Last Call (Stranded in the Stars Book 1) (17 page)

“Allie.” The entity groaned. It dropped down with a thunk, materializing before her eyes, pooling into an unnatural shape on the ground. “We want you.” The thing wailed, it’s voice overlayed by dozens of other voices. The ghost wasn’t her friend but a mass of lost souls.

Allie stood there in terror, drowning in the stench of musty soil and death. Her mouth and lungs filled with the putrid scent, the taste adhered to her tongue. She pressed her back into the wall as if she could become one with it.

“Ophelia, are you there?” She said so softly, she couldn’t hear the sound leave her lips.

The wraith vibrated with otherworldly laughter, the cacophony hurting her ears. She watched as the evil faded in and out, there one moment and gone the next, flickering like the lights strewn along the walls outside the armored core. Every time it reappeared with each quiver, it was closer to her.

The sludge-like hair was branching out around her, pulling from the darkness and yet still clinging to the ghost. Pale, long skeletal arms appeared before it from the muck, clawing at the ground.

She couldn’t move as the thing moved its way closer. She frantically searched its ever shifting form for an image of her friend. It was an unearthly malformation of bodies and it reeked of hatred.

It wanted her, it had always wanted her. Searching the planet with its darkness every night for years to haunt her.

Allie’s arm felt like lead but she lifted it anyway to beam the light directly at it. Any resemblance of her friend vanished as the faces shifted into the other girls who had been on the ship with them that died. Their voices sounded as one, the groans leaking out of its mouth were abominable, the jaw stretched down, revealing an endless black void. It crept closer to her.

She focused on the horror of what was before her, realizing that she should have been a part of the mass of lost souls coming closer; but she had miraculously survived, escaped the fate of an undying trauma. The pain of having hope firmly in your grasp then having it forcefully taken away.

The souls of the girls before her were not the same ones she had grown up with but a macabre mass of angry, painful emotions that had settled and rotted in a place that there was no escape from. They were tied to the ship.

Where could souls go when they were so far out in the fringes of space? They had been left here like discards to suffer alone.

Allie didn’t want the same fate. She pushed her back along the chilled wall, putting more space between her and the suffering mass. It was moving slowly, the decayed arms dragging its heavy, wet body over the floor; weighted down by its physical form.

She felt the darkness creep its way around to caress her skin.

She didn’t dare blink, her eyes dried out from the watching the oncoming mass move closer. When she felt her back hit the corner of the large central room, she pushed her way up, feeling the pain in her knees, the little pieces of glass still lodged in her skin, making each movement a cringing effort. The shards chafed her skin tissue.

The groans of the mass filling the room made her ears bleed, a sharp pain formed behind her eyes.

She slid her back around the outer edges, keeping her light directed at the thing slowly making its way towards her as she made her way back to the exit. When she was just several agonizing steps away from her destination, the wails vanished, the darkness swirling around her loosened up. The oppressive thickness around her moved away.

The mass of souls had stopped, suspended in space, the physical form vibrating. It was no longer moving, the only movement now was her erratic pulse.

Allie stood there, slightly hunched over in pain, her body propped up at an angle against the cold metal wall, facing the fate she had escaped when a familiar faint scratch sounded the air above her.

It was so quiet now that anyone else had to concentrate to hear it but for her, it was as loud as thunder in her ears.

Once again she couldn’t bring herself to move, the fear she had felt morphing to despair and morphing again into terror because Allie
knew
that scratching, she knew what caused it and it wasn’t the grudge crawling before her. It was something from the abyss, an evil that had no right to be in her plane of existence.

The scratching stopped, her heart skipped a beat as something wet and warm dripped onto her face. The strange sensation pulled her back to the reality of the situation around her. She reached up to wipe the drip off her face when another one fell, smearing down her cheek.

She looked up slowly and gazed into the face of her nightmares.

Her eyes were filled with a twisted wide grin engorged with sharp, discolored teeth. The mouth around it blackened out before it melded into a pasty, pale inhuman face. The eyes glaring down at her were dead hollows and gaping.

The creature was on the ceiling, leering at her, so close that she could smell the stale death on its breath. Its breath tickled loose strands of her hair as her mouth fell open into a scream that she never released.

The next moment she was slammed into the ground by the large force. Long jagged nails clawed at her body as she felt slimy, loose skin slide over her legs when a sharp pain stunned her as something sliced the skin on her upper arm.

She felt faint from the burst of pain but her adrenaline went into overdrive and kept her from fainting.

The beast was snapping at her, aiming for her throat while simultaneously trying to pin her down. She knocked her flashlight hard into the side of its head, losing her grip on her first defense; her hand coming away with strands of grimy hair.

Allie heard her flashlight fall and roll away from her. She kicked her legs out, pressing her glass ravaged knees into the creature's body. When she made contact, the thing howled out a shriek and slammed its clawed fist into her stomach.

She felt the abrupt loss of air as she wheezed, the shock of her sudden loss of breath, paralyzing her for an agonizing moment. A painful yank snapped her head as it grabbed her hair, pulling it up with enough force to expose her throat.

Allie pushed with every muscle in her body, her lost scream from earlier filling the room as she bore her entire body to the side, feeling the thing above her shift and slide to the side. Its probing nails slicing her skin into little, jagged nicks.

The ship heaved heavily, lifting upward, lodging the room at a sharp angle. The beast lost its hold on her hair and flew across the room with a monstrous scream. A loud, high pitched wail from their observer joined in the symphony.

Allie struggled on the floor, grabbing at anything that would stop her slide down the room towards the thing now clawing its way back to her on the other end. She saw the exit begin to pass her by as she threw her leg out to catch the side, halting her slide.

With her free hand she seized the door panel and hauled herself through. The ship trembled around her, slamming back down. She could feel a sucking sensation around her as the ship dipped further into the ground.

On heavy legs she stood up, using the wall as support, her hand streaking blood as it moved. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to stop and collapse and give up but she refused to listen.

I would lose everything if I died on this ship.
She could hear the scratches start up behind her.

Without another thought she started running. The ship was so dark she found herself tripping over debris, hitting her body into the dark metal walls, while hearing the ever familiar scratches behind her. Far in the background barely lost over the thing pursuing her, she heard the loud pitiful cries of the souls left behind.

Her eyes welled up for their pain.
I pray they find peace.
The cries came to a stop as if they heard her thoughts.

Her foot caught on a loose plating, twisting her ankle. She fell forward from the shock when her head was thrown violently back again. The beast had caught up to her.

In the distance before her she could see a pulsing red light indicating the passageways leading back to the reactor.
I’m so close.
She felt the familiar claws sink into her twisted foot as she stared at the lights.

Jack was right there.

Furious, her agony flooded out of her body as she saw her chance at freedom being denied again, she kicked her leg out with all her might, thrusting the thing sideways. She turned around to face it.

Allie clenched her hand, remembering the dagger that she still held, having forgotten it with her fixation on the flashlight.

She propelled forward at the monster that was now trying to bite down on her calf and brought the dagger down, feeling it slide into wet flesh. The thing screeched and tried to slither back into the shadows beyond but she wouldn’t let it, bringing the dagger down again, stopping its movements.

Her mind was overwhelmed with bloodlust, stabbing at the abomination over and over, the blood and carnage splattering away.

“He told me to stab until it’s dead.” She shrieked, knowing the ghoul beneath her had perished some time ago. She was unable to stop.

Chapter Thirteen:

---

J
ack carefully pulled the last of the wires out, keeping one hand firmly in place to retain his connection to the reactor. He was temporarily playing as a conduit for the large machine. The electrical pulses were his only lead to the working circuitry.

He was part of the ship at that moment, feeling the energy flow through him and release, simultaneously powering up the core while it charged up his robotics.

He felt invigorated.

The ship groaned beneath him, the floor heaving sideways as if something had thrown its into the the side of the ship. Jack lost his connection to the core as his body was thrown to the side. His hand reactively went to the circuits he had already harvested, that were now strapped to his thigh, ensuring that they were intact and undamaged.

The reactor convulsed, he watched as it rapidly lost power now that he was no longer maintaining his connection to it. It was going to die, the pulsing lights had longer intervals between them as the piece of deteriorating metal depleted its remaining power.

He called out, “Allie, are you okay?” Jack stood up while he scanned the area for her presence. The ship shook again, the movements progressively becoming more violent. His internal alert systems came back alive, overwhelming him with screams of danger.

Fuck, where is she?
He picked up the pace.

His hand shot out to the barrier, keeping his feet steady as the ship jerked downward, a feeling of vertigo encompassed him.

Jack sensed several wurms just outside the battle cruiser, ramming their bodies into it.
Fuck.
He screamed several curses to himself.
How did they get through the rocky mountainous crust?
The magnetic field and the electrical pulses must be drawing them like a moth to the flame.
They’re trying to destroy the ship.

He ducked under the barrier, calling out “Allie, we need to go! Now.” He shouted, realizing it fell on deaf ears. She wasn’t there.

Giant metal panels dislodged and crashed around him, the interior crumbling to pieces with each impact. He searched for the girl as he ran to his half-buried pack and pulled it free, slinging it on, quickly scanning the ship’s rapidly changing interior. In the distance, coming from outside of the ship, he heard a loud monstrous roar as a wurm broke through the surface; the ground quaked when its giant body hit the dirt.

The potent, magnetic field was screwing with his processing, his concentration. He could sense life-forms but he had a hard time pinpointing their location. “Allie!” He yelled louder into the space, deciding to track her the primitive way, picking up the direction her scent was the freshest, he followed it down a decrepit pathway that was now partially destroyed by the barrage of violence.

Where is she? Why hadn’t she stayed near me?

Everything in him screamed to cut his losses and get out. His thoughts felt like the pulsing red lights of the reactor but at a much higher, stressful tempo. He pushed them away, he wasn’t going to leave without the girl.

Jack dodged as a metal pipe broke away and flung outward, nearly smashing into the side of his head. The girl’s scent was stronger the farther he went and became almost overpowering when he caught the fresh scent of blood.

Her blood.

He balanced his body as he rounded the corner, veering off into a side room where her blood was stronger and fresher. He looked around frantically but she was still nowhere in sight. In the center, he kneeled down where glass shards lay strewn about, now scattered to every corner of the room from the tremors. Pieces of them were coated in her blood.

He picked one up and examined it before tossing it away. It wasn’t a significant amount.

A different smell permeated the air as he quietly stood back up and rescanned the immediate area; with no effect. It smelled like soil, not just any soil, but the moist swamplands back on Earth. It smelled like musk and decay and the acrid odor that floats in the air after a bloody battle.

Jack sensed that he was no longer alone as a loud sobbing wail vibrated through the thick metal walls around him. The sound came from somewhere deep in the ship, the vibrations were faint ripples. It was like a hundred beings crying all at once. The sound stung his ears.

He unsheathed his pistol and cocked it while he quietly proceeded further, the smell of carnage growing stronger as did the volume of the crying. He focused on the small communicator he had given Allie day’s prior but could not locate its signal, he gave up in a frustrated groan.

It was then when he strained his ears that he heard Allie’s voice. “–to stab until it’s dead.” She shrieked in an frantic curse.

Jack rounded the corner, following her voice, and froze.

The girl was on her knees, stabbing the ever-living crap out of something beneath her. Her body glowed like a bright red beacon in his infrared vision. That neon red was sprayed over the floor and walls around her.

“Allie?” He walked up behind her, staring down at the floor. When he rounded her body and stood in front of her he could see what she was aggressively destroying; the creepy thing from the cave.