problem, ma'am, I'll be here."
An idea crossed her mind that stopped her from signing off. "Corseaga, can you send out a general SOS signal, something that can replay on its own? In the worst-case scenario, we can still leave it playing until someone takes notice."
"How do we know it won't be the Covenant who take notice?"
"Because they already have. They already know where we are and what's going on here. There's bound to be plenty of other places doing the same thing. I doubt they'll take special exception to us for it."
Corseaga mulled it over. "Alright, I've only got less than half my crew with me. The rest are either evac'd, hiding or...well, let's hope it's just those two. But I'll do what I can with who I've got. It'll probably take me a minute to make sure it's not something they can trace back to here. I'll let you know as soon as I'm do-"
A loud BANG reverberated from somewhere around the room. Corseaga flinched as he looked towards where the doors were. There was a disturbance of worried voices and hurried footsteps as a group of troopers rushed by in a corner of his screen.
"Corseaga?"
"Looks like I spoke too soon. I just jinxed us, didn't I?"
Another BANG heralded more commotion as soldiers started barking orders.
"Can you hear me?" Erica asked. "What's going on?"
Corseaga spoke in a hushed tone. "I'll see what I can do, boss. I'll update you if I can, and if I don't..." He stared off for a while before paying her a smile that was as nervous as it was forced. "Tell Noah I said he's a stud in the making. He probably doesn't know what that means yet but I'm sure he'll appreciate it later."
"Corseaga..."
A third BANG sounded that was louder than the last.
The final traces of Corseaga's smile evaporated before a last-ditch resolve. "Good luck, boss, for both of you. Signing off."
"Wait, Corsea-"
The face of her Director of Security vanished, leaving behind a background of her other contacts. She sat still for a minute, allowing the silence to fill in the void of the moment. Though she tried to ignore it, in the back of her mind she felt it to be true: she wouldn't be seeing Corseaga again.
Another pang of guilt wracked her conscience. A prickling sensation rose in her chest. She fought it back down before it could make her do the last thing she wanted. Mitchell and Turner needed her to be strong. The whole hotel needed her to be strong, what was left of it. If what she suspected happened to Walker turned out to be true then she was the last solid piece of cohesion left in the Csillagos. And if that gave way then what would be left?
"What do we do now?" Turner echoed from a nearby chair.
Erica wanted to know that herself.
"Should we just stay here?" Mitchell asked from the entrance.
Erica shrugged. "I don't know if we can. What we can do, or what I can do, is use my connections to the camera systems. I can set an escape route for us if we need it. I'll check to see which floors are the safest, preferably those with helipads. We'll save who we can along the way and bring them with us."
Mitchell snuck a quick glance through the glass doors then pulled back again. "Think we can escort a few families like this? I don't know if we have the manpower."
"Like I said, we'll do what we can. Now give me a sec to find out what that means."
Erica tapped the screen of her datapad and opened her camera access. She scrolled through the different floor options, mostly those closest to them on Floor 68.
She didn't like what she found. Quite the opposite, it terrified her.
From Floor 67 on down to '61 were sites of carnage. Different cameras provided different angles of the same thing. Scores of guests lay dead. She found them most often bunched together in large groups within the same places that she had called 'safe rooms'. Other smaller salons were painted red. Arcades had their projectors obstructed by the masses of corpses draped over the game stations. The pools in the swimming areas were tainted a deep red by the bodies that floated on their surfaces and below them. In each case the entrances were blown open and the outside corridors showed the signs of battle. Dead soldiers lay beside dead Covenant in a disturbing collage of scorched armor and alien viscera. It was a fight well fought but a loss all the same. The civilians, her guests, suffered the consequences by the hundreds. Men, women...children, none were spared.
The guilt came back with a vengeance. The rising feeling in her stomach also returned, not to make her cry but to make her throw up. She slapped a hand to her mouth in time to brace herself. Once she was steady again, she gained the strength to raise her trembling fingers back to the screen.
A surge of fear overruled the sense of regret that might otherwise have swallowed her whole. What about Floor 60? What about Starry Elementary?
She zipped over to the active feeds coming from '60. The first she came across was a panning view of the atrium. There was nothing there. The area was empty. She considered the two refuges on the floor, the school and the theater.
She hesitated at the school and instead chose the cameras of the other. The hallways and theater rooms were wrecks. Their doors were broken-in and their rows upon rows of seats made into tombstones. The bodies didn't look like bodies per say but the sloppy leftovers of savage beasts. Guts and gore were draped over chairs behind which their owners had hidden...or tried to hide. She saw the turtle-like creatures called Grunts casually waddling over their victims. The bird like abominations she knew to be Jackals paid more attention to the bodies and picked over them for valuables. Several of the imposing and most worrying split-mouths, the Elites, passed from room to room. A few found people hiding beneath the chairs and pulled them out. Those survivors who were discovered were made to suffer in an almost systematized fashion: a scream, a flicker of plasma then silence. The Elites moved on as if what they were doing wasn't cold blooded murder. If anything, they seemed satisfied with themselves.
Her fear petered out in the face of a bubbling rage. She'd heard of what they did to people. She'd even seen what a glassing looked like from Waypoint reels. Yet there was something more personal about a two-meter-tall alien crouching down beside a chair, dragging out a teenage girl by her hair and ending her shouts for her parents, her pleading calls for help with a bolt to the back of the head. Seeing it first-hand made a piece of her break off inside, a piece that was used to peace and security. And a horrible thought tied on the bow to the worst revelation she ever had.
Was this what Duncan saw every time he went out on a deployment?
She always suspected it was bad, but not this. Never this. It made her wonder more than ever before what really lay behind her husband's excited face whenever he came home to them. Hell itself had come to visit her hotel. So what was behind that mask of a man who had made fighting hell itself into his calling, so much so that his job of almost a decade was nicknamed for it?
She wanted to ask him about that...if she ever saw him again. No, she reminded herself. Not if but when. She had to hang on to that or else there was next to nothing stopping her from slipping into the abyss. She would ask him the next time she saw him. When they saw him.
On that note she built up the courage to check on Starry Night. She searched the cameras for Noah. Certainly, the teachers would have sheltered those kids who couldn't find their parents in the classrooms.
They had.
Physical pain lanced through her body as one grizzly scene made her quickly switch to the next feed only to discover even greater horrors.
The children were everywhere.
They were in the classrooms, in the hallways and in the bathrooms. They were over the lockers, under the desks, on the windows, in the sinks and all over the floors.
The datapad practically flew out of her hands as Erica lurched towards the nearest of the salon's sinks. She threw up. Her whole body constricted as it gave up what was left of her breakfast. Her hearing narrowed. The faint calls of Mitchell and Turner as the latter rushed to her side barely caught her attention. She couldn't think, couldn't breathe.
The retching lasted almost a minute. When she was done, she could hardly see. Cracking her eyes open, she found her vision blurred by her own tears. It was a struggle to simply blink them away because more would come to replace them. Turner patted her on the back and tried to calm her. A few shuddering breaths later and she regained some of her composure. She washed off her face, fought to wash the acid taste out of her mouth then allowed Turner to help her back to her seat.
She was still trembling when the maid handed her back her datapad. It took another minute for her to find the will to resume her search. Much to her muted gratitude, Turner stayed by her side and left a comforting hand on her shoulder. Erica took some solace in that. There was relief in knowing she wasn't alone.
But what about Noah? Was he alone? Was he even still-…
Erica stifled the nightmarish scenarios that wrestled for her attention. She scanned the classrooms, forcing herself to check the bodies. They were young, too young. Not all of them though. There were a few teachers sprinkled in as well as a few soldiers and dead Covenant. She even spotted several security guards among them and forlornly recognized the torn remains of the two that always greeted her at the entrance, the playful Chuck and the no nonsense Hailey. Like many of her staff, they had also stayed behind to help. The painful looks frozen on their faces testified as to how well that had ended.
It didn't take long for her to find Noah's teacher, Mrs. Graves, lying in the doorway of her classroom. By the way her arms were splayed about her it was evident that she had tried to stand in the way of something. Whatever it was had gutted her for her trouble.
She paid close heed to the faces of her class, summoning everything she had in her to ignore the blood trails and handprints that marred the scene.
She didn't find Noah among them. Then again, there were several bodies she wasn't entirely sure about. She either couldn't tell if they were the same size as her son, found their faces obscured by bad camera angles or mangled and burned beyond recognition.
There was no relief in not finding him. There was a chance Noah had gotten away on a dropship or at the very least gone somewhere else. There was also a chance that she was wrong about both of those.
The one thing she banked her hopes on was that she knew her son. He wasn't the type to just do what he was told, not without finding some sneaky way to do it or to get around doing it. Sad to think it might have been the one thing that saved him from sharing in the fate of his classmates.
"He's not here." She said at length. "I don't see Daniel or Tommy either. They must have gone off somewhere."
The finding allowed Turner and Mitchell to breathe a little easier.
"There's always the chance he got away safely." The latter remarked.
"What about the vents?" Turner thought. "He knows the ventilation system like the back of his hand. That might've actually come in handy this time around. You think...maybe he..."
"I don't know." Erica sighed. "Not for sure. He could be anywhere."
Mitchell tapped a contemplative finger on his shotgun. "I'd put all my credits on him being in the vents. For a kid his size, he's had to be craftier than most. If I were him, that's where I'd be. Same with Daniel and Tommy."
"Right, if that's the case then the question from there is how do we get him out? How do I get him back to me?"
"You probably won't like this but I'd suggest checking out the other floors."
Erica shuddered.
Mitchell noticed. "There's a possibility that he went either up or down. Since you left him to come up a few floors, there's a good chance he tried to follow your trail."
"You're saying he went up?"
"Did you see anything on the levels between us and Starry Night?"
"No, nothing except Dante's Inferno. I didn't see him anywhere."
"Then maybe he overshot us?" Turner suggested. "Think about it. Out of the whole staff that he's close to, he comes to visit me and Mitch the most. And we both work in the same place."
Erica started sitting upright as she connected the dots. "Floor 71."
Mitchell snuck another glance out the doors to make sure the coast was clear. "Makes sense. If he couldn't find you, he'd want to find the next best thing or at least hedge his bets on all three of us being in the same place. I think it's worth a look."
"I think so too." Turner agreed.
Erica needed no further prompting. She accessed the cameras on Floor 71 and ran through their feeds. She anxiously examined the different corners and passageways which presented a continuation to the pattern of decimation. The Covenant had made inroads here as well though at a noticeably higher cost than usual. For every dead soldier there were twice as many Jackals or three times as many Grunts. Even some of the Elites had fallen to machinegun nests that had positioned themselves at the ends of long corridors. Still, slaughter was slaughter, the kind she realized that she had only avoided by pure chance. Running out of space to hide had incidentally saved her life.
The safe rooms however were not spared. From the smallest to the largest, they were broken down with near maddening ease. Their occupants were cut down to a man in equal measure.
She stopped for a moment to wonder how much blood was on her hands. There were many other hiding spots around the hotel. Floor 71 was already hit, so how long until the death storm swept towards the last of them, if it hadn't already. She was left stunned at just how fast things had spiraled out of control.
She shook herself out of her daze and resumed her search. Shockingly, it took less than a minute for her to find a clue.
On a camera set in the corner of one of 71's outer corridors, she noticed a door to a stairwell on the right side of her view. Nothing was out of the ordinary about the door aside from the way it was cracked open. The camera angle stopped her from seeing exactly why. It did, however, let her watch as after a few seconds the door creaked open a little more, just enough for the barrel of a rifle to peek through.
When nothing happened in the otherwise empty hallway, the door was pushed open further. A boot came through followed by the rest of a two-headed soldier. Her cognition took a second to recognize it as actually being two people. The first was an Army trooper that pointed his rifle at the way ahead with one arm. The other arm was used to support a little kid that clung to his back like a koala.
The latter's dark hair and clothes were a dead giveaway.
Still, Erica wanted to make sure she was right. They had their backs to the camera. She had to wait until the kid looked over at a couple of bodies to see his face.
The familiarity of his green eyes sealed the deal. The shadow of trauma lurking behind them was something new, however. Regardless, she could never mistake them for any other than her son's.
The relief was instant and encouraging.
"I found him." She said. "He's on '71."
Turner leaned over her to see, breathing out a deep sigh at the sight of him. "Oh thank God. Who's that with him?"
"I don't know. Wait..."
The soldier stopped to crouch beside the body of one of his comrades. He shook his head after a while and turned to check on Noah.
Erica felt a new wave of joy at finding yet another familiar face. "It's Walker. He's alive."
"Still in the fight, huh?" Mitchell beamed. "That's good news for us. He might be able to get this situation back under control. Can you contact him?"
"No. I think his communications are out. He looks injured too. He must have run into Noah on his way there. Where they are, I don't think it'll be safe trying to call again."
"At least he has someone to protect him then."
Mitchell's last remark gave Erica reason for pause. Her heart sank at realizing that Noah must have been on his own. She wasn't sure what that meant for Daniel and Tommy. If they were gone then it was likely that their parents had found them. But then why wouldn't Noah have gone with them?
An uneasy feeling crept into her already shaken stomach.
She watched Walker continue; his rifle ready as he treaded down the corridor with light steps.
"I think he's trying to find help." She noted. "Don't know if he'll find it up there though." She turned to Turner and Mitchell. "We need to go. We'll get them and bring them back here."
Mitchell nodded affirmatively.
Turner, however, was hesitant. "Are you sure we could make it back?"
"No. In any case, I can think of a few other places we can go if need be."
"And who's to say the Covenant won't be waiting for us there too? I'm not against finding Noah, I just think we should figure out a way to lead him here rather than going out into, well, you saw it."
"I have. And I know I want to spare my son from it. You do too. But I can't see any other way. We have to go get them ourselves and wait it out where we can."
"Don't worry, T, I've got your backs." Mitchell added. "I know I never talked about it before, but this isn't my first rodeo with these things."
The two saw him look outside again with his M45, the fingers of his metal hand impatiently tapping the barrel like a piano.
"The ones with the tanks on their backs, the Grunts, they're pushovers. Put the bullet in the right place and they'll drop though I'd advise against shooting the tanks themselves. Not unless you want an extra-large firecracker in a confined space on your hands. The same goes for the birdy freaks, the Jackals, although it gets a little trickier with their shields. The worst you'll see are the tall guys, the Elites, but they're heavy enough for us to hear them coming. It's best to kill everything else around them so we can all shoot them at the same time, works to wear down their shields. That aside, if you see the big guys, get to cover. Grunts are trigger happy and Jackals are precise, but Elites are all that in one. You got that?"
Turner frowned reluctantly at his advice. "I...think so."
Seeing no better time to ask, Erica butted in. "Mitch, what were you before you became...you know?"
"I was wondering when someone was going to pop that question."
"Well?"
The Csillagos' best chef looked to her expectantly. "A Marine, a sergeant and a God honest murder machine of the 27th Expeditionary Division. Loved it too," He nodded to his prosthetic arm. "At least until this."
Turner pointed to it with trepidation. "What...did that?"
"A close shave on Jericho VII. Let's put it this way, there's a reason I talked a lot about Elites. You really have to be on your guard around those things. But don't worry though," He flashed a victorious grin. "If you think this is bad, you should've seen the other guy."
At that, some of the tension faded from Turner and she relaxed a bit. "I guess I'll take your word for it then, 'sergeant'."
Erica took the moment to appreciate the help they had on their side. She checked to see how far Walker had gotten. The lieutenant had reached the end of the corridor. He trained his rifle left around a corner and disappeared with Noah.
She made a mental note of where they were heading then switched off her pad and stashed it in her pocket. "They're on the move. It's now or never."
"Alright then," Mitchell set his face into a stern determination as he hefted his shotgun at the doors. "Let's go get our boy."
Evictionem - Eviction