The Bloodless (19 page)

              As I was nearing the end of the process I couldn’t help but think how seamless this mission was and then Saturn came on over the radio again. She didn’t sound as agitated this time, quite the opposite, in fact. “Uh, guys. You might wanna get the fuck outta there.” I heard her gun cock in the background, “We’ve got some serious heat on our asses.”

              “Could you be a little more specific, please?” I said as the process completed and the power to the whole station cut off.

              “Remember that swarm I mentioned earlier? It’s on its way.”

              Just as she said that there were several audible *THUMPS* on the floors above us. “What the hell was that?” I asked Crowder and Fox. They both shook their heads. Those noises were followed by the unmistakable and gut wrenching sound of shuffling feet and heavy bodies moving across those floors.

              “Sounds like something’s moving around up there,” Crowder said, looking up at the ceiling.

              “What the hell could be up there?”

              “Didn’t you say they were doing experiments up in this place?” Crowder asked. At this we all looked at each other and understood exactly what was up there but we didn’t want to stick around to shake its hand. I grabbed my gun and joined Fox and Crowder at the door. “It just got really quiet.”

              “That is not good,” Fox said, unsheathing his swords. Crowder then snuck a peak around the corner and quickly brought his head back in. His face was whiter than a unicorn’s ass.

              “What is it?” I said. He didn’t respond with words, he just nodded his head, gesturing for me to have a look around the corner. I wasn’t sold on the idea but went ahead and did it anyway. I slowly moved the top portion of my head around the edge just enough to see down the corridor and for the third time that day, I nearly blew out my pants. I didn’t think my sphincter would be able to handle many more surprises.

              The entire hallway, dark as night, was filled with glowing green eyes, which was different than the people we had reanimated because they usually had an orange glow to their eyes. They may have been Bloodless at one point, they may have just been normal people who were captured and experimented upon, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was they all had menacingly blank eyes staring me down. We didn’t have much of a choice from there. We were going to have to fight our way out of the building.

              “This isn’t good,” I whispered as I pulled my head back around the corner. I didn’t know if whispering was necessary at the time, it just seemed appropriate.

              “I know, I just said that,” Fox said calmly. “We are going to have to fight. Daniel,” he looked me in the eyes, “are you ready?” I nodded. “Crowder?”

              Now, Crowder didn’t react right away, he may have been in his happy place imagining a world where he was on a beach enjoying an ice cold cocktail with the ocean breeze brushing gently against his face. I slapped him. He rejoined us and looked pissed. He then slowly nodded.

              “Right,” I said. “Lock and load boys.” I cocked my gun and spun around the corner. They had already begun to advance. I let fly a violent shower of bullets down the hallway and watched as they ripped through the bodies charging us. Some bullets found skulls and dropped the attached bodies, but others didn’t and those bodies kept coming.

              Crowder came out right next to me and mimicked my actions, dropping a few more of the creatures but still more advanced on us, now in a full sprint. Luckily the corridor was narrow and they couldn’t move as fast, but they still moved quite fluidly. I retreated backwards and nearly tripped over a prone mass. I looked down and first thought I saw Fox but then I looked around and found Fox sheathing his swords and moving down the hall. “Follow Fox,” I yelled to Crowder as he unloaded another clip into the oncoming horde.

              We turned and ran down the hall, right behind Fox as he twisted and turned through the web of hallways that comprised the interior of the building. As we moved through the building we could hear the sounds of more bodies moving on the floors above us, as if they were coming down all the way from the top. To say we were outnumbered would’ve been the gross understatement of the millennium. We had to get out of that building if we wanted to live up to Burns’ expectations.

              We met several stray creatures on our way to the exit. One jumped out from behind a door and tackled Crowder to the floor. It started to beat him up pretty good until I was able to get to him and remove the abomination’s brain from the inside out. The body continued to fight for a couple seconds but finally ceased and I was able to pull Crowder to his feet.

              Just as we were getting close to the exit one of the beasts from the crowd managed to separate from the pack and gain on us. It jumped on my back and took me to the floor hard, nearly knocking me out cold. I could feel its hot, fetid breath on the back of my neck. It grabbed a handful of my scalp and pulled my head back to my neck’s breaking point. As my neck was on the verge of snapping like a twig, it was released and my head slammed hard onto the stiff linoleum floor.

              Black and white spots erupted in front of my eyes and my head swam with pain. I could feel my brain swelling from the certain contusion it just received.  I didn’t have time to take in what happened or how the thing was removed from me as the hammering sounds of bare feet smacking against the floor quickly grew louder. Fox pulled me to my feet and dragged me until I found my balance.

              Finally we burst through the service entrance but were met with a horrible sight. The first thing I heard was the flurry of sounds that bombarded my ears. Explosions riddled the air and sent bodies flying everywhere. The first thing I saw was Burns as he let loose a torrent of flesh-searing napalm upon an advancing cluster of Bloodless. I watched as single bodies dropped of their own accord, which made me feel good because I knew Saturn was out there doing her part to help get us the hell out of there.

              We came to a halt, running into a still Fox. I looked beyond our position to get a lay of the land but when I turned to look at our immediate vicinity my stomach nearly dropped out of my body. We were surrounded by Bloodless, outnumbered four to one, definitely a bad ratio. I looked around and saw the motorcycle still leaned up against the building.

              “Fox! Are you good by yourself?” I asked.

              “I am best by myself” I trusted him when he said that and I wasn’t going to argue with it. I grabbed Crowder and dragged him over to the motorcycle. He looked down at it.

              “Do you think it still works?”

              “It had better.” I sat down on it and kicked the starter. Nothing. “Shit.” I kicked again. Nothing. They were coming right at us now and Fox was nowhere to be seen. “Come on you piece of shit!” I kicked again with all the strength my adrenaline would allow. It sputtered a little bit then roared to life. “Let’s go,” I yelled at Crowder. He got down on the seat behind me facing backwards. I threw that bitch in gear and took off as fast as I could, pulling the throttle all the way back nearly throwing us off.

              We rocketed right at the surrounding crowd and I realized I wouldn’t be able to break through them with the midsized motorcycle. I cut the handlebars and turned back towards the building. There was nothing else to it but to crash through the windows and navigate through the building and find an alternative exit. As we careened back towards the building, the creatures from inside started pouring out from the service entrance.

              I only got a glimpse of them but they looked horrific. Large solid bodies, scabbed dark grey skin, and green glowing eyes. That’s all I was able to gander at just before we crashed through the floor to ceiling windows on the front of the building. Once inside we found the place crawling with those monsters. “START SHOOTING,” I yelled at Crowder over the roar of the engine. I don’t know if he didn’t hesitate or had the same idea but before I could finish yelling he was already unloading round after round. Spraying bullets like water from an unmanned fire hose.

              Luckily the outer portion of the substation was a little larger than the interior corridors, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get through the place. I will go on record here and say that driving through an enclosed space is way faster and far more terrifying than in open space.

              The motorcycle moved almost effortlessly though as I weaved between bodies and around corners. After a particularly long stretch of hallway that ran down the western side of the building with no exits, we came upon a set of double doors. I had to weave about to avoid the bodies coming out of every door on the way. Crowder’s aim was impeccable, or extremely lucky, and he dropped nearly every creature that came at us.

              As we approached the doors they flew open and even more hideous monsters flew out from behind them. In a move I’ll never be able to duplicate, I retrieved my sidearm from its holster and shot down two of them to clear the path and Crowder cleaned up the rest along the walls after we passed through the doorway.

              We made our way through what appeared to be a large gymnasium or cafeteria-like room. That’s when I spotted it: another set of double doors to our left that had an EXIT sign above it. My spirits leapt and I quickly turned the bike to head for the doors and certain freedom. As I got closer to the doors I noticed a large chain wrapped around the handles and immediately thought, Oh shit, this had better work! “Hang on,” I shouted back to Crowder and I heard his gun drop to the floor as he grabbed onto the motorcycle for dear life.

              The doors smashed open with a thunderous *CLANG* and we were out, we escaped. The open, Bloodless free space in front of us was a welcome sight and for a moment only triumph ran through my mind. However, as soon as I brought the motorcycle to a skidding halt, the unmistakable sounds of all-out war rushed into my ears once again and I was jolted back into our reality. It was imperative I got to my team to make sure everyone was still alive.

              “Saturn,” I yelled into my communicator, “come back, I need a status update.”

              She didn’t respond right away and the next few seconds dragged on like they were a few hours. Finally she came back, “It’s a real shit show out there sir, where are you?”

              “Just escaped that substation by the skin of their teeth. Where do we need to go?”

              “Circle back around to the South side of the building,” Saturn yelled as she fired off a couple rounds. “Burns and Pillar are entrenched pretty good, you’ll see as soon as you get there.”

              “Got it,” I put the bike back into gear. “Hang on,” I once again shouted to Crowder. He pulled his secondary weapon off of his back and loaded it up with a couple magazines. I yanked on the throttle and spun the bike around to head back towards the South side of the building. “Burns, Pillar, we’re on our way,” I shouted into my communicator. “Keep shooting!”

              We raced along the perimeter of the building and soon the larger battle was in view. It was the largest number of Bloodless we had encountered to date. Some of the experimented upon abnormalities were in the fray as well, but they appeared to be fighting both sides. Large explosions and plumes of flames shot up from a particular spot. That’s where Burns and Pillar were. I turned the bike parallel to the battle and Crowder let rip both of his magazines into the back of the crowds. This didn’t go over too well.

              The spray dropped a lot of the bodies but the ones that didn’t fall targeted us and changed course. We had the upper hand though as our speed advantage was significant. I decided to play a little cat and mouse so I slowed the motorcycle up and allowed the Bloodless to catch up to us. Crowder loaded his weapon up again and released another flurry of hyper velocity steel into the oncoming horde. More dropped but more still continued to rampage towards us. I allowed them to get within feet before pulling back on the throttle and speeding away.

              I made a large loop and flew by them again, allowing Crowder to dump off another load of bullets into the crowd. We had thinned their numbers considerably with this tactic and Burns and Pillar were able to fight their way out of the corner they were backed into.

              “Daniel,” it was Fox over the communicators.

              “Good to hear ya Fox!”

              “I have made contact with Burns and Pillar. They are wounded, but their wounds are not life threatening. I have procured the Crowd Pleaser from Burns. Everyone needs to evacuate and get as far away as possible. I will detonate the device.”

              “No! You can’t do that! You’ll be disintegrated,” I said to Fox. I did not like the plan at all.

              “No need to worry Daniel, I have no intention of being around when it detonates. It has to be done, however, as I have spotted Grendel amongst the ranks.”

              “Oh shit, are you serious?” Grendel was one of the most notorious Generals under Mendel’s command. He was quite easily one of the most brutal and vicious beings in existence at the time. Most people who met him on the battlefield didn’t live to tell the story, but there have been a few survivors.
 

*****
 

              The Bloodless army consisted of five Generals, all of them more brutal than the next but none more so than Grendel. We don’t know the soul that occupied his body, that of a pro wrestler who died in a car accident, but it was a demented one even before it was torn from the plane where departed souls dwell. He was called Grendel in honor of the savage creature from the tale of Beowulf, even though our Grendel made the original look like a saint. Anyone who stood against him met a most gruesome death.