James Decker - Fallout

The scene through the windshield tilted to the left. A little at first, then everyone braced themselves as the angle turned steep.

“The left emitters are out,” the pilot said.

“Kill the others, before we roll,” Dragan said, squeezing between Vamp and me to approach the pilot.

“We’ll go down.”

“We’re going down anyway, better on our belly than our back! Do it!”

Something under the deck sizzled, and sparks shot off in a trail behind us but the ship stopped tilting and the pilot managed to get it back under control. He evened it out, until the horizon formed a straight line again, but we were falling lower and lower toward the dust cloud below.

“This isn’t good,” the pilot muttered.

“Just keep us steady.”

Ash and debris began to pepper the undercarriage as we sank, and I turned away from the cockpit, not wanting to watch.

“Brace for impact!” the pilot shouted.

We scrambled to the back and sat down as the ship fell. I planted both feet on the deck and pressed my back into the wall behind me. Dragan grabbed Alexei, and held him tight as the ship began to shake.

“Hold on!”

The hiss of ash against the hull turned louder the farther down we dropped, and underneath it all I heard machinery drum to life as the chemical smell filled the air again. The pilot was charging the remaining emitters for one last go.

The ship slowed, then stopped with a crash as the graviton spool blew its charge all at once. A loud bang sounded, followed by the squeal of metal as the housing, partially melted, gave way under the force. Part of the undercarriage tore free, and a fracture popped open across the deck in front of my feet. Black smoke began to billow into the cabin.

My stomach dropped as the vehicle lost the last of its power and fell to the ruined street below.

The ship came down hard, sparks popping up through the crack in the deck as we skidded across a patch of warped pavement. The vehicle slowed, then hit something that jarred it to a stop. The back end came up off the ground like the whole thing might flip, then crashed back down.

A flashlight beam lit up the darkness, and I saw Dragan’s face behind it. He swept it through the cab, checking on the rest of us.

“Cover your mouths!” he yelled over the sound of the storm. He moved to the back and pulled a metal crate out from under one of the rear seats, which he unlatched and pulled open. He took a gas mask from inside and fitted it over his face before tossing one to me. He put another on Alexei as I strapped it on, sealing the breather over my mouth and nose, then adjusting the goggles as Dragan distributed the rest to the others.

“Masks on, people!” he called. Li pulled his down over his face, then stood in the cockpit doorway, facing us. “Come on!”

“Where are we?” someone shouted, his voice muffled by the breather. “How far to the wall?”

“This makes no sense,” the pilot said, staring at the console. “The facility is there, it’s… there, right where it’s supposed to be, but—”

“Get your mask on,” Shen told him. “Now! We can worry about the rest once we get out of this shitstorm!”

I felt them through the surrogate cluster, just seconds before they came. Overlapping waves of pain, and hunger, and fear so intense that I stumbled, and fell to my knees.

“Sam, what’s wrong?” Dragan asked, kneeling next to me.

“There are haan out there,” I said.

“Haan?”

Haan, yes. A lot of them. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but more than I could keep track of.

“Gohan had started to move them in… some of them are still alive, but…”

They weren’t the haan I knew. How they’d survived what happened I had no idea, but they’d been so ravaged by it that their thoughts felt almost animalistic. They were in great pain, blind, and… hungry. Their hunger had turned so intense that it controlled them.

“Their bodies are attempting to regenerate,” Nix said. “It is causing a massive calorie deficit. They need to eat or they will die, very soon. We are in very serious danger.”

Something hit the side of the ship hard enough to move it. I felt it come up off the ground for a second and stumble as it slammed back down.

“What in the—”

The windshield shattered, thick shards of safety glass exploding into the cockpit on a wave of gray and black dust. Before it enveloped the pilot, I saw something lash through and hit him in the chest with a bone-rattling thud. The air in his lungs was forced out on a grunt of pain and I caught a glimpse of something, blood slick bone and guts, wrenched from out of his torso before the cloud flooded through to cover him.

Kao turned and raised his rifle, aiming into the cloud and firing as the struggle continued somewhere in the smoke. The copilot emerged from the smoke, his uniform spattered with blood as he pushed past Shen and into the cabin with us.

“What was that?” Vamp gasped. “What’s happening?”

He looked around, rubbing his eyes as the lights flickered back on inside the cabin. They were dim, running on dying battery power, but better than nothing.

“Get the force field on,” Dragan yelled through his mask speaker.

Shen headed toward the cockpit when something grabbed his leg and jerked it out from under him. He landed on his back with a crash; then something yanked him away, out into the smoke.

“Shit!”

My goggles were fogging over and even with the mask my nose and throat had begun to burn. Through the haze I saw Nix look around, assessing the situation. He took a step toward the copilot who pushed at the door to the cockpit, trying to close it when something slithered through the gap.

The black tentacle coiled around the copilot’s arm from wrist to shoulder. He came up off his feet as it tried to pull him through, and he slammed face-first into the door. His weight forced it to slam shut on his own arm.

Before he could even scream, the arm came off with a series of meaty snaps. He stumbled back away from the door, the stump squirting blood. I turned away as he fell onto the deck, gasping and choking. Nix stepped over his body and slipped through the door, into the cloud of smoke that had filled the cockpit.

“Nix!” I called as he slammed the door behind him. “Nix!”

Dragan pushed past me and ran to the fallen man to try to staunch the bleeding, but he was too late. The pilot sagged, and then his legs, which had been shivering, stopped.

Something crashed on the other side of the cockpit door, and then I heard the low hum of a force field warming up. A second thud went through the floor, and I heard the rush of air begin over the moan of wind outside.

The vents. Nix is venting the cabin.

“What’s going on out there?” I called back. “Can anyone see?”

Alexei tugged my shirt, and pointed as the rear door hinges of the transport groaned, and then snapped. The door tore loose, and then huffed away into the mist with one corner sending orange sparks across the pavement.

Dragan aimed his pistol toward the opening as a shape appeared from out of the smoke. A long tentacle came slithering through the open back of the vehicle and I could see more of them squirming in the fog somewhere behind it. It pawed at the floor and the walls, the tip moving purposefully like a sniffing nose as it passed between me and Vamp.

Dragan angled his weapon down at the part closest to him, when I grabbed the barrel. He stopped, looking up at me, and I shook my head.

It couldn’t see us, at least not well. The haan knew we were inside, but not exactly where. Bullets weren’t going to stop it, I thought. They’d only tell it right where Dragan stood. I waited, frozen, holding out my hands for him to stay still.