Necropolis (4 page)

What kind of man he used to be was gone. All he had left was what kind of man he was right now.

He kept the shotgun raised, his grip tightening.

“
You're going to have to kill me because I'm
not
letting you leave here alive.” Kyra's voice was so low and boiling with hatred that it made Greg bristle even more. He was glad she was on his side. Nobody moved for several seconds. Suddenly, the man in charge, in a blur of reflexes, smashed Kyra's pistol aside and tackled her. Two others dove to help hold her down. Greg squeezed the trigger, aiming for one of them, but he was too fast. The soldier managed to hit the barrel away, destroying his aim, and tackled him to the ground.

He struggled in vain. It was all over in seconds and the next thing he knew, he was laying on his stomach, rain soaking his hair and his uniform. Rocks pushed up into his skin with dull pain, one ground into his cheek. A gloved hand pressed his head into the ground. Kyra was next to him, screaming and struggling, but she was in much the same position as he was.

“Now what?” one of them asked.

“
Jenkins, go check out those other buildings, make sure the place is clear, and see if you can find a comfortable place for the activities,” the leader replied.

One of the men holding down Kyra nodded and stood. He broke away from the rest of the group, making for the infirmary.

The leader kept talking, his voice malicious and ugly. “Kill him and get her ready.”

Greg felt a cold hand grasp his stomach.

“Should I knock her out? She's going to be tough to move around, remember how she was last time?”

The leader chuckled. It was an ugly sound.

“I
do
remember how she was last time.”

He leaned down and placed his lips against her cheek. She jerked her head up, bashing her skull against his nose. He yelled out, but didn't let go of her. Blood flowed down his face, but he ignored it. Staring down at her, the blood dripping off his chin and landing on Kyra's cheek, he grinned, a feral, dark thing.

“No, don't knock her out. I want her awake. It's always better when they're awake and struggling.”

It was then, just at the edge of his hearing, that Greg heard a sharp
whoosh
, followed by a soft
thud
. The others seemed to hear it as well. They glanced over where Jenkins had gone. Greg prayed for the distraction, prayed for something other than this. He had stopped his struggle and decided to let them think he had given up.

He wasn't dead, yet. And neither was Kyra.

“What the fuck...Jenkins, get up!” the leader called.

Another few horrible seconds ticked by. The leader sighed.

“Paul, go see what the fuck his problem is.”

Another one of the soldiers holding Kyra broke away, freeing up Greg's vision somewhat. Kyra struggled again, but the leader was a big guy, more than enough to hold her down. Greg watched, feeling somewhat detached and dislocated, as Paul ambled over, calling out Jenkins's name. He finally saw the prone form lying on the ground.

“Hey, man, did you pass out?” Paul stopped to Jenkin’s body. He gasped and jerked back.

“
What is it?” the leader called. Paul stared at the body for a few more seconds before turning around.

“
His fuckin' head's gone.”

“
His-
what
?”

“
His head. It's g-”

There was another sharp
whoosh
, followed by Paul's head vaporizing in a fine, crimson mist. His body fell.

“
Oh
fuck
,” one of the other soldiers whispered.

One of the two holding Greg down slowly stood. They were all hidden behind the shacks, out of sight of whoever was sniping them. The soldier edged nearer to the corner of the shack. He slowly peered around it. In a flash, one half of his face was torn away and his body was sent sprawling to the ground.

“Shit,” the leader snapped.

In that moment, Kyra bucked, jerking and twisting her entire body. Distracted, the leader was thrown clear of his cover behind the shed. In a scarlet flash his head was gone, blood spurting from the stump of his neck. His limbs twitched as he crashed to the ground. Kyra rolled to her side, grabbed her pistol, discarded on the ground, and raised it. Greg heard the gunshots and felt the hot, liquid spray across the back of his head and neck. He shoved the limp corpse off and grabbed for his discarded shotgun.

Both he and Kyra pressed their backs to the side of the shed, shivering in the rain, crouching and waiting in rapt silence. For several heart pounding, awful moments, there was nothing, just the sound of rainfall. Then they heard footsteps. Whoever had done the sniping was making a slow approach. Given what Greg had just encountered, he wasn't sure he was willing to put his trust in
anyone
but Kyra.

“
Who goes there?” he called out after several more seconds of uncomfortable silence. The footfalls stopped.

“
My name is Cage.” The voice was calm, eerily so, and just loud enough to be heard over the heavy rainfall. Greg glanced at Kyra, who shrugged. This time, she seemed just as lost as he was. He sighed.

While he debated on what to do next, there was a soft groan and the familiar thud of a body collapsing to the ground. Greg waited for several seconds, confusion taking hold of him. Finally, he peered around the corner of the shack.

Cage lay sprawled out on the rocky ground, a sniper rifle clutched tightly in one pale hand. He was unmoving. Greg waited another few seconds, then stood and made his way toward the prone form. He was shaky with adrenaline, but his instincts whispered to him. They told him this guy was the real deal.

Greg reached the body without incident.

He knelt and rolled the man over. Cage turned out to be a slender, pale man in his early thirties, face rough with stubble, and the flesh around his eyes sunken deep into his skull. He still breathed, but when Greg pushed him onto his back, he saw a gut shot that that soaked his uniform. The man was bleeding out.

“
Kyra, gonna need some help here!”

Chapter 06

–
Outpost Life
–

They carried Cage into the infirmary, setting him down on the same examination table they'd laid Kyra's friend out on not all that long ago. The problem became immediately apparent as they got him onto his back. He'd been shot through the stomach and, judging from his pale pallor, he'd lost a tremendous amount of blood.

Kyra peeled away the torn, bloodied remains of uniform around his midsection while Greg opened up the medical kit. Kyra inspected the wound for several seconds with an intense frown on her face. After what felt like ages, she seemed to come to a decision. She turned and made her way deeper into the infirmary.

“The bullet went through.” She pried open a medical cabinet and hunted through the abundance of equipment within.

At least,
Greg thought while he waited,
this time we have proper lighting.
Overhead, the lights hummed with power. Kyra made the rough approximation of a happy noise and strode back over to the examination table. She held a small device in her hand, something Greg didn't recognize, and stuck it into Cage's arm. She pressed a button. A second passed, followed by a soft chime.

“
Greg, go over to that cold storage unit. There should be containers of blood. Bring me B Positive.”

Greg hurried over to where she indicated, feeling nervous and out of his element. Basic medical procedures had been salvaged from the murky depths of his memories, but anything beyond that escaped him. He popped open the door and hunted through the packets until he found one with B+ printed on it, grabbed it, and hurried back across the room.

Kyra had set up a stand for the blood to hang from and now slipped a needle into Cage's arm. Greg handed her the packet of blood and watched her work, impressed with how competent and deft her hands were. She hung the blood and got it going, feeding it into Cage's system. That task complete, she turned her attention to the wound. It was obvious that the man had attempted to do a quick patch job himself, but either hadn't had enough material or time. Kyra worked quickly, cleansing the wound, and then patching it on both sides and injecting him with something.

When she finished, she ran a scan over him with another handheld device. After several moments of silent consideration, she set it aside and let out a long breath, as if she'd been holding it for the entire procedure.

“He'll be fine...for now, but this is really just a patch job. We'll have to get him somewhere with a real medical bay eventually. No major organs were hit, at least,” she said.

He gave a nervous laugh and felt a bit of tension drain out of him. He rubbed at his face and winced. Several cuts and scrapes had collected there while he was being pushed into the dirt. Kyra frowned and collected more medical supplies.

“Hold still.” She came at him with a sterilization pad.

He hissed in a sharp breath at the sting of antiseptics.

Kyra huffed out a little laugh. “Don't be baby.” She continued, focused on her work, running the pad across the wound several times.

“
It can't be
that
dirty.”

Kyra sighed. “Someone was stepping on your head, grinding it into the ground. It's filthy. Now hold
still
.”

She worked for a few seconds more until she seemed satisfied that his cut was clean, and went about bandaging it.

“So...those guys...you knew them?” Greg asked quietly.

Kyra hesitated, and finally nodded. “They showed up at my outpost...” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “Like I said earlier, I got control of everyone at my outpost...everyone left alive, anyway. Then
they
showed up. That group of assholes. They cut us down. Killed the men, and prepared to rape the women. They never got the chance. More zombies showed up. Still don't know how the bastards snuck up on us, but they were everywhere. Me and Tom were the only ones to make it out. He was another technician, worked with me a lot. Heh, he, I think...” Kyra trailed off, her eyes misty, staring off across the room.

“
I think he had a crush on me, but I never fostered it. I just...he wasn't my type. I’m still not sure why. Anyway, he got bit. I threw him in the back of the jeep and made a run for it, and you know the rest.”

Kyra forced a smile. Greg stared at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. Before the silence had a chance to play out, Cage shifted on the table behind them. They both turned to face him. His eyes snapped open. His mouth remained a flat, indecipherable line. With slow deliberate moves, he propped himself up on his elbows. The movement appeared to cause him pain, but there was only a brief twitch in his right eye.

“Where am I?”

Kyra and Greg filled in the blanks for the mystery man. He listened, remaining propped up the entire time, despite the obvious effort it took. By the end, he was sweating. Kyra grabbed an injector of painkillers, but he waved her off.

“I prefer to suffer through my pain.” His mouth pinched into a thin line.

Greg glanced at Kyra who shrugged before he spoke. “That seems a little...extreme.”

“I find that it serves as a good motivator for success in the future. I also find that, in my line of work, a higher pain tolerance is preferable to a lower one.”

Greg wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just nodded and fell silent.

Cage spoke up again. “I suppose you want to hear how I got into the position I’m in?”

Both of them nodded.

“It's dull, I'm afraid. I was stationed at a military outpost not far from here. Those men came in. There were more when they first showed up, but those who didn't join their cause managed to kill a fair amount of them. In the end, they won out. They shot me, thought they'd killed me. When I came to, I did a quick patch job on myself, grabbed my sniper rifle, and followed them. I tracked them here, to this outpost.”

Something about Cage's voice unsettled Greg. At first, he wasn't quite sure what it is, more caught up in the story than the storyteller.

“You managed to track them here, despite the fact they were in a vehicle and you were wounded?” Kyra frowned.

“
I'm very good at what I do.”

“
And what is that?” Greg’s curiosity and the odd feeling he got from Cage made him ask.

“
I'm a scout first, sniper second.”

“
Must be a close second,” Kyra muttered.

“
Indeed. If you'll have me, I’ll stay here and assist.”

Greg glanced at Kyra. Finally, he shrugged.
Why not?
Kyra seemed to be thinking harder about it, almost looking for a reason to turn him away. In the end, a small sigh escaped her lips.

“
Sure, we'd like to have you. For the moment, you should rest. There’re spare beds in the dorms building, most of them clean.”

Cage gave them a curt nod. He sat up with another slight twitch of his eye registering the pain, and rose to his feet. With new blood now in his system, he pulled the needle from his arm and bandaged it.

“Are there any radios around? Earpieces?” He glanced at Greg.

Kyra hesitated. “Um...there's probably some in the comms room. Why?”

“If we're going to be apart, we should have a way of keeping in contact and a system for checking in.”

“
That's a good idea...alright, come on.” Kyra led them out of the infirmary and back into the misty rain. Greg took stock of their latest addition in the gray light, frowning at what he saw. No question that the man was a competent sniper. That much had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt when he'd saved their asses. Everything from the paleness of his skin to the sunken in quality of his eyes to the gaunt, drawn nature of his face spoke of a deep exhaustion. Abruptly, Greg realized what had been bothering him earlier.

The way Cage spoke. There was little emotion in his words. He spoke each line as if he were delivering an aftermath report to a commanding officer. Greg decided to let it go, for now. The guy was just exhausted, mentally and physically. He just needed a break. Or maybe he was just a stone-cold hard ass.

What did it matter? Provided he didn't flip out on them, he'd be a great asset to their survival. They came into the comms room and Kyra hunted around for a few moments before producing a trio of small, wraparound earpiece comms units. Each of them slipped one in and ran them through a brief series of tests.

“
Okay, they work.” Kyra stepped out of the comms room.

“
I'll be awake in eight hours. That's how long it should take for the healing agents you injected me with to bring me to an appropriate level of pain.”

“
Will you be okay to sleep on your own?” Greg asked.

“
I'll be fine. I'm a light sleeper.” With that, Cage turned and walked out of the room, down the hall, and out into the rain. Greg and Kyra gathered at the door to watch him. He first collected his sniper rifle from where it lay in the mud, then made a slow trek toward the dorms building and disappeared inside.

Kyra stirred. “What about you? You should be resting, too.”

“No...I think I slept enough last night. I don't think I could sleep right now, anyway.”

“
Yeah, I know what you mean. Even though I only got four hours last night, I feel like...” She opened and closed her hands, looking anxious. “I need to do something, you know? I think if we're going to be rest and recuperate here for a while, we should clean the place up. We still have no idea how the infection is spread, but I'm willing to bet that it's blood-borne. The sooner we get all this blood off the walls, and all the bodies somewhere else, the better.”

With that, Kyra headed for the infirmary.

Greg followed.

* * * * *

Right away, Greg knew that he had spent a lot of time scrubbing the deck. Unfortunately, he had no emotional compass to guide him. He didn't know if he loved or hated it. Initially the intimate familiarity bothered him, but he soon drifted into a rhythmic routine of simple monotony. Since the infirmary was, by far, the worst off of all the buildings, they began there. Greg and Kyra located some bio-hazard gloves and masks and large containers of powerful sterilization solutions, then set to work on the ground-in blood.

They worked through several hours, mopping up the blood from every surface. Greg had a hard time imagining the gruesome slaughter that had taken place in order to generate such a godforsaken mess.

As they continued to work, Greg had an urge to talk. At first, the simple tasks laid out before him allowed him to lose himself in their mundane nature. Eventually, his brain started to work, and after the first hour, he found himself itching for conversation.

“
So, Kyra...what brought you out here?” he asked during one of their brief breaks.

“
Out here to Dis? Or out here to the wastelands?”

“
Either, both.”

“
Well, if you must know, I joined up with SI not long after I-”

Greg interrupted her. “'SI'?”

“Yeah, SI...oh, sorry, I forgot. That uniform, combined with how mentally balanced you seem, keeps throwing me off. I keep forgetting that you lost your memories...Security-Investigations. They're a branch of the military, well, a sub-branch, really. We operate under the Colonial Authority. Basically, CA is the administrator of colony planets. Security-Investigations are, well...the muscle of the CA, I guess you could call it. The Security part runs, well, security. Sort of like a police force in the colonies. They also offer other opportunities, like medical and technical training.”

“
What about the Investigations part?”

“
Them? Oh, Investigations is made up mostly of four to six man specialized teams that handle isolated distress calls, curious communications blackouts, and downed ships. Kind of like Search and Rescue, but ground-based...S and R being exactly what it sounds like, only they work in space.
Any
way, after I joined up with SI, I found out I was good at all things radio, so I became a Communications Technician.”

She paused for a moment before she continued. “After getting sent through the bureaucratic shuffle, I got shipped here. This was just after the war and-”

“War? There was a war?” Greg was fascinated with this. He knew, more than likely, that he already
knew
all this shit, but nonetheless it came through as news to him.

Kyra laughed. “Christ, we're going to have to send you back to school...there was a war. I don't really want to get into it. Personally, politics don't amuse me, and that's primarily what the war was about. Suffice it to say, it was a
big
war, millions of people died and it left the galaxy in need. Many capable graduates were rushed out to lost colonies, planets we'd lost touch with during the war, and devastated planets that got hit hard. Dis wasn't necessarily hit hard, per say, but it was important enough to warrant protection.”