Quarantine (The Shadow Wars Book 7.5) (5 page)

Maybe.

As Allan prepared to leave, he took one last look around the infirmary, and paused. His gaze caught on something that glimmered in the brilliant overhead lights. He felt a slow grin spreading across his face as he crossed the room and studied it. A medical instrument, what looked like a fancy machete, lay on the floor among other scattered materials. He knelt and picked it up. Hefting it in his hand, he swung it a few times.

It felt nice and looked exquisitely sharp.

“What...what the
fuck
kind of medical instrument is this!?” he marveled, whispering to himself. He swung it a few more times, chuckling to himself.

“Yeah,” he whispered, “this'll do nicely.”

He was half tempted to abandon the pipe, but it still might be useful. As it was, he could rig up one of the loops on his belt to hold one of these weapons. Allan spent a moment adjusting it, then slipped the pipe through. He wanted to put this strange medical blade to the test. As he was practicing swinging it around a few more times, his radio abruptly crackled to life. Allan let out a small shout of fear at the unexpected noise and dropped his machete. It went clanging to the ground and he hurried to retrieve it, suddenly sure that he was about to be attacked.

But he grabbed the machete, stood and remained alone. The radio was still on, and someone was muttering incoherently on the other end.

“Duncan? Hunter?” he asked, his voice a strangled whisper.

The muttering abruptly came to a halt, then a piercing shriek came through the radio that was abruptly cut off. Allan tried to get into contact a moment longer, but could get nothing more. With no other recourse, he left the infirmary.

* * * * *

He almost made it to the bridge without getting attacked.

As he rounded the corner to the final corridor that terminated in, as far as he could tell, the sole entryway to the bridge, he stepped practically into the waiting arms of another crewman. He was larger, a security officer, his muscles showing through his tattered uniform. With reflexes born of fear, Allan brought the machete around in a tight arc and buried it in the man's neck. It went in about halfway, lodging itself in muscles and meat, spraying blood.

Allan ripped the blade out and then shoved the man backwards. The crewman stumbled back and crashed to the deckplates. He tried weakly to get back to his feet but so much blood was spraying out of his neck that he collapsed. On the heels of the shocked fear he'd felt at being jumped by the insane crewman, a white-hot wave of raw fury exploded into being. Allan suddenly found himself seething with total anger, as furious as he ever remember being. Suddenly, he leaped forward and dropped to his knees beside the body.

He began screaming as he brought the blade down on the corpse's torso over and over again. Blood sprayed across his suit, his visor, the walls. His arm rattled each time the machete hit bone. Allan heard someone screaming incoherently and realized, after a moment, that it was
him
, his own voice, twisted and turned into something else. He became aware of the horrible, wet, meaty sounds the machete made hitting the corpse and suddenly felt his gorge rise. Fighting down the chemical burn of bile, Allan fell back into a sitting position and kicked away from the mutilated corpse. He realized his chest was heaving, his breathing unsteady and rapid.

What was
wrong
with him?

He slowly got to his feet, his legs trembling, the anger now totally gone. Was he
that
stressed out? He'd been prone to angry outbursts in his early days working with SI when he was unusually stressed about something...but never like this.

Allan stared at the chopped up body and wiped at his visor. The corpse barely even resembled a person anymore. He hadn't known he had it in him to
do
that. As the trembling subsided, Allan knelt and retrieved the blade. He shook some of the blood off, cast one more uncertain glance at the bloody mess, then turned and hurried down the corridor to the bridge's entrance.

The sooner he could get off this death ship, the better.

As he approached the door, he noticed a flashing red light on the console next to it. Not a good sign. Jogging the rest of the way there, he reached the terminal and stared at it. Slowly, his hopes began to drop away as he read the message being flashed. It informed him that the bridge was presently in lockdown, and the only way to unlock it was by releasing the three manual overrides, which were spread out across the ship.

“Oh, God...” he moaned, feeling despair begin to set in.

Abruptly, his radio crackled to life once more. He prepared himself for another outburst of nonsensical screaming, but something different, something significantly more welcome came onto the airwaves.

“Allan, this is Duncan, are you there? Did you make it?”

Chapter 05

–
A Spark of Hope
–

Allan felt relief surge through him. He took a quick look around, reconfirming that he was alone, and retreated to the nearest door, to the right of the bridge. Opening it up, he found a small security office that had been subjected to a brutal firefight. He closed the door behind him and locked it, then sat down in a chair.

“This is Gray...you have no idea how glad I am to hear from you. What happened? Where are you? How did you make it?” he asked.

A pause, and Allan instantly began to worry that he might have imagined that last part, that he was still alone on this ship. Then there was a crackle of static.
“Allan! You made it! Okay, this is what happened. We were attacked by the
Stygian
, what might have been automated defenses left on. Colin, Hunter, Smitty and I were on the bridge when it happened. Myself, Colin and Hunter managed to get into an escape pod before the ship was totally destroyed. Smitty didn't make it, some shrapnel caught him in the head, killed him instantly. We're assuming Fletcher didn't make it, or any of the other skeleton crew on the speed ship,”
Duncan explained.

“Jesus,” Allan whispered. “Well...it's at least good that you three made it. Are you all right?”

“Just a few minor wounds. We managed to dock with the ship and we've just made it through an airlock bay. We're near the engine room. According to this map, there's an infirmary not far from our location. You want to meet up there?”
Duncan replied.

“Yes,” Allan said, suddenly desperate to see other people. “I'll get there as soon as I can. Give me the number of the infirmary.”

“Um...Four B.”

“Got it. I'll check a map and be there as soon as I can.”

“All right. We'll be waiting.”

Allan let out a long sigh of relief and decided to take this opportunity to check out the security center. His gaze was at first and immediately drawn to the trio of gun lockers along the back wall, but his hopes fell slightly as he saw they were all open and empty. He walked over to them anyway, just in case there might be something along the bottom or in shadow, but his investigation revealed nothing. Next, he looked across the floor.

There were two bodies in there with him, one of them shot in the head, the other strangled to death. He patted them both down, but found nothing in any of their various pockets. As he was preparing to leave, he spied a bit of metal poking out from beneath one of the bodies. Excited, he flipped the corpse over, but then felt his hopes fall yet again. As if to add insult to injury, he found a shotgun that had been used as a club, it was utterly ruined.

With a sigh, he abandoned the weapon, stood and left the room.

The first thing he needed to do was get the locations of those three lockout consoles. He moved back over to the terminal and studied the holographic layout of the ship. It was large, not as massive as some of the cruisers he'd seen, but big enough to handle easily a couple hundred personnel. The three lockout terminals, all of them security centers, were, of course, spread out equally across the vessel, and none of them near the bridge.

Fantastic.

Still, that couldn't get him down. Not now that he knew there were other survivors onboard. He was saddened over the loss of Smitty, of the skeleton crew manning the speed ship, but was at least consoled by the idea that (hopefully) their deaths were quick and painless. Sometimes, that's all a person could ask for in this nightmare of a galaxy. After memorizing the route to the three places and the infirmary where they were all supposed to meet up, Allan turned away from the terminal and began making his way back down the corridor.

Hefting his medical machete, he pondered his joy at hearing from the others. It seemed, ever since getting onboard the
Stygian
, that he was feeling emotions much more powerfully than before. Fear, hope, fury...speaking of fury, he passed the mutilated corpse on the way back. Allan paused briefly, flicking his glance down at it, then felt his stomach twist and churn and kept up his brisk pace, stepping around the body and hurrying until he'd reached the turn and it was wholly out of sight. Why had he blown a fuse like that?

It definitely wasn't a good sign. After hitting his mid-twenties and realizing that he was a furious ball of rage more often than not, Allan had made it a point to try and control his emotions, or, at least, his reactions. He thought he'd started to succeed at doing so after a few years, but wasn't sure, as he'd begun growing numb not long before coming to Lindholm. He'd gotten what he'd wanted all along: less emotions. Unfortunately, whatever was affecting him didn't seem to care if the emotions were good or bad...it just took them
all
away.

The process of shedding off his feelings had only accelerated during his campaign against the killer. Really, the only thing that had stayed was mute terror, and a grim kind of hope that he might somehow make the galaxy a better place. So why were his emotions coming back with a vengeance all of a sudden?

It didn't make any sense.

Allan turned another corner and froze, spying another one of the insane crewmen up ahead. A former security officer was facing him, that same empty, furious gaze of unmitigated horror and rage on his face. He immediately began shrieking and racing towards Allan, arms outstretched, the very second he laid eyes on him. Allan was ready. He raised his machete, waited for the perfect moment, then brought the blade around in a tight arc. This time, the medical blade cut cleanly through the entire neck, sending the head flying.

Allan let out a soft sound of disgust and surprise as blood fountained out of the stump of a neck, the body stumbling a few steps, hands opening and closing, groping blindly, nerves twitching as the body realized it was dying. The headless corpse finally collapsed. Allan watched the head go bouncing down the hallway, coming to rest by the boot of another corpse. The blood fountain slowed until it was a trickle, then died away completely. Allan felt his stomach twist and knot again. He'd never fully decapitated someone before.

Before he could think about it any further, Allan pressed on, first jogging, then running, as if fleeing the scene of the crime. He reached the end of the corridor, turned, passed through a storage room, ran down another corridor, heard another shriek but kept on going. When he finally stopped, winded, chest heaving, he saw that he wasn't far from the infirmary. He knocked on the door twice and waited, so he didn't get shot coming in. It had just occurred to him to use the damned radio when the door opened.

Duncan was waiting for him. He grinned big, grabbed Allan and pulled him inside, briefly wrapping him in a hug and pounding him on his armored back. “Man, is it good to see you! We were worried you'd gotten caught up,” he said.

“Likewise, about the seeing you part,” Allan replied, closing and locking the door behind him. He looked around the infirmary.

Everyone was there, at least everyone who had reported in. Colin, Duncan and Hunter. Duncan was the only one in full armor. He had a bandage over his forehead and another across his cheek. Colin and Hunter were tending to their own wounds, and Allan guessed that they'd covered Duncan while he fixed himself up, so that he could watch over them while they did the same. Allan spied a canteen resting on one of the cabinets and immediately went over to it. Raising his visor, he opened it up, smelled, discovered it was just water and drank deeply.

“So I imagine you've run into the freaks, huh?” Duncan asked.

Allan finished draining the canteen and nodded. He began filling it back up with water from a nearby sink after replacing his visor. “Yeah, I have, almost half a dozen. Any of you have any idea why they're acting this way? It's...”

“Insane,” Colin finished. “Absolutely insane.”

“I know a lot of people are tempted to save cabin fever, or space fever or whatever, but...this is a bit much for that,” Allan said, attaching the canteen to his belt.

Duncan was nodding. “Yeah. I've seen that before, and it's nothing like this. To be honest, I've never seen anything like this.”

“Me either,” Colin said.

“Ditto,” Hunter muttered.

“Well, whatever's going on, we've still got a job to do, so listen up. The bridge is locked down. The only way we're getting it open is by disengaging the three lockout points.” Allan paused, looking around for a minute, then spied a general access terminal. He hurried over to it, booted it up and found the map. “The three points are here, here and here. They're all security centers. Once you get there, I imagine the instructions for actually disengaging the lockout will be there. And, as far as I can tell, this isn't one of those 'all at once' simultaneous rigs.”

Colin snorted. “It'd
better
not be, we had enough of that shit on that frozen planet.”

Allan found himself smiling. “Hear hear. Now, I'd like Colin and Duncan to take the first one, here, in the medical wing. Hunter, you'll take this one by the oxygen plant, and I'll take the final one, by the living quarters.”

The others began to agree, the radio abruptly crackled to life.
“Is anyone there? This is Fletcher, I...”
she paused, the fear naked in her voice. She started speaking again, whispering frantically this time,
“I'm trapped, over in the dormitories. I'm in one of the bathrooms. I locked myself in. There's all these insane people trying to kill me!”

“Fletcher, this is Gray, calm down. I've got Hunter, Colin and Duncan here with me. What's your precise location?” Allan asked.

“I don't know! I didn't have time to fucking check, Allan! Please...someone come get me, I don't have any weapons and I'm hurt. I think I cracked my ribs or something.”

“All right, all right. Listen Fletcher, I'm coming to get you. Just stay where you are, don't attract any more of them.”

“Yeah, right. No, I thought I'd just go waltzing around and-”

“Fletcher...”

“Fine! I'm sorry! Just...come get me.”

“On my way.” Allan turned to look at the others. At hearing Fletcher's words, something dawned on him and he frowned as his gaze roved over the others' suits. “Why...where are your weapons?” he asked slowly.

“They were lost during our escape, I guess,” Duncan replied.

Allan's frown deepened. “
All
of them?
All
three of you lost
all
of your weapons?” he asked, incredulous. “How?”

“I remember dropping my rifle,” Colin murmured.

“But your pistol, wasn't it latched in?” Allan asked.

The three of them stood silent, apparently considering this. Allan knew that it was technically possible that they could have lost all their weapons in the commotion, but it just seemed so unlikely. He didn't know the actual odds, but he imagined they were pretty low for three high-trained Spec Ops personnel to lose the entirety of their arsenal. The thought made his head hurt, made reality seemed to waver for a moment.

“You okay?” Duncan asked.

“I...yeah, just a headache,” Allan replied quietly, deciding to let it go.

Colin chuckled. “I think we've all got those at the moment.”

“Yeah...I guess so. Come on, we should really get going,” Allan said.

The others nodded, each of them hefting whatever melee-based weapon they'd picked up along the way. They followed him out into the corridor, found it empty of life, and split up, each heading for a different destination.