“What’s that?”, Macready asks, nodding to the vial.
“It’s a raw incendiary bomb. There was not enough space to use it, it would have burned one of us.”
The last words of the woman muffle while the gate opens to a hallway similar to the one upstairs. Here too, obvious signs of destruction. Along one wall three deep gashes run along the surface, they run parallel and fade after a few meters into a large splash of dark blood.
“I must get to the armory. You stay here. If I won’t be back within five minutes… run! There is an opening at the top of the stairs. It will take you outside.”
“No way!”, the firm response of the woman. There is something that doesn’t convince her at all in what just happened. A detail that she seems to miss, but she knows it’s important. “If we split we make things easier for the creature. Alone we are an easy prey. I’m coming with you.”
There is no time to discuss, Macready throws a quick glance to the woman and to the silent Russian behind her. “Okay, but stay sharp and keep your eyes wide open”. Then he turns to face the corridor.
Their footsteps echo in the deathly silence that reigns in the base. However, they know they are not alone. There is something in the air, like an indistinct feeling. Almost a kind of pressure on their minds. A sense of threat, of danger, as a degenerate situation beyond the point of no return. It’s as if a force field is permeating the environment, instilling a sense of repulsion, and everything seems to want to transmit to the three the same message.
Danger…
Death…
Escape now…
Get away…
The long corridor stops after a few dozen meters, blocked by debris. A section of the ceiling has collapsed, giving way to a deep breach. From the darkness inside comes a light mist that smells of rotten something.
“The way to the generator is cut out”, Macready exclaims while he slides his badge in the reader to one of the side doors. The red light turns green but the door moves just a few millimeters, then it latches with a strangled noise. The Major makes a gesture of annoyance when trying unsuccessfully to put his hands to apply force.
“What’s in that room?”, Moore whispers.
Macready heads for a nearby door, across the hall. “These are the armory rooms. There…”, pointing with a nod at the locked door, “we have the heavy weapons. They could be useful right now.”
“Weapons such as guns, even large caliber, would have no effect on it”, says Moore. “The only valid way is to destroy the creature at the cellular level.”
Macready slides his badge in the reader of another door. “Well, then here we’ll find what we need. Stand back.”
The door slides sideways with a hissing. For a moment the soldier is hit by a gust of stinking air, hot and humid, which seems to insinuate insistently in their nose. “Mmmph”, the man puts instinctively a hand to his mouth, rejecting a retching.
Straining to hold his breath, the soldier looks over the doorway, checking the inside. The room is dimly lit by a red light. Macready directs the spotlight of his assault rifle, revealing some details. The walls of the room, and what lies inside, are covered by a tangle of reddish pulsating growths. A thin membrane crisscrossed by dark veins covers the fluorescent tubes, causing the flickering colored light.
The Major looks out warily, expecting an attack at any moment. He walks slowly, stepping on the tiny still free part of the floor, heading for a side wall of still free shelving.
Weird sounds come from that kind of blood mucilage. Gurgles, liquid and crawling noises. In a corner at the bottom there are still recognizable silhouettes of human bodies piled up, also covered by the same pulp. A feeling of anger and sorrow comes to life in the soldier, when he barely recognizes the face of one of the boys who served in the refectory.
Perhaps the creature has killed and piled them here, waiting to assimilate them…
Macready feels like being inside the stomach of a huge living organism. The heat is suffocating.
Shit! Its food reserves…
After a time that seems infinite he reaches a wall. With the delicacy of a cat he is able to extract a first box, putting it on the floor. Inside are stocked some hand phosphor-incendiary grenades. The man takes as many as he can, filling a small backpack.
Without bothering to put the box back in its place, Macready stands up and raises his arms to get another one from a higher shelf. This is considerably heavier and offers some resistance. With an effort the Major manages to pull it out. At the same time the organic mass that covers the walls is shaken by a tremor.
While laying the box on the other one, Macready realizes that some reddish filaments adhere to its back and connect it to the rest of the mucilage.
The tremor that goes through the walls increases. The creature, which was dormant, seems to awake, perhaps disturbed by the man that tore part of its tissue.
Knowing that there is no time, Macready acts quickly and opens the box, whose lid tilts heavily hitting a shelf.
A gurgling sound, louder than the others, catches the attention of the marine, intent on retrieving a timed bomb. A little to his right, one of the growths begins to have a pulsating motion, as if something is pumping rhythmically material inside. The tip of the protrusion takes quickly a spheroidal shape.
By rapidly alternating glances to the mutating creature to his right and the device in his hands, Macready sets the timer of the bomb.
The rounded shape trembles visibly, getting larger and larger, reaching the size of a basketball. A vertical diametrical line draws on its surface, opening a bloody wound that reveals a shiny, dark surface, with metallic reflections. A huge compound eye, similar to that of an insect, stares at him for a few seconds.
The vibration that affects the entire organic tissue that covers a good part of the room increases in intensity, while somewhere in the depths of the base sounds a chilling roar. Other fleshy growths come alive along the walls starting to form limbs and tentacles snaking in the air in search of their prey. New structures come to life on the creature’s surface. Eyes that look human, and others that have absolutely nothing of human. Maybe they aren’t even eyes but other sensory organs, belonging to animal species assimilated during the millions of years of existence of that timeless and nameless being.
A new roar, louder than before, shakes the walls, followed by a heavy thud, which shakes the very foundations of the base.
“For God’s sake, hurry!”, Moore shouts somewhere in the corridor outside.
Macready finishes to set the bomb’s timer and while he gets up he shows the middle finger to the eye that still stares at him. “Fuck you, asshole!”
The man runs crouched, dodging the tentacles that floats in midair and deals a blow with the butt of his rifle to an indefinable shape that tries to grab him in the face. He flees the room into the corridor, just in time before a mucus spray almost hits him in the back. Moore is already fleeting, about ten meters ahead. Ivanov has moved away towards the gate.
A kind of roar reaches them.
Somewhere a wall collapsed…
Another heavy thud accompanied by a chorus of bestial growls and voices echoes in the hallway.
Getting stronger.
Getting closer.
They run to the gate at the end of the corridor, Ivanov has already reached it, he’s pale and waits for them on the threshold, ready to push the close button.
Suddenly the door of the room with heavy weapons, the one that was stuck and didn’t open up, explodes. The door is smashed and bulkhead fragments are thrown towards the opposite wall.
Moore reaches the gate before Macready and turns to look, immediately regretting having done so. An indescribable something has broken through one of the doors and the wall. A creature vomited from hell whose mass is a swarm of strange life forms, ungainly and misshapen. A crawling chaos of monstrous and ferocious tentacular appendices.