"Gas them!" Adam ordered . The two marines at his side stepped forward releasing clouds of aerosolized spray from canisters on their backs, like they were spraying for weeds. The concoction was of the same composition that had been synthesized under the ice of the Tricar home world and was being used to great effect. As the spay passed over the ground, the red fleshy substance began to boil and churn before dissolving back into the dirt. It was a good sign, but two men with canisters weren't going to be enough to fix this mess.
The active void area covered what amounted to about 150mi (241k) while the affected void area was more than a thousand. Reports were streaming into the command center from refugee camps, and survivors fleeing the active area, that included images and videos of subtle changes in the landscape that denoted the coming void.
Animals, plants, and structures slowly morphing into something much more sinister.
Adam had already seen multiple infected dogs and cats roaming the streets, though, luckily it seemed void sickness did not affect dogs and cats in the same way it could affect humans. Adam almost shat himself upon opening a door to a residence and being charged at by a massive void dog with glowing orange eyes and an exposed skull surrounded by pulsating meat. Right before he was about to shoot it, the dog had skidded to a halt at his feet and done a happy sort of dance from paw to paw its tail wagging wildly. Against his better judgement Adam had reached down to pet the creature, and the dog had pressed its sticky snout into his hand leaving behind void Residue, but no worse.
Seems you can't corrupt the epitome of pure love.
Void cats simply ignored him.
He was relieved to learn that void sickness was not incurable, at least to non-sentient beings, and the void infected dog, who had been given a generous spray of antivoid serum, was already beginning to sprout fur again.
And now they were having the void serum synthesized in labs across the world, discussions were being made about releasing the serum in great canisters over large areas, or perhaps infusing it with rainwater. All of these things were well and good and might work in the long run, but it would take some time, and Adam was not willing to wait. Even now the destruction that had been brought by the void sites was unimaginable.
He stood in the rubble of his hometown surrounded by familiar buildings reduced to ruin.
His old high school lay empty and crumbling, houses on his street had their doors ripped from their hinges. His childhood home had been a nest for yet another void mother. He had found her in his parents old room pasted into the top right corner of the room where, every now and again, that void in her abdomen would open, and she would produce another unholy terror.
He had dispatched her with a swift blade to the throat all the while imagining what might have happened if his parents had stayed behind on Earth.
Adam reached up and rubbed the sides of his helmet squeezing his eyes shut with a grimace of pain. They were all so loud, and difficult to ignore, but he had to keep focused.
The ground rumbled, and Adam lifted his head just in time to catch the first in a line of massive armored military tanker trucks as they came rolling up the ruined highway. The man in the front car leaped down from his spot in the truck dressed in full battle regalia and wearing the flag of the UNSC on his right shoulder.
"Admiral." The man said saluting
Adam was taken aback for a long moment retracting his helmet to look at the man face to face, "Been a while since I heard that."
The man shrugged, "Seemed appropriate." He motioned with a thumb back to the convoy, "Got thirteen tanker trucks of the stuff, and more men than you can shake a stick at. We're ready when you are."
Adam nodded once, turning and waving Sunny over.
He was relieved to find that she had made it out of the Orbital insertion alive and with all her limbs in tacked for the most part. One side of her armor was badly scorched, but supposedly the marks were only cosmetic.
She deployed a holographic map, as a group of others jogged up including Lord Celex and king James, both of which were spattered with gore. Sunny motioned to the map, "We place the trucks here here and here, best to let them go off at the same time and have the men protect them. As soon as the spray starts going you are going to have hoards of void creatures crawling out of cracks in the earth to get to them. Do not let those trucks shut off, in fact, rip open the metal if you have to and then the void can't stop it anyway. The rest of us are going to form in one massive wedge and press forward towards the original void site. We will enter and clear every building doghouse, outhouse and hen house on our way there if we have to."
The man was nodding, and leaned over to relay the instructions into his radio.
"I'll take point." Adam said
"Than you know where I'll be." Sunny responded neither surprised or annoyed at his decision. The others took similar positions at the most dangerous spots in the wedge.
"The houses are most densely populated alone the main subdivision." Maverick was saying, "One ofus should be there to facilitate entry."
"Agreed." Adam said, overhead helicopters roared. Gunfire erupted I the sky above them as a series of bright flashing lights and the distant rapport as bullets broke the sound barrier. It sounded like a warzone.
It was a warzone.
Adam Readied all his weapons trading his gun for a spear expecting more close quarters combat.
Behind him Hunts forward defense force pulled into position. Men stepped out of their vehicles to protect the tankers or join the wedge. The man may have screwed everything up, put earth at risk for his own ego, and colluded with Kazna, but at least he knew how to mobilize troops. Then again, Adam thought, these men were only showing up now when this crisis began seventy two hours ago, so maybe he wasn't all that good.
All around him he couldfeel the fear of the men that came behind him. He reached up and put a hand to his head squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to force them out, to keep them all at bay. Sunny gave him a worried look but he just waved her off, allowing his helmet to retract back over his face.
Inside he could feel Anima energy thrumming through his body.
The sensation was exhilarating, like being high.
The sensation was.
Power.
"On me!" Adam ordered, and together they began their slow advance. Their original survival estimates had been low, and as they moved they kept finding more and more townsfolk hiding in crawlspaces or trapped in attics. Men women and children clambered out of drainage pipes, and from he trunks of cars. One man had hidden for the entire seventy two hours by wedging himself into the space behind his couch, and somehow he had not been found. They found children hidden in barrels and women hiding in cupboards.
Where family pets had not been slain in the battle, they were found hunkered in fear under bed and in forgotten corners, some of them infected, some of them not. Adam didn't particularly appreciate the void fish, but there was nothing he could do about that.
Adam took point in clearing out the childhood home of one of his brother's close friends , and was just beginning to clear out the front room when the tireless thundered out of the hallway. She came in with a scream, and Adam had just enough time to dodge to the side and avoid her. She whipped a glowing orange spear back towards his head, which he was forced to duck. The leaf head blade scraped along the top of his helmet and bounced off creating a line of sparks. She was in to close for him to use his spear, so he let go letting it clatter to the floor instead drawing back his hand to punch her in the head.
He did not expect the outcome. The SE suit made him a lot stronger sure. Getting hti by an SE soldier was like getting hit by a truck going forty miles an hour, but he had certainly not expected to send his fist straight through her skull dropping her to the ground like a sack of potatoes. He held his hand out in shock and surprise but shook himself and grabbed up his spear doing his best not to think about it. A cluster of roaches appeared from the wall and he dispatched them handily with a single sweep of his weapon.
He checked both the crawl space and the attic but found no one and exited out the back door to join back up with a line of men and women slowly advancing towards the void site. They began as a line, but naturally started to form into a semicircle as they grew closer. Adam switched to his rifle as they got nearer and the houses grew more sparce. Subdivisions gave way to rural farmland dotted with the occasional ranch style house.
The ground before them was practically teaming with void life which they gunned down from a distance. Behind them came the roar of chain guns mounted atop UNSC hovercraft. Adam found himself right in line with an old homestead and matching barn. Maverick took the house, but Adam headed right towards the barn. The world around them was only growing more twisted and strange. The ground seemed to twitch and move under his feet as he walked, like contracting muscle fibers. The sky was red, and the birds that flew against the sky had featherless skulls.
Adam reached for the barn door, pushing it open with the flat of his hand while he held the spear at the ready. In the distance voices cried out and gunfire sounded. An explosion rocked the ground which twitched and churned under his feet in an attempt to keep him off balance. The door swung inward, a shaft of red light cutting through the darkness to illuminate the massive single room. A dead horse lay on the barn floor its body bloated with decay. In the stalls to his left a void cow pressed itself into the corner wild orange eyes wide with fear.
And then, Adam lifted his head mouth dropping open, taking a step back in horror.
She leered down at him, her massive body taking up the length of the barn. Her arms stretched out across one of the massive crossbeams. Her hair hung down in lank black tangles from her twisted face, skin a mottled cream grey. Her eyes closed a hideous orange. The void mother was absolutely massive, taking up nearly the entire ceiling and the far wall. As Adam watched her jaw worked as if she wanted to say something, but she only managed to leer at him. She stretched her neck and the tendons in her neck flexed.
She shifted in another direction, and her ribs pressed against the skin of her massive ribcage threatening to tear out.
Her stomach bulged tight against the tear in her abdomen, two torn flesh halves pressed together by lips of puckered flesh. When she looked at him he saw nothing but hatred on her massive face.
And then something slammed into him from the side. Adam was sent rolling across the barn floor. He reached out a hand digging his fingers into the dirt and pulling himself into a skid that landed hi min a half crouch. He held his spear in his opposite hand and gave a snarl as the massive roach raced towards him. Adam cut to the side under the swing of a leg lunging forward to jam the point of his spear in the creature's side.
It roared as he ripped the spear out spinning in place and battering him backwards into a pillar. The wood crunched and buckled under his weight. He got up and the creature roared charging at him. Adam charged right back vaulting with one foot off a nearby stall and into the air just as the creature rushed below him. He slammed the metal of his spear down into the top of the creature's body.
It screamed again and tried to shake him off.
It almost succeeded, but he clung on with one hand stabbing the creature in the eye with the blade of a knife he pulled from his hip.
This time he was thrown off, landing awkwardly on his arm.
The King roach shook its head trying to dislodge the item as Adam crawled to his feet. All he had was his gun left and he slung it forward to his front just as the creature turned. Again Adam charged it head on into a reckless game of chicken he was sure to lose, but at the last moment Adam allowed his feet to slide forward through the straw and slime onto his back as the roach thundered overhead, stitching a line of bullets up its exposed belly.
He rolled as he skidded onto his stomach and then to his knees.
Behind him, the creature wobbled, and then toppled over.
Above him the void mother was breathing heavily, her chest expanding and contracting with wild bursts. Her face was contorted in anger and pain.
She opened her mouth.
And Adam was not prepared for the scream that rent the air. He was brought to his knees as a psychic blast hit his mind, unintentional, but now in his vulnerable state it was too much. He felt to his knees clutching his head. The voices he had been attempting to keep at bay all day flooded into him, the minds of the void creatures and the frightened humans outside.
He felt two men die as a king roach pierced them through their armor.
He heard the maddening crackle of the void.
He screamed but was drowned out by the void mother screaming.
Against her abdomen, the tear began to split apart. Black sludge oozed out.
Adam continued to scream and clutch his head as the thing inside her met his mind, twisted and confused. Alive no more than a few seconds, conscious for even less, And then
She was there.
Sunny appeared out of nowhere lobbing a grenade into the slowly opening rift.
She grabbed Adam by the armor and dragged him back and out of the barn.
There was a sharp concussive blast as the void mother was torn open from the inside out. She shrieked again in pain and death as the unborn thing rained in pieces to the floor before she began to dissolve.
Sunny held Adam around the chest as its screams died, and he was finally able to force his mind back into place.