David Golemon: Ripper

“Don’t look at me like that — all you had to deal with was the Civil War,” he whispered to himself, realizing that the humor of his small joke had made him feel better.

Collins and Everett had always told him that humor came out in the most pressure-filled situations for the simple fact that in a terrifying moment, a soldier’s brain will fall back on something that was familiar. In the American military, humor was the most common thread they had. Niles remembered what they always taught — keep it light even in times of stress; it will free your mind to think. He shook his head and for no reason he could think of, nodded up at old Abe. Then without further thought he opened the left side of the office doors.

As soon as he was in he was grateful that all fifty monitors situated around his curving walls were still on. They were all bright with the snow of no signal, but it still gave him more light than he was used to in the dark of the complex. The main thirty-foot monitor was on and the blue picture showed that Europa was still fighting to bring her systems back online. He noticed a clock in the far corner winding down from two minutes and thirty seconds. Above the clock it read “Time to power loss.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” he asked himself. He shook his head and walked quickly toward his desk and the credenza on the back wall. He knelt and as he did he suddenly looked behind him when he thought he heard something move in the outer offices. He froze for what seemed like ten full minutes but was actually only three seconds. He again shook his head to clear it of the fear and started to open the credenza drawers, hoping his radios were still there and that they had held their charge. His eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed glasses as his hands hit the first of five radios and their headsets. He pulled two of them out and turned the first one to the on position. He wanted to scream “Yes!” when the green light came on indicating a full battery charge. He stood and placed the Beretta inside of his belt and the headset onto his balding head. He looked down at the frequency and prayed that it was still set to complex security.

“Compton to Colonel Collins, come in,” he whispered, remembering the things that were stalking not only him but possibly anyone with a radio. “Compton to Colonel Collins, come in please,” he hissed.

Suddenly Niles heard a sound that stopped him cold, and it had definitely come from somewhere in the outer office.

“I hear you,” said the deep, raspy, and absolutely terrifying voice that had the quality of a bass speaker. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Niles closed his eyes and went down hard on the carpeted floor.

“Damn it,” he murmured to himself, “these things are really getting to me.” Niles slowly raised his head to look over the top of his desk and into the reception area of his office. His blood froze when he saw the large shadow as it moved from desk to desk in the office outside.

“This position is untenable,” he said quietly, trying to allow his own voice to give him the bravado he needed to take action.

As he thought, he lambasted himself for all of his inactivity over the years. If he had been in shape he would risk it by running as fast as he could out of his office and through the reception area in a break for freedom before the beast inside could react. But he knew he was fooling himself to the extreme. He could be Jessie Owens and still be caught by this thing from his deepest nightmare. He had seen how fast the creatures reacted.

“I can smell you little man,” said the voice as it tipped over the desk of one of his assistants.

Niles closed his eyes as he tried to think of something humorous as before, but nothing came. He realized that it must take practice for humor to come to your mental rescue in a stressful situation — something he would have to speak with Jack or Carl about.

When the thing had seen that there was no one hiding behind or under the first desk it went into a rage. It roared like an out-of-control animal and started smashing the other desks to pulp as it circled the office. Then it suddenly stopped and looked toward the double doors leading into Niles’s office. Its eyes next went to the adjacent double doors. The conference room was closed. Niles prayed that the beast went there first.

“Stop, think, plan, initiate,” said the deep voice as Niles heard calmness overwhelm the anger of the creature. The beast laughed again, an insane-sounding giggle-like noise that reeked of schizophrenia.

The laugh and trailing giggle were unnerving as they rumbled into his hiding place. As the beast came to his office doors Niles could swear he heard the giant sniff the air. What kind of a nightmare were they truly dealing with? Could this thing be the future of men, or their eventual doom? If this was evolution at its height, he could see no way that mankind could ever survive. Intelligence and violence advancing through evolution together? If this is what the human brain is capable of, Niles now feared for the very soul of the human race. A world of supermen and soldiers that were hard to kill, acted and hunted as animals, and could think as fast on their feet as Einstein? No, he wanted no part of that future, and he knew that this thing wasn’t going to outthink him. Not today.

The beast sniffed again, but for the first time one of its animal-like senses failed it. It went left instead of continuing into Niles’s office.

As Compton listened he screamed when he heard the beast suddenly fall into a rage again as it battered down the double oak doors and burst inside where it began to tear into the giant conference table and chairs that lined it, looking for its easy prey. Niles took that opportunity to start creeping around his desk and crawl from the office to the reception area and then to the hallway outside. Once there he knew through his frightened state that there wasn’t an animal wild or domestic that would ever catch him. At that moment he knew he was capable of flying.

As he finally reached the center of the reception area on his hands and knees, he chanced a look up and realized he would make it because the beast was even more frenzied as it tore through the inside of the conference room. Compton closed his eyes and had hope for the first time in what seemed like hours. Then disaster struck.

“This is Collins. Come in Compton. Over.”

The call could not have come at a worse moment. Niles had never adjusted the radio volume and it seemed anyone could have heard it through the entire complex.

“Oh, shit,” he said, not waiting for the beast to come at him. He leapt to his feet, his heart practically flying out of his chest. His feet spun on the slick floor of the main office. It was like a nightmare where he was stuck in sand or, even worse, syrup. His shoes finally caught traction just as the beast roared and burst out of the conference room. The enraged beast was just in time to see the backside of Compton streak into the hallway.

The chase was on between a heavyset, balding, beyond-middle-age director and a genetically altered superman.

Mendenhall led the way down the stairwell. He was down to three shots in his Beretta as they finally made it to level forty-two. He paused so the others could catch their breath before they ventured into the corridor outside the stairwell door. He looked back and nodded at Gloria, giving her a reassuring smile. Virginia was speaking softly with Sarah and Farbeaux, reassuring the Frenchman that they had made it to the level where the armory was. The Frenchman nodded his head and with the help of Denise Gilliam squeezed past Sarah and Virginia.

“What’s the plan?” Henri asked Mendenhall, interrupting his vision of Gloria Bannister.