>> Many Little Legs

## battleTek System Self Diagnostic: Complete ###

WARNING :: [Heartrate] of user [Spooky_Hardass] is [irregular]!

WARNING :: [Irregular vitals] may cause damage to L.M.G. Property!

WARNING :: Damage to L.M.G. Property is an act of Treason!

## Glory to The Great Leaders! Glory to the neoSoviet Empire! ##

My aim jerks and shivers as liquid ice rattles in my veins. The plastic maze a blur as I force my malfunctioning body to run. Colours smearing into a mess of chaos. Faces twisting into a mad, rictus, blur of features. I stumble, and the others catch me. Heart stuttering. Cold fire eating my insides. The SMG a sweaty, guilty, weight in my freezing hands.

Flashing hot, in sudden bursts, as the RAGE burns itself out in fits.

We pile into a corner of an empty ward, behind a desk, as the plastic walls come alive with hideous shapes. Hellcrawlers. Big as cars, or even trucks. Each one a mass of tangled bodies filling the entire hallway. Creeping under sheets. Sniffing at the air. Ever silent, except when they call to the wounded brood mother.

It's still not dead.

"It's all on you. Find us a way." Kami mouths to Zipper, as I fight my chattering teeth. Sinuous heads twisting knots of shadow against the thin walls. His bees rise as one, and spread into a humming blanket above us. Unveiling a tangled mess of star-shaped Hellcrawlers spreading in every direction.

"How smart are they, y'think?" He mumbles back, and I gesture to them.

Only one way to find out.

I grab a gnawed human bone, and toss high over plastic-sheet walls. It tumbles. Tumbles. And-

A nasty THWACK as it hits a plastic wall.

Way too many heads whip around, and the nightmare things outside.... slide..... away. Followed by numerous others. But the damned things are fluid as Hell, and not all of the Hellcrawler heads are taking the bait.

Some just sit there.

Evil, and sinuous, and wrong - and waiting….

I toss another bone after the first.

Silence, this time. Must have hit carpet. I throw again, and again. Getting a couple more hits.

Many blunt, bulging, heads jerk to follow the sound. Little legs thumping carpet in an evil rhythm as that whole freakish heap of creature swirls along the plastic passageway. Mandibles chattering and snipping. Compound eyes flickering with hideous glints of mad intent as they nose beneath our walls.

We slip out out the actual door of the room - into a rustling hallway, barren of life. Old lights burning circles of deep and vivid red into the soft and dusty carpets. I shiver in my armour, wiping tears of frozen sweat from my chin as we creep past medical symbols from an ancient age. Plastic rattling behind me, as if shaken by unseen hands. Ahead, as monsters tap-tap-tap against the walls.

My ears focused, keenly, on the rising susurrus of many-legged movement.

I break into a shaky run as the others drag me. Dodging billowing sheets, torn loose by the monsters, as Zipper chants directions like a spell. Guiding us round corners. Under flaps. And away from the roiling, nightmare, tangles of bodies and legs. Tiny star-shaped Hellcrawlers slowing up the sides of pillars, and sheets.

We stop at a corner, and peer around it. Breathless, and quiet. Eyes darting as a massive, tangled, shape floods the intersection ahead. Unfolding in a leggy mess of long bodies and gleaming eyes.

"Back. Back." I hiss, and we slip away as the thing spills outward to fill the space around it. Almost swirling, yet somehow delicate. It must be how they hunt.....

"Lifts ahead-d-d. One h-hundred yards." I chatter, shuffling my hunched weight. The colours of the world shifting, strangely, as we circle round the thing in the intersection. Quietly. Carefully. Pacing ourselves, and keeping low. Ready to run, or shoot, at the least opportunity.

"Spook, mate, you doin' okay? You ready to, like....."

"Fine." I hiss through clenched fangs. "Never better."

"More coming." Demon warns, with a low snort of distain.

"Their senses aren't great, at least." Kami whispers. "They seem to feel with their legs, mostly."

"Don't count on it." I grunt. "There. Lifts. C'mon." We slide through the last wall, and out into a wide, bench-filled, space. A row of golden doors gleaming with etched reliefs. All trees, and shadowed woods. My team slinking along the edge of it as we circle around to-

I stop. Suddenly.

"Looks good, mate." Zip breathes.

"No. Can't ya feel it?" I twist my head around. "We're being followed."

"Dash for it?" Kami asks.

"No. Somethin' feels wrong." I murmur back. Still fighting to find my legs, but steadily winning. "Slow. Steady. Eyes open. Tufty, with me."

"O-okay Spook." He blinks as Kami's eyes fix, tight, on the kid. Fingers flexing. Forcing him to shiver and lower his eyes.

"Be careful." She warns me, that huge rifle humming with imminent violence. "No handing him live weapons. He's lucky he dropped it." Her eyes burn. "Very. Lucky."

"Shut it. It was bloody locked." I hiss, whispering away in a curl of tail and darkness. Our catboy a nervous, shivery, lump in my shadow as we thread through the rows of benches. It's a damn shame we couldn't hit the supplies room, what with the current massive hunt on.

But maybe on the way back, when it's settled down a bit.....

I shiver again. The sensation of eyes chilling my frozen neck. Numb fingers tight on the SMG as I fight to keep calm. Every step a quiet breath of impact on the dusty carpet. The sense of eyes growing, and growing with every instant. Senses jarring inside me as ears and eyes swivel in opposite directions. As if that crawling, creeping, hideous thing is reaching its wriggling legs toward me..... Even now.....

But nothing..... nothing.....

Am I imagining it? Did the [battleStim] make me paranoid, or-?

A sudden clatter of light slashes dark, like an old film running off its reel. My whole body jerking, as my head snaps around. Facing the source, right as a brash and terrifyingly familiar voice roars out across the vast space. Thick with terror, and pain, and urgency. My wild eyes fixating on something so utterly improbable I could never have seen it coming.

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"Badger.....?" I whisper, as the kid jumps and screams and waves. His face caked in muck and blood. His armour festooned by wires, and tiny blinking lights.

"SPOOK!! SPOOK!" He bellows, waving hard with his clunky robotic hand.

"What....." I breathe. "WHAT."

No. Not waving. Pointing.

Pointing-

I leap, and slam into Tufty. Carrying him into a blind, bone-rattling, roll as the second biggest Hellcrawler I've ever seen crashes down upon us. Its thick, tangled, core landing exactly where we were. Crushing benches. Pounding plastic plants into bright green bits.

But it's way, way, too big. The splayed bodies encircling us. Slamming inward. Wrapping us in its horrible, leggy, coils as gleaming segments roll in crushing waves. Shining and pulsating and flexing. Hitting us from both sides, then parting to hammer us again.

Trying to stun us. Trample us. Break all our bones.

But my Dominion 5 armour shifts and flexes with impact. Leaving us to stagger and fight for balance, finding it as the monster's coils swaying open again. And I realise I've got no choice. We are in deep, deep, crap and Tufty is frozen. Overwhelmed. I.... I need to get him out, right now. And I can't let my fear get in the way.

What bloody good is terror if I let him die?

No thought. Just do it.

I grab him under the armpits, and jump onto the shining wax-slick back of the nightmare star. Leaping again, and again, as a huge purplish head roars down on me. Forcing me to bounce and skip through the chaos of twisting bodies. Jaws slamming right in my face as it tries to pincer our damn heads off.

I boost myself clear, and inhale a scream. Hurling the cat away from me.

And there I hang, suspended in whistling air. Tail blown out being me. Wind roaring through fingers and toes, and ears, and everything. Staring out over the great, mangled, maze of the medical camp as hundreds of monstrous star-shapes swirl toward us. Rippling under the plastic walls, and up the pillars. Charging across the ceiling, like the massed forces of a demon hoard.

“SPOOK!!! MONSTERS!!!” Badger screams in renewed confusion and terror. As if seeing them all again, for the very first time. I feel my breath catch, as I spin. Head over legs, in a twist of tail. But I've got no time to even think, as feet impact the cool plastic pillar and my SMG snaps to my hand. The voices of my team smashing through the fog of battle to blare bright and loud in my ears.

"GET!" I scream, kicking off the pillar into a spin above the creature. Upside-down. Gun aimed high above my head, as it passes beneath me. "TO!" Four bullets ride a wave of rage and Hellfire from the weapon. "THE LIFTS!"

BOOM.

The rising head meets rail-assisted rocketry, and bits of it splatter. The mouth open wide, and silently screaming, as it reaches to snag me. Flailing its billions of legs as I fire again. Trailing curls of smoke and rage as I kick off one of its heads to hit the second pillar. My gun a blasting hate and death upon it as I spin towards a third. Feeling and hearing, rather than seeing, the others rally to the battle beneath me.

LMG ‘Red Glory’ SMG :: 344/440

Kick number four, and the vile abomination wraps its many bodies around the pillars. Crawling up them, like some insane elevator from the darkest and most twisted corner of Hell. Demon hauling an inert Badger under one arm as he claws and kicks. Zipper firing tight, controlled, bursts at a flat angle. Keeping his fire away from me.

“DEMON! ZIPPER! TUFTY!” I scream in absolute desperation, drawing the Hellcrawler. "YOU'RE ON DEFENCE! KAMI!! GET READY! WE’RE KILLING THIS BASTARD!”

"DEEEEEEEEEFFeeeence." The Hellcrawler crows in a sudden, uncanny, mimicry of my voice. Every one of us stumbling.

"Oh." I whisper. "Shit."

But it's too late.

I kick off a writhing millipede as another come slavering down upon me - mandibles slashing and grinding.

"Spook." Kami breathes in my ear, over comms. "I need a shot on the core."

My eyes narrow. "Got it."

I jink sideways, smashing a fat neck aside with my gun as I plunge into the beast. Fighting downward, in panic, as it pushes me ever up and up - toward the distant, ornate, ceiling. It’s too damn close for rockets. Fear choking me inside. The chills still earing my skin.

But I know exactly what Kami is thinking.

I dive for the inner core of the monster - the roiling heart of the star.

It follows me, and I skid off its sides. Its belly. Gremlin a wild, red shape - blasting past my face. Doing pinprick damage, but sending the thing wild as it tries to snatch at her. Demon a golden blur of violence as he smashes his way through caprice and gore.

Ahead, I see it. A heavy knot of disgusting legs and joined bodies, all melted and fused together at random. And, as the coils begin to implode upon us, I realise that getting in was never the problem. I bounce off its loops at hideous speed, rattling down to the very centre of the madness. Bounding and flipping and tying it in knots.

Or trying to.

The damn thing is smart, and it’s freakin’ everywhere. Closing me in.

“Oh shit! It’s going for the death-roll!” I yell. Flipping over a thick body to escape its crushing, wiggling, jittering, embrace.

“Spook! Come on! I don’t have line of sight!”

“I’ll give you a mark!” I choke back. Bashing a snatching head aside. Firing into the mouth of another.

“It might not punch through-”

“Just! Bloody! TRY!” I scream as mandibles crunch my left elbow, and swing. Cracking armour. I stab my combat-knife right into its face, and twist away. More bodies slamming into the spot I occupied.

Legs are tiring. It's frenetic, up here. Wild, panicking, adrenaline in my blood as the floor looms wide and heavy. Crawling with star-shaped things that should not exist. Abominations unto everything that is.

And then, suddenly. I see it.

An opening. Right into the boiling heart.

I grab a flare from my belt. One of only three.

And then I fall.

“Zpook! Badger is in lift!” Demon crackles, but I'm way too committed. And this thing is way too smart.

I hit the core. Hundreds of smaller bodies writhing around me, like offshoots.

“SPOOK!”

“Flare!” I scream, popping the cap off the sticky end. The whole monster imploding in on my position as I stab it in deep. The smaller bodies screaming and writing. “NOW! Aim just below it!”

And I pull the ripcord.

Dropping through the masses of biting, slashing, groping, coiling forms. My whole head jarring with thunderous noise as vicious jets of roaring blue fire scream from the side-vents of her gun. Ending in a massive bloom of death from the barrel. A line of light tracing the distance between her and the Hellcrawler's core.

BOOM!

The rocket bursts through monster, exploding weird fluids in every direction. The whole horde of monsters jerking in its wake - including the one Demon has by the throats.

But then, nothing.

"Shit! Dud!" I scream.

"No, you idiot! Move! Move!" She roars, as I plunge through the coils. Suddenly, horribly, aware that I was far higher up than I thought. Demon hurling the smaller Crawler aside as he slams in on all fours to catch me. My whole world shrinking to him, and the floor, as I panic-fire grapples.

He leaps toward me.

I reach down to him.

And then Kami triggers the explosive round, and the king of The Hellcrawlers comes apart like a puzzle. Massive bodies shielding me from the dim flash as a second BOOM rolls across the hall. The panic it causes arriving almost before the blast, as huge sections of the colossal creature rain down around me.

My arm jerks as the grapple takes, tearing free of my suit. The armour locking to prevent it taking my damn arm off. I hit the rising Demon like a wrecking-ball, and I suddenly realise his plan. "N-"

He smashes, back first, into the floor. With me on top.

Right as the monster falls around us.

Huge chunks of it detonate with a splattering roar as Tufty bounds in. Grabbing for my hand.

I recoil from both of them, and curse. Then I grab one of Demon's arms, and he gets the other. The two of us dragging him, fast as we can, as the carpet turns slick and dreadful. Masses of gunk splattering us both as we dodge, and weave, and the thing above comes utterly undone. Me firing wild eignt-shot [Burst]s into the closing horde.

"LIFT! LIFT!" I yell as the other Hellcrawlers go absolutely wild. Half descending on their fallen master in a frenzy of feeding. The others still rolling toward us, even as parts of the creature smash the smaller ones flat.

Even as we kill them.

Two seconds of frantic dragging, and I duck as Zipper skids in on the side. Purple blood spraying as he carves a massive fan of fire through the monster behind us. More coming as he guards our retreat. Kami skidding in on the other side, cursing her goopy boots as she fires off her remaining pistols. Plastic sheets falling as the core of the Hellcrawler King falls from on high.

Still thrashing its death-throws as the others begin to feed.

I fire again, and again. Leggy bodies torn open as I fire behind me, again and again. All the way, until we pile into the lift. Slamming Badger to the wall as I hit the button in a machine-gun beat. Dropping to my knee as me and Zip and Kami empty everything we’ve got into the things that are coming. My mag extension snapping off with a ping as I drop bellow 220. Filling the lift with rocket-smoke as it finally snips shut on all that's pouring toward us.

Silence rules for a single second, and then the horde hits metal. Bucking against the door. Clawing. Scrabbling. Ripping at their friends. Spitting. Biting. Slashing with strange legs, as the lift carries us down.

And down.

Down, and down, into the quiet bowels of The Undercity.

Leaving us, in rattling quiet.

And then, as one, they freaking scream.

A single piercing note. Endless and hideous, and howling. Echoing down the shaft.

Carried away from us, by the plunging lift, until it's nothing but a whisper.

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