STERLING

 

Wednesday January 15 - 0314 MST

Sixteen minutes until Turbocharger activates

 

"Did you hear that?"

Morgan's question was rhetorical. We all heard that strange hissing sound that trailed off into what I could only describe as sinister, unearthly laughter. Judging by everyone's reaction they also felt the cold, clammy hand of fear take a firm hold of their spine just like me.

Up ahead was the last post of C-Watch. It was informally known as "the Hole". This was as far as anyone ever went because we kept the nastiest transient artifacts locked up in this deepest part of the Underground. At this final intersection into the bowels of C-Watch was a tiny bunker made of fat granite bricks with a thick steel door as the only way in and out. It was where a security team would be sitting and overseeing the storerooms from relative safety. It was also the most logical place for Captain Hamilton and his expedition to be hiding out if they found themselves in over their heads. But after that last alien screech we were all worried that what we would find in there was a set of half-eaten bodies.

I took the first step forward, because often times that's all it took to break people out of their instinctual paralysis. It worked and one by one the others followed me. We moved ever closer with the light from our woefully inadequate flashlights wobbling around on the floors and walls ahead of us. Bringing up the rifle and the night vision for a better look I found a blur of bright green, but at the edges where our lights weren't shining as brightly I saw something move.

A pair of black tendrils curved around the corner leading into the big intersection of "the Hole". They looked like strange vines that had grown from the corruption that permeated this place. But they moved ever so slightly unlike any plant I had ever seen before. Then a third one joined them and it became clear to anyone with functioning eyes that this was no vine.

It stepped out into the corridor on fur covered legs that were so dark and black they seemed to swallow the light of our meager little hand-helds. My mind tried to wrap around what it was my eyes were seeing and failed miserably. Normally, the human mind made sense of things by comparing it to other, older memories. It could have said I was looking at something that resembled a cat or a dog or a fish or a bat. But it didn't look like any of those things. No matter how much I stared at it all I saw was a blur of fur and alien geometry.

What it looked like was a collection of enormous spider legs, spindly and covered in a hard shell. There was no discernible body, just legs. The fur growing out of it was utterly black. One of its legs bulged at the end making it look like a club. When I thought it couldn't get any worse the club leg split open revealing a mouth filled with needle like teeth. It screamed again and something deep within me was touched by that unnatural sound. I froze, it seemed like long dead instinct told me that was the correct thing to do in the presence of this monstrosity. I wasn't so sure but I was utterly helpless to act against whatever hold it had on me.

The thing's mouth dripped with something that could have been drool or venom as it snarled at me. Then my ear drums practically exploded from gun fire coming from right beside me.

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!

Buck Sharks was firing his pistol in a two-handed stance that had the well practiced look I had only seen in Alpha and Shadow team on the range. He was obviously no stranger to firearms, or using them on exos. He was followed by Doctor Johnson emptying his shotgun into the five-legged abomination blocking our path.

The creature's howling went impossibly loud as high speed projectiles tore into its chitinous shell. Tiny puffs of black goo erupted from every hit. The thing jiggled and spasmed in a dance of death as it was slowly torn to pieces by .45 slugs and buckshot.

In a few seconds it was all over. All that remained of the creature was a collapsed pile of hairy legs with wounds that slowly fizzled and burned as though they had been scorched by an acid.

Sharks and Johnson both circled around the corpse keeping their weapons trained on it as they went. The caustic stench of the smoke coming from spider thing's wounds reminded me of something I'd heard before. That strange metal in Shark's .45 rounds allegedly reacted harshly with exo physiology. It looked like those allegations proved to be true. And the same went for the special shells Johnson was using. All those bits of trivia came rushing back to me as the chemical stench of the reaction hit my nose. I always found it odd how the mind latched onto the most minute pieces of trivia when it was under a lot of stress.

BANG-BANG!

I jumped at the sound of Sharks putting two more rounds in the spider monster. He glanced at me humorlessly. "Can't ever be too careful with these things."

The others had jumped too. Morgan, Brighton, and Jacob. Like me they'd all been paralyzed with fear from the thing hunting us and had just watched the short, violent exchange helplessly. All except Doctor Johnson. He had his shotgun flipped over and was furiously thumbing shells into the under-barrel magazine.

None of this bothered him.

He and Sharks just pressed on like this was business as usual to them. And that's when I remembered another odd bit of a trivia. It was an old saying.

Beware the old man in a profession where men die young.

While Johnson finished pumping fresh shells into the magazine Sharks kept his weapon leveled down the corridor in a two-handed grip. Once Johnson was up again he swapped his own magazine for a full one. It all went off like clockwork as if the two of them had trained together for years. But I knew they had only just met.

"C'mon" Sharks nodded toward the darkened gloom ahead of us. "Let's go find your people and get out of here."

Tiny motes of dust lingered in the air and glimmered like cursed Christmas tree ornaments. At least I hoped it was just dust. Down in C-Watch you could never tell if it was just the ancient walls and ceiling slowly being undone by time or something left behind by a creature that was much worse. I hoped it wasn't the latter that I would be breathing in.

As Johnson and Sharks strode on ahead I felt a chill of anxiety wash down my spine. These men I was following were dangerous and I hardly knew them. But on the flip side of that coin was another fact. They were on my side.

I went along after them and promised myself that the next time we got into a firefight I wouldn't freeze up and end it with a full magazine.