Chapter 20
Subject: Maddy
The team moved out of the station and into the street. Flames leapt into the orange sky in the distance, the controlled fires in the forest coalescing with the new fires burning inside the city. The emergency alert siren was blaring it’s eerie tritone wail. Maddy could hear the booms of the orbital gunships blasting fireline into the forest mixed with gunfire and screams off in the distance. There was no one on the streets around them, thank god. The route Wraith had given them had them avoid the most densely populated areas and instead had them cut through the Exhibit before turning north. It was mostly a straight shot and avoided as many anti-vehicle barriers as possible.
Maddy took up the left center of her wedge formation, she had the Heartbreaker slung over her back and the battle rifle at the ready. Dad was on her right. Peanut and Two-Feet were in Team Two’s powered armor and walked the flanks. Gremlin was too small for the powered armor, and walked in front of the Mamba, making up the core of their formation. They advanced at a steady pace, ready to deal death to anything that approached them. Maddy’s suit HUD showed an overhead view and highlighted any movement thought to be non-human. There wasn’t any yet.
As they advanced, small groups of colonists darted out of buildings and down alleys. Trying to find better shelter amid the chaos. One group ran up to the formation from a collapsing hut, “Help us! Take us with you!” A woman shouted.
Maddy’s team raised their weapons and screamed, “get back!” Over their suit loudspeakers. The colonists looked terrified and betrayed, and scrambled away, raising their arms in surrender. Maddy felt genuinely bad for them, but what could they do? They didn’t even have enough room for themselves. Chief popped out of the top of the gunners hatch. He had a huge grin on his skeletal face and was smoking a giant hand rolled cigarette as he yelled nonsense insults at everyone he saw. Despite the shouting, a small but growing group of colonists followed the team at a healthy distance.
The group made it to the first turn in the road. Maddy raise her fist to pause the group and motioned her fireteam to take firing positions against the building on the inside corner of the turn. Wraith spoke over the comm, “a group of bioweapon creatures moved through this area a few minutes ago. Be on high alert.”
“Copy!” Maddy replied over the open comm, “lead element, wedge formation and advance on me!” Maddy hefted her rifle up in a high ready position and moved around the corner, her team coming up behind her. Behind them, the tracked infantry fighting vehicle rolled.
This was ‘The Exhibit’, as the locals called it. The section of town filled with drug users and neglected by public officials. There hadn’t been much resistance, Maddy could tell. Everywhere she looked, people were frozen in place, as though they’d been stopped in time and glued to the ground. There were dozens, maybe a hundred, in groups of three or four here and there. They screamed and moaned in terror. Maddy stopped to look at one in more detail and saw that they were covered in webs.
“CONTACT RIGHT SIDE!” Peanut yelled, and gunfire erupted all around her. Maddy took a knee and turned to see dozens of crawling insect like creatures the size of her foot rushing them in a solid wave from an alleyway. They had yellow skin and long, thin legs with way too many articulated joints. Maddy started firing into the crowd with her battle rifle.
“Gremlin! Fire your grenade launcher!” Maddy shouted, struggling to hit the small, fast moving creatures. She heard the distinct THUNK THUNK THUNK as the grenade launcher went to work, pulverizing the ramshackle houses and flood of creatures. One of them jumped on Peanut’s chest, and was grabbed by a power-armored hand and crushed. It left a stringy, sticky residue behind that bound Peanut’s hand to his chest. He pulled it away with a great deal of effort, but he pulled it away nonetheless.
“These are the goddamn things that make the webs, don’t let them get on you!” Maddy shouted, tossing a incendiary grenade onto the street in front of the alley filled with creatures. It detonated and sent liquid fire in a line across the alley that burned and melted the creatures as they advanced. Maddy watched as they writhed and blackened. Another incendiary grenade exploded further down the alley, and Maddy realized someone was on top of the Mamba, pulling grenades out of an ammo can and chucking them at the source of the attack. The fire seemed to have turned them back, and only a few dying creatures remained.
Chief had a pistol drawn and fired periodically down the alleyway. He shouted, “fuck yes Blitzer! Burn them to cinders boy!”
“Goddamnit Chief you’re the gunner, fire the fucking coax at them!” Maddy shouted. He ignored her and laughed like madman at the growing flames. “Keep moving but stay on the lookout!” Maddy ordered, and the team started moving ahead.
“Sarge,” Two-Feet spoke, breaking his notorious silence, “what do we do about the people stuck here?” He gestured at the colonists glued to the ground.
“We can’t do nothing,” Gremlin spoke for Maddy, she sounded uncharacteristically melancholy, “they’re just fucked Two-Feet.” Two-Feet nodded, but Maddy thought she could see tears welling up in his eyes behind his visor.
“Don’t think about it just move, there’s going to be a lot worse the longer we linger,” Maddy ordered. She was trying out the tough, marine exterior, but really, Two-Feet was right. The human thing would be to stop and help. But how? And then what?
The team moved forward. They filtered past one poor bastard that was glued down in the middle of the road. Smoker didn’t even slow the Mamba down, he drove right over the man as he screamed at the tracked vehicle to stop. Maddy looked away and kept moving. This place was hell. People were stuck to the walls and inside the buildings. The little web laying bastards must have flooded over this place and just stuck everyone in place. Would the big ones with the big sack belly come after? Harvest everyone and break them down into the goo that they used to make more of themselves? Should she order her team to start shooting everyone they went past, spare them from the horror?
Movement caught Maddy’s attention; something leapt from one rooftop to another off to her right. She raised her first to stop the column and stared straight ahead. The minimap on her HUD didn’t have enough detail to see what that was. Then, she saw it again, this time scurrying down a wall to disappear behind a large metal dumpster.
“CONTACT FRONT RIGHT!” Maddy shouted, firing her rifle a the last known spot in short bursts. Her team followed, the tracers from her rifle fire and added their own fire on the dumpster and everything around it. She remembered this one, this was the same kind of thing that killed Felix and Ward. Behind her, Chief was whooping and firing with his pistol again. She turned to yell, when she saw a small group of the creatures jump down from the rooftops of the buildings behind them, and directly into the rear of their formation. Before Maddy could react, something big jumped down next to her and knocked her to the ground, her rifle skittering away.
A creature towered above her. It was like the one she’d seen at the burrow, the kind that killed Felix and Ward. The kind with the knowing black eyes. But this one was different, it was far more muscular and had a large, armored chest plate. It roared and moved like lighting, it’s bladed arms slicing long gashes straight through Two-Feet’s armor. “Fuck!” Maddy shouted, reaching for the Heartbreaker pulse rifle on her back. Peanut turned and fired on the creature, but his fire on center mass didn’t seem to have an effect. The new armor plate deflected the rounds, and the creature roared and turned to face Peanut, completely unaffected by his gunfire.
Maddy moved with a purpose. She pulled the pulse rifle into her arms and rolled onto her back, lining up a shot on the monster. She pulled the trigger and felt the gun’s massive recoil against her shoulder, the sound of it like an exploding power transformer. The round hit the creature in center mass and blew it into pieces. Orange gore showered down on her and she instinctively closed her eyes to shield them, then remembered she was wearing a sealed helmet. Maddy jumped up and ran to the front of the Mamba while shouting to her team to switch to armored piercing rounds.
The scene behind them was of pure slaughter. Blitz stood on the turret of the Black Mamba, firing down at three of the bladed-arm things as they hacked his team to pieces. All four of them were dead, or would be very soon. Chief was firing his pistol and screaming.
Dad ran up alongside Maddy and started firing his shotgun at the group of things. Maddy fired her pulse rifle at one, ruining it, before shifting and firing a third shot which hit the second creature in it’s arm, blowing it off and sending it hurtling to the side. Maddy dropped the magazine, the unwieldy weapon being a chore to reload with the powered armor. Dad hit the third creature in the face with a shotgun slug, sending it sprawling onto it’s back, dead.
Maddy charged her weapon and scanned the area, nothing was imminently trying to kill them, but she could see movement down the road and on top of buildings. Blitz climbed down from the Black Mamba and frantically checked his team. Maddy growled.
“Dad, Peanut, cover the front. Gremlin, stay close with me.” She ordered through gritted teeth and stomped around to the back of the Black Mamba, climbing up it’s short ladder and moving towards the turret.
Chief was sitting up, halfway out of the gunner’s hatch with a wild grimace on his face, “Sergeant Turner!” He began. Maddy pulled her arm back and punched him in the face as hard as she could, the powered armor easily doubling her strength. Chief’s head flew into the armored hatch cover and he crumpled and slid down into the inside of the fighting vehicle, away from view.
Maddy turned to look at Gremlin, who’s eyes were wide. Maddy made eye contact and pointed at Gremlin, “you shoot the fucking gun, kill everything.” Gremlin saluted and looked nervously at the new blood smear on the hatch.
Maddy turned and hopped down off the Black Mamba. Blitz stood, a broken man amidst his dead team. Maddy had to take charge. She hit the comm for the whole unit.
“New plan. Smoker, charge ahead. Gremlin, fire the fucking gun, kill everything. Everyone else, take up formation at the rear with me. Do not stop unless we have to. Move!” Maddy barked her new plan at the team and watched as they fell in. The Black Mamba plowed ahead, mercilessly crushing the bodies that fallen in front of the vehicle.
“Your nickname oughta be Tideturner, Sarge. You kicked big time ass back there,” Gremlin said, a hint of awe in her voice. Maddy hadn’t gotten a nickname yet, hadn’t been around long enough. Now she’d finally earned one and everyone would be dead by the time they remembered to use the thing.
She pressed the button on the inside of her helmet and gestured with her eyes to navigate through contacts to Jim, then called.
“Turner!” Jim shouted, clearly excited.
“Yeah, Jim. It’s a fucking shitshow down here, we need support, whatever you’ve got,” Maddy said, jogging to keep up with the Mamba. They passed an alleyway and she looked down it. A group of people were glued to a wall and one of the sack creatures was eating them, one at a time. She paused and threw a grenade at it, then kept running.
“Yeah, I see that. I’m going to re-task some orbital fire support but it’s inaccurate as hell without a forward observer. I told them to patch your suit video feed into their systems but you don’t have the right sensors or some god damn thing, so they’re gonna have to guess.” Jim said. “I’m hoping we can at least burn the mass of the fucking things before they get to you. You pissed them off and a fuckload are heading your way.”
“Great!” Maddy said and cut of the feed. “Get ready for incoming! Remember, AP ammo!” Maddy could hear the turbo on the Mamba spool and force air into the hydrogen turbine engines. One of the tracks slipped and sent a mess of orange liquid squirting out of the back. It ran one of them over, Maddy guessed. The coaxial machine gun on the Mamba’s turret started firing in short bursts, aiming at the tops of the buildings. The rocket pod fired a rocket into one of the structures on the front left side of the road, blowing it into pieces. The IFV crunched over the new debris in the roadway and kept moving. Maddy’s rifle had been run over by the IFV and crushed in the hasty move after they’d been ambushed. The pulse rifle was badass, but Maddy felt vulnerable with the small magazines.
“It’s a straight shot down this road!” Gremlin shouted from the gunner’s seat. The auto cannon let out a three round burst, then Gremlin continued. “Five hundred meters, then we take a left, and it’s right there on the right. Cargo bay doors.”
“Almost there!” Maddy shouted. She looked at her team, jogging behind the IFV, and noticed Peanut was red and sputtering, out of breath. “Your cardio fucking sucks Peanut,” she said.
“Shit look!” Dad suddenly shouted, pointing at the sky in front of them. The NCPD containment team dropship flew through the air in above the road, sideways. Flames shot out of two of the engines, and a creature with what looked like fifty legs held onto the side of the dropship, stabbing into the cockpit. The dropship rocketed by them and crashed into a mess of buildings, sending a mushroom shaped fireball up into the sky. Maddy felt the thud of impact in her chest.
She took a deep breath and kept moving forward. More thuds in her chest. She looked around and saw fire erupting in huge gouts behind them. Their orbital fire support, Maddy presumed. Each explosion lit up the street behind them, and she could make out shapes. Dozens of them, and they were gaining on her.
“Fucking double time it!” Maddy roared. The IFV shifted gears and powered ahead. Everyone upgraded from a jog to a run. Peanut was falling behind.
“God damnit Peanut pull it the fuck together!” Maddy shouted, and a yellow spider the size of a car lept down from a nearby building and landed right on top of him.
“Ahhhh!” Peanut shouted, struggling with the thing pinning him to the ground.
“Shit! All stop! Gremlin, behind us!” Maddy ordered, violating her own order not to stop for anything. She raised her pulse rifle and fired it into the belly of the spider, exploding it into a mess of gore. A half dozen of the bladed arm creatures converged on the mess and ripped Peanut in half. The auto cannon turret and coaxial machine gun opened up on the new threats, and Maddy could see more of them on the road behind them.
One of the creatures slipped past the barrage of fire and charged into Blitz, slashing and screaming. Blitz fell to the ground, and Dad fired a shotgun slug into the side of the thing’s head. Maddy rushed to Blitz, and saw that both of his legs had been cut off just above the knee.
“Oh fuck!” She shouted, grabbing onto the grab handle built into Blitz’s armor and started pulling him behind her. “Get on the IFV!” She shouted at Dad. Dad traversed the ladder of the IFV in one swift motion, well adapted to his recon power armor. Maddy hefted what was left of Blitz up to him and climbed on the turret.
“Punch it Smoker!” She shouted as the IFV rocketed forward, the team firing into a crowd of fast moving death behind them.
“Special sauce incoming!” Gremlin shouted. Maddy was dumbstruck for a moment before she remembered that Gremlin had modified the smoke launchers on the IFV to fire tear gas and napalm. Gremlin’s special sauce.
One of the creatures tried to jump on the side of the Black Mamba and got twisted in the concertina wire just as the countermeasure pods deployed their wicked payload. One of the bomblets hit the creature and detonated, igniting the side of the Black Mamba. The creature screamed in agony as a cloud of fire and tear gas filled the street behind them. The auto cannon and coaxial machine gun kept firing into the crowd, and Maddy could tell they were having a hell of a time making it through the wall of death they’d left behind. Maddy drew her sidearm, a 5.7mm SMG loaded with incendiary rounds, and unleashed a long burst into the screaming, burning thing stuck to the side of their IFV. It fell silent.
All around them, the world burned. Flames consumed blocks of the city, and creatures ran between houses and jumped from roof to roof. Maddy realized that in the chaos, they’d left behind that mass of civilians that were chasing them to safety. They were gone, just the same as Peanut and Two-Feet. Felix and Ward. All of Team One. Maddy looked over at Dad, who had started putting a tourniquet on one of Blitz’s legs, but stopped.
“He’s dead, Sergeant,” Dad said. Of course he is, Maddy thought. We’re all dead.
“Hold on!” Gremlin shouted. Maddy reached out and grabbed on to the side of the the turret, finding a handhold and locking in. The IFV slowed and turned abruptly, Smoker clearly hadn’t fully qualified with the thing. It roared forward again and Maddy could see the mob of pursuit creatures were gaining on them. Maddy turned back to look ahead and saw the structure they were heading towards. It was concrete and brutalist, with a big open cargo door and two men with guns pointing out, ready for their arrival. Maddy knew the cybernetics lab was one of the most reinforced placed in the colony, simply due to the value of the cybernetic implants within.
“Smoker!” Maddy shouted. “When we get to that loading dock, spin the ass around so the science team can unload and move. Shut down the engine but leave the turret powered and help the science team!”
“Yes sergeant!” Smoker replied.
“Gremlin, keep the fire on those goddamn things until the science team is inside. Dad, you’re with me! Lets give them hell!” Maddy shouted, trying her best to impersonate the marine squad leaders she’d served with in a past life.
The IFV pulled up to the cargo doors and spun around. The rear hatch fell open and the science team rushed out, handing off bags of samples and equipment to the two guards at the doorway to the lab. Gremlin started engaging targets just as quickly as the IFV came to a stop. Dad had cracked open a box of grenades he’d found in the IFV’s bustle rack and started chucking them one after another one onto the road. Maddy took a pulse rifle shot at a creature that jumped down from a roof and missed, cursing herself before following up with a kill shot. She dropped the magazine, and pulled another from the chest rig she had over her armor, slamming it into the big gun and pulling the charging handle.
She looked back to check on the status of the science team and saw Smoker dragging Chief through the cargo doors. Liselle and another science team member were team carrying a big metal box out of the back of the Black Mamba while the rest of the science team shouted and pointed. “How much more Carney?” Maddy shouted over the comm.
“That’s it!” Carney replied, “get inside!”
“Gremlin! Up and out!” Maddy shouted, firing a shot at one of the spider things. The round hit the spider in the head and exploded it into pieces. Maddy saw Gremlin rush out of the back of the IFV, hitting the ‘ramp up’ button to secure the vehicle as she rushed for safety. Dad and Maddy moved as one, firing and reloading as they climbed down from the IFV and fought their way back to the cargo doors. The two security men were standing at the threshold of the doorway, pointing and yelling at a spot to Maddy’s left.
Maddy turned to see what they were yelling at, and saw one of the tall, muscled, arm-bladed creatures starting at her from just a few meters away. It cocked it’s head sideways, and brought one of it’s arm blades down towards her. Maddy raised her pulse rifle, but was amazed to see her left arm didn’t come up to steady the weapon. She pulled the trigger anyway, and the creature took a glancing hit from the rifle, staggering it. Maddy fell to the ground, the recoil from the one-armed shot sending the pulse rifle sliding away.
She looked at her left arm. It was gone. TRAUMA DETECTED flashed across her HUD. Someone grabbed onto her grab handle and started dragging Maddy towards the cargo door. He was shouting, “don’t you fucking close that door!” As he drug. Another creature, this one having dozens of legs and a massive set of pinchers, climbed down from atop the IFV. Maddy drew her 5.7mm SMG and fired wildly with her right arm, some shots hitting and some flying wide. The creature screamed and lunged forward, a pair of giant pincers lashing out from it’s bug head while its front several pairs of legs slashed at Maddy’s stomach. She screamed and fired her weapon. The creature twisted and fled, something in it’s mouth. Maddy’s vision narrowed, and blackness started to creep in. She let go of her SMG and felt her arm grow heavy. Someone was still dragging her. The words MASSIVE TRAUMA DETECTED: STABILIZING ran across her HUD. Maddy slipped away.