Chapter 12
Both of us planted our feet as the tide of monsters surged into the narrow hallway. They scrambled over one another in a race to get to their meal first. The horde growled, snarled, and screeched as they came toward us, and I shivered as the horrifying cacophony of sound grew louder as they came toward us. Fortunately, the hallway was narrow, so it meant that only a few of them would be at the forefront of the group at a time.
The woman glanced over at me, and I saw the scared but determined look in her bright green eyes. We both nodded once at one another and silently agreed to stick with one another, no matter what happened, and then we turned back to the wave.
She fired a fireball at the first bunch of the creatures that came tearing at us. The flaming ball of orange light careered toward them and exploded as soon as it touched one of the behemoths. The fire spread between the first five monsters, the three at the front and two that were right behind the leaders. The one who had taken the first hit burned to death in seconds and melted into a pile of chargrilled flesh, and the others soon followed suit. The air quickly started to reek of burning skin, flesh, and muscle, and I saw the woman beside me put her mask back over her mouth and nose to avoid the stench.
However, the fate of the frontrunners wasn’t enough to stop the next wave of monsters from coming at us. They stepped over-- and in-- their kin’s bodies without even a second glance and sprinted toward us as fast as their veiny, bulbous legs could carry them.
I aimed my gun at the creature that was the furthest to the left of the hall and fired. As I did, I drew the gun across the hall in a line, and the laser followed my movement. I tried to hit as many of the creatures as I could before the gun would need to recharge, and I watched my first target split in half across the stomach and then the two halves of his body dropped onto the floor with a squelch. To my horror, the top half of his body remained functional for a few moments afterward, and even while it screamed and its organs poured out from the bottom of its severed torso, it still continued to claw its way along the bloody floor toward us, until eventually, it lay still, and its red eyes went dull.
But the same couldn’t be said for the other three I had hit. The spine inside the second one was somehow still intact, so the two halves didn’t fall away from one another. Still, after the blood and guts began to fall out of it, it soon collapsed beside its fallen comrade and lay still. The other three were injured, but not dead, so I fired the laser again a couple of seconds later once the weapon was ready and finished off the other two.
Ten down, about ninety more to go.
“Not bad, Will Ryder,” the woman said beside me, her voice muffled by her mask.
“Are you ever gonna tell me your name?” I asked.
She smirked and aimed her pistol at the monsters and began to let off shots left, right, and center. She was an incredible shot. Her bullets hit each of the monsters square in the head every time, and they started to go down like bowling pins. I joined in with my laser, and soon, we began to carve a chunk through the horde.
However, they kept on coming, and we couldn’t fight them fast enough. We found ourselves starting to have to back off slowly down the hall as the creatures came relentlessly at us. I fired my laser mostly, although I switched to the Electro-Launch when I needed to let the laser recharge. Since these things were humanoid, they went down easily once the electric pulse ripped through their body. It also got rid of the waste that was left over from using the laser, which was what the silver balls of the Electro-Launch were made out of.
Still, they kept coming. We were at a disadvantage because the creatures didn’t care about the others in their group or really even themselves. All they cared about was the hunt and the meal they were going to get afterward.
We edged back down the hall as more of the monsters scrambled desperately toward us. Their nails scratched the walls, saliva dripped from their mouths, and their sharp teeth were bared and gnashed together eagerly. All of their soulless, red eyes were locked on the two of us like red dot sights.
“This isn’t looking good,” I said as I turned back and saw that we were nearing the end of the hallway.
“Can’t your robot help?” she replied.
“I am not a robot,” Francine snapped.
“Francine!” I pressed.
“Keep shooting,” the AI said. “I will work on it.”
The scavenger woman looked expectantly at me.
“Working on it,” I said.
“Great,” she sighed as she set off another fireball and wiped out three more creatures.
I stayed busy on the right as I cut the creatures down like weeds, and she focused on the left. She fired bullets while her fireball launcher recharged each time, and the sound of the gunshots reverberated around the unstable building like a deadly firework show.
But as I turned to my left, I suddenly saw two of the monsters make a break for it. I looked at the woman, and I saw that she was struggling to put more ammunition into the gun before they got to her. At the same time, I had three very determined monsters coming toward me.
“Shit,” I grunted.
I turned my gun on the two animals that were running toward the woman and fired a shot through the head of the creature in front. The laser drilled a hole through the skull and kept going, straight into the head of the creature behind it. The pair dropped like flies, and the woman looked up at me gratefully.
However, the moment didn’t last long. I turned back to the creatures that were charging me just as one of them smashed into me and sent both of us tumbling onto the ground. It sat on top of me, pinning me to the floor, and I looked up into its hungry eyes. It opened its shark-like mouth, and its head began to lunge toward my face.
Its teeth gnashed together as it tried to bite me, so I shoved my left arm in its mouth like I’d seen trainers do with attack dogs. Then, I angled the gun in my right hand upward and sent the laser through its chest. Its eyes widened as it screeched like a dying animal, and then it collapsed on top of me. I started to shove the body off, but I was still looking up at the ceiling. I noticed a huge crack had splintered its way through the plaster from the laser, and I wondered if the whole thing was about to come down on top of us.
Then, I felt two hands under my armpits and looked up to see the woman. She began to drag me backward away from the mutated creatures, which meant that it was my responsibility to kill as many of them as I could as she got me out of the hairy situation I had found myself in.
I fired my laser left, right, and center and managed to kill quite a lot of them as I was pulled back out of the fray. One of the creatures managed to grab hold of my foot with its clawed hand and began to pull me back toward the horde. I jerked my leg toward my body, which threw the monster off-balance for a moment. I shot it in the head with the Electro-Launch, and it stiffened and collapsed a moment later.
Finally, without ceasing fire, I managed to get back to my feet. The woman took her weapons back out now that she didn’t need her hands to drag me anymore and began to fire as well.
“Thanks,” I shouted at her.
“Now we’re even,” she replied.
“I think I have two saves, actually,” I argued as I shot two monsters in front of me. “So I’m up one.”
Suddenly, one of the others climbed over the rapidly growing hill of their bodies and leaped into the air toward me. It flew at me like some kind of terrifying, rotting ghost, and it let out a ravenous scream as it closed in.
A fireball erupted from the woman’s long gun and hit the creature square in the chest just before it landed. The monster wailed as it was encased in flames, and it melted down onto the ground in front of me in charred chunks.
I looked over at her gratefully.
“Two saves each,” she chuckled.
“Now we’re definitely even,” I replied.
We continued to back down the hall as the creatures kept on coming. We had killed around thirty of them, but that wasn’t even half, and we didn’t have much room left in this corridor. And what if there were more on the way? These things were obviously calling each other, so there could be thousands of the creatures scattered around the facility.
There was a very good chance that we’d run out of ammo for the woman’s weapons and a charge for my own before we’d killed all of the creatures. We’d have to find a way out of this hallway and up the stairs before that happened, and then we still had to make it back to the ship.
But the only plan I could come up with was to keep firing and look for our chance. Despite the constant barrage, though, somehow the monsters managed to break through and split the two of us up. They swarmed and surrounded us, and we both caught one another’s panicked eye as we were cornered against the walls opposite one another.
I switched to Electro-Launch on my gun so I wouldn’t hit the woman if the laser accidentally went through one of the creatures, but that meant I could only fire one shot each time I pulled the trigger instead of a beam. I could feel panic start to rise in my chest, and I forced myself to stay calm and scan the hallway.
There was a doorway near me, and I wondered if I could lead the nasties inside. If I could lure them after me, I could switch back to the laser and force them to attack through an even narrower doorway. It might buy me some time, and maybe give the woman a chance to take out a few more.
I found myself in what looked like a lab as I darted through the doorway. There was a heavy bookcase right beside the door, but it didn’t appear to be bolted in place. With the extra strength from the suit, I was able to tip it over so that it blocked most of the door.
It didn’t take long for the mutated freaks to follow me, just as I had hoped, but the horde wasn’t able to charge at me all at once. I could hear gunshots popping off out in the hallway, which told me that the woman was still alive and fighting. But I needed to find a way to get back to her because there were definitely better odds of surviving if we were together.
I moved toward the back of the room, past the rows of counters that had grimy sinks, dusty beakers and test tubes, and gas taps for burners. There were also two doors at the back of the room, one on the back wall and one on the adjacent wall right in the corner, where I was headed. One of them was an old fire exit if I was interpreting the image of a person running away from flames correctly, while the other appeared to be a storage room of some sort.
I ran to the fire exit first and tried to shove the door open, but I was only able to force it open a few inches. It wasn’t enough to squeeze through, but I could see a pile of debris and the collapsed staircase just on the other side. It must have been underneath the collapsed tower, and even if I used the laser, we’d never be able to cut our way through the rubble before the creatures caught up to us.
I turned to face the monsters again and saw that the creatures had finally made it into the lab itself. The first ones had stumbled over the bookshelf, but the other freaks were climbing over them like their fallen comrades were just part of the furniture.
At least the monsters couldn’t all charge at once, and their mindless determination to reach me made them easy targets. The gun was still on the Electro-Launch setting, so I raised the weapon and picked off the pack as they stumbled through the doorway. Best of all, I didn’t have to worry about my aim. As long as the silver ball touched their skin, they were done for.
“Will,” Francine suddenly said.
“Ah, the AI speaks,” I said as I continued to fire at the creatures.
“The storeroom connects to the lab next door,” the AI informed me.
I kept firing as I moved toward the door to the storage room, though I had to stop to open the door. The frame had warped, and the door didn’t want to move, so I had to use both hands to jerk it open. The room was lined with shelves that still held glass containers and small boxes of various substances. There were a couple of cabinets as well and a row of coat hooks that still held a pair of lab coats.
Best of all, there was another door. It was closed, but it looked to be sturdy enough to hold off the creatures for a little while.
“Francine, does the next lab have a door into the hall?” I asked.
“It does,” the AI acknowledged.
“Okay, I have an idea,” I said. “We’re going to lure them in here, and while they’re trying to break down the door to the next lab, we’ll escape.”
“Will--” Francine started to protest.
“Unless you’ve found another way out,” I added.
“I have not,” the AI sighed.
I studied the containers on the shelves and grabbed anything that featured the grimacing face with x’s for eyes. I could hear the mutants scrabbling after me, but I needed all of them to follow me, so I darted back into the lab and started to toss the chemicals at the ones that were already inside.
Glass smashed against the hard tiles, and a chemical smell started to fill the room. Some of the stuff was clearly caustic, and the creatures howled whenever their skin burned from contact with the chemicals.
I darted away from the cupboard into the center of the room and threw my arms out wide. I wanted them to see me, and I wanted them to come for me.
“Come on, you sons of bitches!” I shouted. “Come and get me!”
“Will, if you get yourself killed, I will be very displeased,” Francine said.
“Noted,” I replied.
The monsters charged at me in full force, though I managed to catch a quick glimpse of the hallway. I couldn’t see the woman, but I noticed that several of the mutants that hadn’t followed me into the lab had turned to look in my direction. Good.
I ran between the counters and picked up more items to toss. Test tubes, flasks, stools, and what had probably been a very expensive piece of equipment sailed through the air. I shouted as I ran, which only seemed to anger the things even more.
Some of them scrambled over the counters, and I fired my gun at them more times than I could count. I didn’t even bother to look where I was shooting, but there were so many now that it didn’t matter. No matter where I shot, I’d hit something.
I could still hear gunshots from the hallway as well, but it wasn’t constant. I took that as a sign that the woman was trying to conserve her ammo,which meant she didn’t have long until she was out. All I needed was a few more seconds…
One of the mutants clambered onto one of the lab counters and loomed over me. Its long, white hair dangled down toward me like thin, pale snakes, while its bulging body rippled and veins popped out of its neck as it roared. I shot it as it started to reach for me, and it tumbled onto some of the creatures and knocked them down.
I looked around the room for a moment and saw that the lab was packed. A few stragglers were still climbing over the bookcase to get into the room, but I was trapped and surrounded.
“Stupid bastards,” I chuckled.
I sprinted back to the storeroom, though I had to use the gun to clear a path. I tried to ignore their claws and the snapping of their jaws as I charged through the seething pack, though one of them grabbed me from behind. I pointed my gun over my shoulder without even looking and fired, and the creature let go a moment later.
The door was getting closer and closer with every second, but I was still fighting for my life. I shot, I punched, and I kicked my way through them. I was clawed at, pulled in different directions, and a couple of them tried to sink their teeth into my limbs, although the suit stopped them from doing any damage, much to their anger and dismay.
I managed to wrestle myself free and took the opportunity while I wasn’t being held back to make a run for the closet door. I managed to reach the knob before any of the creatures could recover, and I yanked the door open. I darted into the closet and then slammed the door shut behind me.
There was a bolt on the door, so I slid it into place before I stopped for a moment to take a deep breath. The door and the bolt wouldn’t hold them for too long, so I shoved a couple of heavy filing cabinets in front of it just in time. The monsters crashed into the door like a battering ram, but the door and the cabinet held firm for the moment.
The second door opened easily, so I slipped quietly into the next lab and eased the door closed. There was no bolt on this side, so I grabbed a rather large and heavy piece of equipment and dragged it in front of the door.
Then, I turned around and studied the room I was in. This laboratory was smaller than the one on the other side of the storeroom, but the layout and condition was very much the same. It was dirty, coated in dust, and small particles drifted through the air, just as they did throughout the entire nuclear plant.
I crept as quietly as I could through the lab to the doorway to the main hallway. It took me a moment, but I realized that I couldn’t hear any gunshots, and I hoped that meant that the woman had just caught onto what I was doing and had kept quiet so the monsters would follow me.
I checked the hall, but all I could see were the bodies piled up along the floor, the blood and guts splattered on every surface, and the cracked ceiling that I had accidentally caused with my laser. But there were no living mutants in the hall.
And there was no sign of the woman, either. Jesus, had they eaten her alive?
“She is alive,” Francine said. “She is across the hall from the lab.”
I nodded even though Francine couldn’t see me, and I tiptoed to the room. The door was open, so I could peer inside before I entered. I saw a figure hunched over on the floor, and as I stepped inside, the figure whipped around.
The woman had her fireball launcher pointed at me and a fierce anger in her eyes. She nearly pulled the trigger before I could even react, but when she saw it was me, she breathed a sigh of relief and dropped it again.
“I thought you were dead--” she sighed.
I put my finger to my lips to tell her to be quiet, and then I held out my hand for her to take. I helped her to her feet when she accepted, though I noticed that she hugged one arm to her chest.
We tiptoed across the floor to the open doorway, and I did a quick check of the hall. I could hear the monsters attacking the door to the storeroom, which was holding up much better than I’d expected. With any luck, it would keep the beasts busy until we were safely out of the plant.
I put my finger to my lips again, and she nodded. Then, we began to creep back down the hallway toward the exit. I couldn’t hear the sounds of any creatures out in the stairwell, but even if I had, it was the only way out, so we’d just have to fight our way past them.
Suddenly, I felt something grab hold of my ankle. I looked down and saw that one of the monsters who had been cut in half was somehow still alive, and it had grabbed our ankles with its bony fingers. The woman gasped and tried to rip her foot away from it, and I did the same as I aimed my gun down at its head and hit it with an Electro-Launch blast. It died a moment later, and it let go of both of our legs.
We glanced at one another with a matching look that said ‘It’s never easy, is it’, and then we continued on down the hall.
Finally, we reached the doorway that led out to the stairwell. I opened the door, and then I turned to the woman.
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
“Wait,” I said. “Do you still have any juice left in that thing?” I pointed to the fireball launcher.
“One,” she said.
“Fire at the crack in the ceiling,” I said as I turned the dial on my gun to fire the laser. “I will, too.”
I saw the moment of realization in her eyes when she realized what I had planned, and then she raised her gun and pointed it at the ceiling just down from where we were.
“Three,” she whispered.
“Two,” I hissed.
“One,” she said.
“Fire,” I said.
The ball of fire was catapulted straight into the ceiling, and it hit the beam with a massive boom. At the same time, I fired the laser at the same spot, and a moment later, the ceiling came crashing down inside the hall, blocking the creatures inside for good.
There were a few more rumbling sounds after the ceiling fell in, and I silently prayed that the rest of the plant didn’t come crashing down onto us. But we had focused the blast on one specific spot, and it had been fairly controlled, so in the end, the rest of the plant was as secure as it could be, considering it had been through a war and years of neglect.
We stepped out into the stairwell and closed the door behind us. We both paused to listen for any sounds of creatures on the stairs, but it seemed that we were alone on the stairs.
Once we concluded that we were safe for the moment, both of us bent over, hands on our knees, and took in some deep breaths. My muscles twitched as the adrenaline started to fade, but at least I was alive. I holstered my gun, stood up straight, put my hands on my hips, and allowed myself to catch my breath for a moment. I realized then that I had lost my flashlight at some point during the fight, but I wasn’t about to go back in to find it now.
I looked over at the woman, who still had her arm hugged close to her, and she looked up at me a moment later. She pulled her mask off and took a few more deep breaths without breaking eye contact with me.
We stared at one another for a moment as it set in for both of us that we had actually managed to survive, and then we burst out laughing.
It died off eventually, and we both sighed gratefully as we appreciated the air we breathed and the fact our hearts continued to beat.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I gestured to her arm.
“I got scratched,” she panted. “It’s not bad. I just need some bandages.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What you did back there was insane,” she said.
“I guess,” I chuckled. “But it worked, didn’t it?”
“Lucky for me, yes,” she said as she held her fireball launcher. “I was all out of ammo except for that one shot.”
“Well…” I said and shrugged.
“I need to go and get my bag,” she said. “More ammo.”
“So do I,” I said.
We both sighed at the thought of going back down to the lowest level, but it was better to stick together than to split up. Besides, we both needed to collect our items.
We hurried down the steps and emerged onto the lowest floor. We passed through the doorway, skirted around the crushed skeletons, ran through the empty room with the computers, and then passed into the next hall, where her bag lay on the ground. Some of the contents had spilled out, and I saw that she had collected bits of metal, screws, wiring, and other technology from the plant. She bent down and began to put everything else back into it.
I hurried into the main room to retrieve the uranium from the trapdoor. I grimaced as I passed the barbequed behemoth beside it, and I collected the uranium case as quickly as I could, so that I didn’t need to spend more time next to the charred corpse than I needed to.
I wrenched open the trapdoor, grabbed the case, and shoved it into my rucksack, which was still on the floor beside the body. I zipped it up, and then turned to leave. On the way out, I saw a couple of the larger and heavier pieces of metal on the floor that the woman had unloaded from her bag to make it lighter earlier, and I picked them up and took them back into the hall for her.
I held them out to her, and a smile crept over her face when she saw them.
“Thank you,” she said as she took them and shoved them into her bag as well.
“You’re welcome,” I replied.
She stood up and tried to pick up the heavy bag, but that was almost impossible with her injured arm.
“Here,” I said, and I held a hand out to take it.
She hesitated for a moment, and then she handed me the bag, which I slung onto my back. Then, I slung my bag over my chest, like one of those hip dad baby carriers. I shifted both of the bags around for a moment until they were comfortable, and then I put both of my thumbs up.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What?” I asked.
“The thing you just did,” she chuckled as she held her thumbs up.
“Oh, a thumbs up,” I said. “It means good or yes where I’m from.”
“Ah,” she said with a nod. “Okay. I’ve never seen that before. It was just odd.”
We smiled at one another for a moment, unsure of what to say. Her green eyes bored into mine, although I still had the headpiece of my suit over my head, so she was just looking at the visor. Still, she never looked away. I held her gaze, and I found myself beginning to get lost in her glowing, emerald irises.
“Rayne,” she said eventually.
“What?” I asked.
“My name,” she replied with a smirk. “It’s Rayne Trader.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Rayne,” I replied.
We looked at each other for another moment, and it felt like we had known each other all our lives, instead of less than an hour. There was an exciting, electric feeling between us, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the connection we had found or if it was the leftover adrenaline from the fight. Either way, I felt my stomach flutter, and my cheeks felt hot. I was glad I still had the headpiece on, or else she would have seen me blush.
Suddenly, from one of the rooms down the hall, a noise rumbled out like ominous thunder. A growl that was deep and guttural echoed through the hallway, but this beast didn’t sound like the others. This one sounded worse. Bigger, scarier, and deadlier.
“Time to go,” she said.
“Yup,” I replied.
We both turned and ran, and the sound of the snarling creature followed us.