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The Madhouse
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Private Lyle glanced nervously across to the captain as he sat with his back against the wall of the outpost, unsure of what to do next. The storm clouds were approaching rapidly, and for a moment, he was afraid that Blake might have fallen asleep.
“I’m sorry about your friend, private.”
The words were so faint that Lyle almost missed them.
“Just be glad that you saved him in the end.”
“Sir?”
The captain didn’t say any more, and Lyle sat in an uneasy silence, occasionally flinching as thunder broke overhead.
After what seemed like an age, Blake took a sudden deep breath, opening his eyes. He turned to Lyle, his stare penetrating.
“Let me explain,” he whispered sombrely. He pulled himself to his feet, then stepped up to the top of the ridge, raising his head over the edge. He motioned Lyle to join him, and the young man crawled forwards, then got to his feet, peering between the rocks.
Nothing could have prepared him for the sight he beheld.
He gasped and went to recoil, but Blake steadied him, gripping his arm tightly. They were looking down into a long, gently sloping valley, which spread out into a plain and on to dark mountains in the distance.
To their left, the ridge ran around, rising up until it curved around in sheer cliffs, forming the head of the valley. The rough rock of the plain was scarred and pitted, with black smoke belching from countless rents in the earth. Arcs of electricity played over the ground, lighting up innumerable swirling spirals of dust.
But that was as nothing to the creatures that roamed the plain. Lyle felt that his mind would break; he was unable to take in the sheer nightmarish shape and scale of such alien forms. Creatures, some almost fifty feet high, strode in ponderous steps amongst the chaos. They were terrible to behold, with spider-like limbs balancing great bloated human forms, each one unique in its horror. Claws, spines, and gaping mouths, out of which issued the haunting calls that Lyle had heard echoing up from the plains. He looked on, unable to turn away as a great beast shambled past, hundreds of feet below them, its footsteps shaking the ridge. It was some parody of human form, naked, but of monstrous proportions, its arms and legs twisted and bent. Two more limbs sprouted from its torso, giving the impression of some terrible insect. The head of the creature lolled backwards, hanging down between its shoulders like some bloated egg sac. It gave out another terrible bellow, and a flash and crackle of electricity coruscated out from the ground beneath its feet.
Lyle followed the creature with his gaze as it disappeared into the dust clouds, brief flashes of light from its body periodically illuminating the storm.
He glanced over to Captain Blake. The man was transfixed, his eyes sparkling in the dying sun.
“Here it comes,” he whispered, almost with a tone of reverence.
Lyle followed the man’s gaze out across the valley. As he looked on, he made out a dark shadow rising higher and higher, a band of swirling cloud and dust forming upon the far side of the valley. As it grew, towering into the sky, it seemed to draw up the clouds from the valley itself, briefly stripping them away, laying bare everything they had concealed.
For a moment, Lyle made out a distant shape nestled in the shadow of the cliffs at the far end of the valley. It was a dark metal structure, surrounded by a mass of smaller objects, which he realised were abandoned fieldships and transports, all of them dwarfed by the scale of the main object.
“The Divinity!” gasped Lyle, its lines lit up by a flash of lightning emanating from the heart of the towering dust storm. The great craft lay upon the red rock, listing over to one side. He tried to estimate the number of vehicles parked in rows beside the great craft; there must have been at least fifty, he thought.
And then, the towering dust cloud slid down the cliffs, crashing over the valley, consuming everything before it.
“Sir, should we be getting inside?” stuttered Lyle in concern, as the great cloud rolled across the valley like a tidal wave. The approaching roar was almost deafening, and the head of the boiling mass spat forks of lightning, churning up the earth and tearing at anything that stood in its way.
But Blake’s eyes were still transfixed upon the scene.
“There!” he called urgently above the howl of the approaching storm. He pointed down over the ridge, uncaring whether or not he remained hidden.
Lyle followed the direction of his signal, and for a moment he thought he spotted movement amid the fissures of the rocky slopes.
And then he realised it was the distant figure of a man in an environment suit, walking calmly through the chaos, seemingly unaware of either the creatures around him or the encroaching storm.
“Dear god,” breathed Lyle. As he made sense of the scene, he realised that there were more figures all about, each of them walking slowly across the blasted rocks. It struck him how huge the shambling monsters must actually be, dwarfing the figures around them.
There was a deep roar, and to Lyle’s horror he saw that the creature he had watched pass them earlier had now returned. It appeared to have caught a scent, because it strode out into the plain towards the storm, heading straight for the figures. It shook the ground as it went, sending up great clouds of dust as it drove its claws into the earth.
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As though suddenly sensing the creature, the figures panicked, breaking into a run.
“They’re running straight for the storm!” gasped Lyle. “We’ve got to help them!”
“They’re ghosts, private.”
Lyle looked around in panic. Captain Blake was staring at him with a look of mania upon his face.
“They’re all ghosts from the battle.”
“But,” croaked Lyle in horror. The demon had reached the first of the stragglers now. It lashed out at them with its great, spider-like limbs, pinning one to the ground through the chest, and dashing another against the rocks. Slowly, it settled its body down upon them, the enormous egg sac of a head lolling grotesquely, heaving and pulsating as though things writhed beneath its flesh. The beast just had time to let out a deafening roar of triumph before the dust cloud crashed down, obliterating the creature and the remaining figures in an instant.
Lyle shook, and a wave of nausea came over him. He felt Captain Blake pull him roughly to his feet, but his body was numb and he could barely stand.
“This is what you saved your friends from!” yelled Blake madly, shouting to be heard over the howling gale. “This!”
His eyes were wide and staring, his face lit up by the constant flashes of lightning. The boom of thunder shook the ground now, the storm clouds almost upon them.
“Captain! Captain, you need to get inside, now!”
An urgent call from the doorway of the observation post instantly broke the spell. Blake looked around, disoriented. Lieutenant Millar was standing at the hatch, struggling to keep it open in the gale.
“Captain! Come on!” he yelled again.
Blake turned back to the approaching storm. It had struck the first slopes of the ridge and was crashing up towards them at a terrifying speed. He glanced back to Lyle and grinned.
“Come on, Green,” he shouted and dragged the private back across the rocks. He pushed Lyle bodily through the entrance, crashing down to the floor beside him. There was a loud thud as Lieutenant Millar slammed the hatch closed, tugging at the locking lever.
For a brief moment there was silence before the walls shook with a great boom as the storm hit.
Blake pushed himself up into a sitting position, breathing hard. The sound of the storm was deafening, but for now they seemed safe.
Lyle remained where he had fallen; he was still wide-eyed and shaking, and he looked around in a panic.
The walls were a circle of corroded steel and concrete. The only illumination came from intermittent flashes of lightning shining in through the narrow, horizontal slit windows that ringed the walls. Four other soldiers were standing upon a low observation platform which ran part-way around the circular space. They gazed down at Lyle in silence.
Lyle turned his head, and to his horror saw a dark fissure in the rock, barely a foot away from where he had fallen. A rusted ladder, driven into the red rock, disappeared down into the depths.
“Welcome to Observation-Post, Saturn, Private Green,” came Captain Blake’s voice at Lyle’s side. He was breathing hard but laughing quietly to himself.
“It’s Lyle, sir,” he croaked, almost inaudibly.
“Well done, Green,” came another voice. It was Lieutenant Millar, leaning over him, grinning. He pulled the young man up to his feet.
“Welcome to the madhouse.”
* * *
“Well, Lieutenant, what have we got?”
Captain Blake pulled himself wearily to his feet, idly brushing the dust from his environment suit. He stepped up to the observation platform, squinting through the thick glass of the slit window, but all was a chaos of dust from the storm.
“The compound is secure, sir,” replied Millar, stepping up beside him. “We’ve got a good supply of O2 – enough for a week at low output – maybe four and a half days at combat levels. Food and water for a month.” He sighed, staring out at the storm. “Ammo’s not so good. Plenty of MX chargers, but barely anything for the thirty, and only a handful of frags.”
“What about Broussard and Sitezmann?” muttered Blake anxiously. “Did they have chance to get dug in?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Millar. “They’re not going anywhere. They’ve got plenty of supplies – a real home-from-home up in those caves.” He gave a grim smile.
“Let’s hope this storm passes quickly,” muttered Blake. “I don’t like leaving them exposed up there.”
He glanced around, broken from his thoughts by the sound of Private Lyle struggling to his feet.
“Get down to Carparso and the others at the barricade, Green,” he muttered, taking a ration pack from Lieutenant Millar with a nod. “See that they give you something to eat and drink. And try to get some sleep; we’ll be heading back to Burned Plateau the minute this storm passes.”
“Yes, sir,” croaked Lyle nervously, looking around, still half-dazed.
“Private?” called Lieutenant Millar. Lyle looked up, taking a moment to focus.
“Down. To the bottom.”
He pointed to the ladder leading into the gaping fissure in the rock.
“And then keep going,” he added with a grin.
Lyle peered cautiously over the edge. The hole was about six feet long and three at its widest. He tentatively knelt down and took hold of the ladder, swinging his legs over the edge. In his bulky suit he found it difficult to feel the rungs in the darkness.
The Captain and Lieutenant Millar went back to their conversation while Lyle paused there a moment.
“Hell, I’m not surprised we can’t make contact with all this storm activity. Those radios are worthless piles of crap at the best of times. I don’t know why we bother dragging them about with us.”
“So, I guess that means we’re on our own again, Captain. They’ll never get a ship to us through this,” replied Millar.
“We better hunker down and wait it out, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll get Wade on the emergency channel in case Broussard and Sitezmann run into trouble.”
“No,” replied Blake in alarm. “I don’t want anyone switching their damn comms on while the storm lasts, understood? We can’t risk going out in this storm, even if they do run into trouble. They’re on their own now.”
He turned suddenly, looking down towards Lyle.
“Careful on your way down, private,” he muttered.
Lyle jumped, shaken from his thoughts, and then began to descend into the darkness.
His arms and legs ached terribly as he made his way down the ladder, and he wondered how long he could hold on. The darkness was complete, and he couldn’t tell where he was. The ladder just seemed to keep going down and down, and he felt as though at any moment he might pass out from exhaustion.
And then he caught the faint sound of muffled voices. He saw the pale glow of a light, and he quickened his pace, moving as fast as his weary limbs would allow.
The narrow walls of the shaft suddenly opened out, and he found himself peering into a gloomy cave. Its low ceiling was barely four feet above the rough floor, just enough room for a group of six soldiers to sit, huddled against the wall. They wore their full environment suits, with helmets and visors locked in place. The only illumination came from a dim field lantern, sitting on the floor in the middle of the group. The nearest soldier looked up as Lyle came breathlessly down the ladder.
“Hey, Green,” he muttered, then went back to talking with the others. There was a ripple of quiet laughter around the group.
Lyle peered into the cave as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. He could make out stacks of supply crates and ammunition boxes beyond the soldiers, disappearing further back into the shadows.
“Carparso?” hissed Lyle to the nearest soldier.
“Down,” grunted the soldier, without looking around.
Lyle peered down the shaft and his heart sank: the ladder continued off into the blackness.