Opposing Force: Book 01 - The God Particle (23 page)

"Hold on a second," Twiste said, taking hold of his arm and stopping his movement. "They can still get down to us, through the shaft."

Thom moved up so close to Twiste that their noses nearly touched. His breath came and went in quick gasps as he said what needed to be said, regardless of how horrible the words tasted.

"Listen to me, Doctor. They could come down that shaft, or whatever attacked them could come down after us. If Campion and Franco are alive, they will complete their mission by making their way to the Red Lab on sublevel 8. It is my intention to do the same, and I will haul you through this nightmare by the collar of your shirt if I have to, but you will move out now."

Gant held his friend’s eyes and did not blink. Twiste matched his stare for a moment, then reluctantly retrieved his bag. Together they moved deeper into the Hell Hole.

—

Sergeant Ben "Biggy" Franco directed the other members of the team to form a perimeter around the elevator while Gant oversaw Campion and Moss gaining access to the shaft.

Look at them, sticking together: Gant, his best buddy, and his lapdog.

In front of the sergeant stretched an empty hall with doors to either side, most with frosted glass windows, or shattered frosted glass windows.

He knelt behind an overturned desk and kept his gun facing forward. An askew emergency light affixed to a crooked box twenty meters away provided a slice of illumination that cut across the blackness ahead as if a bladed weapon had sliced open the void, allowing light to bleed out.

Franco did not have a good feeling about this mission. While quite capable of moving silently through hostile territory, he was a man built for more direct action, particularly in his upper body. He could bench press more than anyone in the unit—

—including the major's pet, Campion—

—and despite a few extra pounds he had stamina on par with most of the rest of the team.

Except Campion. He'll run circles around you all day long, Biggy. Same with Wells, too, but then again his kind are built for that shit, right?

He removed the black cap covering his head and, again, the amount of perspiration surprised him. His tangled brown hair felt soaked.

Franco surveyed the guards he had dispatched to the perimeter. Wells and Pearson covered the area by the double doors where that pitch black hall elbowed off. Galati stood at the base of the stairs. To Biggy's right, over by the elevator doors, the others worked. Campion had freed a ceiling tile and found a rusting metal folding chair to help him reach a pipe of some kind to use as an anchor for the rope.

What the fuck is taking these idiots so long? It's a goddamn rope, not storming Omaha Beach.

He shook his head in disgust and returned his attention to the empty hall in front of him. Not for the first time, he wondered if anything actually lived down here. The way Gant had briefed the team … the way that wuss Twiste moped around—

—the way he dug for reasons for three guys to opt out of the mission—

—the rigid, almost robot-like stiffness of the garrison at Red Rock all pointed to some high-level threat. Yet so far, nothing. Only a cold, empty, underground office complex that smelled like a retirement home suffering from poor sanitation.

Kind of like the one Mom was in before she died. Half the place smelled like disinfectant, the other half smelled like a pissed bed. Bunch of crazy old folks, some howling for pain medication, which that fucking orderly—the black orderly—never brought on time.

Franco heard Gant say, ""Okay, then. It is my turn to go on point."

As much as that surprised Biggy, it did not surprise him that Gant's two little butt buddies were all like “no, don't go,” and “send Franco down” or whatever.

Gant said, "Just keep Captain Twiste here and the V.A.A.D. components safe. They are your primary concern. I'll go down first. If all is clear, send down Franco's scout team. If there is a problem, start off for the stairs on the far side."

He alternated his attention between the hall ahead and the elevator as Major Gant disappeared over the side. A few second later a horrid squeal—like fingers on a chalkboard—came out of the shaft.

Good going, Major. Way to let everything in this place know where we are.

"We're good," came Gant's voice over the tactical headset, albeit a voice covered in crackling static.

Franco's eyes drifted over to the elevator, waiting for Campion's signal for the advance team to head into the shaft. He hated roping. Back when he was with the Rangers he had slipped when roping out of a Blackhawk and dislocated his shoulder.

Didn't hear the end of that one for months.

To his surprise, Campion directed Twiste toward the rope, going as far as to put a hand on this shoulder and seemingly push him. Franco could not hear whatever it was the two captains discussed, but clearly this was not Gant's plan. Well, at least not as far as Franco had heard.

Nonetheless, he watched in disbelief as Twiste—duffel bag and all—disappeared over the ledge and started down the shaft.

Biggy returned his attention to the hallway ahead.

Whatever it was, it poked out of and then pulled back into one of the open doorways; one of the offices. Franco heard a soft crack, like a footstep on broken glass. In that brief glimpse, his eyes reported something about the size of a child, maybe four feet tall, with what might have been a bipedal, humanoid body, but the lack of light hid any other details.

Instinctively he called out, "Movement!"

Campion: "Biggy! What have you got?"

Franco: "Five meters ahead on the left. In one of those offices."

From behind them, down the hall, came Wells's voice: "Movement behind!"

Galati backed away from the stairwell, shouting, "Multiple targets!"

Sergeant Franco's head swiveled around from Wells, to Galati, to the office door ahead where he had seen movement but saw nothing now.

Major Gant and his pal Twiste got out just in time, didn't they?

Then they came, pouring around the corner guarded by Wells and from the stairwell door from which Sal Galati bid a hasty retreat. A lack of light made their attackers hard to discern, and even when Franco saw what he saw, he did not know what they were.

Shapes. Vaguely humanoid. Like a dozen or so walking—running—shadows. Animals? Machines? His mind did not stop to analyze. Indeed, his thinking process was overwhelmed with a sudden and sharp blast of emotion.

Fear, yes, a healthy dose, but something more. Anger. Disgust. Whatever these things really were, to Benjamin "Biggy" Franco they were rats that needed to be exterminated before they could infect him with their filth.

He raised his automatic shotgun and zeroed in as the mob chased the team into a circle at the center of the hall. Franco fired at one of the living shadows as it approached. It dissipated into nothingness, like a cloud of fog blown apart by a wind gust.

Franco checked the others. Wells fired his SCAR-H into the ground, seemingly shooting nothing but blasting away chunks of the floor one after another, all while screaming in outright terror—not panic, not adrenaline—but fear.

Galati stood alongside Campion, both emptying magazines into the mob of attackers but inflicting no casualties.

What Franco saw next confused him to the point that his mind all but short-circuited.

Moss moved toward him, walking among the approaching shadow-things with the infrared scope on his M4 raised to his eye as if searching his surroundings, but not firing at all. In fact, he was saying something. Something very strange.

"No targets! I've got no targets!"

Then things took a turn for the weirder, and Franco saw it all happen just ten feet in front of him.

One of the creatures walked straight into Moss. Just walked into him. No collision, no impact, just slipping right into him like a ghost possessing a body, except Franco saw Moss disappear, his BDUs, his body armor, his weapons … everything enveloped by a living shadow, eliminating any trace of the man and replacing it with a monster.

Then it came for Biggy. Staggering toward him, a warped limb made out of night reaching out with intent to strangle.

The sergeant fired his USAS-12; three blasts in quick succession. This time the shadow collapsed backwards instead of disintegrating.

They can be killed!

No matter how alien the things appeared, they could be killed and Biggy aimed to do just that; to exterminate every last one of the disgusting things.

He fired and fired again, apparently hitting nothing. But when he turned to look across the hall he saw that Pearson was in trouble. Some creature—some version of these walking shadows—had latched on to the soldier's back and was doing to Pearson what Franco had seen one do to Wells: absorbing him, enveloping him, taking his flesh and turning it into something inhuman.

Sergeant Franco ran across the hall with the hope of prying the attacker free, but it was too late; the monster completed the metamorphosis. What should have been a man was now something else.

"Die, you fucking bastard!"

And Franco let his USAS-12 do the work. The shells tore into the creature. It screamed in a surprisingly human voice, even though Franco saw no mouth or eyes or any other features.

That scream was replaced by a warped hiss as the wounded foe staggered about, side to side.

"Franco!"

He raised his shotgun to finish off the target … then he saw Captain Campion approach and raise his sidearm.

"I got this one, get the fuck out of my way," Franco said, pulling his trigger and blasting the creature one last time. At the same instant, a bullet from Campion's pistol slammed into Franco's shoulder. His left arm went limp. First the barrel then the rest of the heavy weapon dropped from his hands.

Campion shot me! What the f—

He never finished the thought. The creature he had shot … the one that took Pearson's body … exploded in a ball of golden flame. A wall of heat came with a blast of concussion that sent Franco falling backwards, splaying across the floor and sliding into the side wall, his body peppered with some kind of shrapnel and blood pouring from the bullet wound to his shoulder.

Franco remained conscious just long enough to hear Campion issue orders.

"Move! We have to move out of here!"

Then Biggy Franco's eyes closed and his mind turned off for a while.

—

Campion stepped from the folding chair and tugged the rope. The pipe—probably a protective cover for electrical wires—would serve as an adequate anchor.

"That should do the trick," he told Gant.

"Okay, then," Thom said. "It is my turn to go on point."

"Sir?" he and Twiste said in unison.

Campion, however, heard the major's tone, and he also recognized the expression on Gant's face. There would be no talking him out of it, no changing his mind, and the captain thought he knew why. It was apparent from the start that Franco was not happy being sent on point. Why? Well, Captain Campion had long ago given up trying to understand the sergeant. For all his intelligence, Franco seemed a man who let his emotions get the better of him.

Emotion has no place on the battlefield.

"Just keep Captain Twiste here and the V.A.A.D. components safe," Gant said as he reached for the rope. "They are your primary concern. I'll go down first. If all is clear, send down Franco's scout team. If there is a problem, start off for the stairs on the far side."

Despite knowing he had no chance at success, Campion started to try and talk the major out of it, but a new thought pushed away that idea.

Let him go.

Yes, of course, it made sense for Gant to go first. He was the leader, he was important, and there was something else about him … something that set him apart from the others in the unit.

Campion turned away from the elevator shaft and surveyed the corridor. The men were in good position. Yes, there was one soldier—Wells—standing by the secondary corridor that led to the break room near the double doors that opened to the cafeteria. Another man—Salvatore Galati—covered the stairwell, and of course the others—Pearson, Moss, Franco, and, yes, Brandon Twiste, the scientist carrying an equipment bag and trained to operate the V.A.A.D.

A terrible sound—a scream of some sort—reverberated up through the elevator shaft and nearly made Campion jump. Then he realized that he had heard a screech of rusty hinges, probably the elevator roof hatch.

A burst of static crackled in Campion's ear, followed by Major Gant's voice: "We're good."

The equipment must be protected. Get Twiste down there now, everyone else can stay behind for playtime.

Campion motioned for Twiste to go down the rope.

"He said to send the scout team first."

"Get going Doctor," Campion said, putting a hand on Twiste's shoulder and shoving him toward the shaft and the rope. Still Twiste hesitated, standing there with his eyes squinting and his head tilted in what was clearly an expression of confusion.

"I said go; it's playtime."

Campion's words only added to his comrade's confusion, to the point that Twiste physically did as instructed even though his mind obviously struggled with the idea. Of course, Campion sympathized because he was not sure why he had said that, either. It just sort of came to mind.