Rachel’s arms were starting to get tired after the initial adrenaline dump wore off but she was too nervous to lower her rifle. She refused to make anyone else take point as they continued down the dark corridors that seemed to have no end. The only other actual member of the Militia was bringing up the rear of her squad and that was arguably just as dangerous as the front. So she was stuck leading them onwards into the cold damp labyrinth where the only light was the green glow sticks left behind by the other team. The faint glow of the sticks was about as bright as everyone's mood.
Besides jumping at every piece of furniture that her light caught it wasn’t that bad. Except when the flesh-eating creatures came charging at her and if she wasn’t fast enough they’d rip her apart but other than that she was doing just fine or so she kept telling herself. They only stumbled on two more Gray as they kept following the chem-lights left by the Major’s team. She was glad they had split up since having the Gray wandering around behind the sole team would have been asking for an ambush. At least this way she was able to help clear the place out. After all, if the generator did in fact work they would need this place completely cleared out so they could possibly use it as an outpost. That is if more Gray didn’t show up. It was highly possible the few Gray here were remnants of a much larger swarm that was topside hunting and could return at any moment. She tried to avoid thinking about that since they’d have no warning. The radios didn’t work well with the thick concrete and metal walls so the sentries would be of no help. In truth, she wasn’t sure why the Major even left them.
Rachel knew the other team took at least seven casualties as they passed the bodies of Mischoff’s men who were all flayed open in varying degrees of brutality. She shuddered to think about Sarah who hadn’t been killed right away and what became of her. She was already regretting leaving her behind but deep down she knew it was the right decision. They were never going to find her, at least not alive.
After an hour or two of wandering through the maze, they reached the other team who had set up a makeshift camp in the power station room in order to triage wounded and evaluate the situation since the bunker was turning out to be much larger than they expected. The power station may have once been an impressive sight but those days were long past. Time had not been a friend to the sensitive components and somewhere a crack in the ceiling was letting water drip down onto several of the more delicate systems.
Mischoff had been kneeling over one of his men that was obviously in bad shape and not going to make the trip back, almost everyone had blood staining their uniforms. They were a sore sight and over half the people they started with were gone. Mischoff’s earlier enthusiasm was replaced with anger as his nostrils flared and brow furrowed.
“Tell me this was all worth something?” He yelled across the room as he walked over to her, obviously no longer caring to address her by rank. He looked like hell with blood smeared over his green fatigues, a tear in his pants, and pouring sweat even though it was freezing in the bunker.
“We just got here, we’ll need a closer look before we know anything.” Rachel replied in a defensive tone.
“By all means take your time. I’ll be over here watching my friends die.” Rachel knew this was hard on everyone, she wasn’t to blame for it though and he knew it. She held her tongue and let him push blame, they didn't have time for arguing. Out here there was no backup and anyone who needed surgery or intense medical care usually died long before that help was around. Rachel felt bad for the Major, she had seen him upset before but never this dispirited. She reminded herself how lucky she was to have a job in the HQ working on analyzing data and decrypting Bastion transmissions rather than out here doing this every other week.
Rachel laid her rifle down near a pop-up lamp someone had placed down to brighten the room and looked over the metal grate covering the generator. Mitchell rummaged through his bag and pulled out a few items he needed for diagnosing the station, he walked over to Rachel while fiddling with his tools.
“I don’t see any ports on the terminals to feed an external power source to check the computers. I’ll need to pull the terminals apart and fix them before I can start on the station.”
“Alright, I’ll start getting the grate off, so we know what we’re dealing with at least.” This wasn’t exactly her field of expertise but she was good with computers and engines, the later not being related to her role in the Militia. However, when you grow up with only broken junk you get good at building or you sleep in the cold. The technicians went to work on the generator, pulling apart metal covers and tracing cords around to find where the led. The Militia soldiers cared for the wounded, kept security on the door leading back into the dark hallway, and explored the rooms branching off from the power station. It went from a dark abandoned basement to a busy workplace in no time with everyone having a delegated task.
Rachel hadn’t been working but a few minutes when she heard gunshots, but it wasn’t any gunshot she recognized. It sounded more like an electrical discharge from a transformer. She grabbed onto the metal housing of the generator she had crawled into to inspect the damage. She expected to see more Gray coming at them. Then she heard a voice that sounded like someone talking into a microphone or a radio on max volume. She pulled herself up and out of the housing and much to her horror she found something worse than the Gray attacking them.
Black figures in heavy armor were storming through the door while being shot at by the rest of the survivors. The bullets were pinging and ricocheting off the figure’s armor as they fired back with rifles she had never seen before. The weapons weren’t loud but it was obvious they didn’t need to be. Several Militia soldiers were laying in the room with massive holes the size of her fist in them. She panicked and looked for her rifle which was still lying near the pop-up lamp at the base of the generators housing.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Get down!” One of the figures yelled with a booming microphone like voice as he grabbed a tech and threw her down in the middle of the room where another figure holding what looked like plastic cuffs went to restrain her.
Rachel jumped out of the housing and rolled to avoid hurting herself from the fall. It wasn’t a high fall but the concrete floor underneath would have easily shattered her legs if she landed wrong. As she scrambled out of her roll one of the figures ran towards her with surprising speed for its size. Her rifle was to her left and the figure was coming right at her, she dove for it and grabbed the stock to pull it towards her. Right before she got her other hand around the rifle an armored boot slammed down on the rifle and pinned her fingers underneath it, crushing them. She screamed out from the pain but went to grab the knife in her belt with her other hand. She wouldn’t let them get away with murdering her people.
The armored figure grabbed her hands and drug her away from the rifle which was bent from the heavy boot stomping it, it didn't even look like it would fire. She punched and kicked in vain as the armored suit didn’t even have to struggle with her, the grip wasn’t budging around her wrists. He tossed her to the figure in the middle of the room that had been tying everyone up and he shoved her to the ground on her stomach. She was facing the front of the room and watched as one of the techs pulled a sidearm out of a dead soldier’s holster. One of the figures standing nearby lowered his rifle and pushed his fist towards the tech. She wasn’t sure what he was doing until the blade lunged from the figure’s hand and pierced the techs chest as he screamed briefly before it turned into a gurgle.
The entire assault was over in seconds and now she was pinned to the ground with her hands tied in plastic restraints. She had no idea what was happening, who were the figures? They didn’t have the blue insignia of the BDF and couldn’t have been one of the other surface dweller groups as they were way too well equipped. She struggled to stay calm despite everything happening around her. She rolled to one side to see who was yelling and caught a glimpse of a soldier running into the room from a storage area they had been exploring when the attack started. One of the armored figures was already near the door when the soldier came running in. The figure moved his rifle to his back where it seemingly with magic stuck and didn’t move as he let go of it. The soldier was too late, the figure stepped in close to him and placed a hand on his chest before slamming him into the hard-concrete ground.
The figure that had restrained her used his foot to roll her back over on her stomach and she lost sight of what was happening to the poor man who had to have broken a rib. Whoever the attackers where they had defeated them in an instant. Everything happened so fast and their rifles had been useless against there armor. Finally, the room was quiet except for the sound of panicked breathing and someone gasping for air, she assumed it was the soldier knocked to the ground.
“Stay down and don’t move.” One of the figures growled through his helmet’s microphone. She strained her neck in an uncomfortable position to get a better look at the one talking. His rifle was cradled in his arms like you would hold a child and he paced back and forth in front of the prisoners all lying on the floor in the middle of the room. His suit was completely foreign to her, over the years she had seen a lot of different radiation suits but none like his. It had various tools and compartments attached to a thick belt around his waist, a pistol in a holster on his thigh and so much armor she wondered how he was able to move with the weight.
“Facedown lady.” he barked as he turned back around from his pacing and saw her staring.
A moan came from behind several boxes in the corner of the room. It had to be one of the wounded from the Gray attacks, that’s where they had been collecting the casualties and treating them. She could hear heavy metallic footsteps making a beeline towards the direction of the noise.
“Leave them alone!” She desperately yelled and while she knew it was pointless, she didn’t know what else to do.
“Relax. We want you little assholes alive.” The voice replied with an almost casual tone.
“You just killed my friends and you want me to relax!” She yelled back, letting her anger get the best of her.
Mischoff’s voice came from somewhere behind her where he must have been tied up too.
“Rachel shut up!” He ordered.
The figure that had been pacing nodded and pointed at where the voice came from.
“Yeah, what he said.”
This was surreal but she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She laid her forehead on the cold concrete floor and held back tears of not only sadness but frustration. They had worked so hard for this and lost so many people only to be stopped again. Every turn something bad happened to the people she wanted to protect. They were done, without the generator, the Peak would fall and everyone she knew would die. She resigned herself to whatever fate awaited her and tried to focus on something else.
She thought of Chelsea and Thomas who had been her friends in the orphanage she grew up in. They’d play pranks on the ladies that ran the orphanage and got in trouble all the time. The three of them stuck together no matter what. Until Thomas got cancer from radiation and Chelsea was adopted by a group who moved out of the Peak and she never heard from her again. Maybe not the happiest memory to think about after-all. Rachel struggled to find a happy memory to hold onto to keep hope but she couldn’t find one that didn’t end with someone dying or going missing.
Even her mother died shortly after she was born, the only thing she had to remember her face was the pendant around her neck with her picture in it. She wanted to know her and ask her so many questions about where they had come from. The only answers she got were empty with little evidence or proof since her mother had apparently been somewhat of a mystery.
She came to the Peak with the migration from the Bastion during the Purge. Her mother had been in one of the Castes the Bastion deemed expendable so she like so many others were going to be killed to save resources or so they discovered before it could happen. The details were murky about what transpired inside the mysterious Bastion. It wasn’t clear how they escaped but several witnesses said it was an Artificial Intelligence that aided them. Something called Gabriel had warned them of the impending purge.
The AI provided them with an escape route and with help from soldiers known as ‘Venators’ most of them made it out. While most of those fleeing the Bastion perished on the surface her mother had made the trek to the Peak with Rachel in her womb. It was something Rachel thought had to be a lie to make her feel special as no pregnant woman could have made that long journey on foot with all the dangers the surface had. The ladies at the orphanage were always making up stories to keep the children occupied. Regardless, the thought of it gave her comfort in this dark hour where she desperately wished she had truly been special and not just another orphan alone in the broken world.