This time, at least, the tram was still functional.
Jack had dropped himself bodily into the conductor's chair and, as soon as he confirmed everyone else was onboard and there weren't any immediate threats in the area, he closed the doors and started them off towards Command Control. The sooner they made progress, the sooner he could be off this wretched fucking moon. Even the comatose boredom and misery of Mars looked fantastic by comparison. Although he'd be lying if he didn't admit to some perverse pleasure at putting these hideous caricatures of humans and monster beasts down. When he was younger, he used to fantasize about something like this.
Who the hell hadn't thought about fighting zombies?
He glanced over his shoulder as the door opened up. Jennifer came in. She closed the door behind her and joined him in the cramped compartment. They were currently cycling through the big airlock that would admit them access to the lengthy glass tunnel that snaked its way across the dead, bleak surface of Phobos.
"Hey," he said, turning away from the controls. She leaned up against a nearby bulkhead. "How are you doing? I, uh...we haven't really had a chance to catch up," he added awkwardly. Although they'd slept together multiple times now and they'd both trusted each other enough to share a bed when they were asleep, at their most vulnerable, he still didn't honestly know the extent or genuine nature of their relationship.
He knew that he liked her, and respected her, and she didn't have any immediately obvious deal-breakers for potentially a long term relationship. Of course, it was pretty insane to be thinking about this right now.
"I'm tired," she replied, then laughed. "Hungry, thirsty. My back hurts and my ankles and knees are sore from all the damned running around, falling over, diving for cover, kicking the shit out of zombies. We got woken up in the middle of the night for this crap. What about you? It was pretty gutsy to come in here after us."
"If there was even a chance that any of you were still alive, I was coming in," he replied flatly. "Although it wasn't like I had much choice. I think the same thing that's screwing with the radios is also screwing with the ships. It's the only thing that makes sense. Stanmore panicked and tried to flee, but the ship wouldn't lift off. And all the others, it wouldn't make sense that the other pilots wouldn't try a retreat, especially if something was ripping its way into the airlock with nothing but brute force and determination. So even if we find Blackmore and the others and get back to the ship, I don't think we're going home."
"Then...what do we do?" Jennifer murmured.
"I don't know. Dig around, find out what the fuck they were doing up here," Jack replied. He sympathized with her. He was tired, hungry, and sore, too. The adrenaline had amped him up, and he knew he could keep going for awhile yet, but how much longer would he have to be here? How long until he needed to sleep? Technically he could go for weeks without food, but he'd start suffering for it long before that.
And then there was the matter of ammo. There didn't seem to be enough of it around.
"It's, uh, it's been good to see you again," Jennifer said, giving him a somewhat awkward smile.
He favored her with an equally awkward one. So she didn't quite know where they stood either. Unfortunately, now just wasn't the time to deal with that.
Jack returned his attention to the tunnel ahead of them. They weren't far from Command Control now. The huge structure loomed above them. They cycled through the airlock and pulled into the tram station.
A pair of Imps and three zombies awaited them.
"Great," Jack muttered as the creatures became aware of their presence, staring at them through the glass, and attacked. The Imps began throwing fireballs and all three zombies were armed, two of them with pistols and one with a shotgun. Fuck. This was looking worse by the second. He got up and moved with Jennifer back into the main cabin.
"Get ready," he said.
Jack was on one side of the door, Jennifer was on the other side, and Jenkins and Peterson were further back in the tram, prepared to provide backup. It was now or never. The glass was cracking from the Imps' and zombies' attacks. Jack hit the button and the doors slid open. As soon as they did, he and Jennifer popped out, pistols in hand, picking out targets of opportunity. He popped off two shots right away, turning the eye of one zombie, a former Space Marine, into a geyser of blood and gore, and punching an ugly hole through the forehead of another. Jennifer was just as good, her round tearing away a good portion of the left Imp's skull.
The survivors launched their counterattack.
A .45 caliber round embedded itself in the tram's frame hardly an inch from Jack's head and the Imp sent a fireball that sailed in between them and into the cart itself. Peterson shouted but Jack didn't have time to see if he was hit. He adjusted his aim and punched a round through the zombie's mouth as it roared and readjusted its aim. The back of its head burst like a ripe melon. Jennifer put down the Imp with two to the head.
All became still and silent.
"I think that it's," Jack said. He turned. "Anyone hit?"
"I'm fine," Jenkins muttered.
"Negative," Peterson managed. Judging by the scorch mark behind him, the fireball would have just missed him. If he hadn't been wearing his pressure suit, Jack was sure that the man would have burns.
"Then let's get a move on," Jack said, heading out of the tram cart. He and Peterson policed up the ammo while Jennifer and Jenkins patrolled the area, checking the shadows for lurking hostiles. Jack whistled, catching Jenkins's attention, and held up the shotgun. The man hurried over, holstering his pistol, and accepted the shotgun.
"Thanks," he said, marveling over the fine piece of hardware.
"It's low on ammo, conserve it," Jack replied.
Jenkins nodded and looped the strap over his shoulder, then let the weapon hang. He managed to scrounge half a shotgun's worth of shells and another magazine. As he prepared to head into the building beyond, his radio crackled to life again.
"Private Ward, are you there? Over." It was McGee again.
"That's affirmative, Corporal. Over."
"What's your sitrep? Over."
"We've just entered Command Control and have been putting down a few problems. We're about to head into the main facility. Over."
"Good. I managed to get out of the storage room and make it to an infirmary. I'm patching myself up right now. But I needed to warn you. There's something new, something I haven't encountered yet before and it's very dangerous. Over."
"What is it? Over."
"It's..." she hesitated. "Ghosts."
"Ghosts?"
"Yes. Ghosts. I don't know what they are or how or why, but they're almost invisible and they're mean, nasty fuckers. Keep a very sharp eye out for them. Now, you should be able to find a map of the facility in the lobby. I'm in Infirmary Four. Over."
"Affirmative. We'll get there as soon as possible. Over."
"Good. Out."
Jack led the way into the lobby, finding it vacant, though bloody, like everywhere else on Phobos apparently. He wondered if there was an untouched location yet. This lobby, at least, had more variety. There were two security stations, one tucked in each corner nearest him to the left. They were small but looked solidly built, little more than large kiosks built into the corners. Not that it had done them any good in the end.
This lobby was larger, with a big octagonal desk on a slightly raised platform dominating the center of the room. There were several doors, one leading to another apartment block, another to some cafeterias and recreational areas and a gym, the final, biggest, most important one leading deeper into Command Control itself.
Jack went forward to try that door while he sent the others to check out the security centers, looking for goodies like bullets, guns, or grenades. He pondered over McGee's words as he approached the big door. The woman had been injured, could she be hallucinating from blood loss? She sounded pretty competent...
After a moment's consideration, Jack ultimately decided that she was probably on the money. As flat out fucking out there as 'ghosts' sounded as a legitimate, straightforward warning coming out of the mouth of a Marine, well, everything was crazy up here on Phobos Base. Jack let out a curse as he suddenly realized that the door to the rest of the facility was locked down tight. Then he cursed again as he realized the nature of the lockdown.
It was under a triple-lock, meaning he needed three keycards to get through it. The screen he was looking at calmly informed him that he needed a blue, a yellow, and a red keycard. Remembering that he actually had a blue keycard, he pulled it out and gave it a shot, slotting it. The door buzzed angrily and he sighed heavily and threw it on the floor. Of course they wouldn't work in other buildings. Standard security measure.
"What's wrong?" Jennifer asked.
He turned around. She was within the octagonal desk.
"We need three keycards to get through this door," he replied, approaching her. Then he paused, "Although..." he reactivated his radio. "Corporal McGee, Ward here. The door to Command Control is under lockdown, do you think you could give us some help? Over." He waited, listening. "Corporal McGee, do you copy? Over." Nothing. The radio had gone dead again. "Fuck!" he snapped, resisting the suddenly powerful urge to kick a nearby corpse.
"I've got the map," Jennifer said.
"Gather round, everyone," Jack called.
He and the others joined her in the octagonal desk and studied the map. Command Control was pretty big. "All right, we need to find a way to download this to our suits," he said, raising his wrist and checking over for some kind of port.
"These pressure suits aren't designed to hold anymore data than the basic operating system that runs them," Peterson said.
"Of fucking course not," Jack whispered, dropping his wrist. "All right," he murmured, looking over the map again, this time checking out the more immediate area. There didn't seem to be any surprises and it all looked pretty straightforward. "This is the plan. Peterson and Jenkins, check the cafeterias and the rec rooms, basically just anything you can find over there. And was there anything worthwhile in the security checkpoints?"
"They were cleaned out," Jenkins replied.
"Fantastic. Jennifer and I will go over to the living quarters. We're looking for keycards. One red, one blue, one yellow. And obviously any spare ammo. And keep your eyes out for ghosts," he said, feeling slightly ridiculous.
"We'll get on it," Jenkins said, heading away. Peterson trailed after him.
Jack and Jennifer headed in the opposite direction, towards the apartments. Something made Jack switch over to his shotgun. He opened up the door and they cleared the room beyond. What he saw did not inspire any amount of confidence and he was glad that he'd switched to his shotgun. This apartment block was a bit more upper-class. It had an entrance lobby and everything, complete with some vending machines, a desk, and a little lounge area. The furniture had been burned and smashed to little more than kindling, the vending machines trashed, and the bodies...that's what had him concerned. There were a few regular corpses there, but some Imps too. Normally that would make Jack thrilled, but now it just left him confused.
They had bites taken out of them.
Some of them were missing limbs, others their heads, some whole chunks of their torsos. They reminded him of the bite he'd seen taken out of Stanmore. So Demons were around and...apparently they liked the taste of Imps. So that was interesting as hell. They didn't like each other. He'd assumed they were all working together, but if they weren't...that raised a whole lot of questions. And it could be useful.
But it also made him worried. He didn't relish the thought of fighting these big nasty fuckers in tight corridors again.
"Let's go," he murmured.
They had three ways to go, although judging by the map they'd seen, these places were a bit more straightforward. No network of corridors, no maze. Just straight corridors stretching for about a hundred meters with apartments placed at regular intervals. To make matters even worse, however, the corridors were very dimly lit. Power must not have been getting to the sector very well. He and Jennifer set off down the first corridor to the left. They moved slowly but surely, keeping a sharp eye out for anything red, blue, or yellow.
They checked into any apartment that had an open door, finding nothing but death and destruction. They managed to make it there and back again without finding anything, either dangerous or worthwhile. And the same again down the corridor to the right. As Jack stepped in front of the final corridor, glancing nervously at Jennifer, who had a pretty good poker face, he hoped that the other two were having better luck.
"Come on," he said quietly, setting off one more time. If they didn't find anything down this one, they were going to have to get inventive.
The pair moved slowly down the dark passageway.
Something was wrong with this one. The other two corridors had felt ominous, but this place felt downright dangerous.
Up ahead, something let out a deep growl. He recognized it immediately. A Demon. So much for McGee's ghosts. He waited for it to come to him, listening to the growls. Jennifer was steady beside him, shotgun at ready.
Jack thought he caught sight of some movement up ahead, but he couldn't be sure in the low lighting. When he heard the growling, it was startlingly close. In fact, it sounded like it was in the hallway with them, very close. He suddenly heard pounding footsteps. He could see movement again, some strange, vague kind of movement.
"What the hell is that?" Jennifer whispered.
Suddenly, Jack realized that McGee wasn't mistaken. "Shoot it!" he cried, aiming for the shadowy movement in front of him and squeezing the trigger. There was a spray of blood and a loud, furious roar. Jennifer shouted in surprise and fired as well. Two more shotgun shells seemed to put down...whatever it was.
"Is it...it sounded like a Demon," Jennifer said as she fed a few more shotgun shells into her weapon.
"It was," Jack murmured as he did the same. "But it was invisible...Christ, I thought McGee might have been cracking up or suffering from blood loss. But she wasn't. It's a fucking ghost."
"Spectre is a better name," Jennifer replied, her voice a little off-kilter. He glanced at her. She looked back at him. "What?"
"Nothing. You're right. Spectre is better. Come on, let's finish this up. This place is really starting to freak me out."
They pressed on, hurrying down the corridor until they reached its end and still finding nothing. Jack was about to give up hope and press on, when he saw something glinting softly in the light of one of the apartments.
"Watch my back," he whispered as he slid into the room, clearing it with a sweep of his shotgun. Nothing and no one.
The glint, he saw, was blue.
Jack moved over to it and crouched. Shoving some debris aside, mainly a few books, a cracked and dead PDA, and some bloodstained clothing, he found it: the blue keycard. There were bloody fingerprints on it. Sighing in relief, though lamenting that this was only one third of what they needed, he pocketed it and stepped back out into the main corridor.
"Got the blue keycard," he said as he started heading back. "Let's go see if Jenkins and Peterson had any luck."
They came back to the lobby and were stepping into it about the same time the other two Marines were. Jenkins had a look of triumph on his face. "Found the yellow and red keycards," he said, grinning broadly and patting his pocket.
"I found the blue one. Let's get this fucking show on the road," Jack replied, impatient to be reunited with the rest of his squad. As fun as it was playing Sergeant again, he wanted to pass the reigns over to someone else. He wasn't sure but he was beginning to suspect that he was a lot more screwed up by this whole thing than he thought. The fact of the matter was that his hands were trembling now and he felt sick to his stomach, not to mention his mind was starting to go off on weird tangents every couple of minutes.
All bad signs of battle fatigue, or something like it.
The quartet headed for the door and slipped each of the keycards through the magnetic slot reader. This time, it chimed three times and, once they'd passed the final card through, chimed once more in a slightly different pitch.
The doors opened.
Jack found himself staring down a lengthy corridor.
Command Control awaited. He led the others into the corridor beyond very slowly. It was dark here, too. He didn't like it. Slowly, the quartet moved into the huge hallway beyond. It was broad and tall, looking like it was meant for a great deal of traffic. Now it was home to a great deal of corpses from both sides of the conflict.
"Keep a really sharp eye out," Jack murmured. "We ran into those ghosts McGee was mentioning. We call them Spectres. They're like the Demons, but almost totally invisible."
"Fuckin' great," Jenkins muttered miserably. "Like we didn't have enough to worry about."
Almost as soon as he'd let out the warning, Jack began to hear the meaty treads of a nearby Demon or Spectre. Considering he couldn't see anything, he figured a Spectre. The four of them froze up, each of them covering a different direction.
"There!" Jenkins suddenly called.
Jack spun and saw it, finally. The awful thing was close, really close. He raised his shotgun and pounded out a slug, spraying the area with a wave of blood. Under their combined assault, the creature wilted...and kept them from noticing a second Spectre that had pounded right up to them while they'd been mowing down the first.
Peterson began to scream.
Jack spun around and stared in horror. The man's right arm, all the way up to his shoulder, was gone, disappearing into the Spectre's mouth. With an awful ripping sound and a thick, wet snap the creature finished biting his arm off. A tremendous spray of blood splashed the beast as Peterson fell shrieking to the floor, blood flowing freely now. The blood got all over the Spectre, rendering it at least partially visible.
Jack stuck the barrel into its mouth and pulled the trigger.
The thing's brains vaporized out the back of its head in plume of dark red gore. Some of it sprayed onto his visor, which was already smeared with Peterson's blood. He called for the others to watch the area while he cleared his visor off to the best of his ability. When it was clear enough, he confirmed that they were alone again. Once they were, sighing, he moved over to Peterson, who was definitely dead from blood loss and shock. Frustrated, frightened, and anxious, Jack patted the Marine down and distributed his ammo. He didn't have a whole hell of a lot on him and his only weapon, his pistol, was now down the Spectre's throat.
After pocketing only a single magazine for himself, Jack straightened up and marched off, leading a silent Jennifer and Jenkins away. A moment later, after moving down a smaller offshoot corridor, they found the infirmary they were looking for. McGee was on an examination table, trying unsuccessfully to clean some of her wounds.
"What the hell happened?" she asked. "I heard a lot of screaming."
"Peterson's dead. One of your ghosts ate his fucking arm," Jack replied.
"Fuck," she murmured.
"Here, let me help with that," Jennifer said, setting her shotgun down on an adjacent table and moving to help her.
"Jenkins, stay here, I'm going to check out the area," Jack said. He needed to be alone for a minute, needed to clear his head. Two fucking people down now because he wasn't paying close enough attention. He should've seen that goddamned Spectre coming a mile off, should've picked up on those extra set of feet, no matter that it was invisible. If this were anywhere, anywhen else, he'd have been on it.
But that was just the problem, this wasn't like anything he had ever faced down before. As much as he told his fellow Marines to treat this just like any other situation, any other battlefield...it wasn't. This was something completely new. Completely unique. They weren't fighting humans, they were fighting...demons. Or aliens. Or...genetic mutations. Or monsters. Whatever they were, they were horrifying.
Suddenly, Jack could see why the people here and the teams they'd sent up had all died. These things were just too much. But he didn't have a choice, he had to get over it, get used to it, or he was going to die a horrible, brutal, painful death. Sighing, Jack moved slowly along the hallway he'd found behind the infirmary, in front of a row of patient rooms. All but one of them was empty, and the one that wasn't empty, Jack wished it was. A man was hanging from the ceiling, having hung himself with a bedsheet.
Jack could see his nametag on his chest. It read PVT. Murphy.
He turned away from the body, ready to face the world again. He rejoined the others in the infirmary. McGee was just getting her armor back on. Before anyone could say anything, their radios crackled to life.
"This is Sergeant Blackmore to anyone that can hear me. I need you to converge on my location in the control center. Over."