“I don’t know how to say this, boys, but I’m heading in to save as many of these women as I can.”
Emil moved the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, shaking his head all the while, while Jake just looked like he was one more second closer to losing his mind from fear. Walter laughed.
“Shit, you men get back to that tube train platform and give Donlon and his boys on CAT-4 some support, and that’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” Jake said, the screaming of the still-caged women plus the loss of their super soldier nearly fraying the last of his nerves. It was clear to Walter that he’d do anything to get out of there, and therefore was more of a risk to them than a benefit, at least until he got a hold of himself, and he sure the hell wasn’t going to be doing that on the edge of Nightmare Hall. Emil was a bit harder to convince.
“You know if you head any further in there you won’t be heading back out,” he said, the pipe clamped tightly.
“CAT-2 is yours, Colonel,” Walter said with a nod, then ran ahead into the darkness.
34 — The Hall of Horrors
The men of CAT-1 fought their way across the floor of the Hall of Horrors, shooting out any vats with Grays floating inside, and quite a few that had deformed and mutated humans as well. There was one with a man sporting octopus arms and a bewildered expression; another holding a woman with four heads, not all of them on top; and several with humans that were either totally are halfway-transformed into some kind of snake or serpent creature or… sometimes it was just hard to tell exactly what they were looking at. One thing was clear, however, and that was that the defense was growing stronger.
Sammy walked steadily forward, the Mossberg Model 590 shotgun held out confidently before him. Another Gray jumped forward, seemingly out of nowhere, and once again Sammy was sure he saw fear or surprise or something in those black orbs when he kept walking forward, when he raised the gun up slightly higher on his shoulder, when he finally pulled the trigger, often with a ‘fuck you’ thrown in for good measure. This time was no different, and the 12-gauge cartridge shot out the side of the gun as the bullet shot into the Gray’s head and tore it apart, showering the walls and floor with that greenish-goo.
“Goddamn, Sammy!” Tommy shouted from behind. “That’s nine of the bastards now!”
The words barely registered for Sammy, so intent was he on what lay ahead. The men were advancing steadily through the row upon rows of glass vats spaced evenly on the floor around them, the whole multiple-acre level being taken up by them. It was a ghastly sight, with Grays floating in the tanks, most oblivious to them, like they were under the effect of some strange drug, one that made them completely useless. Of course they weren’t all useless, and as the men moved through the level, shooting nearly every vat they saw along the way — and especially those holding Grays or hopelessly mutated humans — quite a few of the aliens stirred themselves and made to attack. And oh how feeble and comical those attacks were! In most cases a Gray would be able to get itself up over the lip of the vat, perhaps thinking it could get some kind of mind attack off, but invariably they tried to fall back into the ‘safety’ of the greenish-goo when the attack somehow failed. And that’s when the men of CAT-1 and CAT-2 opened up on them.
Beside Sammy, Major John Bingham brought up his AR-15 and sent a hail of machine gun bullets out at two more Grays that jumped out from behind some of the vats, two more of what Charlie was calling the ‘base security forces.’
“Shit!” he shouted, his heart nearly skipping a beat at the sight of the things.
“Just stay close to Tommy and me,” Sammy said as he loaded a few more shells into his shotgun, the others covering him with their guns pointed down the tunnels. “You stay close and their mind tricks won’t do a damn thing.”
“Won’t do a damn thing but fool the hell out of ‘em!” Tommy shouted back with a laugh. “Bastards can’t even read our minds — they don’t even know we’re comin’!”
Charlie heard the words and frowned. They will, he thought, God help us, they will.
He held his M240 machine gun out with one hand and fired at any Gray that moved, and with the other he reached down to the special satellite radio at his waist. If he could just get one call off… one call to Blue Lake…
You’ll never get a call off to Blue Lake, why on earth would you want to do such a thing?
Charlie looked up to see what beautiful face held the beautiful voice that just spoke to him, and he wasn’t disappointed. There, in a pool of the bluest mountain lake water he’d ever seen, was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her hair was blond and flowed about her naked body slowly, the currents in the water moving the hair just so, obscuring all the best parts, leaving it all to Charlie’s imagination.
Forget Blue Lake, Charlie — make love to me… now!
How could Charlie refuse? That was the thought going through his mind as he started forward, past the few trees blocking his path, and then as he took the last few steps to the lake shore and–
“Colonel!”
John’s shout from back on the main pathway barely registered with Charlie, but Tommy running toward him as fast as he could did. One moment Charlie was reaching out to the beautiful woman in the lake that was reaching back to him, the next he was looking some kind of… thing.
“My… God,” he managed as Tommy reached him and put his hand on his shoulder. It was some kind of human, or at least had been one, though now it’s head had nothing more than one large eye under a head of blond hair. Their was a neck going down to a pair of shoulders, but then the torso trailed off into a amphibian-like tail, the arm-like appendages little different. Charlie bent over and started to feel sick.
“Don’t get so far away from Sammy or I,” Tommy said, and even through bouts of puking Charlie could detect the serious tone in the young corporal’s voice, a rare thing indeed. After a moment he was fine. Without a word he let go of the machine gun so it dangled from his shoulder, pulled out the two Colt .45s at his waist, and unloaded each of them into the monstrosity staring back at them from behind the glass vat. Charlie liked to think the thing’s eye went a little larger at the sight, and also that it’s last thought was one of fear before his two revolvers put an end to it. He didn’t want to think that it might have once been a young woman.
“Let’s go,” Tommy said, pulling his commander back to the main pathway or roadway that led through the seemingly endless room of tanks and vats and experimental pools.
“Damn,” he shouted out between bursts from his M16 and the occasional launched grenade from the M203 mounted on top, indicating to Sammy and John that he was drawing near once again, “they just keep comin’!”
“No shit,” John yelled from a short distance ahead on the road. His machine gun had jammed a short time before and now he was firing away with his two 9mm pistols.
“Just stay close,” Sammy said.
“And keep moving,” Charlie added.
The four men kept close and kept moving, the goo-filled vats all around them, blocking their view of what lay ahead, obfuscating where the end of the level was, and ensuring that the men would always be guessing, would never be knowing.
“If we can just get up past these last few vats there looks to be a straight path forward,” Sammy said after they’d gone another few yards, and blown-out another few vats, “after that we should be—”