H λ L F - L I F E: Bishop's War✔️

CHλPTER 15: Surface Tension

The other two went down under a hail of combined fire from all the others. As Eric readjusted his aim back up to the floating thing, he cried out and jumped back, narrowly avoiding a stream of bright, pale yellow balls of what looked like pure energy. He could feel their scorching heat as they slammed into the pavement at his feet, barely avoiding him, hissing and singeing the ground as they struck. One of the others shot it through its big, bulbous head with a few well-placed rounds, and its skull split open. The creature's corpse fell to the ground.

Just as Eric began to think that that had gone pretty well for a first encounter, a hellish chorus of echoing, shrieking sounds assaulted them from all sides. He looked on in horror as a dozen of the things floated ominously into view from over the tops of the warehouses. All of them let out echoing calls and pointed, gesturing furiously at the squad, and all around them, the roars and shouts of alien grunts sounded.

"Run!" Bower screamed and opened fire.

Eric did the same, emptying the rest of his SAW into a cluster of floating bastards and killing three of them. Then he slung the big gun, switched to his assault rifle, and began sprinting. As he did, opening up on a big armored monster that stepped out from between two of the warehouses up ahead, he realized what he was seeing. If these grunts were the Privates of the alien army, then these things that were controlling them must be the Sergeants issuing orders in the field. This whole thing kept getting worse and worse.

He emptied his assault rifle and hastily reloaded as he ran, trying to manage both at the same time, then grunted as he felt the impact of a few of those electronic hornets the grunts were firing slamming into his combat vest. He had to give it to the military though: he didn't feel it nearly as much as he thought he would. Given that he had started out closest to their destination, Eric reached the warehouse first. He kicked open the door, then spun around and provided cover fire, hosing down a pair of grunts that were on rapid approach.

Bower went in and he heard a few gunshots as the Sergeant took on whatever hostiles were apparently occupying the warehouse.

"Go! Go!" he screamed as the others ran on.

Eric hit the secondary trigger and launched the grenade he'd been keeping in reserve in the launcher, nailing the middle of a trio of grunts and blowing the top half off the middle one. Those weird electric hornets were crashing into the metal walls all around him, and what's worse, they were clearly curving towards him and the others, just barely missing them in some instances. Vanessa made it through, then Gallo, finally Maria.

"Come on!" she shouted. "Get in, Eric!"

He backed up, emptying his rifle, and then slammed the door shut behind him. "That's not gonna hold!" he warned as he turned to face the others. The warehouse they'd come to was stacked with crates, big ones, creating a maze.

"Let's move it!" Bower called back, plunging into the network of alcoves created by the stacks of huge crates.

There were several dead zombies littering the area. Exhaling shakily, Eric hurried after them, joining the squad as they got moving. This was turning out to be a real crap situation. He'd hardly made it around the first corner when he heard an explosion of activity behind him. The next several moments passed in a confusion of twists and turns, with the occasional spray of gunfire as they encountered a hostile in the maze, but finally the squad reached the back wall of the warehouse, where they tracked down the freight elevator they were looking for.

"Come on!" Bower snapped as he opened the elevator.

The piled onboard the big lift and as soon as Eric was onboard, Bower hit the down button. The door closed and the lift began to descend.