Ceaseless (9 page)

“I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you all to leave, this is a restricted area-” the security officer said as he stepped out of the gatehouse behind the perimeter fence. He hesitated when he actually took in the bloodied and battered nature of the three people he was addressing. “Who are you?” he asked after a moment.

“My name is Allan Gray. I'm a Sergeant in the Investigations Division. On authority of SI, I hereby command you to do let us in and take me to the man in the charge,” Allan replied with as much authority as he could muster.

“I...” the guard hesitated.

“Do you see that?” Allan asked, pointing back the way they had come at the far-off black dot that was slowly growing closer.

“...yes? What is that? Is that a person?”

“That is a maniac who has somehow gotten his hands on some top-of-the-line military armor. It's bulletproof and magnifies his strength beyond reason. So far, he's survived two crashes apparently completely unaffected. He's killed over two dozen people and he doesn't look like he's slowing down anytime soon. I need to stop him. Now take me to your fucking boss,” Allan snapped.

The guard hesitated a little bit more, then opened the fence. “Come on.”

He led them onto the grounds of the power plant. The guard hesitated, staring at the killer in the distance, and then shut and locked the chainlink gate.

Allan laughed. “That won't even come close to stopping him.”

“Come on,” the guard repeated, leading them towards the four-story structure ahead of them. The three of them followed, coming into an almost barren lobby. In lieu of a circular desk with that most buildings that needed lobbies came equipped with, the power plant sported a security station. The room had been split in half by a wall that was mostly bulletproof glass. Behind it, a pair of security guards sat, studying a bank of monitors.

Allan and the others approached the glass wall.

“What the fuck is going on?” one of the guards asked, her voice coming through a speaker built into the glass. Allan knew that her stern demeanor and the extra security might seem strange to a civilian, but he also knew that power plants were common targets for insurgents and mercenary factions looking to make a quick cred due to the fact that the power cores used in larger, more powerful plants made very nice bombs.

Allan quickly updated them on the situation. The pair of guards behind the glass exchanged glances, then the woman who seemed to be in charge reached out and grabbed a radio off the wall. “Wait one,” she said.

Feeling the press of time, Allan turned and looked out of the windows built into the front doors. He could see the killer making slow, relentless progress towards them. How much time did they have?
Would
this plan actually work?

“The shift leader is coming,” the woman said.

A few agonizing moments later, an even sterner looking woman with short black hair and cold eyes appeared. Allan spent the next sixty seconds detailing the plan he had come up with to her, and appraising her of the situation.

“And you have the authority to do this?” she asked when he was finished.

“Yes. Under command directive Double A Five,” Allan replied quickly, using the directive that he actually had no real authority to use. It was an emergency directive that those in the higher echelons of command that ran the SI Branch could use in times of emergency. Technically speaking, a Sergeant wasn't even close to the proper rank to use it, but there
were
times when no one in Command could be reached and those on the ground had to act.

“Very well,” the woman replied. Her demeanor seemed to suggest that she'd served in either the Marines or SI before. She turned to the security room. “Give the order to evacuate,” she said. Glancing back at Allan, she asked, “how long can you give us?”

“Five minutes,” he replied. “Probably less.”

The woman frowned and turned back to the desk. “Change that to a meltdown evacuation order.”

* * * * *

Allan stood on the second story of the power plant and stared out the front windows, into the wastelands. Behind him, Johnson fidgeted and Lucy worked the controls as quickly as she could. Allan could see the killer. He was much, much closer now, just a few dozen meters short of the gate. Everyone had evacuated, heading for the nearest source of civilization: a small colony about five miles from the plant.

“How much longer?” Allan asked.

“Hush,” Lucy hissed, wholly focused on her work.

Allan left her to it and then glanced at Johnson. “Why didn't you leave when you had the chance? You could have easily gone with them,” he asked.

Johnson laughed bitterly. “I feel like I've got a better chance here at ground zero than hoping to outrun the blast. They build those bunkers to last.”

“They'll be fine,” Allan said. “The actual blast is extremely powerful but contained to about half a mile. They should easily be able to make it beyond that. Hell, they probably already have. You would have been fine.”

“Whatever,” Johnson muttered miserably.

Allan wasn't sure if the man had stayed behind because he'd been paralyzed by his sudden ability to do exactly what he'd wanted to from the beginning, or because, despite all his bitching and moaning, he
did
want to put a stop to this psycho killer.

“Done,” Lucy said suddenly. “The reactor will meltdown in one hundred and twenty seconds,” she reported.

“Good-” Allan paused as he looked out the window. The killer was going around the building instead of through it. He cursed, hurried over to the wall and opened the window. Bringing his rifle to his shoulder, he glanced at the others, “get to the shelter. I'll be along shortly.”

They didn't argue and hurried out of the room. Allan aimed at the killer and fired off several three-round bursts, hitting him in his massive chest.

“Come on, asshole!” he screamed. “Come get it you stupid
fuck
!”

He fired off a few more shots. The killer seemed to hesitate, then turned and began walking directly towards the building. Allan laughed and hurried out of the room. He rushed down the stairs, leaping down the final set of them and landing with a heavy thud on the ground floor. He glanced out the front doors and saw the killer, coming for him. Turning, Allan sprinted across the room, exited the structure and bolted across the exterior.

He spied the bunker at the edge of the compound. Built to withstand the brunt of a full meltdown blast, it came standard with all power plants. It was a squat, rounded building just big enough to hold all the employees of the facility, although not comfortably. The door was open and Lucy stood at it, waving him closer, urging him to hurry.

Allan crossed the distance and entered the small building. Lucy closed and secured the door behind him. He looked around the padded interior. There were straps and seats along the walls, meant for people to lock themselves into. Johnson had already done so. Lucy and Allan sat down and quickly began strapping themselves in.

“How long-”

The plant blew.

* * * * *

This time, Allan managed to retain his consciousness. The force of the blast picked up the structure and threw it clear of the area, at least several hundred meters, if not more, by Allan's estimate. It landed with a very heavy thud in the dirt. For a very long moment, nobody moved. The bunker had done it's job, for which Allan was very grateful. Finally, slowly, he reached up and undid the straps. The bunker had landed at a sharp angle, so that the back wall was now practically the floor. Standing up slowly, Allan considered their next actions.

“Can we go now?” Johnson groaned as he freed himself.

“We should check and make sure,” Allan replied.

“Make sure of what? There's no way he survived that,” Lucy replied.

“I want to be sure,” Allan said.

Fighting against gravity, he moved up to the front entrance and unsealed the door. Opening it, he found himself peering up into the endless blue skies. He climbed up over the lip of the door frame and stood atop it, carefully balancing himself on the edge of the bunker, which jutted from the earth, half of it buried in the packed dirt.

“Wow,” he said.

Despite everything, there was still something pretty awe-inspiring about looking at a half-mile wide and deep crater, still smoking.

“Could you move?” Lucy asked from behind him.

Allan hopped off the bunker and landed softly in the dirt. They were about a quarter mile from the crater. An immense silence seemed to cover everything.

“So, you really want to go check?” Lucy asked, jumping down next to him.

“I guess there's nothing
to
check. He'd have been totally vaporized,” Allan replied.

“You sound disappointed.”

“I guess...I wanted a body. I wanted to know just who the fuck he was, why he did all this,” Allan replied quietly.

“I guess so, but come on, we should get to that colony, try to figure out what to do next.”

Johnson hopped down onto the dirt next to them. As one, the three survivors turned and began walking towards the colony.

* * * * *

“I could really use a shower,” Johnson said.

It was the first thing that had been spoken since they'd set off. Allan estimated that they had perhaps ten more minutes of walking before they reached the outskirts of the colony. He wished they'd somehow been able to save the jeep, but he supposed it didn't matter. A couple miles' walk through the wastelands was nothing compared to what he'd been through over the course of the past day. He was honestly glad for the reprieve.

“I could use some food, and a drink,” Lucy replied.

“I need to take a piss,” Allan said after a long moment.

Johnson burst out laughing. “Eloquently put.”

“Are we screwed?” Lucy asked suddenly. “I mean, we blew up an entire power plant. I get the feeling that isn't going to go over lightly. I kind of like my job, you know?”

“I'll need a new job,” Johnson murmured.

“I'll take full responsibility for what happened. I'm not exactly anyone's favorite at the moment, so they'll probably be pretty happy to just pin any and all issues on me. I'll lose my job, and I might have to do some time, or go into debt or something. Those plants aren't very cheap. But I don't know, it doesn't really matter. We stopped him,” Allan replied.

To that, neither of the other survivors seemed to know what to say.

As Allan reached the outskirts of the small colony, which was essentially just a line of housing units, he hesitated. There was something wrong. At first, he couldn't tell what it was, only that it was making him nervous.

Then he realized.

He could hear absolutely nothing.

No voices, no movement, no signs of life. For a split second, terror gripped him, sure that somehow, someway the killer had survived. Then he had relaxed. Everyone was probably just either hiding or had evacuated. That was fine. He could deal with that.

“Come on,” he said, leading them into the backyard of one of the houses.

Colonization had become so popular and routine that most colonies that sprang up, almost always around some kind of resource buried in the ground or some opportunity for regular business in a new area, that prefabricated structures were mass produced by several corporations to be bought so that colonies could be set up practically overnight. This particular grouping seemed to be very cheap and small. Allan doubted it more than two hundred people lived here. He moved between two of the housing units and came to the road beyond.

He began walking along the road. The others followed silently behind him. They followed the road to a larger, more traveled thoroughfare and began following it.

“Where
is
everyone?” Johnson whispered.

“Probably evaced because of the meltdown,” Allan replied, but uncertainty had crept into his voice. Where else could they be, anyway?

As they approached what must have been the 'town square' of the colony, Allan stopped. He found it difficult to fully comprehend what he was seeing. There was a small impact crater in the middle of the open area in the center of town, around which several business had been centered. Around the impact site, there were close to two dozen bodies, perhaps more. They were all dead. Necks crushed or chests punched in.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

“He must have landed here,” Lucy finally said, breaking the immense silence that engulfed the three of them.

“And then killed anyone nearby,” Allan whispered.

“Do you hear that?” Johnson asked softly.

At first, he didn't. Then, he could hear it. An engine. Without a word, the trio turned and hurried off towards the sound of it. They found the killer standing over the popped hood of a civilian model jeep. He slammed the hood down and began heading for the driver's seat.

“Now he gets in a fucking jeep,” Allan whispered.

“We're not going to try and attack him, are we?” Lucy asked.