Ceaseless (6 page)

* * * * *

“So, you must be Johnson,” Allan said.

They'd been driving for nearly five minutes in silence. The jump ship had accelerated to its maximum speed, beyond their ability to see it and then beyond the jeep's ability to track it. But it had been heading in one direction with absolutely no deviations thus far, which was good enough for Allan. He was still driving in that direction.

“Yes, Richard Johnson,” the man said after a moment. He was the lone survivor from the relay. The spare technician who had been on staff. If Allan remembered correctly, he was the one who'd been exiled there for insubordination. He hadn't really looked at the man's first name though. An unexpected bubble of laughter took him, then.

“Wait...your name is Richard Johnson?” he asked.

Johnson sighed. “Yes.”

“I...but...
Richard
.
Johnson
?” Allan pressed.

“I don't get it,” Lucy said from the back.

Johnson sighed again, more explosively this time. For a moment, Allan felt almost drunk, his head swimming from all the lethargy, anxiety, excitement and terror he'd experienced in the past twenty four hours. He gripped the steering wheel, but found it hard to stop laughing.

“Dick is short for Richard...God knows why. And Johnson is another name for a man's dick. His name is basically Dick Dick,” Allan replied. He stopped laughing for a moment, then abruptly burst out laughing again.

“Okay, it is
not
that funny,” Johnson said.

“Why are you so immature?” Lucy asked.

“I think I might be losing my mind,” Allan replied with such a serious tone it caused the others to sit up a little straighter.

“What are you talking about?” Johnson asked.

“What's that?” Lucy cut in, pointing ahead.

Allan had seen it, but only now registered it. There was a pillar of black smoke on the horizon, growing steadily closer.

“Did he crash?” Lucy asked quietly.

“I think so. When he killed the pilot, he fucked up the cockpit pretty bad. I'm honestly surprised the ship took off at all...maybe he was killed in the crash,” Allan said. But even as the words left his mouth he didn't believe him.

“What
is
he?” Johnson whispered.

“Some psycho that grabbed hold of some power armor,” Allan replied.

“I've never seen power armor like
that
,” Lucy murmured.

“I haven't personally either, but military-grade armor could be like that. Strength-enhancers, bulletproof...that helmet rig, though, normally you see camera-lenses built in, in place of having a visor. I don't know how he can see.”

As they drove closer to the smoke, Allan slowed down. Before long, he could see that it was, indeed, a crash site. The jump ship was a ruined, crumpled heat of smoking, twisted metal. Allan brought the jeep to a full halt.

“Stay here,” he said.

No one argued. Allan threw open the driver's side door and stepped out. He reached for his rifle, but realized he'd left it behind. Not that it made any difference one way or the other. Why was he doing this again? Allan looked back into the jeep, wanting to do what the others had suggested and just hightailing it out of there.

But he couldn't. He'd lost his team, another damned team, to this bastard. And what did he have to run back to anyway? Allan slammed the door shut and began walking towards the crash site. He reached down and pulled out his pistol, more for comfort than for actual security. Nothing was moving in or around the wreckage, as far as he could see. The back ramp was closed and it didn't look like it was opening without a cutting torch.

Moving around the side of the ship, Allan approached the cockpit. The ship had crashed at an angle, so that the nose had buried itself partially in the ground. Allan hesitated as he caught full sight of the cockpit itself. The front window was broken out. He considered the situation for a moment, then holstered his pistol, approached the side of the vehicle and began climbing. Finding awkward hand and foot holds, he hauled himself up to the top of the ship. Moving carefully, he walked forward until he was atop the cockpit.

Allan got down on his hands and knees and peered cautiously into the broken window. He expected to have his head punched off or his neck crushed, but there was nothing inside the cockpit save for ruined instrumentation panels and dead screens. He took a moment to ready himself, then pulled himself headfirst into the cockpit. Working against gravity due to the extreme slant of the floor, he moved to the door at the back and opened it. Beyond the open doorway was the bay he'd ridden in with the others less than an hour ago.

It was empty.

Allan hauled himself back up out of the cockpit and stood on the nose, looking around. He could see nothing moving all around him, just the empty miles of wastelands, but, staring along the length of the direction the ship and the killer had been heading in, he thought he could see a small collection of distant structures.

Allan climbed back down and returned to the jeep.

“Well? Can we go now?” Johnson asked.

“Cool it, Dick,” Allan replied as he fired up the navigational database built into the dashboard of the jeep.

Johnson stared at him for a moment. “So are you Section Eight or what?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” Allan replied.

“Because, you don't really seem fine. I've served with nutjobs before. I was in the Marines for two years and SI for another two years after that, and-”

Allan slammed his fist into the dashboard, cracking it with the amplification of strength his armor gave him. “I'm
fine
!”

Silence settled over the jeep. Allan kept working the navigational database. After a moment, a soft chime filled the air.

“Okay, it looks like there's a vehicle repair center dead on course for wherever this fucking psycho was going. It's about five miles from here. The guy is obviously a fucking nutjob. We at least have to warn them and maybe evac,” Allan said as he fired up the engine and sped off.

“Why can't we just use the radio?” Johnson asked. Silence followed his question. Lucy sighed. “Oh...yeah.”

They drove on in silence.

Chapter 05

–
Unstoppable
–

Allan slowly brought the jeep to a halt as he approached the edge of the vehicle repair center. If the pillar of smoke rising silently into the air wasn't enough of a clue that something was seriously fucked, then the hole in the wall of the nearest building and the smear of blood on the ground certainly was. Allan listened for any signs that the slaughter that had occurred here might still be going on, but he could hear nothing.

“Jesus,” Johnson whispered.

“Come on, we need to see if there are any survivor,” Allan murmured, turning off the engine and stepping out of the jeep.

The others reluctantly followed. Two more doors opened and closed, the sounds falling flat in the still air of the desert. Allan pulled his pistol out again, wondering if he should even bother, but he found that his hands felt awkward if he wasn't holding some kind of weapon in them at this point. With Johnson and Lucy backing him up, he moved towards the small collections of structures. They were approaching from the back.

Allan approached the hole that had been made in the wall by what must have been brute force. He peered in, pistol out, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. The room beyond was empty. This building seemed to be a storage bay. Shelves and crates lined the walls, taking up most of the interior. A clear path had been forced through. Shelves were toppled over, crates broken over, their contents spilled across the floor.

“What, did he just
walk in a straight line
through here?!” Johnson whispered.

“Come on,” Allan replied.

They went into the hole, stepping over the scattered tools and spare parts, and up to a corresponding hole in the far wall. Allan peered out into the area beyond. It looked like the station was essentially a collection of buildings built around a pair of landing pads that glinted dully in the high sun. There was one building to their left, two across the way and one more to the right. Immediately, Allan spied a pair of corpses on the landing pad. Both of their necks had been crushed and they each lay in a pool of blood.

“Check the buildings,” Allan murmured.

“Okay, I am
not
splitting up,” Johnson said.

“I don't think he's here anymore,” Allan replied. “Will you just go? You can run away if you find him. He doesn't seem that fast.”

Johnson heaved a sigh, but turned to the right and made for that building. Lucy said nothing and made for the building to the left. Allan moved across the landing pad, constantly scanning his surroundings, not quite trusting his instincts. While he
did
feel that the killer was gone, no longer at this location, the situation was so strange that he knew he could be wrong. But then what? What was he
doing
here, anyway?

If they actually did run into the killer, then he'd probably kill them. They had no way to physically stop them. They'd have to pick up some armor-piercers and those weren't exactly lying around, waiting to be picked up by a desperate Investigator. He was putting not only his own life in danger, but two others as well. As Allan reached the first of the two buildings opposite the one they'd come into, he stopped for a moment.

Just for a second, he actually tried to make himself leave. To turn around, gather up the others, get into the jeep and just drive for Lansing. But it wouldn't come. He simply
could not
do it. He shook his head and moved into the first building. Judging by the fact that the two buildings he'd come to were identical, Allan figured that they were both garages as he looked around the interior. It definitely looked like a regular garage.

A pair of jeeps occupied the center of the area. Around the exterior of the room was a ring of tables, workbenches, lockers and shelves. Everything had a gritty, worn feel to it. The whole area felt very used and lived in. Allan did a quick sweep of the area, then stepped back outside and moved on to the second building. He wasn't really sure what he was looking for or what he was expecting to find, only that it was standard operating procedure to check out the area. He moved to the second garage and opened it up.

There were more bodies inside. Base personnel, no doubt. He wondered, briefly, what a vehicle report station was doing way out in the middle of nowhere, and realized that it was
because
they were out in the middle of nowhere that it existed. It'd be a huge pain in the ass to get stuck out here where there were no roads and civilization was spread thin, where you were lucky if you could find a single outpost every twenty miles.

He wondered if it was independent or government funded. Not that it mattered anymore. It seemed likely that everyone was dead. Besides the corpses, there was only one thing that seemed out of place. A large, sliding door at the back was open and there was a large, empty space in the center of the room. The scattering of tools and spare parts, as well as a foldout table that had been set up, seemed to indicate that there had not long ago been a vehicle there. In a flash, Allan realized the killer must have taken it after murdering everyone here.

He turned and left, spying the others stepping out at the same time.

“Anything?” he asked, heading back towards the initial storage room they'd first come through.

Lucy was shaking her head. “No. Everyone in there is dead.”

“Same,” Johnson said. He looked pale and sick with fear.

As they headed back to the jeep, Allan took a moment to really take stock of the man. He was thin but looked like he still had some wiry muscle packed onto his narrow frame. He wore a sleeveless blue jumpsuit and his head was shaved bald. His eyes were wide with apprehension and he kept looking around constantly.

They got back into the jeep and Allan fired up the navigation database once more. Going off the assumption that the killer was, for whatever reason, going to continue in the same path he had been, Allan tracked a route along that path. After another thirty five miles, he saw that there was another outpost, meant for storage.

“Okay, here we go,” he said, firing up the engine and setting off once more.

“
Where
are we going?” Johnson asked warily.

“There's a storage facility along the route the killer's taken so far,” Allan explained. “Maybe we can catch up.”

“He's got a good lead on us,” Lucy pointed out as they pulled out from behind the facility and began driving across the wastelands again.

“And why aren't we just getting out of here? Letting the guys with big guns and ships take care of this nonsense?” Johnson asked.

“It's
our
responsibility with the radio dead. We can't just...give up,” Allan replied, his voice hard and edged, brooking no argument.

A long moment of silence passed, and Allan decided to try and get some information. “So, Johnson, what the hell happened back there, at your base?”