[Warbinger Returns Arc]
Chapter 13
Fighting Together
Richard slid the ceiling hatch open and climbed the ladder out. Wind buffeted his face, forcing him to shield it with his arm as he looked around. Hometoll was rushing by, but it was blurry and distorted, like a melted painting. He took a deep breath. If they went quickly, they might not have too much trouble. Quick, but steady.
His heart was pounding. Steady, he reminded himself, and climbed out onto the roof. Immediately he felt the wind threaten to blow him over. He stayed on his hands and knees and approached the edge that faced the next car. The metal was dark grey and smooth, without much in the way of handholds. To make matters worse the roof of the train was gently curved. One wrong step could send him sliding off.
Geoff climbed up behind him and the wind blasted dust off of him. He fell back and rolled across the roof, but once he fell flat the wind lost its hold on him. He waited for him to get closer before moving further. Between the wind and the train, there was no way to hear each other, so he hoped they wouldn’t need to.
It was a long gap to the next side. Once Geoff was crouched next to him they nodded to each other and climbed down. Bars lined the walls every metre all the way down, and made for decent handholds, but climbing up would be hard. There was less wind between the cars, but Richard decided against jumping across. He reached out and a spectral hand shot forth to grab a bar on the other side. He let go with his other hand, and slammed roughly into the opposite side as it pulled him across.
Geoff eyed him with a look of jealousy. But Richard wasn’t going to make Geoff jump either. With a quickness born of urgency he pulled the cable that bound them over the bar and looped it through itself. Geoff stared at him with concern when the cable went taut.
Richard beckoned. “Come on!” He wasn’t convinced Geoff would hear him, but he’d know what he meant. His friend let out a deep sigh and jumped. The moment he was in the air Richard reached for him and grabbed his harness with the Grasping Glove. Geoff’s weight threatened to tear him off the wall but as he endured the strain he was able to draw him over.
“That’s messed up!” Geoff said in his ear, and climbed onto the roof of The Multistadium.
Richard was optimistic that that was the hard part. He was keeping his fear under control, all they had to do was shuffle across, make one more jump, and open the hatch into the Storage Car. And pray Warbinger wasn’t in there, too.
“I SEE YOU,” came a voice in his head, like a scream frayed around the edges.
He lay flat on the roof as his mind was racked with pain. Everything went dark. Was he dead? He turned his head, and Geoff was there in the dim light that came only from the train itself. Concrete and stone rushed by around them. Not dead; the tunnel.
Ooze boiled out of the roof and formed a tentacle-like limb. He heard a thunk to his right and a fiery blast scattered bits of black goo. Richard started to move quickly. He didn’t know how long it would be gone. Geoff was close by when the top of the train burst open and a black mass crashed into the tunnel above. It tore out boulders of stone and concrete that crashed across the steel roof.
Richard rolled aside as the roof he’d just occupied was demolished. But he was too close to the edge. The smooth curve of the roof gave him no purchase to hold himself on. He slid over the side and barely caught the second bar on the way down. He let his legs slam the wall deliberately, so when his weight tore his grip free they slid behind the third bar and caught him.
He arched back uncomfortably, and felt his hair brush the passing wall. Bending his waist he brought himself up enough to take hold of the bar above him. Metal twanged below him, and he looked down to see both his tethers severed. There was no time to wonder what happened to Geoff; an explosion above told him everything.
Richard unclipped the broken cables and let them fall. He was light without Sparlyset on his back; he could make the climb across. But he wouldn’t go up and give Warbinger another target, and Geoff someone else to worry about. He pulled out the Painkiller and fired it once. Its booming shower of pellets would let Geoff know he was fine.
Every few metres he had to stop and collect himself. He shut his eyes, he took deep breaths, and then he moved. By the explosions above, Geoff was keeping pace. He might even be a little ahead.
As he neared the end, another appendage sprouted from the side and battered the tunnel wall, pelting him with stone. He fired a Warning Shot into it, but it did little but make it twitch with amusement. He had to count on Geoff to have heard the shot or seen the flash. He climbed closer.
It slammed the side of the train, trying to reach him. He shot it again, and moved closer. The limb morphed into a hand with eyes for fingerprints. The wall scraped against it, tearing its flesh and spraying dark blood into the air. Even as it was shredded by the wall it released foul rays of black light from its eyes that rippled across the steel train. The metal bent, suddenly wobbling like paper from his weight. He had to hold on with his elbows, but he inched closer.
An explosion sounded above, and Richard knew it had to be then. It had to be when Geoff was safe on top. So he moved closer, right under the sinister dark palm that was flapping like a flag as it beat against the edge of the tunnel. Flames erupted from behind it and it was blasted from the train. Richard lost his grip, and as he fell, he saw Geoff on the roof, holding out his hand. He reached for it. The projection of his hand found Geoff’s, but his friend slid off the roof from his weight. Geoff’s arm caught one of the bars and he screamed in pain, but held his grip. Richard flew up to him and caught his hand.
“Damnit, Geoff! Your arm’s dislocated!” Richard moved up beside him and shoved his arm in front of his friend. “Hold on to my back!”
Geoff reached over his shoulder and held him under his arm. As Richard moved to climb up, he felt his friend’s legs squeezing his waist. He’d be easier to hold than Sparlyset, but he was much heavier.
The Grasping Glove helped him hold his grip under the extra weight, and the moment he was on the roof he sprinted for the next car. His foot landed on the edge. The point of no return. He aimed his grip at the hatch handle on the other side and jumped with all his strength. He pulled so hard he almost dislocated his own shoulder, but his feet planted firmly on the other side.
Warbinger cackled loudly in his head. He tried to ignore it and twisted the hatch open. Geoff slid down first and unclipped his tether. When they were both in he pulled the hatch shut.
“Shit.” Geoff cursed. “What the hell.” Richard approached him. “Nah man, give me a second.” There wasn’t time, He took his arm and popped it back into his socket, earning a pained yell from Geoff and a few stomps of his feet.
“We don’t know if it’s in here,” Richard reminded him. “We have to be ready.”
Not that Richard was ready either. He let his shaking legs take him to the ground and sat there catching his breath for a minute.
“What car is this?” Geoff asked. “Storage?”
“Yeah.”
Richard turned on the radio and set it to MAINTENANCE 2. “This is Richard and Geoff, HDF, anyone on the line?”
“You two… still alive?”
“We made it to Storage.” Richard stood up and approached the elevator. “Any word out of here?” He hit the button to call it.
“Not… they reported an intruder.”
Richard frowned, lowering the radio to speak to Geoff. “They didn’t tell us that.”
Geoff shrugged. “Maybe maintenance didn’t tell management?”
The elevator rattled to a stop and they squeezed in. Richard checked the other channels, but except for some of the staff channels organising the retreat, they were quiet, and their messages barely came through..
“Lamet says she thinks things are going well, and so far Warbinger hasn’t spread from The Multistadium on that side.” Geoff reported.
“You’re speaking to Lamet? How?”
“She said it’s a spell of the Rite of Sharing. I think she’s the only one in her village with that Rite.”
“Damn,” Richard replied. “She must have got it on one of her adventures.”
“I think if your girlfriend had it, you’d know.”
“Don’t tease us, Geoff. Just because it’s not like you and Beatrice doesn’t mean it’s not real. Besides, by my count I have saved her once, and she’s saved me twice.”
“Not bad for one day.” Geoff laughed as the elevator shook and the doors slid open. “But you gotta get that count up if you want something as real as us!” He laughed and stepped out.
“You mean me and you, or you and Bea?”
Geoff scanned the room. Richard stood next to him. It was dark, lit only by orange emergency lights on the walls and shelf corners. The heavy shelves seemed to go all the way to the ceiling, but it was too dark that high up to tell. “Either or,” he replied quietly.
They kept close to the wall and walked towards the centre first, where the tunnel back through to The Multistadium would be. Spotlights on a structure near the middle of the car pulsed, flashing long shadows across the warehouse at regular intervals as if struggling to remain lit. Warning lamps spun their hazy red light through the dark in the far corners.
When they reached the tunnel, Geoff approached the opening with his MGS ready to fire. The tunnel was sealed.
“These close? I guess they didn’t have time on the other side.” Geoff said.
“Yeah well, something still got through.”
Now that they knew what would be behind them, they followed the tram rail. There were mountains of crates and boxes all around them, stacked in between the towering shelves. It reminded him of alleys in the city core. In the distance Richard saw an enclosure swaddled in red warning light where cars were carefully parked in neat rows. The two brands he recognized were expensive.
“Should we get our lights out?” Geoff asked.
Richard gave him a palm-down without thinking. “No… something might sneak up on us.” It was bad enough their boots tapped audibly on the metal ground with each step. Anything in hiding knew they were there already, and turning on their flashlights would kill their peripheral vision. He stopped when a green shine caught his attention from the corner of his eye. It was a type of barrel he recognized.
“See this?” he said. “Remember this stuff?” He grabbed one by the top and swung it around and stood it between them. “Cement foam.”
“Yeah, we used that to seal the tunnels when we rescued Toy Guy.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Richard nodded. “It’s disgusting and reeks like chemicals but it might be useful.”
“You think it can hold Warbinger?”
“One of the little bits of him, maybe. What do you think?”
Geoff looked through the darkness around them. “It’s a better idea than shooting it.”
He rolled the barrel back onto the shelf. There was no point dragging it around until they knew how they would use it… and what they were up against.
As they walked, Richard heard a footstep to his right and froze. They came near the centre of the train car where a large loading station for the tram was lit only by the edges of spotlights aimed away from it. The light pulsed dim, then bright, across the ground at the corners. Richard heard the familiar sound of a footstep beyond the light as something moved.
He tilted his head towards Geoff, and his friend nodded in understanding. They stepped forward carefully.
Another footstep.
When the lights flashed brightly he made out a silhouette of movement through the cracks between shelved crates.
A third step echoed, but from a different place farther to the left.
“Boots,” Geoff said. “That’s not Warbinger.”
The steps were irregular and slow. Richard squinted to make anything out. “Call out?” he said.
“HDF!” he shouted. “Show yourselves!”
More footsteps. New ones, They came from every direction. They were surrounded.
Warbinger howled in their heads. “OH, THE TASTE OF IRON BLOOD DOES SO THOROUGHLY NOURISH ME!”
“Don’t fear him!” Richard screamed, holding his head against the pain of the gashes the voice made in his mind.
He looked up as the pain dulled. Someone now stood in the pulsing light. They stumbled unnaturally, every step taking them off balance, only for a leg to swing out and barely catch them. Their torso flopped forward and back, but the face always stared straight ahead. Too large, uneven eyes on a near-black face of Warbinger flesh. Tendrils wriggled from its head. The body was a row of teeth that opened in a wide grin, spilling intestines across the floor. It stepped on them, uncaring.
Two more dragged their feet into the light. Their feet, that wore the boots of maintenance staff.
“I’m asking Lamet if she or Sparlyset know what to do with these.” Geoff said. He looked ready to run, but his gun was poised, as if he couldn’t decide between running or shooting.
Richard heard the tapping of more unseen boots in the darkness nearby and squinted at the shadows. The only place that the footsteps had stopped was around the other side of the loading station. Two people stood that way in the dim light, but his eyes were no longer adjusted to the dark and he couldn’t make them out clearly. They looked straight-backed, normal. One waved an arm, beckoning.
He nudged Geoff, and they ran. When they were close enough to see the men more clearly one of them held a finger to his lips for silence. They followed them to a dark corner where the emergency lights were out, through a doorway into a pitch black room.
A door clicked shut behind them, and then a lantern illuminated the space. It was the office. The windows were blocked with cardboard and furniture. Nine maintenance crew and one LT Security were huddled in the room, slumped and tired looking. They barely looked up at Geoff and Richard.
“Peter,” a man said, extending his hand. “I ran the Storage Car.” Richard shook his hand. “I don’t know if I’m glad to see you guys…” His eyes passed over Geoff’s gun. Geoff looked like he was lost in thought. “Maybe you can help us… or maybe we all die here. You saw the monsters. Something’s been eating us and turning us into puppets, and they’re more dangerous than they look.”
“How many?” Richard asked.
Peter shrugged. “Eight last time I saw for sure, but I’ve heard screams since then. My crew is hidden all over the place and it’s just hunting them… It laughs in our heads. It loves this.”
“It’s called Warbinger.” Geoff said. “This is just a little bit of it. The main one is eating Earth like it ate those guys outside.” Peter opened his mouth to speak but Geoff didn’t give him the chance. “But our friend Lamet is optimistic. She says she saw this, it tried to eat Longhorn but she managed to save her.”
“They can be saved…?” Peter asked hopefully.
“Not all of them.” Geoff said. Richard didn’t expect anything could be done once their guts were spilling out, but it still saddened him. Geoff continued. “Lamet said the power used to take people over is weak. If they aren’t physically connected to the main body, they’ll stay dead if we kill them. But there will be a big one in here.”
“How do we kill the big one?” another crewman asked.
“Can’t. Might be able to stop it though.”
“Do you actually have a plan?” Peter moved closer, hands on his hips. “Seems like you know how to fight this thing.”
Geoff shrugged. “Rick noticed there’s a whole shelf of cement foam. If it isn’t too big, maybe we can trap it.”
“I think it’s bigger than a man.” Peter said. “Nine or ten feet tall, maybe, but I didn’t get a good look. It tries not to be seen, and I try not to be close enough to see it.”
The other crewman chimed in, ‘I saw it. It’s skinny and has six arms. Around the mass of you two combined maybe. Is that small enough?”
One of the other men stood up and walked over to a pile of supplies they’d made at the back of the room and started digging around.
“Might be.” Richard replied.
The man came back holding a green-rimmed pod in his hand. “Foam pods,” he said, handing it to Geoff. “Will these help? We typically use them to plug holes on the short term, but if they can slow that thing down…”
“That’s great.” Geoff said. “The other thing Lamet said is that it hates ice and lightning. Do you have liquid nitrogen or… a defibrillator? Anything like that?”
“Liquid nitrogen… yeah.” Peter scratched his chin. “Should be two cans around here, it’s not much but if you want to slow it down, it might do.” He turned to his crew. “Don’t have defibs, huh?”
“Processing Car does but we closed the way. We do have cables and car batteries.”
“Finally.” Peter sighed. “I was beginning to forget what hope felt like.” He chuckled nervously. “So what’s the plan? Trap it? Shipping crate or something?”
“Will a shipping container conduct?” Richard asked.
“If it’s not grounded, it should.”
“Good.” Richard was beginning to feel hopeful as well. “We need one raised onto some pallets then. Get a barrel or two… or four, I don’t know, as many as we can all round it.”
“I’ll kill the puppets.” Geoff said. Richard frowned, and Geoff took notice. “Unless they look like they might be saved,” he added. “Are the car batteries coming from a car, or do you have some laying around?”
“Ah,” Peter hesitated. “Yeah we’ve got to pry some out of the cars here. Can’t wait until we save lives here only for those rich bastards to sue our asses off. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do it, but damn.”
“If Chriskopher Bonnair has any cars here, take them from his. He won’t sue you.” Richard said.
“That hotel millionaire? Are you sure about that?” Peter didn’t look convinced.
“Just take my word for it.” Richard asserted. “He’s on our side and he’ll be glad to have helped.”
“Well that’s two then. We’ll rig up the forklifts too after the container is in place.”
Richard nodded, taking the foam pod from Geoff, and they exited the office to set up their plan. He and Geoff sought out Warbinger while the maintenance crew prepared the trap.
They found the puppeted worker first, right around where they’d left it. Its intestines left a grotesque trail behind it. Geoff looked at him for approval and then blasted it with a thunk of his gun.
Richard’s hands shook. Every person they couldn’t save was a failure. There would be a lot of failures; it was never possible to save everyone. He hated how weak it made him feel.
Geoff took out three more puppeted men with intense blasts as they crossed the spotlight. There might be four left, or a couple more than that. Richard turned on his flashlight. He turned around, illuminating the dark corners. They spotted another two. One’s limbs were all broken, but it still crawled across the ground on all fours. The tendrils on its head wiggled towards them.
“Hit it,” he said sadly. Geoff destroyed it with a blast that knocked the other one over. It twisted on the ground, snapping its own back to face them backwards. Its head spun all the way around, the hair-like tendrils always pointing the same way. Towards them. Above them. “Hit it.”
Thunk. It exploded, spraying red and black across the ground. Geoff knew Richard. He knew he wanted to save everyone he could. He always hesitated to shoot without permission. Now, there were only two, maybe four left, but their job wasn’t to take them out. It was to find the big one.
Richard looked at Geoff, and his friend cocked his head at the puzzled look on his face. The tendrils always faced the same way. Why would they do that? He pointed his light up. Four dark eyes stared back at him.
It dropped.
Richard rolled, but Geoff fired his gun first. The explosion tore it in two and the halves thudded wetly onto the ground. Geoff ducked to safety as thin stands shot out between them like stretched-out cheese and they began to drag back together. Curious what would happen, he cracked the top of the pod and tossed it at the centre where it coalesced.
The pod burst with grey slime, coating the sinewy strands and pooling on the floor, then rapidly expanded to quadruple the size, encasing its centre in a cumbersome block.
Richard looked over his shoulder as the familiar bang of metal sounded at the loading platform. He shared a look with Geoff and they strafed around the monster as it came together.
It took a form like an insect, putting power into its legs that could drag the cement anchor. If it could free itself from it, it didn’t bother. It kept a humanoid face with four eyes that watched both of them at once.
They skirted around it, ducking and dodging as it swiped lazily at them with its single-clawed legs, testing them. When the loading area was behind them, Geoff fired a shot into its face. The detonation left its head a smoking hole and they ran while it recovered. The thuds of its many legs shook the ground behind them.
“Stay on the left!” Someone shouted from the dark. “Through the container!”
The crate before them was open on both ends. Two cans of liquid nitrogen stood against the right side. They ran into it, clinging to the left wall and Richard could hear the creature grabbing the sides behind them, jostling the entire thing. A pod rolled in beside them.
They spun around to slam the doors, but it extended one of its skeletal limbs and caught Geoff by the wrist with a hand that was still forming from its malleable flesh. As the foam soaked its belly and expanded, Richard fired his gun into the tall cans of liquid nitrogen as they were taken in by the foam and the container exploded with icy mist. A stab of his knife earned a sluggish shriek from the monster and freed Geoff.
More pods were tossed into the container as the chill made the creature slow. Soon it was engulfed in foam. They slammed the doors shut and the buzzing of electricity filled the air. Crewmen ran out to pop the barrels lined up around the sides. Crackling and popping came from inside, and wisps of smoke escaped the cracks.
As the barrels burst, they launched a tower of foam into the air that fell over everything near the container. The grey goo bubbled up, swallowing the container completely and then solidified into a rock-hard mound.
Everyone was still. The chittering of Warbinger’s laughter dulled to a quiet whisper. The electrical buzzing was the loudest noise in the room until Geoff broke the silence.
“W-what?” he whispered. “It got quiet? Did we actually kill this thing?”
The crewmen began to laugh from relief. Their posture relaxed as they looked at each other with elation.
“What does Lamet say?” Richard asked.
“I say we did it!” Peter exclaimed. “You three, go search for anyone still hiding in the shelves. Take foam pods with you just in case.” The three men rushed off. Peter pointed to another two and told them to make sure everyone had foam pods. “Turn that power off for a second,” he ordered. “There’s not enough juice in here to fry it forever anyway, we may as well see what happens. But you hear so much as gas from that container, you turn it back on.”
A worker with huge gloves on both hands pulled off the cables from the car batteries, and everything fell quiet again. They waited, listening. Nothing. But the silence of his own thoughts, something he realised he had sorely missed.
“Lamet says she’s unsure. Since it’s separated from the main body, enough damage might kill it, but we aren’t really sure how Warbinger works. It wouldn’t be this easy for a bigger piece that’s for sure.”
Peter looked confused, but nodded his agreement. “I don’t see us pulling this off in The Multistadium.”
After a moment three of the crewmen returned, hunched over dragging bodies. The disfigured corpses’s flesh was torn full of holes. There were still traces of dark-ish goo on their skin, but it was turning pale.
“We found these. Looks like the monster rotted out of them when it died.”
“Shit,” Peter said. “At least it looks good for that thing staying dead.”
Richard shook Peter’s hand. “We have to go. Take care of your crew, and keep an eye on this thing.”
“I have one question before you go,” he said to Geoff. “I’ll go crazy thinking about it if I don’t ask. How are you speaking to that Lamet person? You aren’t using the radio.”
Geoff gave Richard a sideways glance before answering. “We’re telepathically linked for a while.” he said plainly.
“Well… ain’t that some shit.” Peter said. He guessed Peter had seen enough impossible things in one day to start making him numb to it. Richard certainly had.
“Can you open the way for us?” Richard’s foot was beginning to tap impatiently. “We have to reach the locomotive to get the train out of this loop.”
“Yeah.” he waved someone over. “In fact if you give us a minute we can have a tram for you. There’s a bunch of them here and most of my crew can operate them.”
“Perfect.” Richard squeezed his hands. “If you can, maybe get everyone from Processing and Farming over here. I have a really bad feeling.”
“You say that every time we’re on the train, Rick.”
“Didn’t you say Central Hometoll is torn to shreds?” he shook his head. “This train… it’s not really on the tracks, not in Hometoll. You saw it, it was melting out there. Once we break the loop, who the hell knows where we end up? What happens if it passes through Central where the rails are destroyed?” Richard was certain it was going to be a disaster. He tried to imagine the city, all the wedges jutting up into the air like teeth, and Warbinger soaking into all the cracks. He sighed.
Peter groaned. “We’ll get everyone into this car. Farther from the locomotive, the better, I guess.”