When he inspects the leg that had been siezed by the alien worm, Soto feels a chill running down his spine. The previously smooth metal looks as if it has been given a once-over by a over-sized cheese grater. There are a series of gashes in the thick plate, and Soto doesn’t even want to know how his leg would have looked had he not worn the ample protection of the power armor.
Then again, he probably didn’t have to imagine it; he thought, remembering the Gajun female Zed that had been their first encounter on this damned planet. After all, her leg had been scraped to the bone.
“How’s the leg?”
Hagen kneels down next to her seated captain, and gazes at the mutilated metal.
“Good. The armor took the damage. The leg’s fine.”
He checks the diagnostics displayed on his helmet’s HUD, and takes a breath of relief.
“No breaches. Still got a hundred percent integrity.”
Hagen nods as Vasquez laughs.
“Good! It would suck to have to put you do-”
Clank
Before even finishing the sentence, he is interrupted by Ulrich smacking him over the back of the head.
“Shut up, Vas. Don’t even say it.”
Vasquez runs his hand over the back of his helmeted head.
“Geez, man..”
Soto gets up on his feet, testing his legs’ stability. He is relieved to find that they remain fully mobile. The monster’s fangs mustn’t have gotten to the inner workings of the complex machine he’s wearing.
“Cut the chatter.”
Looking around swiftly, Soto points out the tall building that they were heading towards.
“There’s our destination. Get your asses in gear and let’s move.”
“So. How do you think these zombies… work?”
Ulrich’s words are soft and quiet, aimed towards the tense medic next to him.
“I don’t know. But I know those worms seem to be involved. I’m guessing it’s parasitic in some way.”
They’re walking on a quiet road filled by stranded hover-vehicles. The scene is very similar to one taken from a 21st century apocalypse movie, and what bothers Soto the most is the silence.
There’s no wind whining, no sound of people anywhere, no birdsong… and no sign of the zombies.
He licks his parched lips gingerly.
“We’ll find out sooner or later. Right now I don’t care. We need to make sure it doesn’t happen to us, or any of our worlds.”
there are muted nods from his soldiers, and Soto can tell the silence is eating at them as much as it is at him.
He is just happy the only sound they make is the sound of their footsteps.
Thank god for internal suit radio communications.
Looking ahead, they see something troubling. Large concrete blocks lined up as to block off access from the road, and surrounding them military vehicles set up in defensive position.
On the concrete, the words “safe zone” are written in galactic common, in large black letters.
“check point coming up.”
Soto can’t see motion from the defensive formation, or anywhere else for that matter.
“Spot any movement?”
Sulieman doesn’t even try to sound positive at their prospects.
Soto sighs and shakes his head slowly.
“That’s a negative. Best to assume it’s been overrun just like the one at the city hall.”
Soto hears the silent cursing of Vasquez.
“shit. It’s like a bad movie.”
Soto chuckles grimly.
“If it is, we’ve had a remarkable lack of mad scientists so far.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“let’s hope that’s what happened here.”
It is Ulrich’s turn to speak up;
“Why?”
“Because then this is a contained situation.”
As they reach the checkpoint, Soto’s suspicions are confirmed. The only signs of the positions’ defenders are a few scattered bodies in apparent military uniform that seemingly chose to take their own lives as the position was overrun rather than succumbing to zombification.
Soto looks down at one of the truly dead defenders.
“It seems the infection needs a intact brain to function. Sulieman, see if you can find any oddities inside our unfortunate friend here.”
The medic nods, setting aside his rifle. He seems excited to do anything other than staring down the barrel of his rifle, even if only for a little while.
The medic crouches down beside the corpse, carefully prodding it a couple of times to make sure that it was indeed dead, and then proceeds to withdraw a medical scanner from his medikit
For a few seconds, the only sound heard was the silent whirr of the medical device.
“Sir. There’s something here.”
He grabs the corpse, and flips it over, exposing an apparent bite-mark on the back of the soldier’s neck.
“There’s an alien organism in the wound. Microscopic. It’s not in our logs. Beyond that it’s dormant, I can’t tell you anything without more specialized equipment.”
Soto nods.
“Take a sample. The facility we’re heading towards is supposed to be a research building. If we can find out what these things are, we might be able to stop them.
The medic nods, and takes the samples as instructed, placing them in a sealed container that is then placed in a plastic bag, which itself is placed in a separate compartment of the medikit.
“All done, sir.”
“Well then. Let’s head through the gates.”
Reaching the steel gates into the ‘safe zone’, Soto feels no doubt as to the fate of those within and their defenders.
The gates are bent out of shape, and a massive hover-truck riddled with plasma burns sits discarded at the gate.
The truck had knocked the gates wide open for the zombies.
What happened next must have been carnage, if the amount of dried blood staining the ground is any indication.
“God damn..”
Ulrich inspects the truck momentarily.
“People do crazy things when desperate. Alien space lizards included.”, Hagen notes somberly.
“and this one probably got a lot of people killed.”
Soto disregarded the conversation between the two marines, and cautiously rounded the vehicle.
As he looks forwards, he can see where the majority of undead seem to have ended up.
Between them and the science building is a sea of undead, pressing forwards as they attempt to approach what has to be the last sanctuary of the living in the city.
“Okay, people. We’ve got zeds. A lot of them.”
Soto is struck by an idea.
“and I know how we’re going to get through. Ulrich! Can you get that truck moving again? We’re going to do a zombie movie classic.”