The airlock went through its hissing cycle as it flooded with atmosphere.
Jack swallowed nervously, holding onto his pistol with both hands now. He made sure for the third time that the safety was off. Behind him, Stanmore was still and silent. Jack looked down at his hands. At least he wasn't trembling anymore. It was pretty fucking unbecoming of a Marine to tremble. But goddamn was this a scary situation. Here he was, heading into a completely unknown situation, facing completely unknown hostiles, armed with only a damned pistol and a terrified pilot who he basically had to coerce to be here as his backup.
Pretty high up there in terms of nightmare scenarios.
The airlock let out a clank that made him jerk and the hissing cut off. Jack cleared his mind, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now was the time for focus more than anything else. He stepped up to the opposite end of the small airlock bay.
"Remember what I said," he murmured to Stanmore, glancing back.
The man nodded, his pistol in hand as well. He looked even paler than he had before. Jack turned back around. He looked down at the small control pad set into the door frame. The open button beckoned him.
It was time to face the unknown.
Jack hit the button and brought his hand back, gripping the pistol. The airlock doors split down the middle and slid slowly into their recessed niches within the walls. Slowly, bit by bit, a poorly lit, metallic corridor was revealed. The metal was a dark grayish color, lit only by a row of naked bulbs studding the ceiling overhead. The place had the feel of a maintenance access tunnel, some kind of behind-the-scenes area, the guts of the base where power and light and oxygen were routed. There was nothing in the stretch of corridor.
It was pretty simple, just about twenty feet of metal hallway, one door at the very end, big enough maybe to push some basic cargo through. This must be some kind of auxiliary access airlock. Jack stepped carefully out of the airlock and felt a chill shudder through him. He waited to see if anything would happen, expecting some kind of reaction, but there was nothing. Around him, the Hangar hummed mutely with power and whispered the quiet respiration of oxygen filtration. He didn't like how dim the lights were, though.
"Come on," he said quietly to Stanmore.
Slowly, he made his way down the corridor, checking for anything. But there was nowhere to hide. Well, that was nice at least. Jack reached the end of the corridor and opened the next door. Another stretch of corridor, but this one had more doors in it. They were all to the left, just two, neither open. Jack began to head towards the first one, but froze as a sound came to him. It sounded like...he wasn't sure. It was too indistinct, but it struck him as an organic sound, a noise a living thing would make. Stanmore tensed behind him.
"Did you hear-" he began.
"Shh!" Jack snapped.
Both men waited, frozen in silence. A few seconds later, the sound repeated. It was still too indistinct to make out, but he thought it might be a human being making the noise. It took a third time for it to be issued for him to determine where it was coming from: a vent to his right, stuck high up into the wall, near the ceiling.
There was something disturbing about the noise, something besides the obvious. After a few seconds, he had it: the sound was being repeated, almost like a recording on loop. As he was standing there, feeling the situation out, he heard it again, closer this time. Yeah, definitely a person. But what were they trying to convey? It didn't sound like pain, or anger, it sounded like...he didn't know what emotion was being displayed.
They'd deal with it later, for right now, he wanted to clear these other two rooms.
"Stay here and watch the doors, let me know immediately if anyone comes out," he said.
"Yeah," Stanmore replied softly. He swallowed nervously and looked around the hallway.
Jack moved up to the first door, reached out and hit the access button. The door slid open, revealing...a maintenance room. Just some back room where technicians worked on equipment. Workbenches, lockers, and tables took up the most space along the periphery of the cramped room. Whatever had happened, it hadn't touched this area. Jack did a double check of the more shadowy areas, where someone or something might conceivably hide, but there was nothing, so he left the room, closing the door behind him.
The second door led to much of the same, though he did find signs that someone had actually been here, in the middle of something. One of the workbenches was scattered with tools and spare parts, and a chair had been knocked over. It looked like a tech had bailed in the middle of a job, because...because why? What had he heard? Seen? What had happened here on Phobos Base? Jack left the room and stepped back into the corridor. As he did, he heard a soft chime from inside of his suit. His pulse spiked. Thinking it might be the radio, he glanced at the very basic wristpad interface and frowned. It was his oxygen.
His suit was warning him that he'd used up a quarter of it. Jeez, had it really been half an hour since he'd stepped outside?
"Turn off your interior oxygen," Jack said, deactivating his own and opening up his vents. "We don't know what kind of situations we might run into, we might need to go for a walk on the surface," he added.
"There's got to be oxygen reserves around here," Stanmore replied as he did the same.
"There doesn't got to be anything around here. Assume nothing, rely on as little as possible," Jack replied.
Stanmore sighed but kept his peace.
As Jack made for the final door, he paused. Now that his vents were open, he could smell something. It was an old, familiar smell he'd become all too acquainted with: blood and death. But there was something beneath it, something putrid that set him on edge. Rot and decay. Meat gone bad. Jack reached the door and opened it. A simple square room awaited his inspection. Nothing in it, just a door to the right.
Jack tried the radio again. "This is Private Ward to Sergeant Blackmore or anyone else that can hear this transmission. Please respond. Over."
Still nothing. Sighing, Jack opened the door, and hesitated. This time, the door led into an immense area, what he quickly realized was the hangar bay itself, or one of them. He swept the area with his gaze and pistol, picking out the usual litter of stuff he'd seen in a hundred hangars. Crates and fold-out tables and chairs, a couple of land rovers and two shuttles. Over to his immediate right was a huge stack of crates that towered over him and a pair of abandoned loaders, one of which had tipped over, spilling its load.
Half a dozen crates were smashed against the floor, most of them broken open, spilling all manner of gear and spare parts across the dirty metal floor. That's where the sound had come from, and even now he could hear it again, much more clearly. It was a groan. A flat, empty groan, sounded like a male, but he still couldn't hear anything in the groan. It didn't sound like pain, it just sounded...flat. Dead. The sound put him even more on edge.
"What is that?" Stanmore whispered.
"Let's find out," Jack replied.
There were a couple feet of space between the edge of the crates and the side of one of the big shuttles. The sound was repeated, and, as they drew closer to the opening, Jack began to hear another sound: what sounded like...eating. Like someone greedily chowing down on a steak. Occasionally there was a sharp, high crack.
The sounds did not inspire confidence.
His mind was feeding him all kinds of awful images and he shut it down. Now was not the time. Jack reached the crates and stepped carefully through, briefly peering back, but his view was blocked by the big, bulky ship.
He stepped around the pile of crates.
For a second, maybe two seconds, relief flooded him. Someone was standing on this side of the crates, facing away from him. Judging by the blue jumpsuit, it was a technician. One of the base personnel. Jack began to open his mouth, to say something, to ask what the fuck was going on here, but then that same sound, that groan, was repeated exactly. And it was coming from the man in front of him. That's when the relief began to fade rapidly. And then, all at once, his mind picked out a bunch of different things.
First, the guy's jumpsuit was torn and bloodied. In fact, it looked like someone had put two rounds through his chest and they'd burst out his back. Then there were his hands, sticking out of his sleeves. They were far, far too pale, like a corpse left in the snow. Then he turned around and everything just slammed into place. The man's eyes were wide, white, and empty. No pupils or irises, just white. His mouth was stuffed with teeth, more than there should be, and they were all sharp. Worst of all, blood was smeared around his lips.
At the same time this was happening, Jack became aware of the fact that there were more people behind this strange new terror. They were crouching on the floor, doing something, but now this technician, this...former human, was coming right towards him and Stanmore. That broke his paralysis. Jack was good at noticing when dangerous people were coming right towards him. He snapped his pistol up.
"Don't move! Identify yourself!" he barked.
The man issued a low moan and raised his arms, reaching for him with hands that were also smeared with blood.
"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Stanmore cried.
"Stop, now!"
The man kept coming.
All of Jack's instincts were screaming at him to pull the trigger, so he did. He aimed low, putting a round through the man's right thigh. He stopped, stumbled, but then kept going like it was nothing. Jack remembered the two bullet wounds he'd seen through the middle of his back. What the fuck was going on?
"The head! Shoot him in the fucking face!" Stanmore yelled.
Jack's next thought, actually. He raised the muzzle, took aim, and fired. The bullet entered the man's forehead, a little left from the center, and ripped away a good section of his skull. The man, (zombie, call it what it is, a fucking zombie, a goddamned zombie), pitched backwards, a spray of deep red gore erupting into the air and splattering the nearby surroundings with its rotted brain matter and coagulated blood.
As the body slammed back to the deckplates, Jack became immediately aware of three new hostiles. They had been crouched down behind the first zombie, almost totally hidden in the shadows. They were standing now, their hands and mouths smeared with shredded gore, the remains of a corpse beneath them.
The origin of those meaty, snapping sounds he'd heard earlier.
Jack adjusted his aim, training taking over. Three hostiles, unarmed, coming for him at a slow gait. Okay, he could deal with this. He shifted aim a bit more and squeezed the trigger. The pistol barked in his hands and the first zombie, another technician, this one tall and thin, took a shot through the mouth. The back of his head blew open like a ripe watermelon. He went down like bricks on Jupiter. He snapped to the right and the second zombie's eye erupted in an explosion of deep red gore. The third zombie, a blonde woman wearing green fatigues with half her cheek ripped away ended up with a bullet right between the eyes.
As Jack began lowering his pistol, he heard a startled shriek and four quick gunshots. He spun around, seeing another two zombies headed their way, coming out from behind the shuttle. Stupid! Stanmore was going ballistic, hosing them down, wasting shots. He managed to put one of them down, a lucky shot that punched through one's cheek.
"Stop firing!" Jack screamed, leveling his pistol at the next zombie and squeezing the trigger. The bullet went in, the blood splattered out.
"Oh-oh God-I-I just...I just..."
"Stanmore, calm the fuck down," Jack said, looking around quickly. They seemed to have the immediate area to themselves.
"I-I-I, I never sh-shot anyone..."
Jack sighed, turned and placed his hands on Stanmore's shaking shoulders. "Say teacup and saucer," he said.
Stanmore's eyes cleared a little and the haze of panic was replaced by a cold splash of confusion. He stopped looking around and stared at Jack. "Wh-what?"
"Teacup and saucer, say it."
"T-teacup and saucer."
A few seconds passed.
"Feel better?" Jack asked.
"I...uh, yeah," Stanmore muttered. He laughed suddenly. "Where the fuck did you learn that?"
"Read it in a book by Stephen King once," Jack replied.
"I didn't think anyone read him anymore."
"People still read him. Now come on."
Jack turned around and checked his six again. Still nothing there, though he heard a dismal growl somewhere nearby.
"What are these things?" Stanmore whispered, some of his fear returning.
Jack began making his way around the front of the shuttle.
"They're zombies," Jack muttered, surprised that he was able to say it so plainly. Zombies. Zombies weren't real...except that he'd just killed five of them, so...obviously they were real. They had all the classic signs of zombies: smelled like something dead, buried, and then dug up three weeks later, groaning, slow, stumbling, eating human flesh. So obviously they were real. Even if they weren't actual horror-movie zombies, but just something similar…
"But that's impossible!" Stanmore hissed.
"Be quiet," Jack replied. Up ahead was the other shuttle. He wanted to clear the hangar first, then move on. They slowly began moving through the area. Given all the insane stuff the UAC had actually put on the market in the past twenty years, Jack had no problem believing that they could produce something like this. So they'd produced some kind of toxin, something that created zombies...Jack felt ice fill his veins.
If it was something airborne...they had opened up their vents. He swallowed, then tried to push the fears away. If he was infected, well then, he was infected. He'd learned to be zen about certain extremely dangerous things in his life. There wasn't a lot he could do about being infected. That was zen...or maybe it was fatalism.
He didn't say any of this to Stanmore, the guy had enough to worry about.
As he finished clearing the hangar bay, more thoughts began to come to him. Why didn't he have a goddamned map of this place?! He was so unprepared for this. Speaking of unprepared...as they approached the exit to the bay, he turned to face Stanmore.
"Stanmore, for Christ's sake, don't throw away bullets like that," he said.
"I'm...sorry. I panicked."
"I know. Don't do it again. Now come on."
Jack opened up the door and looked into what lay beyond. It turned out to be a big corridor. The most immediate thing he noticed was a corpse laid out in the center of the passageway. He could tell right away that it was local personnel, not anyone from the team. How far had they made it before the zombies had gotten them? And...how could the zombies have gotten them? It just didn't make any sense. They were all armed, trained in at least the basics. He knew for a fact that Blackmore, Jennifer, and McGee were solid and could take care of themselves. Why hadn't any one of them tried to get back to the ship?
What if they were all dead?
No. Jack wouldn't accept that. They couldn't all be dead. He stepped out into the corridor and took a better look around. No sense in just standing around. The place was huge, more of a tunnel than anything else, with high ceilings and broad enough to drive a truck through. Which was probably what regularly happened, given that this was the nexus point for cargo to be offloaded and uploaded. Dead ahead of him was another hangar, but he wanted information, answers, and they sure weren't going to be in there.
He needed to get to the control tower.
Since the corridor seemed to be clear and Stanmore was okay with letting Jack make all the decisions, he took a moment to orient himself, remembering the structure from the exterior. The tower should be to his far right. He looked down the length of the tunnel dead ahead and saw that was actually cross-sectioned by another huge tunnel about seventy feet away. Okay, that probably was where he needed to go.
He set off.
Stanmore followed. "Where are we going?" he whispered.
"Control tower," Jack replied.
They moved down the length of the corridor, more questions swirling around Jack's head. He pushed them away. No questions for now. He was deep in unknown, hostile territory and he needed his wits about him if he was going to survive.
Speaking of survival…
Somewhere up ahead, he heard more inhuman growling. As they drew closer, the sound resolved a little more and he could tell it was coming from the right, the way they wanted to go. Jack got up against the wall and edged up to the corner. He first took the opportunity to look ahead him, a little into the left passageway. No zombies there, just some more bodies, pools of blood, and shell casings. So far, so good.
He peered cautiously around the corner, into the next tunnel.
There were six zombies waiting for them, milling about, stretched along the length of the tunnel. Two medics, three technicians, and a single Space Marine, though no one from the squad. "Watch my back," Jack said, then stepped around the corner.
He took his time, aimed well, and fired true.
There were five shots left in his magazine and each one of them was a clean headshot. He had to admit, once you got past the skin-crawling horror, (something he was unhappy to admit he was already doing, what did that say about his mental health?), zombies weren't all that bad. They were slow, stupid, uncoordinated. They didn't fire back or try to duck. As he ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in, he called to Stanmore.
"Come on out, get some target practice in," he said.
Stanmore stepped out. "Why didn't you kill it?" he asked, staring uneasily at the stumbling medic, who was a good thirty feet away, slowly coming towards then, dragging one leg.
"I left it for you. Put it down," Jack replied.
The pilot had already killed one zombie, but that was more out of blind panic and luck than anything else. He needed to actually, intentionally put one down. Swallowing his fear, Stanmore stepped out and stood next to Jack. He aimed and fired. The first shot went wide. Stanmore took aim again and squeezed the trigger one more time. This time, the round took the zombie high and right in its forehead.
Its head snapped back in a plume of deep red gore and it slammed into the floor.
"There you go. How many rounds you got left in that magazine?" Jack asked.
"Um..." Stanmore fumbled with the pistol, pulled the magazine out. "It's spent."
"Then reload. And keep count. Nothing worse than running out of bullets in the middle of a firefight. You usually don't live to regret the mistake," Jack said.
Stanmore nodded, ejected the spent mag, and put a new one in.
"It's my last magazine," he said.
Jack passed him one of his own. "Make them count."
Stanmore nodded and accepted the magazine, slipping it into his pocket. Now Jack only had two to spare. As they started walking down the hallway, something was nagging at his brain. A lot of somethings actually, but this one was more apparent. He was missing something...but what? Missing something in a situation like this was a good way to get dead fast. He slowed and scanned the litter of bodies he'd produced.
Zombies, man. Fucking zombies…
His stomach did a slow roll and his last meal threatened to come up. Okay, maybe he wasn't handling it super well. Maybe he was just jettisoning his emotions to stay sane in the moment or maybe he was shell-shocked.
Either way, he felt like a fucking idiot as his eyes fell on the dead Space Marine. Look for more ammo! Why hadn't he thought about that? Sighing, Jack paused and knelt by the dead soldier, feeling more than a little guilty. This was no way to go down, no way for a Marine, Space Marine or no, to end. Really, it was no way for anyone to end. Are they alive?, he wondered as he rifled through the man's pockets.
If so, death would be a release. A mercy.
Unfortunately, the corpse was empty, no spare ammo, no sidearm, not even a combat knife. He took a moment to pat down the other corpses in the area, but it was all the same story. Well, this wasn't good. If all the base personnel were like this, he'd need a shitload more ammo. And something heartier than a freaking pistol. Also, preferably more backup than a pilot with minimal training ready to piss himself.
Jack sighed and pressed on, leading Stanmore to the end of the hallway and slowly in through the set of double doors waiting for them. They were halfway open and apparently stuck. He carefully swept the room beyond but there wasn't anywhere to hide. It was just a big tower with stairs wrapped around the interior, ascending to the control room at the top. All the space underneath the stairs on the ground floor was packed solid with crap, there was nowhere to hide. Jack hesitated as his eyes caught on something.
Among all the crap packed in there, he saw a trio of gray, ribbed, forty gallon barrels nestled in the shadows beneath stairs. One of them had sprung a leak, and what was slowly leaking out was a noxious, bright, almost neon green liquid.
"What do you make of that?" Jack muttered, pointing at the barrel.
Stanmore stopped looking worriedly around long enough to study the barrel and frown deeply. "It looks like...toxic waste," he murmured softly.
"Great, another fucking thing I need to worry about."
Jack began making his way up the stairs with Stanmore riding his heels. Now that he was actually here, dealing with this, he kind of regretted taking the guy with him. If he was alone, he could be more in tune with his environment, more aware of something missing or something that wasn't supposed to be there. He could hear Stanmore's breathing and shuffling footsteps and the occasional worried mutter from him. Not exactly a great person to have with you in a deadly environment. But what the hell was his other option?
He couldn't drop the guy off somewhere, he'd just go right back to his ship and try to escape. And maybe he'd succeed this time.
They trudged up the stairs to the top. Jack found himself on a platform that served as an impromptu level. There were three doors. He moved to the first one, opening it up and slowly stepping inside. A small bathroom done up in white tile. Someone had been brutally murdered up here, as evidenced by the chewed up meat that resembled a corpse lying in the center of the room. Jack checked out the stalls but they were empty.
Zombies were more than likely lurking nearby.
He moved into the next door, finding a derelict break room. A few tables and chairs, a kitchen area that had a mini-fridge, a dishwasher and some cabinet space, a couple of old arcade cabinets shoved into one corner. He recognized Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 and a recently resurrected classic, Area 51, since there'd been a weird resurgence of arcade cabinets for the first time in over a hundred years. Turkey Puncher's screen was cracked.
Jack left the room and moved to the final door, beckoning for Stanmore, who had been hanging around the top of the stairwell, looking down, to join him. The doors to the control room itself were closed.
"Open them," Jack whispered, pistol at ready.
Stanmore hit the button and the doors opened up, revealing another abandoned room stuffed with all manner of equipment and terminals and workstations, a hundred screens, most of them dead and black, some with static washing across them, others flickering madly. Not exactly the most distraction-free environment.
Jack took a cautious step into the room as he saw that there was nothing immediately threatening. Mistake. He felt a sudden smashing pain in his left shoulder and let out a small shout about the same time Stanmore let out a warning. Jack backed away several steps, raising his pistol with his right hand, his left one temporarily out of commission as his whole left arm was numb from the blow. He saw a man in an orange flight control suit, one of the techs that coordinated the ships and shuttles, at least back when he was still alive.
The thing was holding a big, red wrench like it knew how to use it.
Jack aimed and fired twice, putting two big nasty holes in its head, one of them turning its eye into a thick plume of gore and an empty, dark socket. Whatever passed for life fled it and the walking corpse became the regular kind, slamming to the floor.
"You okay?" Stanmore asked.
"Yeah," Jack muttered, taking a more careful look around the room this time. Stupid. That was really stupid. How many more mistakes was this place going to let him make and get away unscathed? He flexed his arm, well relatively unscathed. He'd be fine, but he was going to have one big fucking bruise now. And damn, that was through the fucking security armor! Those zombies were apparently really fucking heavy hitters.
But that wasn't what was bothering him.
That zombie was using a wrench. It was using a weapon. Fifteen minutes ago they were drooling, stumbling morons. What the hell did this mean? Did the guy happen to be holding one when he turned? (However the hell that happened.) Was it just muscle memory? Or something more? Jack filed that away for later and moved into the control room. The center strip of the three outer walls were all glass, giving him a grand view of Phobos Base and the ashen gray surface of the moon itself. What a wonderful view.
"Watch my back," Jack said, moving over to what appeared to be the most intact workstation left in the room.
It was obvious some kind of firefight had gone on, as a lot of the screens were cracked and shell casings littered the floor. No other bodies, though. Not exactly the most comforting sign. It didn't take him long to realize that the main computer network was pretty much fried. He couldn't pull any real useful information out of it, at least not from here. He might have more luck at some kind of main control center.
He switched gears and rolled the chair over to the communications console. Jack fired it up and plugged into it.
"This is Private Ward to Sergeant Blackmore or any other Space Marines or UAC personnel, is anyone receiving this message? Over."
He waited, listened, and then after several seconds, prepared to try again. All he was getting was the hum of an open channel. However, as he leaned in again, suddenly, there was a surge of static. He jerked back in surprise, then froze as a flat, dead voice spoke.
"It's dark here. Here, the birds burn."
Jack felt ice fill his veins. There was something disturbing about that voice, something that reached down and touched a base part of him, an old, primal caveman undermind that reacted instinctively to danger.
Jack made himself respond. "H-hello?" he asked. He realized his hands were trembling slightly. He forced himself to calm down, to get a grip. "Is anyone receiving this message?" But there was nothing after that, not even static.
"What the fuck was that about?" Stanmore asked.
"I don't know. But we need to make a plan," Jack replied, standing up and stepping away from the comms console, instead focusing on the rest of the base.
Phobos Base was spread out before him. He had a great view of the area. Ahead and to the left, he could see a big, flattish green pyramid with a lot of pipes coming off of one side. Farther on, beyond it, a big, green dome with huge yellow windows. Then, to the far right, opposite of those, a big two-tiered structure, split into two sections connected by bridges. Finally, back to the left, beyond the other two structures, he saw two huge, bright-green pod like buildings with tunnels connecting them back to a central, towering structure that was built right through the wall that the two huge craters the base was built in shared.
He could see more structures beyond that, but only vaguely.
"Stanmore, you've been here before, right? What am I looking at?" he asked, calling the other man over to the window.
Stanmore joined him and began pointing the structures out. "I don't know too much, but that green one with all the pipes to the left is the Nuclear Plant. Then the round dome one is the Toxin Refinery. And then that other one to the far right is Command Control. I think that one in the middle is Phobos Labs, but I'm not sure. And I don't know anything beyond that. I just picked this up from chatter I heard over the radio and in the hangars."
"Fine," Jack murmured, going over his memory. "Sergeant Blackmore's plan was to check out the Nuclear Plant and the Toxin Refinery, then converge on Command Control to look for some answers. I don't see any reason to deviate from that plan."
"Except for the fact that it got them all killed," Stanmore mumbled.
"We don't know that they're dead," Jack snapped. "Now focus up."
He already knew how they were going to get there. He could see long, almost-invisible tubes connecting all of the structures. Tram tunnels. A good, quick way to shift personnel and cargo. It would take them straight to it.
As Jack led Stanmore back down the stairwell, a thought occurred to him. Well, a couple did, actually. Namely, he wanted to go back to the hangar bays and check them out. He'd skipped over one and hadn't thought to look for ammo in the other. Plus, he wanted another look at those ships, to see what his options were.
He didn't have time to search every nook and cranny, but he took fifteen minutes to hurry through the two bays, (judging by the size of the first one and the overall size of the building he'd seen from outside, he knew there couldn't be more than one other hangar bay), and checked off the things he wanted to do.
First, he investigated the two ships in the first bay, (there were no ships in the second one), and confirmed that they were in just as bad a shape as the three he'd investigated out on the surface. Which, all at once, he realized how disturbing that was. Back then, when he'd been checking them out, sure they were creepy and mysterious, but everything was. Now that he'd faced down the big bad guys of Phobos Base, his discovery was thrown into a new, harsh light: what the hell were zombies doing out there, smashing up cockpits?
Except that...it couldn't be zombies.
Even with enhanced strength, Jack couldn't imagine any human had the capacity to rip open the airlock doors the way those had been. But even putting aside that question, he found himself wondering why it was done. The zombies were drooling, mindless fools, intent only on, apparently, eating flesh. The destruction of the ships, the total radio blackout, the utter lack of contact with any other survivors...it all reeked of intelligence.
That all made him feel like crap.
What made him feel only marginally better was the fact that he put down enough zombies to have to slap a fresh magazine into his pistol, (Stanmore capped another two), and this time, he managed to scavenge an extra three magazines, one of which he gave to Stanmore. He also didn't find any traces of his missing team. No corpses, no survivors. It felt like a zero sum game. Ultimately, he and Stanmore ended up in a security center attached to the tram bay. Jack recognized the security center the second he saw it and quickly made for it.
Security meant ammo, maybe more guns even.
However, he wasn't prepared for what was actually waiting for him in the security station. He opened the doors and peered inside. There were no zombies, though there was a corpse, sitting askew in a chair at the edge of the room before a huge bank of monitors. Something was wrong. It wasn't just the flickering yellow-red light coming off of the monitors. It was the monitors themselves. They were...no, that wasn't possible.
"What the fuck are we seeing?" Stanmore whispered.
Jack didn't know what to say. For the first time in a long, long while, perhaps his entire military career, he was utterly, totally stumped for an answer. Several of the screens that made up the bank of security monitors were…
Bleeding.
Deep red blood leaked steadily from them, pooling on the control console beneath them. What was worse, several of them showed flaming pentagrams. Pentagrams? What, were they dealing with an outbreak of fucking demons…
Demons.
His mind flashed back to the image of the crimson thing he'd seen on the screen over Ishii's shoulder. No...that wasn't possible. He simply flat-out refused to believe it. They were not facing demons from Hell.
An old, old phrase from a very old horror movie rose in his mind, unbidden…
When there is no more room in Hell, the dead shall walk the earth.
But this wasn't Earth! This was Phobos! And that was all bullshit anyway!
Jack was in the middle of this crisis when, abruptly, all the screens flickered and then went dead. Before either man could react, a message appeared in bleeding, flaming text, taking up the entirety of the screen wall.
THE END IS HERE
Jack jerked back in surprise.
"Oh what the fuck, man?! What the fuck!?" Stanmore cried.
"We're leaving," Jack replied. "Get to the tram, now."
He turned around, half expecting a grinning demon with red skin and horns and a spiky tail to be waiting for him in the doorway. But there was nothing. Nonetheless, as he hurried back out into the tram bay, he felt cold all over. He and Stanmore moved through the open door and transitioned into another room that had a pair of loading platforms on either side. A sleek, silver tram was waiting for them in one of the bays.
It felt too convenient, but Jack wanted out of the Hangar now.
He and Stanmore moved onto the tram and cleared it, then Jack settled into the control area and began working the instrumentation panels there. He was no conductor, but he was smart enough to get the tram rolling.
The Nuclear Plant was dead ahead.