Guy was the only one other than Nathan who seemed collected. Everyone else was a shuddering, groaning mess, trying to put on jumpsuits from the adjoining locker as quickly as they could. Guy stared at them with the impatience of a parent whose children were late for school.
“Excuse me for caring,” Nathan said with a hard glare. “You want to climb back in, be my guest.”
“If you’d gone for the nuke, you might have stood a chance. The rest of us don’t matter when you’re talking about the entire world.” Guy tapped on a nearby keyboard. “As it is, we can expect an attack any second.”
Hayes raised a hand. “Hey, I’m glad you got us out, bro.”
“Yeah, me too.” Charlie Foxtrot jerked her chin at Hayes “You’re looking better, son. Like someone only stomped on your face, ‘stead of a week-old corpse like before.”
He touched his slightly discolored face. “Thanks?”
The room blinked. Red warning lights in the corners flashed, every pulse ominous as approaching footsteps.
Blackwell ran to the wall console. His face drained. “Damn it.”
“What is it?”
“Warning sensors triggered. The outer doors have been opened.” He gritted his teeth. “Whatever’s outside can march right in.”
Hayes leaped up. “Are you serious? What the hell, man? I thought this place was supposed to be safe.”
“Calm down, Hayes.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Blackwell. This is your screw-up. We shouldn’t even be here. You sent one unit against some cross-dimensional, outer space, alien, time-traveling wackjobs and thought that would be enough? Now look at us. Unarmed with the enemy breathing down our necks. We’re screwed, bro. We were better off asleep in those damn pods!”
Guy ducked down, opened a cabinet under the table, and yanked out a heavy tool box, spilling the contents across the floor with a colossal crash. He picked up a hammer and hefted it. “When you’re done crying, better grab whatever you can use for a weapon. It’s a matter of seconds, now.”
Charlie Foxtrot picked up a large wrench and tossed it to Hayes, then pocketed a pair of utility knives. Snatching open several drawers, she found a handful of scalpels and slid them across to the others. “Better than nothing.”
A loud thumping sound made everyone freeze.
“What was that?”
“They’re trying to break the door down, man!”
“No.” Guy held up a hand. “That was here. In this room.”
Nathan looked at the pod in the corner. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
The thump was louder the second time. The window of the pod was clouded over, but a large silhouette was clearly visible.
It was moving. One arm repeatedly raised and slammed against the chamber’s window.
Thump.
“What the hell is that?”
“Victor.” Nathan backed away from chamber. “Some kind of enforcer the Gestalt created to force Stein to do what it wanted.”
Thump.
“The Gestalt? What are you talking about?”
“The one behind everything. The Aberrations. The energy anomaly Chimera detected. Ask Stein if you want to know more.”
“How do we kill this… Victor thing?”
Thump.
“I already tried. We have to get out of here.”
“Where?” Elena gave a helpless gesture. “God only know what’s inside the building now. Where do we go that won’t get us all killed?”
Blackwell picked up a fire extinguisher from the wall. “We have to get to Stein.”
Thump. The glass of Victor’s viewport cracked as it splintered. A hissing sound escaped, the frantic rage of a caged animal.
“Don’t think Stein is worth the effort. Didn’t you say there’s a sub docked here somewhere?”
“I don’t care about Stein. I care about his position. The room he’s in was specifically built for emergencies. Not only is it the only dark zone from digital surveillance, there’s a small armory behind the wall façade. We get there and arm ourselves, we might have a chance.”
Glass ruptured when Victor’s arm exploded from the surface, clawing at the outer door. Harsh snorts and snarls followed as the creature tried to free itself.
Hayes cringed, skidding as far away as he could. “Kill that thing!”
“Yeah? With what?”
“Forget about it.” Guy placed his hand on the door handle. “The armory’s our only chance.”
“What about you? That hammer isn’t much of a weapon.”
Guy seemed to almost smile. “I am a weapon.”
He opened the door. Mist billowed in as though the hall was coated in dry ice. Everyone except Guy staggered back as tendrils of fog searched the room like probing fingers. The sounds of Victor battering against his capsule door muted as apprehension soaked the room.
Guy was snatched into the hallway so quickly it looked like he disappeared.
Screams followed. Wet sounds, like raw meat slammed against a solid surface. Gurgles and squeals from an inhuman throat.
Then silence.
A roar split the morbid stillness, jolting everyone. Victor had managed to bend his body at an impossible angle, forcing his head to follow his shoulder and arm out of the pod’s ruptured cavity. He was grotesque in the flashing light, a corpse freeing itself from a metallic coffin. His teeth were clamped in a skeletal snarl, his eyes yellow slits. The jagged edges of the ruptured pod cut into his sinewy flesh, but he didn’t appear to notice in his savage determination to escape.
“Go!” Michael yelled.
They ran for the exit just as a body appeared in the doorway. Skidding to a halt, Michael could only stare as the shadowy form materialized.
It was Guy.
Black blood painted most of his forearm and dripped from the hammer in his fist. He glanced at Victor, then at the rest of the group.
“Let’s go.”
They obeyed, followed by Victor’s enraged roars.
A creature’s corpse lay right outside the door, shrouded by the unnatural fog. It had too many limbs to be human, but still retained a vaguely humanoid form under its sags of scabby, wobbling flesh. The head was beat to pulp, haloed by a widening black stain. Michael tried not to look as he carefully stepped over it.
Nightmares emerged from the unnatural fog. Twisted deformities having only the barest semblance of humanoid form, mockeries of man and beast. They shuffled forward, moaning and snarling. Muted light glimmered from pale eyes, glistening fangs, extended claws.
There were no screams. No curses, no gasps or cries. There was only quiet. The scuff of boots, harsh breathing, the wet sounds of flesh being turned into bloody meat. The group worked in tandem, one unit fighting for their collective survival. Their tactic mainly consisted of holding the monstrosities at bay until someone administered the coup de grace with a blunt instrument.
Michael’s face twisted as he jabbed a scalpel into the reddish eye of a creature that seemed to be a nauseating twist of opossum and human. It screamed in a high-pitched, feminine voice, exposing rows of needle teeth in its slavering mouth. Hayes stepped in, crushing the creature’s head with brutal strike from his pipe wrench.
Michael glanced around. Blackwell was on top of some monstrosity that looked like a centipede with an oversized human head. He bludgeoned it with repeated blows from the fire extinguisher, a grim smile on his face. Nathan wrestled a hairy, simian beast to the floor while Elena slit its throat with a scalpel. Charlie Foxtrot sliced and diced several malformed creatures with twin utility knives, as feral as the monsters she fought. Guy followed like a shadow, finishing them with this hammer.