>> Hellcrawlers

Ancient repairBugs beep, and rattle, back into their holes as we slump into a random maintenance room. Demon leaning hard against the table as we work to seal the doors. Zipper and Kami taking one each, while I ram my shoulder into a heavy crate of tools. Grunting. Shoving. Slamming it into the drone-hatch, and sliding down it.

Then, almost as one, we turn to our [Berserker].

"Hey, like, you alright big guy?"

"Za'dai un....." He rumbles, through barely opened lips. "Good. I am.... good. A moment is what is needed."

We trade looks. "Lemmie see. You too, Kami." I say.

"I'm fine." She grunts, while Demon stares for a second longer.

"Kah. No. I am good. Pain fades. Wounds heal." He slams a fist into his chest. "See. Now better."

"You-" I start, but his serious eyes stop me. Kami avoiding my gaze entirely. "If you says so."

"Zha. I do." He nods, with a slash of that lion tail. Settling down.

And that's it.

I turn. "Alright then." I growl. "We been hit pretty hard. We been done bad. But this ain't over til the fat lady dies of a massive bloody heart attack..... Or however that bloody goes."

"Are you calling me fat?" Kami falters.

"Uh. No?" I blink back at the gaunt girl. "Anyway. We ain't outta this yet. So take five, an' we'll rock out hard." I spin on the spot. "Ah! Polybius! Ya found us!"

"Correct." Says the mess of noise and glitches above us. "Apologies for my absence. Local connectivity is fragmentary. I was forced to hijack a series of pumping-stations, substations, and nodes of The Old Internet."

"Mate! Hey, like, y'know-" He coughs.

"As per your instructions, I have dedicated several nodes to scouring the mainframe. All working videogames will be catalogued, and sent to you, as a first priority."

"Brilliant, mate!" He grins, both thumbs up.

I let off a wry snort. "Any actual intel?"

"Hey, steady on." Kami scoffs at me. "Priorities, here."

"Moon's dataStick yielded scant intel related to our target." The Machine Mind clicks. "However, local servers contain more precise information."

"Show me."

A virtual map of the tower explodes from nothing, shining and blue. A red line snaking from our current position to the assumed target. This spins up toward us - layered by blueprints, images, and from ancient websites. In seconds, we're looking at a full 3D walkthrough. Cameras. Electromagnetic. Traffic reports (crabspiders). Temperature (21°c, in case you're bloody interested). Humidity (dry). And a hundred million other things.

Polybius has weird ideas about the word 'basic'.

I try to grab our target from the air, but it fogs through my hand. The whole mass of information flickering with errors until I back off. My implant hot as flame in the side of my skull.

Polybius regards me with alien eyes that tick with unfathomable clockwork. Meshing and unmeshing in ways that burn my fractured mind. And then the target location drops from the midst of the map, and flattens against the floor. Expanding into a live model built, directly, from their internal cameras.

"And this is where things fall apart." Kami mutters, gently rubbing and flexing her ankle.

We stare at the monster-infested nightmare. Fungal horrors, shambling. Spreading their festering spores. Slithering things loaded with seeds that pulsate and shiver. Twisted creatures eating their neighbours, and growing....

Wrongness. Utter wrongness bleeding up from every image.

"Damn, mate. That's freakish." Zip breathes. "Total devastation."

"Well, yeah?" Kami's pierced eyebrow rise. "What were you expecting? A GMO puppy playpen?"

"Gotta hope, right?" Zip snorts. Triggering a quiet, feline, huff from the back row.

"But, seriously. Are we actually-?"

"It's fake." I realise, very suddenly. Leaning forward.

"What?" Zip blinks, as if coming out of a trance. Kami leaning around him.

"I'll repeat that. What?"

"Look." I point at a doorway. A doorway to nothing. The creature half-way through it reappearing at the bottom of the map. My finger darts again, and another creature. It slides along a hallway, and.... stops existing. We look closer. The carpet of strange mushrooms broken in all kinds of weird places. A kitchen randomly attached to a bathroom cupboard. Another room stretched, awkwardly, so the monsters grow as they cross it.

A thousand little things you could put down to errors. But together.....?

"Shit, you're right....." Kami breathes.

"Polybius-!" Is as far as I get before The Machine Mind rips the map into parts. Adjusting them. Locking them back together, much more neatly. With far fewer voids.

"Shit....." Kami leans back. "It's a cut-n-shut. They taught us how to do these, back at-"

Zip's eyes are widening. "Mate. So. Where the Hell is the real one?"

"Gone." Kami says. "It doesn't exist. It's been replaced. Whatever did this will have cut all lines into and out of the building. It won't just be this one unit. It'll be everything. Which means-"

"Someone" I say, very slowly. "is in there."

We all stare at the image. And then I slash it out of the way.

"Don't matter. Maintenance hatch is our way in."

"Unless they've fricked up that map too."

"Doesn't matter." I repeat. "We play it by ear." I twitch mine. "We win."

"Um...." Tufty whispers, after a second. "Ummm.....!"

"C'mon shorite."

His tail wraps tighter round his legs, and he shrinks into a little hunch. "H-how are we gonna get back??"

I suck breath through my teeth. "....the power o' friendship?"

Zipper snorts, kicking himself up on a metal table. "Hey, like no sweat. Right? We'll work something out, lil mate."

"We will." I state. "Polybius. Work with Zip to find a new route."

"Ah, crap. Well played." Zip mutters.

"We shall win. We shall return." Demon growls, with surly surety and terrible force. Shaking huge horns free of his hood. His serious moment only slightly spoilt by Gremlin's mischievous lil face peeping out of the side. Ruby eyes glimmering with evil as she catches a peak at her favourite 'snack'.

Fingers.

She latches on like a lil murder-limpet, and we all wince in sympathy as he yelps. Flailing and jumping about as the teenie-tiny horror flops like a wet noodle. Giggling all the way.

Thirty seconds of extreme violence later, we manage to pry the 'little darling' off him with our special 'anti-Gremlin warfare kit' - aka treats, and a spatula. We then slap a bunch of GMO plasters over her mouth. And Demon.

Leaving us free to eat the treats.

"So. Game on, mate?" Our [Drone Tek] says, crunching through archaic crisps of some unknown flavour.

I hesitate, eyes flicking between them. Zipper, expectant. Kami, scared and in pain - but trying to hide it. Gremlin a fuming lump. Tufty, hunched over a low crouch. Coiling his nervous tail around scrunched-up feet. Nibbling his biscuit with both hands. And Demon....

Demon gives me the same, solid, unshakeable look he always does. Unmoved by anything around him.

Or, so he'd like you to think.

"Yeah." I nod. "Game bloody on. Let's go."

We clear the opposite door, and step out. Polybius generating a green line on the ground to make up for my implant. I trace it up the silent stairs with Demon at my shoulder. Fungal trees radiating a deep and malicious light, as we skulk our way past an infested parking level. Exiting a sealed maintenance hatch into a tiny staff area, behind a front desk.

The robotic receptionist barely spasms as we vault it. Landing in a vast, velveteen, lobby with pillars so tall it might once been a temple. Art deco lanterns pooling golden light on the red, red, red of the carpet. The colour so deep it seems to suck at the darkness. A crimson hallway, lined with rustling sheets of pale plastic. False walls that weave empty space into a treacherous maze.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Once, it was a lobby. Then a field-hospital for the evacuation.

Now it’s a graveyard.

Possibly ours.

“Zip. Get those bees in the air.” I breathe, as we crouch on the edge of that abyssal dark. Fingers close to the trigger. Eyes tracing across medical symbols from a long-gone age.

"Supplies?" Kami breathes.

"If we're lucky...." I keep my nerve steady. There’s dry blood slashed up one of the plastic walls - a little too fresh, for my liking. A few bullet-holes in one of the sheets.....

Tufty swallows, touching Demon's tail - but yanking his hand away. "I c-c-an..... I can....."

"It'll be fine." I breathe. "We ain't stupid."

"But...."

"Let's find a wall." I mutter. Slipping past the wide, inviting, mouth of the field hospital. A small swarm of Zipper's bees swirling up and over the sheets as I creep close to them. My steps are light and carefully placed. Touch down my little toes, then roll inward to spread the weight. I get low to it. I put one hand on the ground, and slide my gun under plastic.

"Clear, mate."

I slice open the thick plastic, and slip through. Cautiously. Into the little make-shift ward. Stepping over sleeping bags, and torn-open bones. And…. claw marks. Wild rips in the carpet. And the plastic.

The blood licked away. The skulls broke-open.

I turn on the spot, and frown. "Attacked from every angle. All at once." I whisper. "Eaten alive…. "

Like we will be, if we aren't quick, quiet, and careful.

We dodge the fallen, and slash our way into a tiny office. Unveiling an empty chair, caked in dust. A merge desk. And an open view of the hallway, so quiet and dead it stills the heart.

It's a night station. For a nurse or a guard.

I shiver, and rip my eyes away. Memories flickering.

Kami tips her head out the hallway. "Poor lines of sight."

"Weren't set up by army, then." I mutter, turning back to the desk. Carefully, noting the lack of.... anything. No personality. No pictures. Nothing, except a small glassy device - which Kami quickly snags to sell.

My eyes flick across the shifting plastic of the hallway, one last time, and then I cut us an exit. Gremlin leaping herself onto my helmet to peep through the hole as I do. Straining forward and blinking her huge, curious, eyes. I shake her off, with a jerk of panic, and hop through. Into a massive jumble and tumbling mess of torn luggage and burst holdalls. Shredded clothing, toys, and keepsakes scattered in every direction.

There's..... so much of it.

A doll's head bounces and skitters away from my foot as I drop to all fours. Eyes flicking across the formerly neat stacks. Unwilling witness to a thousand little lives. The broken guitar, its strings ripped open. The spilt handbag, leaking its contents. A lipstick. A tiny bear.

A boy's army play outfit, tossed to the side. Mangled. Chewed.

A tin soldier caught in an actual war.

Kami's eyes shift from cool focus to insane rage. Flickers of anger that sparking through her mask, as if to set the whole pile alight. "They thought they were going to be safe." She whispers. Eyes lingering on a fragment of dress. A shoe. A formal tie, still half done up like a noose. Ready, waiting, to be slipped around a dead man's neck.

"We all kinda do." I whisper, as the world glitches. "Then we find we ain't."

"Can we go? Please? I can.... smell things....." Tufty hugs himself, and shivers at the core of the huddle. "Bad things...."

Zipper blinks slowly, and looks away. Nodding. "Yeah, like, I ain't up for looting this. Y'know?"

“Yes.” Kami clutches her wrists with hard fingers. “Just…. Just, let’s…. Let's go.”

I bounce out across the wreckage, and pause. Sniffing, quietly, at the air. I didn't want to say it, but Tufty is right. Beneath the must, and decay, there's something else. Something alien and unplaceable. Yet familiar.

It's getting stronger.

A shadow breaks cover, and I whip my SMG toward it. Catching Gremlin in the crosshairs - hopping from stack to stack, and snuffling quietly. She digs at one, and chirps happily.

"Gremmie! No." I hiss, flicking a hand at her.

"Tastysss foodsss?" She chirps again. Hopping on the spot.

The whole pile shifts.

"Shhhh. C'mon...." I whisper. Hopping from briefcase to bag, as the others circle her. Demon scooping the tiny girl with some hesitation.

"Shit, mate. I think I smell it too." Zip mutters, Kami frowning at the rest of us.

"It's gettin' stronger." I admit, after a moment. "Like musky acid, and....."

Tufty freezes, like he saw a predator, and we all go still.

"What is it?" I mouth. But the cat is frozen. Green eye wide, and flickering, as the pile of fabric cases slip and shift beneath us. So very, very, slowly. My eyes slashing, out, across the vast space. Snagging on towers of cases. On corners, and cover. "Shit. I whisper. It's a trap."

And that's when I hear it.

A thing with too many legs, stirring in the black.

Clickaty-click. Tap tap tap.

I check my footing, and gesture to the others. Sliding backwards, slow, and careful. Our breath, and touch, the only sound in that infinite silence. Ears and eyes twisting in every direction. "Multiple." I whisper. "We got multiple."

A little way ahead, the cases jump and shudder. Some bags sliding. Others bowing upward, and staying there, as something huge presses its way beneath the stack. Jolting my nerves with every subtle shift of fabric.

"Go." Kami whispers. "Go go go."

I shift a leg back, and the cases slide and skitter away. Too soft in all the wrong places. Too ready to slide and tip. And we're already half-way across. I could make it. Tufty, and Gremlin, too. But Demon is heavy, and Kami can't jump to save her life. She's too awkward. Her body unbalanced by too many arms - forcing her into a slow, spidery, crawl as the cases jump like happy children around us.

An avalanche shunts the ground beneath me, forcing my legs and arms apart. I roll, and cases slam down upon me. The wave of destruction splitting to rend the whole pile apart. Endless, oily-dark bodies, bursting from it in three different places. Glossy-dark things, wriggling the air with billions of tiny little legs. Waving and grasping, as they rise.

And rise. And rise.

Long, and slithering, and too fast to be real. Four massive mandibles, per mouth. All champing on spit and bile and air as they lock eyes with me. Eager, and hungry. As vicious light burning within randomly bulging eye-clusters.

And then they bow their twisted heads, and fall upon us.

Hammer fast.

I kick a case into the air, and roll as fast as I can. My whole team scrambling as fourth and fifth waves blast, up, through the surface of the pile. Like feelers. Each one a vast, worming, thing with too many venomous tongues…..

"WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY!?" Our [Sniper] screams.

“Hellcrawler!!” I choke. “IT'S A HELLCRAWLLER!!!”

"Wait, like, singular-"

“That’s…. all…. one…. creature?” Kami freezes as her mind finally comprehends the magnitude of what we face. Demon leaping, fully onto the leviathan insect. Ripping at legs and feelers in a terrifying rage. His mind lost in an instant as he goes utterly berserk. That frees me enough to spin onto my back, and hammer out a quad-shots at the head smashing toward me.

Punching bullets through its fungal eyes.

It rears back, in terrible silence, and the second head smashes into my chest. All legs, and biting, and mouth, and globular eyes. I plunge claws into them, and it jerks away. Knocking me sideways as a third takes sudden notice. Turning upon me, as four and five burst fully from the collapsed luggage.

Limbs of a single beast, moving together.

Rattling their too-many legs. Wrapping their hideous bodies to block our escape.

Everything after that is a fractured whirl of images. Tufty panicked and leaping about, half way to fleeing. Demon tearing his way through the body of one as two others slam his back in turns. Kami taking cover beneath a tumbled stack, fighting to assemble her rifle.

No teamwork. No plan.

My eyes snap to the line drawn by Polybius. A direct route, right from my nose to the target. But do we risk it? What if it runs us into even more trouble?

"Spook. I have infiltrated the cameras-"

"SHIT! SHIT!" I scream as the mandibles grab Tufty. Yanking him up into the air, and shaking him like a toy.

Kami's huge rifle goes BAM as she ignites a rocket. Wrath and fire blooming from the sides as it spins up the smooth-bore barrel and snaps toward the neck of the Hellcrawler. With railgun assistance, that would be it. The thing would explode, and we'd be down one head of this horrific hydra.

Except, it isn't.

She didn't have time.

"Spook. Listen."

The unpowered shot slams itself into the creature, and stops. The massive thing stilled, suddenly. Yet there isn't a single sound as it drops Tufty into the pile. Demon rushing to scoop the dazed kid, even as two other heads come smashing down where he lay. Shaking the floor.

“Lifts.” I choke. “LIFTS!”

Gremlin slashes past my face, in a trail of mad giggles. Biting. Clawing. Ripping open eyes. I fire again. and again, as we change course. Cutting between stacks of luggage that still stand tall. The thing a boiling mass of half-blinded heads as it fights to keep us in its circle. Kami's armour flashing bright with gold as she snaps out of existence. Her ghostly image a jarring mess of static and angles that-

I rip my eyes away to fire at the huge, leggy, thing swarming down at my face. Smashing its face open with a heavy, charged, shot.

But it's ready. It tanks the bullets, and grabs me by the waist.

"NO! NO-"

The world twists up and away from my grasping feet. The fallen hospital a distant maze, far beneath me. Crawling with strange shapes. Kami is screaming. Demon a manic blur, leaping off the hard shells of suitcases. Then, everything turns blurry and confusing. My head snapping backward and forward - protected by the adaptable brace om my neck. I can't scream. I can't breathe., its got me so tight.

Then, a green streak hits me from beneath - and I'm falling. Tufty clamped around me.

I scream. The world a white-hot whirl of-

I hit the suitcases, and bounce. Tumbling. Rolling. Tufty letting go, as warnings flare across my vision. Impact. Impact. Impact. I roll to a dizzy stop, and suck in air. My thoughts compacting to a sullen bead of infernal heat.

Rage. Pure, cold, and hot enough to melt your insides.

All of my claws grip suitcase. Toes. Fingers. Clenching tight as the Hellcrawler's heads sway to a stop in midair. Confused. Its many fat bodies sniffing for meat as the others go still.

Because they know what it just did.

I crick my neck. I settle my eyes. Tossing my SMG to Tufty.

And then I whisper it.

“Omega Protocol: Spook.”

A click. A pwissssh.

And white-hot nitro-glycerine FURY explodes through my veins. A madness. A wild, incalculable, feeling of absolute terrifying clarity. The whole world sluggish, and jagged, around me.

And so very, very, very, simple.

My head snaps to a point roughly central to the heads, and I kick off the suitcase so hard it bursts. My hands hit another, and I flip into the air. Bouncing from point to point.

It sees me coming.

It won't help.

Nothing will.

I am unstoppable, and that damn thing is IN MY WAY.

I backhand one of its heads, and it ruptures from the force. I claw another, and the eyes pop like fat berries. And then I'm past them. Flipping from case to case as I target the thickest body, with the most horrible - wiggly - legs.

I hit it like a fist through a bag of guts. Bursting fluids and carnage as I literally tear my way into its scuttling belly. Finding no bone, no organs, only a hollow throat lined with armoured shell and muscle.

I rip at it. I tear.

I scream. And I rend my way through. Finding myself in a pulsating tunnel of death. A squeezing, shifting, rolling tube designed to suck me down and down into a the underworld.

I drop my last frag in it, and run.

Behind me, the other heads recoil and then slam upon me. Heavy and thick.

I rip at them. I make bloody wounds.

Demon by my side - so wild it's like he took a shot of Omega himself. The others barely a blur of afterthought as I try to rip my way out through the back of its head.

A low, sudden, boom shakes the fallen stacks. A flicker of light up the throats of the beast. And then, slowly, two of the heads simply fall over and die. The whole creature thrown into a chaos of smashing and flailing and skittering and legs. And legs. And legs. And-

I roll myself free and Zipper grabs my arm. Kami the other. "We have to bloody go!" She screams. "SHIT! Did you give Tufty a gun!? Are you insane!?"

"KILL." I snarl, with vicious joy. "RIP IT APART!! AN' ANY BASTARD WHO TRIES T'STOP ME!!"

"Mate! No! We gotta go! Pol worked it out!"

"KILL! BURN! BREAK! KILL!"

"Mate! Like, that's the brood mother!"

"PISS OFF! I GOTTA KILL! I GOTTA-"

"No! You don't get it! It's gonna-"

Quit suddenly the three remaining heads rear back to let out a long, eerie, whistle like the final note of shattering glass. A note that goes on and on and on until I feel my ears numb, and my mind fog. As if the thing never, ever, ever needs to breathe.

And then.... from out in the maze.....

....a thousand shrilling wails answer back.

>>><<<