Kraken Mare (14 page)

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I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always think plans completely through when I suggest them to others. It’s a flaw in my mental process. I get so focused on the aftermath of the plan that I don’t really consider what others think of the implementation of said plan. I also have a bad habit of forgetting to share all of the details of the plan with others, which leads to situations.

“This plan is borked,” Lockhart grumbled as he took the submachine gun I offered him. He cleared the chamber and inspected it briefly before nodding in satisfaction. He grabbed one of the many magazines I had pilfered from the Armory and slammed it home. He still was pretty pissed, though. “You want to do
what
with our fire suppression system?”

“It’s easy,” I tried to explain in a comforting tone. “We use the suppression system to knock out anyone in the area where we trigger it. The locale with the best suppression system in a contained environment is the hangar. Ergo, we lure those psychos up to it and then knock them out with the Halon. Backup plan is we blow them up and vent the hangar of all oxygen, which gets rid of the flames and keeps the station from melting from the inside.”

“That doesn’t sound easy,” Poole picked up complaining where Lockhart left off. “It sounds overly complicated and extremely dangerous.”

“You’re pocketing grenades while bitching about safety, Gary,” I reminded him. “You really don’t have much of a leg to stand on here.”

“Well, I can’t have just one…” he muttered in a low voice. I shook my head and tried not to sigh out loud. It was difficult.

“So how are you going to lure them up to the hangar anyways?” Lockhart asked as he grabbed a handgun and loaded up for bear. He gave me a sideways look.

“We can remotely lock the Observation Deck from here, right?” I asked. Seeing his confirming nod, I continued, “We lock the scientists in their berthing areas and make a general announcement over the PA about escaping in the shuttles. The escapees will rush up there to steal the shuttles and get off the station.”

“That…could actually work,” Lockhart admitted. While there was some doubt still in his tone, I could see that he was warming up to the idea. Poole was a harder sell, though.

“You’re assuming a lot,” he said, “and you’re assuming that they’ll come along like little mice for the cheese fairy. What if they suspect it’s a trap?”

“It’s mice and the Pied Piper, and that’s why we have guns.” I patted my bag of goodies. As bad as the situation was, I felt that we were beginning to get the upper hand at last. Too many had died already, and there would be hell to pay, but we were finally getting a handle on things. Relatively speaking, at least.

“How are you going to keep them from getting too suspicious?” Lockhart asked me.

“We’re going to make the channel secured, but since I’m almost certain that one of them has a comm unit on them, we’ll broadcast over it for all the other guards,” I said.

“But what happens if the guards believe the call and go there as well?” Lockhart pressed.

“I don’t know, shit,” I exhaled heavily and thought for a moment. That was something I hadn’t really thought about. “I’ll worry about that if it happens. Anybody else check in yet?”

“One of the maintenance wipes, when directly ordered,” Poole answered, “and some scientists. I’m sending you the list now.”

“Guards?”

“Not yet,” he said, though I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t expecting anyone else to report in despite his use of the word “yet.”

I had to agree with the unspoken sentiment. If the other guards hadn’t reported in by now, they were never going to report in at all. So far as we could tell, the three of us were all that was left of the security force from Xanadu.

Welp, that’s going to create some high-paying openings in the job market
, a dark and sinister voice whispered in the back of my mind. I grumbled and told my subconscious to shut the hell up. I grabbed my bag of goodies and slung it over my shoulder.

“Take care of him,” I nodded at Isaac.

“Will do,” Lockhart stated

“We’ll be waiting for the signal,” Poole added helpfully.

I exited Central and slowly made my way up those godforsaken stairs. Six floors up might not sound like a lot to anyone in reasonable shape, but I had gotten my ass kicked twice already, was carrying enough explosives and ammunition to give Honduras pause, and had already suffered through a pretty shitty day. Don’t judge me.

When I wasn’t being dragged up them forcefully and having my kidneys slammed into the edge of every step, the stairs weren’t actually all that bad. I probably could have hit them more often than anything in the gym, been left alone by my fellow guards and gotten a pretty good workout to boot. Plus, the stairwell was a few degrees cooler than the rest of the station. That would have been a nice benefit.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Hindsight and all that.

And I was lying about the stairs. They sucked, as always. Single story is the way to go, people.

I reached my destination level and took a deep breath. I triple-checked the safety and the magazine on the submachine gun before I paused to say a swift prayer. I might not have been the most religious of men, but even I’ll admit that I’ll ask for help whenever I needed it. Buddha, Flying Spaghetti Monster, God…all usually work on the side of the angels, and I could use all the help I could get.

I had a slight flashback to Soma. I shoved it away. I might have been outnumbered once again, but there was no way I was outgunned. There would be no bastard with a comm to call down an artillery strike on my position this time. I was facing, at most, nine hostiles. Compared to Soma, this would be a cake walk.

I pushed the door open and quickly checked the right before swiveling around and pushing fully into the hall, the barrel of the machine gun turning left. My eyes scanned the immediate area. Nothing. I let out a sigh of relief. Score one for the good guys. I wasn’t going to die just yet.

The corridor was nearly dark, with only the emergency lights up and running. It created some weird shadows and dark holes which set my teeth on edge. I was tempted to empty a full burst into each and every one of them but I stopped myself. I was saving all the ammo for legitimate threats. I didn’t need to expend any to soothe my shattered nerves.

So I turned to my usual reaction to shitty situations: I began to mouth off.

“Of course the lights are dimmed up here to create a spooky fucking atmosphere,” I complained in a low voice as I carefully made my way down the corridor towards the hangar. “Why the fuck not? It’s not like I’m not living through a horror movie already.” Each step I took was cautious, each breath was measured. Every second was painstakingly long and I could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

“Let’s see, the bad guy is going to pop out of one of these doors with a knife while wearing a bloody hockey mask and hack me with a machete,” I continued, all the while my eyes scanned the corridor. “Or drop down from a ventilation duct, like that one, with acid dripping from his alien-like jaws and eat my face. Better still, they’ll pop up right behind me even though there’s nowhere for them to hide. In retrospect, that seems more likely.”

Yeah, we all project our fears in different ways. I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll probably say it again. Besides, you try walking down a super freaky corridor sometime while hunting for men who were both hardened killers and shape-changing psychopaths. It’s not an easy thing to process. When you do, tell me how you coped.

I have my ways, you have yours.

I caught a blur of motion out of the corner of my eye. Before I could even blink, something heavy slammed against my left and I was tossed aside like a ragdoll. The submachine gun flew from my grip as I landed heavily onto the corridor floor. I slid a few more feet before coming to a stop near the stairwell door. My neck and shoulder ached from the impact, but the adrenaline was pumping and fear fueled me. I was back on my feet with one of my myriad of handguns up and pointed at my attacker’s head in moments.

Someone was standing in the shadows, waiting. I couldn’t quite make out who it was, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Back off, convict,” I growled. I was going to remain under the assumption that it was one of our escaped prisoners until proof showed otherwise.

“Manning…oh, I hoped it’d be you,” a frightening voice came from the darkness.

Shit. I recognized that voice. It belonged to Charles Gentry, one of our most problematic prisoners. He was a sick and twisted individual who loved to play mental games with the scientists and guards alike. Why he had ever been allowed to participate in this scientific study was something all of us guards had debated over. My theory was that he had some senator bent over a barrel somewhere and had also knocked up his daughter. Nobody else bought that theory, but it seemed solid to me.

“Gentry, hands behind your head and face the wall,” I demanded. I really didn’t want to shoot him, not just yet. If I killed him out here and one of the others were around, I’d never be able to set the trap properly. Digging out escaped convicts from within the confines of this station, each of whom were dangerous as hell, was not something I could afford to do. We simply didn’t have the manpower for it, not any longer. It had to be one shot to get them all.

“Let me come into the light, Manning,” Gentry hissed.

“What the hell…” I whispered as the tall, lanky ex-soldier moved out of the shadows and into the dim light fully for the first time.

I’d gotten my love for classic movies from my mother. I’d seen just about every movie that she considered a “classic” multiple times. Granted, what she termed a classic, I would later discover, most “real” critics of classical film considered to be campy at best, all the way to downright horrible. So I’d seen movies that most of my friends had never considered, which included hundreds of horror movies. Horror movies which depicted aliens, zombies, and everything else that used to scare the crap out of kids.

That movie list also included
Nosferatu
.

Apparently, Gentry had seen that one as well. If he hadn’t, then it was one hell of a coincidence that he looked just like Max Schreck.

His skin had turned a pasty white, which was a stark contrast to the darkness behind him. He had hair, once, but now it appeared to have disappeared, along with his wide chest and muscular arms. His arms were elongated and his elbows just looked wrong somehow. His ears were pointed slightly and his eyes appeared to be sunken deep within his skull. His mouth was twisted and broken, and there was a strange glint in his eyes. I was used to his crazy, but this was just too much.

He had changed himself into a freaking vampire. What a cliché. A terrifying, nightmarish cliché. My throat tightened for a moment as the fear took hold. I couldn’t speak, could barely even breathe.

No
.
Not this time.

I swallowed and the tension eased. I would not be cowed by this wannabe. I would not be petrified by this convict. Besides, Max Schreck had been far scarier than this ass clown.

“Gentry! Turn around, get down on your knees and put your hands on your head!” I demanded, my voice thundering in the sterile metal corridor.

“Or what? You'll shoot me?” Gentry's mocking laugh sent chills up and down my spine. My fingers tightened on the pistol grip. The prisoner took another step forward, his eyes locked onto mine. “I'd like to see you—”

I fired four times in the span of a single second. Every shot struck the creature that had once been Gentry solidly in the chest, the .45 caliber rounds erupting in small geysers of blood behind him. Spent shell casings landed on the floor. The creature looked down at the wounds clustered in a two-inch area right where his heart was. He scowled and shot me an irritated glare.

“Ow… Nice grouping, though,” Gentry said in a voice which somehow managed to convey both annoyance and envy. His jaw, reminding me of a snake, unhinged, while his teeth… Jesus,
his teeth
!

Now pointed and sharp, they fit well within his newly formed mouth. I took a small step back, keeping the pistol level, unable to stop watching his continued transformation.

Gentry’s fingers began to elongate, tips sharpening into claws. Snapping my attention back to his eyes, I watched as the pupils narrowed into slits and began to lighten. The color progressed from dark brown, to yellow, finally settling on a deep shade of crimson. He ripped his bloodied white smock off his body, exposing his chest. I watched in awe as the gunshot wounds closed, leaving only a slight blemish on his now alabaster skin. A very disturbing look for a man who appeared emaciated.

“Fine, tough guy. You want to play?” Gentry ran a finger through the still wet blood before raising it to his lips. He sucked the blood off noisily. “Then let's play.”

As the Things would say, my original plan was borked. It was time to improvise.

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but grenades are definitely a Marine’s. I grabbed two off of my belt and tossed them at Gentry. He darted to the side and out of the way as they bounced along the floor. I moved as well, though not in the anticipated direction. I charged forward, following the grenades as they rolled down the corridor.