Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (14 page)

There was a man. There was a war. There was a city burning into ashes.

Depravity
Dear Mother,

Anna here, I was going to see you the other day but it wouldn't stop raining. I
have gotten another letter from Joseph since. I hope you are all right with me
keeping hold of the letters. When I see his handwriting it makes me feel close
to him. Though I know I will be visiting soon Joseph told me to write to you.
I am. I'll just quote most of this…

"Dear Anna, my darling.

I can't tell you where I am or but I have been promoted and put on an
important assignment. I am even typing on a Signal Corps typewriter, just
some of the new equipment we just had brought in. I was supposed to go on
leave but instead I will be going out in another twelve hours. Right now I
have enough time to grab a meal, write to you and get some good sleep. The
officer tent is a whole lot nicer then the regular barracks. It smells of lavender
instead of sweat and I swear the beds are warmer. I am sorry I won't be
coming home to you so soon. I hope you can forgive me. This is something
that they said will help us win the war. That means even though I won't be
home to you I can stop leaving again and again. For that reason alone I will
keep fighting. I have seen more then most anyway. Did you know they are
letting children enlist now? I feel like if this doesn’t end soon it never will.

We saw combat the other day. I was part of an assault wave and soon after
we landed I killed two Jerry's. I managed to pick up a few souvenirs from
them as well. Aside from that I have spent much of my detail on patrol. The
ruins of depravity. That's what we call it. Its always nothing more then in and
out. I'm just thankful I am out of the trenches. I don't think anything could be
worst then going back there. If hell was a place on Earth.

I want to win this war. I want to come home to you and have children with
you. I know there is an angel looking out for me but knowing should
anything happen that I would meet you on the other side. Tell my mother and
father I miss them. I love you all - you all keep me going. Thank you.

I am sorry I am not coming home.
- Joseph Everett."

Those were all his words not mine. If I could I would tell him to
come home. It doesn't have to be him. I would tell him how much he is
needed here. I would tell him he's been gone three years and it is too long. I
would tell him he needs to visit your grave. We are all that keeps him going
but we are falling apart. I don't know if I can keep this secret anymore.

- Anna Everett
10 April 44
I had been fighting this war long enough to know when I was

being hunted. We were clearing a path behind enemy lines beating and
bombing our way to Berlin. When the war began I joined not because it was
my duty, I had no choice. It was fight or flight. I run from no one. When I
first crossed the ocean and landed on the blood drenched shores of bad wolf I
was putting a notch on my gun for every Jerry I killed. I had to stop when I
lost count.

A Jerry sniper sits in the ruins of Depravity. I can see him through my scope.
The M1 Garand, or more specifically M1E with M84 telescope and T-37 flash
suppressor, my instrument of death. He doesn't sit long. The sound of my
bullet echoes through the cracks and walls inside the city. A flock of pigeons
fly into the air from the ground below me. I had spent two days inside the
stomach of depravity waiting, being both the prey and the predator.

I climbed the wooden ladder to the snipers position. He sat in front of me still
alive but barely breathing. "Sorry I missed," I said to him before taking his
life with my pistol. I wasn't really sorry it was him or me and if he lived he
would have killed any number of my brothers. Depravity wasn't a city for
men. The moment you enter you forfeit your soul. You can smell the decay of
flesh, fire and ashes that mysteriously start and stop for no reason at all.
Black dust blows in the air from where entire buildings once stood. A town
hall here and a shoe polisher there, a bread and basket store, even a flower
shop that now stands with nothing more then a frail frame and broken glass.
Even after executing the sniper I can't shake the feeling of being hunted as if
the city itself is devouring me whole.

Anna, my wife if she could see the horrors I have done to people in the name
of patriotism. In the name of values I once held so dear. I could have gone
home to her. I should have gone home to her but I wouldn't be the same man.
I couldn't face her. I am too weak for that. All I can do is hope that she will be
able to go on without me. I wanted once to have a family, a child. Now I just
want to end this for her. Time will heal all wounds. She will cry over me but
one day she will move on. She will find a man to love her and make her whole
in a way I never could anymore. If I am lucky, which I am probably not I will
meet her on the other side of the gate... or at least on her bequest be given
grace to speak kind words to her.

We entered the city at night. There were six others in my squad. Two were
French; they were on loan from the resistance fighting back there. Another
was Australian, another British, and like me the last one our commanding
officer was American. We made our way through the ruins slowly. It was a
mass grave. Bodies had been cindered. Some were bleeding out still, unable
to scream or speak they watched us like the dead as we walked through what
was once there home or work. We were making our way to an underground
bunker. It was there we heard the Nazis had been planning something big. A
smaller sect, worshippers of the occult and black magic ruled depravity. We
heard they were running experiments on captured soldiers and Jews. We had
no idea what we would find but we knew it would be disturbing to say the
least. We had busted other sects similar to what we knew about this one... the
Thule society, the Vril, the Black Suns. Each of them believed there was a
black force or superior intellect driving their actions. They were all just
murderers and monsters.

The bunker was bombed but our Intel told us it was so far underground we
should expect a small resistance. This meant sneaking in with stealth.
Without our guns we made our way down, breaking necks and slitting
throats. It was dirty work. When we entered the heart of their sanctuary we
found bodies laid out along the floor. Some were covered, others had arms,
legs, organs removed. It was a butcher shop. There in the center of the room
was a naked girl. There was a green glow from where her eyes should have
been. Her thighs and wrists had been slit. She stared at us not saying a word
just barely breathing. Faint crying breathes that seemed to whistle.

There was only one guard in the room with her. It took me two seconds to
plunge my knife into his heart. I took off my jacket and walked over to the
girl. I couldn't imagine what she must be going through. It made me think of
Anna, my mother, my sister. I never felt better about killing these bastards.

"This is for you, our medic will be here in a minute," I told her, "can you tell
me what happened?" She didn't say a word instead she pulled away in fear. It
was more fear in her then anyone I had ever seen. She wasn't afraid of dying
though, she was afraid of whatever they had planned. That was when I saw
it. Her tongue had been cut out and her eyes had been burned black. The
green glow was from some kind of phosphoric acid they had used to torture
her.

"What do we do with her?" One of my men asked. Everyone was silent as the
medic spoke, "I gave her some painkiller, morphine, powerful stuff... she is
bleeding from her legs and wrists, she is blind and can't speak, it looks like
she might be deaf as well I can't tell her whole body is in shock." "Send her to
sleep," said the French resistance member, "if that was me I wouldn't want to
live."

The medic took our morphine and injected it into her arm. She was bleeding
so bad we almost weren't sure it would work but then we saw her smile and
pass.

All around us lay the dead. Male and female body parts played out in design.
The girl was a sacrifice. "What kind of god would want something like this?" I
said aloud. "Even in the darkest of times life has meaning," said the medic.
Then I saw it. A book lying between the girls legs. "This wasn't for a god, this
was meant for a demon," I said flipping through the incantations and
drawings in blood written on pages of human skin. It was here in the devils
handbook we found the map. The American was the one who found it,
"There, an island in the South Pacific, Japanese territory, This says long ago
an ancient god came to Earth and brought with him the power to see the
future." They were sacrificing to their god. I slammed my fist on the table and
shot three bullets into the dead guard, "This was their secret weapon. The
reason we destroyed an entire city. All for what some voodoo, some black
magic that doesn't exist."

The next day we were given a new nickname, our task force became Cold
Squad. Our next mission, infiltrate Black Island in the south Pacific and
destroy or hold whatever it is the Nazis believe they have found.

Dear Anna,

I'm sorry. I will be closer to home then I have been in years in the next few
days but please don't think I will be coming home. Even if I did I would no
longer be the man you fell in love with. This war has taken its toll on my
heart and mind. My soul is forfeit but I know if you can live on, if you can
find love, raise a family I will be happy. I will see you on the other side for in
heaven there is no jealousy between man or woman. I will wait for you. Tell
my mother I love her.

Forever yours,
- Joseph
19 May 1944

Machina
“Get him out of their now!” Balkava screamed as I awoke…

I felt my heart stop beating as I went into cardiac arrest. I struggled to
breath. I felt like someone had just dropped a weight on my chest. It was a
rare side effect of using the nexus too much. After what I had just seen it
become witness too it didn't surprise me. I had been spectator to plenty of
horrible things inside but that girl, the way she was tortured. I felt like could
remember every cut like they were my own. It took the doctor a few minutes
to get me stable. In that time I felt like I was floating. It felt like I had woken
up inside another world.

This was my life. I was a ghost trapped in so very many bodies… and there
was only one in which I had even the slightest bit of control over.

“Sev?” Balkava was sitting next to me. We were lying in bed naked under the
sheets. “Yea?” I said wondering what she would be asking or ordering from
me next.

“You haven’t seemed like yourself lately, what’s wrong?” It had been weeks
now since I had used the nexus. I was taking a break. My body was in need
of healing and the doctor was worried my mind would break if I kept using
daily. I had never felt so trapped on this ship. Even simulations felt worthless
and fake compared to how the nexus made me feel. I put my hand on her
inner thigh and began to rub it with my hand. No one said anything about
what I had seen. They didn’t think anything of it but I knew there was
something more to it. There was something about what I had seen through
Joseph Everett. I knew it was a small part of a bigger picture. “Nothing is
wrong,” I said climbing on top of her. I was avoiding the situation the best
way possible.

Balkava had always said I was a better lover then I was a
fighter. Not like I
had any real combat experience anyway. We had been adrift in the immer for
years and I hadn’t seen a Trepp or Skrav since I was a child. She had told me
once how when she was a child she had been forced into combat much like I
was on Errikus. Only a few times did the Skrav ever manage to board a
human ship and she experienced firsthand what it was like. She told me the
story dozens of times - a group of 'elite' Skrav had managed to eject from
their assualt ships and climb aboard the hull of the Erebus during a small
skirmish. They waited several days before killing a group of caretakers and
sneaking inside. The room Balkava was training in was one of the first that
got hit. She lost her family and most of her friends in the attack. She ran for
hours crawling inside vents inside the ship while a group of elders attacked
the Skrav. She was lost and found days later wandering the ship. When they
found her she had been covered in blood it seemed she had taken a Skrav on
in a fight and barely managed to survive. The elders found it unbelievable
that a child held their own even against a weakened Skrav but the facts were
the facts. This was when the elders saw fit to begin training her for combat
and another reason they had no objections to making her a part of there
consul. She was a living legend; the child-Skrav killer and merciless Balkava.

During the few weeks I spent in bed with Balkava a crew led by Hayden
pulled in the space debris and began studying it. It was Lethe. They managed
to dig out a pair of coordinates from it. Coordinates that the the elders had
decided were close enough to our destination that we would make a detour.
We weren’t the only ones that had sought out the Eden and come this far. It
seemed like the Lethe were leaving us a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. We
were nearly there and the Lethe had rolled out the red carpet.

Hayden and I sat at our lunch table in the mess. It was our daily routine to
meet for lunch and talk about our day and the night before. If we weren’t
eating in the mess sometimes we would sneak our way into the hangar and sit
inside one of the drop ships and just waste the day away. I would usually talk
about Balkava and the nexus and he would talk about some kind of scientific
breakthrough or new weapon they were developing. Hayden's job was
suppose to be non-disclosure but when it came to me he never had any
problems keeping his mouth shut. Today I had some strange questions on my

mind. In all my time on the Erebus I had only seen 1/8th of the ship. The rest

was used for stasis, living space or had been deemed off limits by the elders.
It was rumored that parts of the ship were crawling with monsters. Why had
so much of the ship been made off limits to us? This was our home and we
could only wander through so much. Another question popped into my
head... something strange I had never asked before…

“Where does our food come from?”
“Do you really want to know?” he answered with a question.

“Yeah hit me it can’t be worse then some of the things we ate back on
Errikus,” I said. It was true on Errikus we had eaten ration snacks made from
printed protein, farm animals, and grains but on the Erebus there were no
farms, some of the food was printed and there were a few plants from Earth
but nothing significant enough to feed a crew that numbered in the
thousands.

“We scrape it off a Chev,” he said.
“WHAT?” I exhaled.
“Well it’s kinda like a huge whale or like a giant genetic cow regenerates it’s
body parts within a day or two. It doesn’t feel pain when we cut into it, it was
created for exactly this purpose,” he said it all so calmly.

“What does the Chev eat?” I asked.

“That’s easy. It sucks up a mixture of grain and sewage and on top of that it
uses the same technique that the caretakers use to make energy. It’s so big it
doesn’t move it just sits and eats slop all day. It actually has it pretty good
from what I’ve heard.”

"So its a whale that eats shit?" I said watching Hayden smile and nod.

My mind wandered wondering what the Chev looked like. It must be larger
then a drop ship; I wondered how much of the ship it took up. It must have
been engineered to live a very long time as well. How could such a weird
creature exist? Hayden would tell me it was years and years of genetic
manipulation.
Food enough to feed the hungry.
I felt sick.
I couldn’t finish my meal. I never should have asked where the food came
from.

That night instead of going to my room or Balkava’s room I walked around
the Erebus. It was time I explored.

An auton sat motionless inside a dark corridor lit only by small
phosphorus lights that seemed to make everything glow with a purple aura. It
was hard to make out at first. It was so still it looked like it could have been a
park of the wall. Its body was made of dark silver metal with loose wires
hanging here and there. It had a shape that mimicked a man who slept with a
raptor but the proportions were all wrong and there was no face only a
rectangular box full of sensors. If we had built them too human we would
never know they were machines. The auton must have sensed I was there.
They had hundreds of sensors built into their hands. They were created long
ago their bodies worn down. If they had been left in the elements they would
have rusted and withered away. The auton was watching something...
something in the dark. I walked closer and closer standing only a few yards
away when the machine rose. It must have stood seven or eight feet nearly
touching the ceiling. Then it turned its upper body one hundred and eighty
degrees around and faced me. I felt fear. Never had one of our machines
attacked a human being but I knew I wasn’t where I was suppose to be and
there was so much to this world that I didn’t understand.

It reached its hand out towards me. Four
fingers stretched like silver metal
claws. I felt like it was going to attack. Slowly I moved my legs bracing
myself. I was ready for the machine to strike. Perhaps I was a better soldier
then I led myself to believe. Then the auton took off. It went from standing
still to running in a flash. Its body disappeared into the dark where the lights
were too dim to see. I felt relief believing I had scared it away.

I had only walked a few blocks down from the part of the ship I had known. I
was nearing one of the stasis chambers. I couldn’t believe I had never been
here before. It all felt familiar but horrifying at the same time. I felt alone. I
looked close at the first naked body I saw. They littered the walls. I could see
inside. The small pods were filled with water. Faces covered with breathing
masks, bodies covered in wire and tubes that monitored brain acitivty and
kept their bodies alive. This part of the ship seemed more organic then metal.
Small jagged strips that looked and felt like leather replaced the straight walls
I had become so use to. From the floor to the ceiling it seemed as if I was
standing inside a small rib cage. Between each rib there was a body. I stared
into the face of a young girl, probably in her early twenties. She would be
about the same age as me but she was in reality much older then I was. She
could have been a hundred years old for all I knew. She was not any of the
crew from Errikus or a soldier. She had probably been in stasis waking up
once every few decades. I pitied her. She was living a life made of nothing. All
she had were her dreams. This ship was probably all she ever knew.

The corridor seemed to never end. I must have walked over an hour. If it
wasn’t a straight line I would have felt lost. I was lost. My legs were
beginning to hurt and my brain was telling me I needed to turn back. I must
have been somewhere around the center of the ship. The more I pushed
forward the longer it would take me to get back. I sat and decided to rest. I
would have brought a backpack if I knew this would be such a hike. It
seemed almost as if gravity itself was stronger in this part of the ship. Every
few minutes I would feel a force pushing me side to side. The ship must have
been turning or slightly moving from left to right. Bodies seemed to sway in
their tanks. Out of the hundreds of pods I went past I didn't recognize a
single person. There faces all seemed to blend together. I was about to give up
on my adventure when I heard a scream.

I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I was guided by the dim purple and
blue lights spaced throughout the chamber. The scream was a woman. It
couldn’t have been someone too young but not too old either. It was clear
they were calling for help. I finally came upon the source of the cry. The
auton was holding a woman in her mid forties by the neck. It’s claws grasped
around her digging its lifeless fingers inside her skin. I watched as she bled
over it’s dark metallic hull. I had no weapon. My body would be no match for
the machine. I couldn’t just watch. I ran towards the machine and started
beating its stomach with my fists. The auton had no weak spots. None that I
had been taught anyway. The only way one could be stopped was for it to be
disassembled or blown apart.

Originally the autons were workers built for repairing starships and space
stations, mining asteroids, doing the work that most caretakers do now.
During our first few years they became one of the first weapons we used
against the Skrav. Fighting side by side with soldiers. They were obsolete
though. Skrav weaponry could tear through an auton like a knife through
butter. Wave after wave we would send only for them to be devoured. They
were a joke. They couldn’t strategize the way a human could and no man was
about to give them the power of self-preservation. What was I looking at
than? The ship’s could have given a command to them but why? Any
command would have to be traced back to a human programmer and the
ship’s mind was loyal to humanity.

One of the first lines of code made certain robots couldn't harm humans.

My
fists began to bleed. The skin around my knuckles tore layer after layer. I
put aside the pain and watched helplessly as the woman stared down at me.
Her naked body shook. Her hands grasped the auton’s arms as she kicked her
legs and feet trying to break the hold it had on her. I wondered if her life had
flashed before her eyes. A part of me wondered if she felt relief in the end.
Had she been a soldier or had she slept her life away with nothing more then
decades of dreams between her birth and now? I finally took a step back. All
I could do was watch. I posed like a warrior, my bloody fists ready to attack
and defend. I was ready for the auton to turn and kill me but it did no such
thing. It laid the woman down on the ground slowly and then on its knees its
hand closed the woman’s eyes.

The auton moved into a position of prayer though it’s disproportion made it
seem more like it was a beast hovering over dead prey. Like a wolf guarding a
feast. Then a shadow, a black silhouette came forward from the dark. The
beast was bowing to its master.

The Pawn

“Don’t they teach you to stay out of this part of the ship?” A voice cried out
from the darkness. The auton stood up from its prayer position and faced me
its body hunched over like a troll. I had witnessed how dangerous it could be
first hand now and I had no idea what I was dealing with. I thought about
turning and running back the way I came but already I was so far gone -
hours away from my bunk, my bed, my gun.

“Wait, you are Sev are you not?” the voice said. I still couldn’t see who was
speaking to me but I could tell from the tone and pitch of the voice that it
must have been an elder. Their voice was raspy and old. The figure continued
to speak to me from the dark, “I’m sorry for what you have just seen, that
must have been horrible.” The elder began to walk forward. I could see a
small part of his dark grey robe in the light. Fear, paranoia, anxiety. All of
these feelings began to take hold and overwhelm me. If this was an elder and
I was in for a fight I couldn't kill him? I couldn't murder a member of the
consul and get away - there was literally nowhere to run and the auton could
move a hell of a lot faster then I can. I run anyway. I run before I can even
see the elder’s face. I had just seen a machine and an elder murder - no - I saw
them execute a living breathing woman.