PART THREE
–HORROR RISING–

He was dead.

Jack was positive that he was dead.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had this certainty locked so firmly in his skull, but it was at least a familiar one. How many times had he been sure that his life was over? How many times had he looked down the barrel of a gun? The edge of a knife? How many crashes had he survived? How much pain had he endured?

Apparently, death was cold.

This wasn't a surprise to him.

Out of instinct, Jack tried to move his body, and was surprised that he still had a body to move. He risked opening his eyes. A grainy, gray ceiling filled his vision. He sniffed the air. It smelled like blood, death, shit, and oil. He was still breathing, he realized. If he was dead, he wouldn't need to breathe. Right? Jack slowly sat up.

He found himself staring at a generic stack of crates, a shelf of generic maintenance supplies, and a bloodied workbench.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

Glancing down, he realized he was naked. Worse than that, he had no weapons. He had absolutely nothing on him.

He took a moment to sort through his memories. It terminated abruptly in the incident at the gateway. He remembered being sucked up into nothingness. If he had to guess, he'd place his money on the gateway activating and grabbing them. So where had they gone? Obviously somewhere with generic UAC equipment.

Jack looked down at himself again and sighed. He'd come through with nothing but himself. After all the damned work gathering the guns, the ammo, the supplies. It was all gone. Slowly, painfully, seemingly his entire body aching and sore, Jack pulled himself to his feet. He began to get his head, and his priorities, sorted out.

The first thing he needed was a weapon. That above all else. Wherever he was, he was positive that he hadn't escaped the torment of the damned that had infested Phobos. He tried to get some clue as to where he was by studying his environment, but it could have been anywhere. To give himself something to do, he began checking out the crates and the shelves in the small storage room he was in. Most of it was just spare parts, and none of the tools were lethal enough to provide any help. He needed clothing, a radio, armor, information, allies.

He needed a lot.

Right now he had jack shit.

Jack sighed in frustration as he finished his search. Glancing down at himself, he saw that he had a number of bruises, as well as some scrapes, cuts, and burns. Medical supplies would have to be added to that list. Feeling a bit more in his right mind, he moved towards the only obvious direction that presented itself: the door. Walking up to it, he paused and listened, pressing his ear against the metal. He couldn't hear anything.

That didn't necessarily mean there was nothing out there.

Hesitating for a moment, he finally mustered his courage, reached out, and hit the button. The door slid open to reveal...a short length of hallway and another door directly across from him. He waited, listened, heard nothing and slipped out. The hallway stretched away to his right and terminated about ten meters away to his left. As he stepped out into the corridor, Jack shivered. It was definitely cold here and that was going to be a problem.

He moved over to the other door and opened it.

Another storage room awaited his inspection.

Jack wasted fifteen minutes checking out all the rooms in the immediate area. The only thing of use he found was a small bathroom where he pissed into a urinal. Padding back out into the corridor, he moved to the open end of it, which led him to a crossroad section. Another two corridors snaked away from him, one on either side, and they looked the same as the one he'd just come from. The way ahead, however, looked different. He made his way down that shorter hallway and opened up the door at its end.

There was what appeared to be an office that served both as a security checkpoint and perhaps inventory management, providing ingress to this particular storage section. The place was a wreck and the air was hazy with smoke from a few burning consoles. Jack screwed up his eyes and coughed, and just at the worst time, too.

Out of the dark haze lurched a zombie.

"Dammit," he whispered.

He'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

He went to meet the zombie with his bare hands. It was a technician by the look of the ragged, soot and bloodstained uniform, and not a very built one at that. Jack thought he had his work cut out for him. However, as he grabbed the zombie by the throat, intending to drag it down, the thing grabbed hold of him and pulled his arms away with a shocking strength. Jack grunted as he grappled with pale monster, trying to shove it off of him.

The thing made a bite for his neck. Jack managed to get out of its grasp and leaped back. The zombie lunged for him and he narrowly avoided it. Reaching out instinctively to his left, as his combat senses told him there was something there, he found the back of a chair, grabbed it and raised it, then bashed the zombie in the face with it. The thing went stumbling, but recovered quickly and kept coming.

Jack hit it again, and again, and another time.

When it finally went down to the floor, he leaped onto it, grabbed its head, raised it up and smashed it into the floor four or five times, before its skull finally cracked and bloody brain matter began leaking out.

"Christ," he whispered, getting up and stumbling away, fighting the urge to vomit. He shook his hands vigorously, flicking droplets of coagulated blood everywhere. After taking a minute to chill out, he began searching the area, including the zombie and the two dead bodies in the room. Ultimately, he ended up wasting another five minutes. All he got for his troubles were a totally useless pistol and a combat knife.

Well, a combat knife was better than nothing.

The uniforms he found were too shredded and bloodied to be worth wearing. Knowing he had to press on if he was going to get anything done, Jack left the security ingress and stepped out into a larger, open area that obviously served as some kind of access point for a variety of wings in wherever the hell he was.

As he scanned the area for anything useful, a way to go, and threats, he began to wonder where the others were. Were they alive? Was Jennifer? God, he hoped so. He'd hate to think that he was alone here now. Obviously the infestation had struck here, as well. Was he somewhere on Phobos? It was possible, though his gut told him he wasn't. So where then? Back on Mars City? Now there was a nasty thought.

Or maybe he was on Deimos?

No way to know for sure until he gathered more intel. There were a few zombies lurking in the shadowed periphery of the room. They groaned and began coming for him as they noticed him. Thankfully they weren't Z-Sec, just the regular kind, though two of them were armed, one with a big nasty wrench and another with a clawed hammer. Wielding the knife, Jack moved forward, slowly circling so that they had to come to him one at a time. When the first one came at him, the one with the hammer, he moved quickly around it as it swung at him, missed, and stumbled forward. It was the perfect opportunity.

He drove the blade into the base of the zombie's neck.

It went down like a bag of bricks. He repeated the process twice more, dropping the other two zombies and narrowly avoiding getting his skull smashed by the one holding the wrench. Once they were dead, he patted them down. Two of them were wearing maintenance uniforms, and one wore a security outfit. That one actually had a pistol on it. Relieved, though frustrated at his lack of pockets, Jack grabbed the pistol and ultimately abandoned the knife, because he needed his second hand to hold the single spare magazine of ammo.

Pistol in hand, the way clear of enemies, (for now, anyway), Jack studied his choices. There was a huge silver door at the head of the room. He had no idea where it led, but it must be important given its size. He left it alone for the moment. Back the way he had come, the two other doors were marked Storage. Another led to Offices, another to Reactor, another to Infirmary, another to Recreation, which must have been a laugh.

What decided him was the sound of gunshots.

They were pistol shots and coming from one of the other storage areas. He was off and running, feet slapping against the metal as he entered the storage wing, made his way through the security checkpoint, and came into the plus symbol hallways. He skidded to a halt as he came to the crossroads rooms. The gunshots were coming from the left. He spun that direction and saw a figure, facing away from him, naked and bloody, firing at an Imp. A zombie was creeping up behind her. He recognized Jennifer's fit ass as he approached her. Just as she put down the Imp, he aimed and popped off a shot, capping the zombie.

Jennifer spun around, gun raised, and nearly blew him away, a round scorching past his face, just inches away.

"Christ, Jack, I'm sorry!" she cried, lowering the gun and jogging over to him. As soon as she got to him, she wrapped him in a quick but hard hug. "I thought I was the only one."

He hugged her back fiercely, then they stepped apart, knowing they couldn't let their guard down in this place. "I did, too. I haven't seen anyone else," he replied.

"Um..." Jennifer glanced back the way she'd come. "I was, uh, checking out one of those storage rooms. I looked through a manifest and it said there were supposed to be uniforms in one room and rations in another."

"Perfect," Jack said, and they set off. "There's an infirmary out there. We can hole up in there for a little bit and get our breath back. I'm dead on my feet."

"Me too."

They managed to get into the storage rooms, grab some black security uniforms, some canteens of distilled water, and some MREs without running into trouble. Once they'd secured their new supplies, (still no new weapons for now, but two pistols were a good start), they skulked through the corridors and across the main area until they hit the infirmary. It was mostly untouched, surprisingly, and empty of enemy hostiles. Once they had cleared it, they locked it down as well as they could, then slipped into the bathroom and shower area at the back. After setting their supplies on a nearby counter, they got into a shower stall together.

Jack turned up the water as hot as they could stand it. When he turned back around, he saw Jennifer staring at him intently. He felt something, suddenly powerful, overwhelmingly so, stirring within him. It wasn't lust, not exactly, though it felt very similar just then. He thought it might be more like the thrilling excitement of surviving a crazy-ass experience that should have killed you a dozen times over, combined with lust.

He and Jennifer came together, kissing fiercely, passionately.

He pushed her up against the nearest wall and she jumped up, wrapping her legs around him. He caught her and held her.

Their lovemaking session was short, but fierce, fiery, and furious.

When they were finished, they stayed together, embracing, for several seconds, before getting back to the task at hand.

"So, um...how are you?" Jennifer asked after a moment, once their pulses had settled back to normal and their brains weren't so intoxicated with raw desire.

"Doing a lot better now," Jack replied.

She snorted, grinning slyly, and he felt a wave of calm and happiness roll over him. What they were doing right now was just so...normal. So human. It was like the eye of a bloody hurricane, a moment of peace, desperately needed downtime.

"I'm so glad I found you," he said. It felt like a stupid, obvious thing to say, but by God, did he mean it.

"I'm glad I found you, too," Jennifer replied. "We should probably finish up."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, knowing our luck, there's an Imp sneaking in here right now. Although, it's too bad..." he said, studying her.

"What's too bad?" she asked.

"Naked and bloody is actually like a wicked hot look for you," he replied.

She laughed and rolled her eyes. "I'll keep that in mind for when we get into the fetish part of our relationship."

They grabbed bars of soap and quickly scrubbed themselves down. The cuts Jack had accumulated stung, then felt better under the barrage of soap and hot water. Once they were clean, they killed the water, got out, and dried off. With that out of the way, they took the time to give themselves some medical treatment, patching up any cuts, scrapes, or abrasions, and injecting each other with universal antibiotic/antivirals. To top it off, they downed some painkillers that wouldn't take their edge off, but were powerful enough to deal with their numerous aches and pains. With that out of the way, they pulled on fresh underwear, socks, uniforms, and boots. As Jack zipped the black security jumpsuit up, he began to feel whole again.

Food came next.

They found a mini-fridge among the contents of the infirmary and raided it. No food, but there was most of a twelve pack of Mountain Dew Lightyear left, and it was nice and chilled. Jack snagged two of the bright yellow-green cans, eager for some soda, and so did Jennifer. They sat and then wolfed down their MREs, trying not to eat and drink too fast.

"Man," Jack said between bites as he studied the can, "how the hell long has Mountain Dew been around? My freaking grandfather remembered drinking it, and said that his dad had been drinking it, too."

"Dunno. But it has to be a long while. This latest edition is pretty good," she replied.

They finished their meals and then sat back, though only for a little while. After maybe two minutes, Jack sighed and sat back up. "We probably need to keep moving. Jenkins and Thompson must be around here somewhere," he said.

Jennifer nodded and stood. "You're right. Now that I'm clean and dressed and fed, I can actually think straight again."

Jack stood. "Let's get back to it."