“They’ll overrun us,” he said, lowering the gun. Around him the men of CAT-4 frowned, and started to wonder how much time they had.
33 — Nightmare Hall
Jake rushed forward, and then tried his best to skid to a halt. There before him was a man… a hideous, deformed man.
“Ugh…” he moaned, his head whipping down to catch sight of Jake, the movement catching his eye. Jake saw those eyes go wide, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Jake couldn’t believe what he was seeing, either. The man was stationed on some kind of large platform, at least ten feet up off the ground. It had to be that tall for the man’s testicles were as tall as small trees, and looked like large, overfilled balloons ready to burst. And between them, where Jake imagined the man’s penis was, or at least some gross caricature of it, was what he could only describe as a milking machine, like he’d seen on some dairy farms growing up. The man was being milked for his sperm, his balls somehow modified to produce the stuff endlessly. Looking up into his eyes again, Jake didn’t know if that meant he was in constant pleasure, or constant pain.
“Kill… me…” the man said, and a teardrop fell from his right eye, skimming across the black teardrop tattoo there.
Jake didn’t have to be told twice. He raised his M16, took aim right at that small tattoo, and let off a huge burst of gunfire and a hideous yell, hoping to capture some of the man’s anguish at what he’d been put through for the past… God only knew how many years.
Jake lowered the gun and saw that the man was dead, the aliens robbed of one of their ‘cows.’ He shook off the terrible thought and continued on, his boots drumming on the metal walkway as he ran.
Ahead was Walter, still rushing forth into the larger, open-area of Nightmare Hall. He and Emil had gone ahead, expecting their super soldier Bobbie to be just behind. Thankfully both were just ahead and firing like madmen, oblivious to the detour off the beaten path the two men had taken.
After making the call to General Anderholt and then getting word that the mission had changed from one of search and destroy to one of rescue and run, Walter’s demeanor had changed. It was as if he were fighting for something more, something that wasn’t part of the regular agenda.
Jake rushed forward, actually getting ahead of Bobbie, but not enough that he was going to worry about it. His adrenaline was pumping, his heart beating fast — safety was the last thing on his mind.
He rounded the bend and the ramp began to level off, the next level-up of the base coming right up before them. Jake, Walter, Bobbie and Emil all made it up, shoes pounding on the pavement, that the only sound as they raced higher, and then reached the top and the opening. It was there that Jake finally stopped and stood, his eyes wide and mouth agape. The TV monitors of the security facility were one thing, but seeing Nightmare Hall in person was quite another. It was the endless screaming and crying and wailing that hit them hardest of all.
“God, won’t they stop?” he said, his face scrunched up as he tried to block out the sound with his hands over his ears. It did little good.
“They will when we get them out of here,” Walter said, “now this is what we’re gonna do.” The other three men gathered closer as ahead of them the cages of women — nearly all that they saw were women, all naked, though there were a few that looked like men — and Walter laid it out. “We’ve gotta stay close, so I want Bobbie walking down that main hallway there,” he pointed, and the blackness hundreds of feet ahead swallowed up wherever it went, “and Emil, I want you and Jake opening those cages on either side.”
Emil nodded. “And you, Walt?”
“I’ll take the rear, hitting anything that could come up behind.”
“Think they can make it?” Bobbie said, nodding at the caged women.
Walter shook his head. “Looks like many can move, but how far they’ll get or where they’ll go…”
“Let’s just get to it,” Jake said, and the others nodded.
Bobbie moved ahead first, his Heckler & Koch machine gun held out before him, but there were no Grays to be seen. On either side of him Emil and Jake quickly opened the many cages. The things were kennels, really, about the size you’d find in an animal shelter, though in some spots they were much smaller, and stacked, with the women crammed into them, hardly any room to move. It was they that were the most far gone. With the larger kennels the women rushed out. From behind Jake and Emil, Walter had to call to them to move down the hallway they’d come from, to not cling to the men. It was hard, as many were crying with terror, most wailing that they’d be killed at any moment.
“Run down the hall!” Walter shouted at them. “You’ll be alright — there are men there waiting for you.”
He wasn’t sure it was true, but what else was he supposed to say? General Anderholt had assured him new teams would be mobilized, and that the women just had to make it to the tube station platform where CAT-4 was. He hoped that would truly be enough, and that the suffering and anguish of these women could end.
Most were little more than college-aged women, some even teens or adolescents. All were beautiful and nearly all were blonde. Most were short as well, and Walter couldn’t help but think of his two daughters back home in Tucson, as well as what awful things the Grays would do to them if they were here in place of some of these women. At one point one of the more held-together of the many women — they were all beginning to blend together as the team progressed down the seemingly endless-hallway unmolested — came up to him and grabbed his shoulder.
“I’ve been here for two months, I’ve been raped everyday and I’ve had two… miscarriages of some sort, thought how that’d be possible in that amount of time, don’t ask me.”
Walter just nodded, hoping she’d run off like the rest. Already there’d been thousands.
“You’ve got to listen to me, I—”
Walter turned about to scold her, tell her to run along to the train platform. He was just in time to see her head explode like a melon that’d been struck with a mallet. His eyes went wide and saw a Gray standing behind them, women screaming and rushing past it as it aimed its flashgun right at his head.
“Down!” Walter yelled as the Gray fired, and dropped to the floor.
Behind him Bobbie was just turning about when the flashgun blast hit him. Jake was looking right at him and saw him wink out of existence in a flash of light, the kind that allowed you to see every bone in the person’s body. It was a fraction of a second and then there was just a pile of soot on the concrete floor. A chill came over Jake and he felt his mouth opening to scream. He turned about to do so and saw a sight almost as fearful — Emil with his eyes in a rage, teeth clenched, and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun shouldered.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was on single-shot for some reason, but each of those shots tore into the Gray’s head and made any facial features that may have set it apart from its brethren little more than a meaty pulp.
“Bobbie!” Jake yelled.
“He’s dead,” Walter said evenly and without emotion, getting up now that no other Grays looked to be about. The tide of women was also receding, though their screams were not.
“No shit,” Emil said in reply, “and that’s what we’ll be here real quick if we don’t get another super soldier. Or were you planning on developing some kind of mind-attack blocking capability real quick here, huh?”
Walter looked at the hardheaded Lieutenant Colonel, that ever-present pipe stuck in his mouth dangling as annoyingly as usual, and then to Major Jake Zates. He frowned.