"I don't suppose you have even the slightest idea as to what's going on, do you?"
Jack turned and looked back through the open door at Stanmore, who was sitting on one of the benches in the first compartment of the tram. They'd been riding in silence for a good five minutes now, progressing smoothly beneath the glass tube. There wasn't anything to see out there but space and Mars overhead and the dry grayness of Phobos. Jack's mind had been running furiously for the entirety of all those minutes.
"No solid intel," he replied and turned back.
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Stanmore groused.
"It means I don't know anything for sure beyond the fact that there are apparently fucking zombies and my team is missing and the radio is dead." Although that wasn't entirely true. He still remembered that flat, dead voice with its cryptic, chilling phrase. In his mind, he could still hear those dry words. What did it mean?
What did any of this mean?
"Could it be a toxin? Or a disease? A virus?" Stanmore asked suddenly. He got up and joined Jack in the control area.
Jack sighed. "I don't know, Stanmore. It could be anything. Could be cosmic rays for all we know, or an alien plague. The only intel that matters for the moment is that we can kill them pretty easily. But some intel I'd like to know is: do you have any real training?"
"What? I mean...some," Stanmore muttered.
"Define 'some'," Jack replied.
The pilot sighed. "My uncle used to take me shooting and I was okay at it, and when I signed on to be a pilot for the UAC, they made me take a few courses. Essentially very, very basic military training. How to shoot a gun, load a gun, clear a room..."
"So how come you aren't better at this?"
"I'm not a fucking soldier! And I'm kind of freaking out because we're facing the goddamned walking dead!"
"Fine, but I need you to focus up, Stanmore. Remember the basics. You watch my back, you don't point the gun at anything you don't intend to kill. We go into a room, I cover one side, you cover another. You call out when you see a threat."
"Yeah, all right, fine. I...I got it," he replied, going and sitting back down.
Jack suppressed another sigh and returned his attention to the growing structure ahead. Its huge, flattened pyramid design was kind of throwing him off. He realized, suddenly, why there was such a broad, flat space on the roof: it was a landing pad. He imagined they offloaded hazardous waste there sometimes, stuff that couldn't be taken care of by the Toxin Refinery. Jack realized he was getting distracted.
As they neared, he tried the radio one more time, but all he got was the same flat silence as before. Well, it was better than some other super creepy thing. Maybe there were survivors here, or at least a freaking shotgun. It'd be nice to lay his hands on one of those pump actions and blow open some zombie skulls.
"Get ready, Stanmore, we're almost there," he called back.
The tram pressed on, passing through the final stretch of tube and then sliding into the airlock, which, mercifully, still worked. He waited, listening to the hissing and other telltales of a big airlock doing its duty. He had no idea what would be waiting for him on the other side. Part of his mind told him: more zombies.
But he couldn't stop thinking about that red creature he'd seen.
Abruptly, the airlock sounds died away and the corresponding door opened up into another terminal area. He didn't see anyone or anything waiting for them on the loading platform. Nonetheless, after the tram settled into its position and went into standby mode, he stood and pulled his sidearm from its holster.
"Get ready," he said, walking back into the first car.
Stanmore stood up stiffly and grabbed his own piece. The two of them moved to the doors and Jack took another look around the area. He still didn't see anything, but he didn't like the way the far left portion was unlit. Jack hit the access button and the doors slid open. He stepped out onto the platform and flicked on the small but powerful flashlight built into the muzzle of his pistol. Playing it over the shadowy region, his eyes widened in surprise as he saw a trio zombies lurking in the darkness, all three of them chowing down on a pair of corpses. As soon as the pale beam of light exposed them, they rose up.
"Shit!" Stanmore hissed.
Both men opened fire at about the same time. They each put down one and then Jack shifted his muzzle a bit and punched a gory hole through the third's head. God, they were ugly, so dead pale...and all of them seemed to have blood and shreds of flesh smeared across their mouths. Jack slowly approached the three new corpses, sweeping the area one more time, then he dropped into a crouch and patted them down. All three of them wore light green jumpsuits. They weren't Space Marines, so they must be the personnel that ran the nuclear plant.
Which meant that, unfortunately, none of them was packing any heat.
Jack stood back up and briefly considered checking the other two corpses, back in the shadows, but they looked too chewed up and he didn't want to go over there anyway. Jeez, now he was afraid of the dark. Phobos Base was resurrecting all his old fears. But why not? Anything could lurk in the darkness and apparently monsters were real. Jack tried to shake off the uneasy feelings and only partially succeeded.
He led Stanmore to the back of the platform where a broad security door had been forcefully ripped open by what might have been an explosion. They stepped into a small, bland square room that was clearly meant to serve as both ingress and checkpoint. The right wall was mostly glass and beyond it he could see another security checkpoint. This one didn't look quite as trashed as the other one. Maybe there'd be guns inside.
Stepping through the corresponding door and out into a lobby like area, which was dominated by a large, circular desk, he and Stanmore swept the room. No zombies here, either. And...Jack hesitated, spying a pair of corpses near the desk. He moved forward. Both of them were nuke techs but it wasn't that particular factoid that drew him in. No, these were clearly zombies and they had clearly been killed by someone.
And recently.
Headshots, so probably a professional someone. A missing teammate?
Jack straightened up and took a moment to clear the lobby. There wasn't much, just a bunch of tables and chairs along the periphery of the room and a few terminals on the walls that didn't show anything of any interest. He also found three large doorways, each of them at least clearly labeled. The one to the left led to crew quarters, the one to the right led to storage, and the one dead ahead led into the plant itself.
Leaving them all alone for the moment, Jack instead moved to a small door at the back of the room, not far from the one he'd entered through. It wasn't locked, thankfully, and as he stepped through, he found himself in the security checkpoint he'd been looking at earlier. It was obvious that people had been through here and most of the contents of the room had been pilfered, but that didn't mean it was all gone.
Jack got to work searching, telling Stanmore to stand watch.
It took him five minutes, but he managed to secure two more magazines for his pistol and, lo and behold, a shotgun! He even managed to find enough shells to fully load it up. The DX-20 Pump Action Shotgun, or what the troops tended to refer to as a Blaster, held eight ten-gauge slug shells and was known to be a particularly powerful son of a bitch. It was simple, basic, and like a force of nature. Jack was more than thrilled at his discovery.
"Whoa, nice," Stanmore said as he came out of the security center.
"Yep," Jack replied, holstering his pistol. He opened his mouth to say something else, but his words failed to manifest as he heard something completely new.
"Did you hear that?" he murmured after it had faded away.
"No? What?" Stanmore replied, fear playing across his features.
Jack moved slowly across the lobby, towards the entrance to the crew quarters. It took a few seconds, but he heard it again. It was a strange sound, difficult to make out, but like before, it struck him as organic.
"Come on, we're checking these apartments out," he said.
Stanmore looked like he was going to argue, but then stopped, probably thinking better of it, and moved to join him.
Jack opened up the door that led into this section of the structure.
An open room with open doorways cut into each of its metallic walls awaited his inspection. So did a pair of shredded corpses in the center of the room. They were so bloody that he couldn't even tell what color jumpsuit they were wearing. Swallowing nervously, Jack kept the shotgun held tightly in his grip and stepped into the room. Dead ahead, left and right were doorways that led into long corridors lined with doors at mathematical intervals.
Apartments, staff housing.
How many people had died in their homes?
Jack considered what to do for a long moment. They just didn't have the time to sort through every single apartment. As he was thinking, he heard the sound again. This time it was a lot clearer. It almost sounded like...an upset stomach. It was a strange, almost clicking, gurgling noise. And, on the heels of that sound, he heard the familiar groan of a zombie. So they definitely weren't alone in here. But what the hell was making that gurgling sound?
"Come on," he whispered to Stanmore. "Watch my back, stay close, stay quiet."
"Got it," Stanmore replied, his voice a strained murmur.
They broke left. Jack finally decided that he would do a sweep of the corridors, listen for signs of life. It was a lousy way to search and rescue, but he wasn't really here for that. Besides, he had the sneaking suspicion that a hell of a lot of people hadn't made it out alive. Of course, that train of thought just looped back to the same question he'd been asking himself since he'd first gotten that call in the middle of the night.
What happened?
The pair of them made slow progress down the left corridor, which ended about twenty meters ahead and turned ninety degrees to the right. Jack got up to the edge of the wall as he approached the corner. He waited, listened, heard another groan somewhere not too far away. Peering cautiously around the corner, he spied a pair of zombies wandering aimlessly among the dead. He began to raise his shotgun, but something in his head said: No. He hesitated, then let the shotgun hang by its sling and unholstered his pistol.
He might need it for something else.
What? He had no idea, but his combat instincts were very rarely wrong.
Stepping out, he took aim and popped off two shots. They were clean hits and kills, and the zombies dropped to the floor. He led Stanmore around the corner after waiting to see if anything or anyone would come running at the sound of the shots. He patted down the corpses and found that they weren't carrying anything worth mentioning.
That seemed to be standard operating procedure in this awful new environment. He didn't have an infinite supply of bullets or shells, he'd need more eventually. And that wasn't even considering food, water, medical supplies.
He progressed down the length of this new corridor, which was a lot longer than the other one and was cross-sectioned with two more hallways before coming to an end in another sharp right turn. There was nothing alive and moving in the corridors he passed through, but he kept hearing that sound. It was closer than ever.
As Jack reached the end of this passageway, he stopped, waited, listened. The noise came again, and this time it was practically within spitting distance. He realized he was breathing more heavily and sweating now. His stomach was an acidic knot of tension. Trying to swallow his fear, he switched back to his shotgun and peered around the corner.
Time seemed to stand still.
Something new stood about fifteen feet away from him with its back to him. But it wasn't new. He'd seen it before.
Even from the back, Jack immediately recognized the visage of terror he had witnessed on the display, standing beside Dr. Ishii in an abandoned comms center beneath the surface of Mars. Only it was here, now, in the flesh. It made the strange gurgling, clicking sound again and Jack felt his stomach turn over.
Carefully, he stepped out and raised his shotgun as silently as he could. Its back was huge and thick with muscle, and sported several long, ivory white spikes. The thing had to be six and a half feet tall. Its flesh looked like tough leather and it was a dirty red, like old blood. Jack tucked the shotgun into his shoulder and took aim, never taking his eyes off of the brand new monstrosity. As he prepared to take it down, the beast abruptly cut loose with a hiss and spun around. He had no idea what had given him away, but that didn't matter.
Jack stared into the face of horror.
Its head was shaped like a caricature of a skull. The leathery skin was stretched tight over the bones. Twin crimson orbs, glowing like hellfire, stared at him in a gaze of pure malignant hatred. And its mouth…
Its mouth was huge.
The beast issued a furious roar and raised its right hand. A ball of flame burst into being and the thing threw it like it was throwing a fucking baseball. About that time, Jack's reflexes kicked in and he squeezed the trigger.
About a second before the fireball punched him in the chest and knocked him back on his ass, he saw the thing's alien, demonic face disappear in a plume of deep, dark red gore. Grunting as he slammed to the floor, Jack gasped, trying to suck back in air, get his breath back. He sat up, still holding the shotgun in a death grip.
"What the fuck is that!?" Stanmore moaned.
"Shut up!" Jack snapped, scrambling to his feet. He listened intently while also trying to check out his chestpiece. He thought he might have been on fire, but he wasn't actively in flames, although his chest was uncomfortably warm now. There were more groans now, getting closer. Jack switched back to his pistol and moved slowly forward, approaching the body, which was at the intersection of a T-junction. He peered to his right, then ahead, and spied a trio of zombies coming for him. He aimed and fired, dropping all three of them.
A strange sense of dislocation settled over him as he looked down at the corpse he'd made. Its head was missing above the neck, ending in ragged pieces of flesh and hard protrusions of bone. Crouching down, he poked at the thing with the barrel of his pistol. What the fuck was this thing? Its skin was definitely more of a hide, thick and tough. It looked like it might even stand up to small arms fire, a kind of natural armor.
Frowning, he studied the thing's hands.
It definitely had some really nasty looking claws. Jack made a mental note to stay out of swiping range. After a long moment of examination, he determined that he had no fucking clue how that thing had produced fire.
This was definitely a big problem.
Jack got shakily to his feet. "Come on," he said quietly, continuing his patrol of the corridors in the apartment block.
Stanmore followed him silently.
He thought about the implications as he navigated the corridors, looking for survivors or supplies. The zombies had been one thing. Although they were crazy, they were a craziness he could at least get a grip on. The UAC had done some kind of experiment, it had gotten out and turned the staff into zombies. Okay, he could get behind that idea, at least in the sense that he could understand it. But this thing?
The existence of this creature indicated that a lot more had gone wrong than some kind of biohazard spill.
A strange thought came to Jack as he finished his search and came back into the lobby. Didn't he remember reading some story once when he was younger, some old, old fairy tale about creatures that played with fire?
Yeah...they were called Imps.
Well, these were Imps from fucking hell. There was that word again, that thought. Jack shoved it all aside, however, as he heard something over his radio. There was a jolt of static that sent a wave of startled panic straight through him, but it was offset by a surge of hope as he heard a voice rising through the white noise.
"...eed help! Require fucking assistance...zzt...vate Jenkins, requesting assist...zzt...I'm in the storage...zzt..."
The signal faded away, but it was more than enough to boost Jack's morale. Jenkins was alive! He was nearby!
"Come on, Stanmore, we're mounting a rescue mission," he said, a spring in his step as he crossed the lobby and opened up the door to storage.
He hesitated slightly, however, as he saw that the door led to a darkened stairwell. At the base of the stairwell he saw a portion of a room that was covered in blood. He also saw a severed arm laying down there. But it didn't matter. Mustering his courage, Jack gripped the shotgun and made his way down the stairwell, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure that Stanmore was still with him. The man looked as pale as a ghost, but he was there, pistol in hand. It would have to do. But damn would it be good to have another Marine around.
As he reached the base of the stairwell, Jack quickly scanned his environment. More corridors snaked away from him to either side. They were wide and lined with doorways, but they were also clogged with stacks of crates.
Not exactly the best situation.
Jack activated his radio suddenly, kicking himself mentally for not doing it sooner. Fuck, this place was really throwing him off his game.
That was a good way to get dead fast.
"Jenkins, can you hear me? It's Jack."
"Jack!? Oh thank fucking Christ!" Jenkins cried, coming in a lot clearer now. "Where are you?"
"I'm very close to you. I've got the pilot with me. I'm in the storage area."
"Be fucking careful. There's some big giant fucking pig thing down here. It nearly chomped my fucking arm off. I'm locked in a storage room. Um...if you're standing at the bottom of the stairwell, facing away from it, I went left. I'm...somewhere near the end of that hallway. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, I kind of freaked out."
"I'm coming. Stay put," Jack replied, setting off in that direction.
"Watch your ass," Jenkins replied.
Even as annoying as the kid had been, it was fucking fantastic to hear his voice again. Jack moved slowly down the corridor, maneuvering carefully between the stacks of silver crates, Stanmore backing him up. It was a hell of a place to be. He couldn't stop thinking about what Jenkins had said. Some kind of pig thing?
The situation had even wider implications than he thought, and they were already pretty fucking wide to begin with.
No time to think about that now.
All at once, Jack and Stanmore came out into an open area where the crates fell away. He heard an awful chomping sound, mixed in with a deep, snuffling snorting noise that immediately filled his mind with the image of a gigantic boar. Shaking the idea off, Jack raised his shotgun and moved in on the sound, preparing to put down whatever the hell it was. There was just one open doorway and he saw a shadow being cast.
Something was moving around inside.
There was an awful ripping sound, followed by a loud, wet snap, and Jack knew that the beast was eating a corpse. His stomach turned over lazily and he fought to hang onto his last meal. He'd seen a lot of fucked up shit in his time, but the idea of a human corpse being eaten by this unknown horror from beyond the stars…
He shook his thoughts and fears loose and focused.
Like the Imp before it, he saw this thing from the back. Whatever it was, it was fucking huge. Although it was about as tall as he was, it was broad enough to fill an entire doorway. It looked very top-heavy, bulky with raw muscle that rippled beneath its dark pink skin that made him think of rare steak.
The thing stopped feasting abruptly and straightened up. He heard a deep snorting sound. Suddenly, it turned around.
Yet again, Jack stared into the face of horror. And this time, he was hard-pressed to deny that this thing looked like a...a demon.
Its head, which was fucking enormous, was jutting directly out of its chest. Its eyes were also glowing, but they glowed with a deep amber light that blazed with malice and animal hunger. Stubby, thick horns grew out of its head, giving it a very demonic appearance. But its mouth...holy damn, if he thought the Imp's mouth had been big, this thing's maw put it to shame. It looked like it could snap up steaks whole like they were just treats.
The beast cut loose with a roar, spraying bits of blood and shreds of flesh from its mouth, and began coming for Jack and Stanmore, reaching for them with thickly muscled arms. As Jack raised his shotgun, he was reminded wildly of a shaved gorilla. The beast forced itself through the door frame. Jack loosed a shotgun blast. The slug shell found its mark on the stomach. How the hell had he missed the head?!
He took aim and fired again as he backpedaled. The thing was fucking fast. This shot clipped its head, taking off one of its horns in a spray of blood. The creature let out another furious roar and kept charging. Jack screamed and dove to the side, barely managing to get out of its way. As he began scrambling to his feet, he heard Stanmore start to scream. Jack stared in stark horror as the beast grabbed him by the shoulders, held him in place, forced him down to his knees, and then chomped his entire fucking head off.
Jack screamed again, this time in shock and rage and fury. He raised the shotgun and opened fire, blowing through every single one of the shells left in the damned thing, opening up bloody, gory holes in the thing's broad back. He became aware of quieter popping sounds, a pistol being fired from somewhere nearby.
He cocked the shotgun and tried to fire three more times before it finally clicked home that he was out of ammo.
Breathing heavily, trembling with adrenaline and fear and fury, he slowly reached into one of his pockets to reload the shotgun, but remembered he had no shells.
"Jack."
He turned as he switched back to his pistol. Seeing Jenkins helped bring him back to reality. The man looked like hell. His armor was dented, singed, and bloodied. The hand holding his pistol was trembling. His eyes were wide and wild.
"Jenkins."
They stood there like that for a long moment, as if in the eye of the storm. Then, somewhere nearby, a zombie groaned, and they were snapped back to the situation at hand. The eye of the storm was just an illusion.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," Jenkins said.
"Hold on," Jack replied, turning and staring at the decapitated corpse of Stanmore. He knew his plan to bring the man inside was risky, but, goddamnit, leaving him there was surely riskier. Either way, what difference did it make?
The man was just as dead.
"So that's our pilot, huh?" Jenkins asked morosely as Jack crouched and patted him down.
"Yep," he replied.
He took the pilot's holster and attached it to his other hip, then slid the man's gun into it after making sure it was fully loaded. He only had a single spare magazine on him. Jack added it to his own cache and stood.
He led Jenkins up and out of the storage area, back into the lobby.
"So what the hell happened?" he asked.
Jenkins shook his head slowly. "I'm not entirely sure. I was here, we were...we were going through the plant. Sarge took some of the others on ahead to the Toxin Refinery. I was searching the place with Taylor and Peterson, but...we got attacked by the zombies, and then later, by the other ones. The red ones that throw fire. It was just like you said man, they looked just like you said. I got separated from the others, tried to fall back, but there were more of the things in the lobby here, so I ran downstairs, straight into that big fucker."
"And then you locked yourself in that room...have you heard from any of the others? Do you know who made it?" Jack asked.
"No, I haven't heard shit from anybody. And for all I know, they could all be alive."
Jack sighed. "Well...we need to move on. We have to get to the Toxin Refinery, find the others, figure out a way off this rock."
Jenkins looked like he didn't like that plan, but finally he just nodded. "Yeah, not like we got a lotta choice either way, huh?"
"Yeah. Come on, let's get to the tram."
They headed through the final door.
The nuclear plant was a confusing network of metal tunnels, but, mercifully, there was a fairly straightforward way through the mess. The two men came to a central corridor that led straight to the tramway. The shredded remains of zombies and some Imps that they found along the way gave Jack a bit of hope.
Were the others still alive? Still fighting?
He needed to know.
"You're sure you don't know anything else?" Jack asked as they moved across the exit lobby, towards the trams.
"I can't think of anything," Jenkins replied.
Jack opened the door that took them into the tram bay itself. He looked through the glass and saw that the tram wasn't in its station. Well, that was fine. He'd just recall it.
"Oh...fuck," Jenkins muttered.
"What?" Jack followed his gaze to the windows ahead of them that showed a view of the stretch of land between the Nuclear Plant and the Toxin Refinery.
The glass tunnel that provided protection for the tram was in pieces and, about halfway between the two buildings, he could see the tram itself, half in and half out of the tunnel, a twisted wreck. He stared at it for a long moment.
"Fuck," Jack said. He sighed heavily. "I guess we're walking there. Let's find some spare oxygen for the trip."