Episode 16: … They Always Return to the Bad

"What do you mean? No, you stay there, get your weapons. I can deal with this." Joe dashed over to the woman who had called out, leaving Sally to supervise the group in the weapons closet.
Her name was Nataliya; an excellent operative, but no one spectacular. Joe respected her, but she wasn’t that important to him. Just a quality operative.
"Sir, the sensors have detected a large warm mass rapidly proceeding down the tunnels, in the direction that Agent Sally just came from."
"Well, judging from those kids, there’re a lot of left over entrances to the tunnels from before we shut them down. It’s probably just some people seeking refuge."
"It’s not just them, sir. The motion sensors are picking up more motion behind them- but there’s no heat reading."
"Oh, shi…"
"They seem to all be going pretty slowly; I don’t think that the warms know they’re being chased."
"We have to go help them," Waldo declared from the railing behind Joe.
"Kid, I thought I told you to get a weapon!" Joe called. "And you shouldn’t listen in on conversations."
"I have a weapon." He held up a semi-automatic, much like the one that Sally had been carrying. Joe noted the bulge of an ordinary handgun in his right pocket. "And I wasn’t listening in. I was coming over to get orders."
Joe grinned sardonically. "A military boy, arencha? Well, that’s good. You’ll be good in this unit."
"Actually, sir, I just don’t know what I should do. If I don’t like the orders, I won’t follow them."
"Good lad!" Joe cried. "You’re perfect for the agency!"
"Joe," Nataliya whispered, "We’ve got a situation that we have to take care of here. Let Sally deal with the kid."
Joe turned slowly and gave her a nasty look.
"Yes, the situation," He hissed. Then he spun away and marched back up to the armory. Waldo gave Nataliya an incomprehensible look as Joe passed, and then turned and followed him.
Nataliya stared after both of them for a minute.
"What the fuck was that?" She growled incredulously under her breath, before turning back to her .
The narrator took a moment to comment on the painful adverb descriptor. He was very not fond of it.
By the time that Joe and Waldo returned to the armory, everyone was armed with nearly state-of-the-art weapons. His hawk-eyes jumped instantly but casually to Jennifer. She had chosen a sleek-looking compact gun. It was only a handgun, but it packed quite a punch and had a chamber capable of holding twenty rounds. They were surprisingly small for their power, or surprisingly powerful for their size; it depended on which you noticed first. The people who tended to learn the former were those who were on the receiving end, and obviously didn’t see the size before feeling the power, and so often didn’t have a chance to observe the size before losing the capabilities to observe anything. She also had a military boomerang (still being tested; Joe briefly wondered why it was in the armory) sticking out of the left side of her pants. It was programmed so that, upon throwing, it would produce minuscule razor blades and spin through enemy complexes, making a return trip to the thrower, pulling in its blades safely three-quarters of the way through its trip.
Sally had strapped two holsters to her hips, each holding a gun just like the one that she had held in the first place, and the new one that she now held in her hands. All three were slight improvements on the older model, like slightly quicker firing time. It was enough to make discarding the old weapon for spare ammunition worthwhile. The weapon was lying on the floor, devoid of clip, just inside the door. Joe smiled at how she managed to be strikingly frightening, strikingly beautiful, and somehow give off a motherly air all at once. That was why she had gotten into the game, after all… And he turned to the next person.
Jack picked out similar weapons to Sally, merely because he still wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself. Joe could already tell that Sally had instructed him to stay behind her unless he had to move. He was a bit disheartened to actually see the man that Sally… But that wasn’t important. He seemed like a good man, and he was obviously smart. He shook off the thought and looked to the next person.
Dawn held in her hands a basic pistol; it was well balanced and a manageable and unsurprising size. It held twelve rounds, and someone had convinced her to stock her pockets with a number of rounds. He frowned briefly, hoping that she wouldn’t have a relapse of some kind. But he shook the thought from his head; she was holding the gun and, though looking a bit nervous, seemed fully awake. He hadn’t seen her like that, well, ever. His eyes moved on.
Marty had been generally forbidden from taking a weapon. She was still drunk off her ass and worried everyone around her. Joe considered her the strangest variable in the thing, and wasn’t sure if that meant she would end up killing them all, or doing nothing notable. That worried him.
Zach still had his sword at his side, and his pack on his back. Everyone had returned the handguns to him, and they lay at his feet, tossed carelessly to the ground. Now in his hands, he held a long pole with a handle, with a tube running away from the end into a tank strapped to the leg opposite the side carrying the sword. Joe cringed a bit; that was a tank of extremely explosive compressed gas, and that was, in the vernacular, a flame thrower in his hands. Joe wondered if he should keep a closer eye on this Zach than on Jennifer; he might prove to be quite dangerous.
Todd had gone simple, much like Dawn; he had one simple pistol like hers in his hand, and two strapped in holsters to his legs. Joe made a note to have the armory’s Velcro supplies restocked. Todd was standing rather separate from the rest of them, glancing from Dawn and Zach, to Jennifer, to Sylvie. Joe recognized how torn he was, but felt little sympathy; that was all emotional, and they were about to head into the realm of instinct.
Sylvie had picked up what seemed to be an ordinary rifle; she had picked it because she had always had a fondness for people who could shoot rifles, and because her instinctual flirtatious level (which had developed as it had because of her feline intentions) picked it out as an amusingly phallic symbol. Of course, the rifle was supercharged like the other weapons; it held hundreds of rounds that fired out at velocities that had a notable chance to rip a man in two. Joe had the make of her character immediately, and decided that she was not a threat to anyone in the group besides herself.
Mina, on the other hand, he determined may be dangerous. She picked the same weapon as Sylvie, but only for the reason that Sylvie had picked it. That much was obvious to Joe; Mina was just trying to be a carbon copy of Sylvie. But she had a strange independent streak that caused her to not truly comprehend why she was doing what she was doing. As soon as he had figured this out, he realized that he recognized Mina. And he knew that she was dangerous too. Quite a coincidental little group here. That none of them had yet recognized each other worried Joe just a little bit.
"Alright, soldiers!" Zach winced at the word, but turned to look at Joe with the rest of them. "In a turn of events that doesn’t surprise me considering some of you, a group of survivors has somehow entered the tunnels. They are being pursued by figures that our heat sensors aren’t picking up on. Considering that we really have no fucking clue what’s happening out there or how many people are left on the planet, it seems a wise course of action to me to rescue them. The warm bodies don’t seem to be moving at a speed that indicates they know that they’re being pursued, so we might get lucky and they’ll get here before they’re caught, but…"
"Sir!" Nataliya screamed. "The warm bodies stopped for a moment, and have now sped up!"
"Damn," Joe growled. "I guess that rules that out."
"Some of the heat sensors are picking up smaller, immobile readings, left behind in their path, sir!" Nataliya called from the floor, staring at the screens before her. "Oh, strike that sir-the cooling readings are now moving."
"Okay, you newbies, get to the door you came in through! Sally, open it up and get ready to close it as soon as any survivors are through!"
"Sir!" a male voice from the other end of the room called out. "The President of the United States needs to talk to you!"
"Tell him to write his own damned speech! We know as much as him about this!"
"Yes Sir!"
"Sir," Nataliya called, "Warm region is reducing in area, and increasing in velocity. Estimated time of arrival in three minutes!"
"Alright, you heard that kids? I’m giving you three minutes and ten seconds to shut that door." Joe walked into the armory and picked up the first gun he saw. "And have your weapons ready."
Joe returned to a spot on the walkways above the main room, just where he was when they came in, as they returned to the door. He was generally invisible to anyone entering the room without a sharp eye, and had a perfect view of the door. He pointed his gun in its direction.
The others took up positions around the door. Sally was at the ready at the control panel-much simpler from this side-, with Jack and Waldo guarding her, guns pointed at the entryway. Zach was on his stomach, just inside the door, with the flame thrower pointed directly at an average man’s waist level on the door. Jennifer was the least visible, and had her tiny gun at the ready. Todd stood with Sylvie and Mina in front of the door and a few feet back, standing to the side enough to let people rush past. Marty sat in a corner, defenseless except for the team of teenagers in front of her. She was still confused.
Two minutes passed.
Nataliya announced that there were only enough heat readings left to constitute about fifteen people, out of a range from one hundred to two hundred and fifty when the readings were first picked up.
Another thirty seconds passed.
Screaming and stomping feet were heard echoing down the halls.
"Sir," a new female voice from inside the room cried out, drawing Joe’s attention away from the door. "The first perimeter fence has been broken!"
"What the hell do you mean?" he screamed at her.
"On the surface-Something big is barreling through the fences. It just took out number two! Sensors indicate that it’s too heavy for the complex to hold it up!"
"Sonovabitch!" Joe screamed. He charged down the stairs that had lead him up to the catwalks, and dove to the side of the room. "Get off the main floor and hit the dirt!"
Fifteen seconds after that started, the section of the floor with the monitors was clear of people. Three seconds later, five people came barreling through the doorway, screaming. Four seconds later, Elli came through. He didn’t take a moment to look around as he rushed past, right into the middle of the room. Todd looked out the door and shook his head; Sally shut it, just as a shambling corpse was about to pass through. Everyone at the door spun.
"Get to the sides!" Joe screamed as the six who had run in slowed in the middle. Elli turned and ran towards a wall; the others did the same, but slower.
The roof began to crack.
"Elli?" Waldo called out. Elli spun his head for a moment, but kept going.
"Shit, the ceiling’s cracking!" Zach yelled, rolling to his feet and backing up against the wall. Everyone stared up, and surely enough, the ceiling was filling with cracks. And then there was no ceiling, only a plummeting bag of dust.
The falling object got caught on the catwalk, long enough for the dust to catch up entirely, but then fell straight through it, crumpling the metal. It hit the next level of catwalks, and did the same. And finally it fell to the ground, sending a shock wave of force throughout the room, and sending up a cloud of dust that obscured all vision.
A few moments later, when the dust settled, there was a crumpled eighteen-wheeler, covered in dents, dings, and dust, with spinning wheels, sitting in the center of the room, crushing most of the computers. Small amounts of water began dripping in behind it.




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