Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle (27 page)

"Come on! Come on, you fuck. You want a monster? You want a monster?"

Franco did not wait for it to strike. He reached out and grabbed its throat with his left arm, the one weakened by a bullet hole.

The creature took the general form of a person but might have been even more inhuman-looking than the alien from the Everglades. Sores and bruises, boils and cracked skin, black eyes and cauliflower ears, a skeleton covered in a skin that resembled white plastic. The only sight he had ever seen that came close to this beast were old photographs of bodies piled at Auschwitz or Buchenwald.

Franco threw it against the wall. It offered little resistance, little in the way of strength, but it did snap at him with rotting, jagged teeth, as if trying to bite off his nose.

"You want a monster, huh, bitch? You want a fucking monster?"

Franco jammed two fingers into its eyes … and pushed. They popped like sour grapes but he did not stop; he drove further into its mushy skull, easily puncturing bands of weak cartilage and snapping skinny bones that seemed no stronger than chicken wings.

It gurgled something, some kind of moan. Its teeth kept snapping, its arms flailed.

Franco pulled away his gore-covered fingers and grasped its throat with both hands. A pain shot up from his wounded leg. He nearly lost his balance and fell backwards. That would have reversed the situation. Instead, the near misstep made him angrier still.

"I’m your fucking monster!" he screamed, banging its head into the wall. "I’m the biggest fucking king-of-the-hill bad-ass sonofawhore monster in this whole Christ-forsaken shithole and
DON’T YOU FUCKING FORGET IT!"

He battered the thing’s skull again … and again … and again. A thick, chunky liquid splashed out onto the wall behind. Teeth stopped chattering; arms stopped flailing. Its head deformed, taking on the shape of a rotting cantaloupe.

The sergeant stopped his assault not so much because it was dead, but because his arm grew tired. He stopped with both hands around its throat, his eyes staring straight at its gory, punctured sockets.

"What the fuck you looking at?"

He laughed, unsure if he had asked the question of the monster or it of him. Down there, in that dungeon where shapeless monsters consumed men, where brothers deserted one another, where creatures feasted on flesh—down there the mind could play tricks, making the strange and absurd seem likely and reasoned, especially for a mind burning hot from infection, a mind that had been bent and twisted by the thing living on sublevel 8.

Playtime.

Under such stress, the hidden doors inside a man's consciousness could break open, letting free demons of a far more human nature, but no less dangerous. Demons of prejudice and envy; of frustration and anger.

Demons a weak soul might turn to if trapped in the dark.

"They left me here. They left me here to be eaten alive."

What was that saying? Oh yeah …

"Dad always said … he said, ‘Son, sooner or later you gotta pay the piper.’ What the fuck is a piper?"

Don’t know … but he gets paid … each and every time … sooner or later.

How about this, Benny. How about if you wallow around in this crazy shit long enough, sooner or later you're going to get your due. Sooner or later there’s a price to be paid.

"You say something? Did you … did you say something?" Its lips had not moved. Its arms hung loose. The stain of blood—and worse—still slopped along the wall behind its smashed skull.

The creature had said nothing, nor had anyone else. He had been discarded by everyone and everything, his purpose apparently fulfilled. Gant … Campion, they continued on, as did everything else in Red Rocks' dungeon halls. Sergeant Benjamin Franco was all alone down there; all alone with his memories, his thoughts, and his demons.

"No … you didn’t say shit. You’re dead. Just like they thought they’d leave me for dead, didn’t they? They just forgot about old Sarge and went on their happy little way. I learned in the Rangers, no one gets left behind. You don't leave people behind." 
He banged its skull against the wall one more time, as if he held Gant and Campion in his grip and they needed a lesson drilled home.

"So what am I supposed to do? Huh? What am I supposed to do?"

Franco spitefully tossed the limp body aside. It thumped to the ground, as lifeless as Moss, Pearson, and the monster that had been eating his leg.

As his adrenaline cooled, the pain returned. Sharp and debilitating from two distinct injuries. Franco fell to his knees and vomited. He vomited until there was nothing left but dry heaves, one after another for several minutes. When he was done, he wiped the spit from his lips with the back of his hand, but succeeded only in smearing blood across his face.

He paid that blood no attention. But he did pay attention to something else. Not far from Moss’s body lay that soldier’s M4 carbine with its infrared scope.

Franco looked at the weapon, then looked at the stairs ascending to sublevel 5.

Those fuckers left me here to die.

Franco tried to stand again but he managed it for only a long second; the pain was too much. He could do no better than hunch over and limp as he made his way to the carbine.

Biggy grabbed it. The grip and trigger were painted in Moss's blood but Franco barely noticed the mess, just as he failed to recognize that it had been his shotgun that had blown away half that man's body. No, Franco was more interested in the magazine, which he ejected and examined, finding it full.

Idiot didn't even fire a shot. Died without a shot. Fuck that. I'm going down with both barrels blazing.

Franco slung the M4 over his shoulder, wobbled to the stairwell, and grabbed the rail for balance.

They owed him a debt and he planned to collect.
 

Captain Campion stood in one corner of a big room full of bookshelves, tables, microfilm readers, and mammoth monitors hooked to equally large computer towers complete with floppy drives. He realized the place was, in fact, a library, but it could also pass as a museum.

Jupiter Wells and Sal Galati stood to either side, trying to catch their breath after a double-time evacuation from the combat zone.

Still, they had escaped the initial danger, giving Campion an opportunity to get his bearings and plan their next move. To that end, he examined the display on his wrist computer yet again. He knew better than to completely trust that map. After all, the facility's layout had changed during its construction in the early 70s, not to mention some levels undergoing remodeling and retasking in the years before the incident. Add in the fact that the images on his screen were actually poor-quality scans from forty-year-old blueprints and the result was more of a general overview than an accurate representation of sublevel 6.

Wells tapped Campion's shoulder.

"Hey, Cap, just so you know, you almost forgot this."

Wells held the duffel bag containing the V.A.A.D. unit. Somehow, for some reason, Campion had completely forgotten about his half of the equipment. In fact, right before the battle broke out he had focused entirely on keeping Twiste and the bag that man carried safe, yet that bag contained only batteries.

For the first time in his career, Campion worried he might be losing focus. How could he possibly have concentrated so much on Twiste and disregarded the fact that Twiste was useless without the main unit? Worse, how could he leave the battle scene and not even remember the one piece of gear that was critical to completing the mission?

As he recounted the confrontation outside the elevator, Campion came to realize that his mind had not seemed quite right during that entire episode. While forcing Twiste to go first turned out—ironically—to be the best move, it made no sense and did go against Major Gant's wishes.

Galati's voice speaking into his tactical headset interrupted Campion's thoughts.

"Do you copy? Major Gant, do you copy? What is your position?"

"Give it a rest, Sal," Wells told his friend. "You won’t get anything but static unless you’re in line of sight."

"Pipe down, you two," Campion ordered. "Speak only when necessary. We don’t want to draw any attention if we don’t have to."

Wells moved away from Campion and removed his helmet to run a hand through his sweat-soaked hair.

The blast and fire had bought them cover for their retreat, which started out as a run down the hall followed by a shortcut through a large computer room housing an ancient HP mainframe that had not been in use for years before the initiation of quarantine. From there they stumbled about in the dark for a few minutes before finding the library.

A line of big, rectangular windows separated the room from one of the main corridors from which several battery-powered spotlights shined in, providing better light than in most sections of the underground facility. Never mind the question as to how battery-powered lights still worked after twenty years of total isolation.

The three soldiers stood behind a row of reference books. Wells glanced at some of the titles—all scientific journals and reference volumes—while Galati gave up on the radio and turned his attention to his weapons. He had expended quite a bit of ammunition and was running low.

Wells asked, "Hey, Cap, why aren’t we bugging out?"

Campion did not turn away from his study of the map as he answered, "I said stow it, soldier. I’ve got work to do."

"With all due respect, sir," Wells kept on, "we somehow managed to survive Little Big Horn out there yet we’re not heading back up. Why not?"

"We have a mission to complete."

"Mission? We just got overrun and routed by some of the nastiest shit I've ever seen. Isn't it time to get back to the exit? You know, live to fight another day."

Campion snapped the cover of his wrist computer shut and looked Wells directly in the eye.

"Listen to me, both of you. We have a mission to complete. That's why we were sent down here. You knew coming in that this was going to get crazy, so don’t start acting like a couple of school kids. Focus and let your training do the job."

"Hey," Galati strolled over to him. "I've been, you know, on missions more fucked up than this one but I got to admit, maybe we should—"

"Bullshit, Sal," Wells spat. "You have never been on anything as fucked up as this, just like you never banged a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit model and you didn't call that pool shot in the rec room the other night. Now isn't the time for one of your stupid stories."

Galati coked his head at his friend's shot across the bow and opened his mouth to launch a rebuttal, but Captain Campion interceded.

"Shut the fuck up, both of you."

His use of such strong language knocked them off balance, just as planned. Campion was not opposed to four-letter words, but he knew such words had their place. Dropping f-bombs in every sentence sort of reduced the effect, but when Richard Campion let one fly it grabbed attention.

"I am not routed. I plan to take back the initiative and I plan to complete the mission. This is who we are; this is what we do. We stick together, we work as a team, and we get the job done. I'll cover your backs, you cover mine and we'll make it through this."

Both men stared at him, either thinking him crazy and plotting a mutiny or buying in to his words. Campion did not know which way they would go. He was never good at reading personalities or emotions. He dealt with facts and he lived by a code he expected others to follow, no matter how often they disappointed him.

Of course, retreat always remained an option; a tool for use in war like any other weapon or tactic. But one did not retreat when the objective was only two floors below.

Sal sort of smirked and said, sheepishly, "I've heard better inspirational speeches, Cap," and he glanced at Wells.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Wells gave in, too. "Whatever you say, I'm in," he said, then he punched Galati lightly in the shoulder. "But only because someone has to look after his sorry ass."

Sal puckered his lips and blew him a kiss. "You can kiss this sorry ass, sweetheart."

Campion popped open the computer again, now that things seemed under control.

He told the men, "We're going to find another way down. If we have to cut through the bioweapons sector, so be it, but I'd like to find a route around or an alternative means of descent."

"Bioweapons?" Wells asked. "Say, Cap, you think that's where those things came from? You know those things that hit us. They seemed like some kind of nasty bioweapons project gone bad."

"What?" Campion said, because he thought Wells's suggestion sounded absurd. "What would that have to do with anything? If it was an experiment that went bad, then maybe it had something to do with time travel. Those uniforms were from the 1940s."

"Uniforms? What uniforms?" Wells tilted his head and squinted his eyes in a manner that suggested he questioned the Captain's sanity. "How the hell would something like that wear a uniform?"

Campion shut his computer lid again and looked at Wells. "Those were German soldiers who attacked us, or people dressed up like World War Two Germans. You know I'm an expert on that kind of thing."