Necropolis 2 (9 page)

They emerged from their hiding places and made for the corpses.

“
Now I feel a bit rude, asking all about myself. Tell us about you,” Greg said.

They came to the corpses and frisked them for ammo.

“Not much to tell. I'm afraid I'm a bit boring. After I got out of high school, I just kind of drifted for a while. Picked up a job as a dockhand on a cargo ship for a few years, then I was a cook in a diner on a trade route space station for a year. Had some more odd jobs before I finally decided, what the hell, and hooked up with the Marine Corps. That was, ah, fun, I guess. Like I said, spent five years doing the whole Corps thing.”

They reached the end of the corridor and slipped into a small maintenance area. At the back of it, they found the lift, untouched, sitting in its nest. It was just barely big enough to hold all three of them. Greg sighed, but entered all the same. Kyra and Holt squeezed in with him. Greg hit the proper button and waited as the lift hummed to life.

“Why'd you quit?” Kyra asked.

“
Contract was up. Didn't feel like renewing.”

“
You ever been married?” Greg asked.

“
Yeah. Twice. Once before I joined up, once after. The second one is the whole reason I'm out here, actually.” He offered a short, bitter chuckle. “Married a woman I fell in love with. After I quit the Marines, I went back to drifting. Landed a position as head of security on a cargo freighter. The captain was a fine example of a woman. We got to talking, realized we really liked each other, within six months we were married.”

The lift came to a halt. The doors slid open and Greg was out first, rifle at ready. There was nothing in the back maintenance area they'd come to. It was identical to the area they'd just left. There were shelves, tools, and crates, plus a storage room, a workroom, a small machine shop, a bathroom, and another storage room.

They came back to the exit and Greg peered out. The first thing he noticed was that this portion of the ship was different from the one they'd just come. Everything had a cool blue tint to it, not exactly comforting, but a damn sight better than cold white sterile environments of the detention center and medical wings.

The second thing he noticed was that the area reeked of death and decayed flesh. Undead were nearby.

“Stay sharp.” He stepped out into the corridor.

Greg almost tried to get Holt talking again. For some reason, he liked hearing about other people's pasts. Maybe it was because he had none for himself, but he couldn't shake the notion that he really needed to focus. They crept down bloodied passageways, the cool blue corridors turning red and black as they drew closer to the DNA Processing Center. No corpses, though. Greg wondered about that.

Something made a sharp huffing noise, followed by a deep, guttural growl. It was up ahead, nearby. Greg swallowed and edged up to the corner. He poked his head around and immediately pulled it back.

“
Berserker,” he whispered.

“
Fuck
,” Kyra snapped.

“
What do we do?” Holt asked.

“
I don't know. We
need
to go that way. DNA Processing is at the end of that hall and it's the only way in. These things are
hard to kill
, maybe even harder now that more time has passed or Dark Ops has been screwing around with them. Okay...okay...” Greg realized that history was going to repeat itself.

He reached into his pocket, passed his container of the blood samples over to Holt. “Here, take these.”

“Greg, no. You
aren't
doing this again.” Kyra grabbed his arm.

“
Don't worry. I'll be fine. I've got enough practice at this point.” Greg tried to give her a convincing smile.

“
What's going on?” Holt asked.

“
He's going to be bait.” Kyra's voice was laced with anger.

“
Oh. Wow. You've got guts,” Holt replied.

“
Thank you, Holt. At least
someone
thinks so.”

“
What the fuck is it with you men? Why do you always have to do stupid shit like this? I swear to fuck, Greg, if you get killed-”

“
I'll be fine. And if I do kick off, you'll be fine, because you're a hard ass.”

Kyra made a face at him, but didn't argue anymore. Greg grabbed her and kissed her hard on the lips, then let go of her and ran into the next corridor.

“Come on, fuck face!”

He fired several shots into the thing's broad back.

The Berserker flung itself around and barreled down the corridor towards him. Greg turned and ran, back into the original corridor and away from Kyra and Holt. The Berserker didn't even glance at them as it passed, now thrown into a frenzy as it made a feverish beeline for Greg. He glanced once behind himself, saw that the thing was gaining on him and turned the whole of his attention to flight. Running full tilt down the lengthy corridor, Greg let himself be consumed by the simple action of running for his life.

He reached the end of the corridor far too soon, smacking into a large set of double doors and rebounded off them. Hurrying over to and slapping the open button, Greg darted inside and hit the close button on the corresponding side. A huge dent instantly appeared in the door, followed by another, and then a third.

“Shit.” He looked around.

He'd come into a large, warehouse-style room. Shelves and piles of crates towered over him. He spied a large metal claw meant for moving larger crates built into the ceiling. He tossed a plan together. Behind him, the Berserker raged, howling loud enough to freeze his marrow. Greg hurried across the room and climbed a steady pile of crates closest to the crane.

Behind him, the door shuddered once more, and then it tore free of its moorings. A large slab of bent metal flew into the storage room. The Berserker stormed in, maddened eyes hunting insanely for its prey.

It saw Greg climbing the stack and let out a wretched sound of inhuman triumph. It came for him. Greg relied on luck, in a very large way, but there was nothing else to do. He scurried up the pyramid of crates to the top, where he leaped and got a good hold on the claw. Below him, he watched the Berserker scramble mindlessly after him.

Moment of truth, he realized.

Luck shifted in his direction and the Berserker lost its footing. Better than that, it upset the pyramid of heavy crates. As it rolled back to the ground and crashed onto the floor, the crates went after it. Greg had to act fast. He looked around for a good way to get down, as the floor was damn near twenty feet down, and the nearest stack of crates was across the room. He started swinging his body, and the claw jerked in that direction.

It wasn't locked into place, he realized. Continuing to swing his body, he brought himself closer to the next stack. Below him, the crates continued to fall, burying the titanic Berserker beneath their great metal weight. He kept swinging until he was almost over the pile, and then dropped. The top crate shifted beneath his weight, and for one terrible moment, Greg held his breath, expecting to go down like the Berserker, but it held.

Moving fast, he descended the pyramid of crates and hopped onto the floor. The Berserker was still half-buried beneath a pile of crates, only now it was viciously shoving them aside, freeing itself. Its head was exposed. Greg selected his shotgun and ran over to the trapped beast. It roared up at him. He put the barrel of the gun in its mouth and squeezed the trigger. A great blast of black gore sprayed in a circular pattern as the back of its misshapen head exploded.

“Holy shit,” Greg whispered as it stopped moving.

“
Did you do it?”
Kyra asked over their link.

“
Yep. Dead as shit, and I'm fine,” Greg replied, a grin in his voice.

“
You're getting cocky.”

“
Confident.”

“
Whatever, both of them come before the fall, but only one of them is sexy. Get back here, now. We're uploading the blood samples.”

“
On my way.”

Greg shot the Berserker twice more in the head, effectively vaporizing everything above the neck, just to be sure, and then left the storage room. He hurried back down the corridor, feeding more shells into his shotgun, then returned it to its place across his back. He felt good. They were making progress and he'd just survived something insane.

He turned a corner and headed down the primary corridor that led directly to DNA Processing. The doors at the end of the hallway were open and he could see Holt and Kyra moving around within. Good, after this they'd get to the bridge and-

“
Bishop
!”

Greg spun around, his blood freezing, and he saw death on two legs coming directly for him at a brisk pace. Graves, in all his muscle-bound terror, had a rifle in his hands. The thing looked like a toy against his enormous frame. Without a word, he raised the rifle and fired. A three-round burst kicked Greg directly in the chest, sending him sprawling onto his back, the wind knocked out of him. Graves let the gun hang and kept walking.

“Bishop, you mother
fucker
.” He came to Greg, reached down and wrapped one beefy hand around his throat, holding him easily up in the air.

“
Do you have any idea what you've done?
Any idea what you've released
? The fucking Undead were bad enough but-”

His sentence ended forcibly as a bullet whizzed by, grazing his neck and sending a thick spurt of blood from it. He dropped Greg to the ground, slapping one hand over the wound while raising his rifle with the other. Gasping for breath, Greg tried to bring his weapon into play. His hands shook and he could hardly function.

Two more gunshots rang out, one grazed Graves' shoulder and another hit him directly in the chest. Blood splattered across the wall, Greg realized he wasn't even wearing a vest. Graves seemed to come to a snap decision. He turned and sprinted away, trailing blood, and disappearing around the corner before Kyra or Holt even reached Greg.

“
Are you okay?” Kyra crouched beside him.

Greg coughed several times. “Yeah, I think so. Shit...those fucking bullets kick like hell. Here, help me up.”

Holt and Kyra each offered him a hand. He got to his feet, and once he was steady, made his way towards DNA Processing.

“
How's it going?” he asked.

“
I...we managed to get the samples uploaded. We're in the database,” Kyra murmured, her voice laced with uncertainty.

“
Good. Let's get inside, contact Powell.”

Once they were inside and made sure that there was nothing waiting for them within, nothing hiding in the shadows, Greg contacted the other team and updated them on the situation. Powell's reply was immediate and unfortunate.

“We've got another problem.”

Chapter 09

–
Lockout
–

“
Hold on, hold on...explain this situation to me again.” Greg massaged his temples.

Campbell cut in.
“Okay, look, it's really simple. They locked the bridge down. And, well, you know Dark Ops, they can't seem to do something without making it fucking complicated. The only way to override the emergency lockdown they've initiated is to go to five separate terminals and initiate a manual override. Of course that's not enough, obviously, because once that's finished, two people have to be at two separate terminals and activate the final override sequence at the exact same time. So, like I said, complicated.”

“
Oh, God...” Greg moaned.

“
It gets better.”
Here, Campbell sounded embarrassed.
“We shouldn't
use the suits of armor.”

“
What
? We just killed a fucking Berserker to get to this DNA processor,” Kyra snapped.

“
I know, I know, I'm sorry. Dark Ops can remotely shut down the suits or even overload them, killing the occupant.”

“
Why didn't you mention this before?” Greg roared.

“
I'm sorry. I forgot, okay? It just...slipped my mind.”

“
You know, Graves showed up, looking for me. Did you send us here, Campbell? Send us here to die?”

“
What? No. Cage...stop looking at me like that.”

Cage came onto the line.
“Should I kill him?”

Greg considered it for a long moment. It
could
be a coincidence, and Campbell was providing them with useful information now. That could just be a simple ploy, give with one hand and take with the other. Campbell might be a bit on the slow side...or he might just be playing some kind of sick game.

“
Bishop?”

“
No. Keep him alive. For now. Can't believe I fucking wasted all this time coming down here. We could still be together,” Greg muttered.

“
It's actually better this way.”
Powell's voice came over the connection.
“Your area of the ship holds two of the manual release terminals. We're going to coordinate, hit these terminals, then meet up and time it right for the final digital dual-release override. Then we'll meet at the bridge. It shouldn't take too long.”

“
Fine, fair enough. Give us some directions.”

“
There should be a terminal in the room with you, by the main doors. I'm forwarding a map of where you'll need to go, in order. Try to find an infopad, there should be some in that room. Download the map to the infopad, but make sure you switch the wireless network adapter off, so you can't be tracked. Got it?”

“
Got it.”

They spent several moments hunting through storage cabinets before coming up with an empty infopad. Kyra was the most technologically intelligent among the three, so she took the pad and downloaded the data from the terminal. While she worked, Greg massaged his temples again. His headache was back. He seemed to be having a lot of them since he woke up in that ship. Had he always suffered from headaches or were they the result of the cure? Or more likely the result of all the head trauma he'd encountered so far?

“You okay?” Holt asked.

“
Yeah...fine. Just a damned headache. Stress, tension, I guess. I swear to fuck, it's always something.”

Holt chuckled. “That's usually how it goes. I remember having similar problems down in the mines. As if busting ass drilling out rock all day wasn't hard enough, there was always equipment breaking down or someone calling in sick or some such bullshit. Malfunctions, mistakes, and fuck-ups. That's life, I guess. Nothing ever seems to go the way it's suppose to. My best advice is to make yourself flexible, go with the flow. Otherwise, you'll end up breaking when too much pressure is put on you.”

“Good advice,” Kyra came back from the terminal. “I've got the data. The first terminal isn't too far away. A level up, in the living quarters. We get to see how Dark Ops troops kick back.”

“
Fantastic. We're good to go, Powell.”

“
Understood. We'll keep in touch.”

They left the DNA Processing Center, heading back down the corridor. As they reached the T-junction, they looked first left, then right. Finding they were alone, the trio retraced their steps to the maintenance area where they could take the lift. Greg hoped the next floor would be as quiet as this one was.

“So...Holt, what made you want to become a miner?” Greg asked.

“
Not much, really. It's always been the kind of job you do when you've nothing else going for you. It's easy, and even if you don't know what you're doing, they train you in two weeks flat. It's hard work, but it's all grunt work, manual labor, really. Good pay, too, especially because they offer room and board. I guess...well, I came to Dis because I wanted to go somewhere far away. The guys used to have this joke. They called what we did 'the job at the end of the galaxy'. Which is accurate, considering how far out Dis is.”

“
How far?” Greg asked.

“
At the edge of known space. There are always probes pushing out further, thousands of 'em, I understand, but space is just so damned big. If it weren't for FTL flight we'd still be stuck back in Sol, probably dying at this point, the way we humans consume resources.”

“
Did you like the work?” Kyra asked.

They reached the maintenance area and navigated the simple handful of rooms, stuffing themselves into the squalid lift at the back.

“Well...yes, and no. I'm a simple kind of guy, I think. If I'm doing a job, I know how to do it, and feel comfortable doing it, then I'm pretty satisfied on a day to day basis. I gotta admit I'm pretty out of my element here, even with the training.”

“
You're doing great so far,” Greg replied.

“
Yeah...maybe. I can't help but feel like it's just a matter of luck and time.”

The lift slid to a halt and the doors opened. A zombie stood in the opening. Greg snapped his rifle up and pounded out a round, punched an ugly hole through the thing's forehead and sent it flopping backwards.

“Damn,” Holt whispered. “Good reflexes.”

“
Thanks.” Greg vibrated with an adrenaline buzz.

They piled out of the lift, eager to be free of the cramped confines. They moved through the maintenance area, putting down a handful of zombies that occupied it. Greg wondered what they were doing back here. He found the exit and opened it. As he began to put his head out, someone ran by, screaming, while a trio of zombies ran after them. Greg heard gunfire
and screaming. Somewhere, something burned.

“
Damn,” he muttered. “Looks like this is going to be the hard part.”

“
Maybe so far,” Kyra said.

The three of them slipped out into the living quarters' deck. It seemed that Dark Ops liked to color-code things: this deck was a dark aquamarine with carpeted floors. Though
much of the once plush carpet was now stained thickly with red and black. They came into a lengthy corridor, interconnected with other corridors. Dozens of doors lined the wall at regular intervals. Each had two names above them. They set off.

There was smoke and blood in the air. Something roared and a hail of gunfire followed. Distantly, something shrieked. Men were screaming and dying. Occasionally, an explosion rattled the area.

“Man, hope this ship holds together,” Holt murmured.

One of the doors opened and a half-dressed soldier stumbled back, wrestling with a zombie that might have once been his roommate. The zombie sunk its teeth into the man's neck and ripped out a mouthful of glistening meat. Blood sprayed across the carpet and the man's struggles quickly began to weaken.

Greg and Kyra put both the zombie and the dying man out of their misery and broke into a light jog. Holt hurried after them. Kyra led the way, first taking a right as soon as she was able, then following the corridor through several intersections and, seemingly at random, taking a left. Greg trusted her to get them there.

“
Where is this terminal?” he asked.

“
In someone's bedroom. It was a random disperser pattern,” Kyra replied.

A man on fire shrieked past them, trailing thick, black smoke, as they reached another intersection.

“What the hell is
that
?” Holt cried, pointing.

Something shifted through the smoke left in the trail of the running man, coming straight at them. Greg had a difficult time seeing it, merely registering whatever it was as a watery blur of motion that was barely even visible.

His eyes widened in sudden revelation.

He raised his rifle and fired off a series of shots. Something squealed and black blood flew in the air. Abruptly, a corpse seemed to pop into existence. It was a Stalker, only advanced, like the one he'd encountered in the vent. It looked sleeker, paler, and healthier even. The body streamlined for speed and murder.

“Jesus,” Kyra whispered. “That thing was practically invisible, like some kind of cloaking field. How...how could it do that?”

“
I don't know, but I think we need a new name for these,” Greg replied as they started moving again, unwilling to stay in one place for very long.

After a long moment of silence, Holt finally spoke up. “What about Creeper?”

“Creeper?” Kyra asked.

“
I think it's a good name, Holt,” Greg said.

Holt chuckled. “Thanks.”

Kyra seemed dissatisfied. “I guess it'll do...anyway, we're here.”

She stopped before one door among hundreds and hit the access button. The door slid open, and nothing jumped out at them. They hurried into the quarters. Greg closed the door and he and Holt stood watch while Kyra crossed the room and sat down at one of the desks. Greg studied the quarters. He was impressed. The room was bigger than he thought it would be and everything seemed modular. The beds, the desks, even the tables looked as though they were capable of folding into the walls or the floor.

At the back of the room, he discovered two separate bathrooms, each with their own tub. Everything had a clean, fresh, pristine feeling to it, as if everything here was brand new. He wondered if these ships were indeed new or it was just the quality of the material and the up-keep of the staff that kept it so.

“
Okay, got it.” Kyra stood.

“
That was fast,” Holt replied.

“
Powell talked me through the procedure. It's easy. Now we need to head for the next one, it's on this deck, though on the opposite end.”

“
Great,” Greg murmured.

Back into the fray, they made their way down the confusing network of corridors as quickly as they could, passing by the occasional firefight or roaming Undead without too much trouble. Greg kept his finger inside the trigger guard, hoping that their stealth and the chaos around them would keep them free of conflict, but banking that they wouldn't be so lucky. After a long walk, they finally hit the edge of the area.

Broad, low corridors and rows upon rows of similar doors gave way to one, titanic open area. The far wall was three stories tall and seemed to be a network of open-faced rooms. Catwalks and stairwells granted access to the heightened stories. Spread out before them, in a huge, open space was a grid-work of tables and chairs.

The
whole area was a bloody, fiery mess.

“
It's a...a fuckin'
mall
,” Holt breathed.

“
Damn,” Greg said. “They live
nice
on this ship.”

“
Lived, anyway,” Kyra muttered. “Come on, we're making for the third floor. There's a taco joint up there, Mega Taco.”

Greg laughed as they hurried across the open area, weaving in between tables and chairs. “
Mega Taco
?”

“
Yeah, goofy name, I know, but it's super popular. Everyone loves Mega Taco.”

Something flew right in front of Greg's face. It was so close he could smell rot and decay. He spun and spied a small army of Lancers coming for them, throwing aside tables and chairs as they came.

“Go!” Greg screamed, raising the rifle.

Kyra looked torn, but finally nodded and took off. Holt went after her with another sharp shout from Greg. He zeroed in on the
twisted, ugly caricature of a face of the first one, staring at it through the enhanced, digital zoom. It was hideous, a visage of awful, mottled ruin. He put a bullet through its eye and quickly snapped to the next target, shooting it through its open, screaming mouth. Then on to the next.

More spikes whizzed by him, dripping what he imagined was pure infection. He dodged, ducked behind a flipped over table, and watched three of them bury themselves in the metal, punching through, becoming lodged. Greg licked his lips, prepared himself and popped back up. He shot the next one twice, once in the neck and once in the forehead. Two left now. He prepared to kill the next one when both of them were cut down by gunfire.