Anthony DeCosmo - Fusion

The metal door slid open of its own accord. Two Spider Sentries stood in the entry on their spindly legs. Their high-powered rapid-fire pellet guns fired. Vince Caesar barely avoided a burst as he rolled toward the wall and returned fire with his carbine.

Bly dropped into a prone position and rested his M-249 on its small tripods. As the alien rounds skipped across the concrete around him, Carl Bly fired a fierce volley. The loud rat-tat-tat of the machine gun joined with the falling rain, the complex’s constant rumble, and the hiss of Spider Sentry guns to fill the hall with an eclectic mix of sound that bounced off the high ceiling and echoed to ear-splitting levels.

Bly’s first rounds went wide but his steady hand guided the hose-like stream of bullets into one of the Spiders. Its round head disintegrated into goo.

Nina felt a shot hit her high in the shoulder, catching uniform and padding but not flesh. She concentrated her M4 at the head. The silenced rounds fired from her carbine in a series of pops. Those bullets annoyed the Sentry-knocked its round head side to side-but could not only chipped at its flesh.

Just behind the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun, the pop of her silenced weapon, and the sharp hiss of the Spider Sentry guns came the whir and clang of the scorpion tail descending from the heights somewhere-not far-behind her.

Vince, from one knee, launched an M203 grenade hitting the second sentry in the side. A nice chunk of its centerpiece fell away but it kept on shooting at Nina. She found cover along a metal bin-a kind of dumpster-but a new threat garnered her attention.

Her instincts felt the thrust of the scorpion tail’s razor-sharp stinger and she dropped and rolled at the last instant. The strange device hit the metal bin where its stinger lodged. The tail-thing immediately wiggled to try and free itself.

Despite incoming fire from the sentry, Nina wedged an anti-personnel grenade in the last joint by the tail’s sharp point. A moment later it freed itself from the metal bin and retreated toward the ceiling.

Nina threw herself to the ground alongside the bin and covered her head.

The grenade exploded. Pieces of metal and a kind of hairy skin fell to the floor but the sound of machine guns and air guns and rain drown out any noise the impact may have made.

Nina sat up and re-focused on the remaining Spider Sentry just in time to see Bly’s M-249 finish it off. The thing wobbled side to side and then collapsed.

“Move! Move! Move!” She commanded and led them into the next room-where they stopped dead in their tracks.

The three soldiers entered a massive rectangular chamber filled with pallets full of cereal boxes, canned fruit, powdered milk, shortening tubs, chemical jugs, pasta crates, and much more. All stacked in piles seven to eight feet tall, shrink wrapped into tight bundles, and aligned in rows to create a maze of boxes. Most of the goods inside certainly spoiled a long time ago; an acidic sour smell emanated from the collection joining with the already pungent aroma of the facility.

The room stretched as long and as wide as a football field. A catwalk ran the length of the chamber halfway up the four-story western wall. Bright fluorescent lights hanging from a flat metal ceiling lit the whole place up like a stage on which a play would soon begin and Nina knew exactly who the players would be.

“We have to keep moving,” she said, but she did not get a chance to finish the sentence.

Nina felt hot shot fly passed her face, inches from her nose. She instinctively dove toward the first line of packed pallets.

Carl never stood a chance. A round hit him in the forehead. The weight of his M-249 machine gun pulled his lifeless body over like a toppling statue.

Vince tried to dodge but another blast of alien bullets hit him in the leg. He crumpled over, barely finding cover behind another pallet of goods.

The shots came from the catwalk overlooking the maze of crates from the west wall. One of Voggoth’s mechanical commandos served as assassin.

Nina raised her rifle and tried to return fire, but more shots came in from the advantage of an elevated position. She retreated, pulling Vince along with her by his utility belt.

Behind cover, Nina took stock of her mates.

Bly lay in the open in a growing puddle of crimson. The impact tore away the top half of his head. Despite knowing battlefield gore all her life, Nina felt a sharp pang in her heart at the sight of her friend so badly mangled.

She turned to Vince. Blood streamed out and over his black BDUs from a wound to his knee. His face twisted in agony, but he refused to cry out.

Captain Forest removed her pack and retrieved a heavy bandage. She struggled to wrap it around the wound. His leg shook violently from the pain.

“Listen, we have to stop the bleeding; or at least slow it down,” she spoke the obvious. “Then I can get you out of here.”

“I can’t walk, Nina.”

“Not yet you can’t. But look, I’ve got strong shoulders. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Strong shoulders? Yeah-yeah…” he mumbled as she wrapped the bandage tight. Blood spouted but with each trip around the leg the dressing grew firmer and pressed against the hole in his leg.

A grating metallic sound interrupted the first aid treatment. The two soldiers faced south and saw the bulkhead from which they had come slam shut with a very permanent clang.

Nina returned to her work, pulling the bandage tight on its final trip around his knee.

Another grating metallic sound. This one farther away. This one from the north end of the warehouse. Nina did not need to see the bulkhead opening; she could picture it in her mind. She wondered how the Christians had felt when the Romans opened the tigers gate on the far side of the coliseum…

The north side door finished opening and out of the black came Voggoth’s robotic commandos skating in and swaying side to side on the wheels in their heels. Kind of like rollerbladers gliding along a sidewalk.

Bronze-colored metal helmets protected solitary round red eyes that swiveled sideways surveying the warehouse as they moved in. Their skeletal bodies wore bronze metal ribcages that protected blobs of bio mass that blurred the line between robot and animal. Gun barrels affixed to forearms gave the Commandos fire power equivalent to a human carbine.

A Sergeant-identified by black chevrons atop silver shoulder plates that also sported twin grenade launchers-generated a static-filled electronic tone that served as a communication. The squad of ten commandos split into pairs and entered the maze from the north side and searched for their quarry…

Nina tried to clamp the bandage but Vince grabbed her hand.

“Go.”

“What? Listen, I’m not going to leave you.”

“Then what, Nina? We’ll just wait here until they come and gun us down? Don’t be-don’t be stupid. Get going.”

She stared at him for a moment. Thought. Then pulled him into a small space between two pallets.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you.”

He opened his mouth in protest, but she silenced him with glaring, narrow eyes.

With that, Nina adjusted her beret tighter on her head and ran into the maze from the south moving fast but silent. She discarded the sound suppressor on her carbine as she moved.

Sterile bright lights from above cast over the labyrinth, chasing most but not all shadows. The same smell of rot that lived throughout the complex remained in the air here, but joined by the sour odor of decaying foodstuffs hovering over the field of crates.

She followed the nozzle of her gun as she ran forward then turned right along a wall of grain sacks, then left and forward again between row upon row of number ten soup cans piled eight feet high.