powdered milk, shortening tubs, chemical jugs, pasta crates, and much more. All stacked in piles seven to eight feet tall, shrink wrapped into tight bundles, and aligned in rows to create a maze of boxes. Most of the goods inside certainly spoiled a long time ago; an acidic sour smell emanated from the collection joining with the already pungent aroma of the facility.
The room stretched as long and as wide as a football field. A catwalk ran the length of the chamber halfway up the four-story western wall. Bright fluorescent lights hanging from a flat metal ceiling lit the whole place up like a stage on which a play would soon begin and Nina knew exactly who the players would be.
“We have to keep moving,” she said, but she did not get a chance to finish the sentence.
Nina felt hot shot fly passed her face, inches from her nose. She instinctively dove toward the first line of packed pallets.
Carl never stood a chance. A round hit him in the forehead. The weight of his M-249 machine gun pulled his lifeless body over like a toppling statue.
Vince tried to dodge but another blast of alien bullets hit him in the leg. He crumpled over, barely finding cover behind another pallet of goods.
The shots came from the catwalk overlooking the maze of crates from the west wall. One of Voggoth’s mechanical commandos served as assassin.
Nina raised her rifle and tried to return fire, but more shots came in from the advantage of an elevated position. She retreated, pulling Vince along with her by his utility belt.
Behind cover, Nina took stock of her mates.
Bly lay in the open in a growing puddle of crimson. The impact tore away the top half of his head. Despite knowing battlefield gore all her life, Nina felt a sharp pang in her heart at the sight of her friend so badly mangled.
She turned to Vince. Blood streamed out and over his black BDUs from a wound to his knee. His face twisted in agony, but he refused to cry out.
Captain Forest removed her pack and retrieved a heavy bandage. She struggled to wrap it around the wound. His leg shook violently from the pain.
“Listen, we have to stop the bleeding; or at least slow it down,” she spoke the obvious. “Then I can get you out of here.”
“I can’t walk, Nina.”
“Not yet you can’t. But look, I’ve got strong shoulders. We’ll get you out of here.”
“Strong shoulders? Yeah-yeah…” he mumbled as she wrapped the bandage tight. Blood spouted but with each trip around the leg the dressing grew firmer and pressed against the hole in his leg.
A grating metallic sound interrupted the first aid treatment. The two soldiers faced south and saw the bulkhead from which they had come slam shut with a very permanent clang.
Nina returned to her work, pulling the bandage tight on its final trip around his knee.
Another grating metallic sound. This one farther away. This one from the north end of the warehouse. Nina did not need to see the bulkhead opening; she could picture it in her mind. She wondered how the Christians had felt when the Romans opened the tigers gate on the far side of the coliseum…
The north side door finished opening and out of the black came Voggoth’s robotic commandos skating in and swaying side to side on the wheels in their heels. Kind of like rollerbladers gliding along a sidewalk.
Bronze-colored metal helmets protected solitary round red eyes that swiveled sideways surveying the warehouse as they moved in. Their skeletal bodies wore bronze metal ribcages that protected blobs of bio mass that blurred the line between robot and animal. Gun barrels affixed to forearms gave the Commandos fire power equivalent to a human carbine.
A Sergeant-identified by black chevrons atop silver shoulder plates that also sported twin grenade launchers-generated a static-filled electronic tone that served as a communication. The squad of ten commandos split into pairs and entered the maze from the north side and searched for their quarry…
Nina tried to clamp the bandage but Vince grabbed her hand.
“Go.”
“What? Listen, I’m not going to leave you.”
“Then what, Nina? We’ll just wait here until they come and gun us down? Don’t be-don’t be stupid. Get going.”
She stared at him for a moment. Thought. Then pulled him into a small space between two pallets.
“Wait here,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you.”
He opened his mouth in protest, but she silenced him with glaring, narrow eyes.
With that, Nina adjusted her beret tighter on her head and ran into the maze from the south moving fast but silent. She discarded the sound suppressor on her carbine as she moved.
Sterile bright lights from above cast over the labyrinth, chasing most but not all shadows. The same smell of rot that lived throughout the complex remained in the air here, but joined by the sour odor of decaying foodstuffs hovering over the field of crates.
She followed the nozzle of her gun as she ran forward then turned right along a wall of grain sacks, then left and forward again between row upon row of number ten soup cans piled eight feet high.
The sound of wheels rolling on the concrete floor carried through the passages of the maze. The noise grew, then spread all around her. Some to the east, others to the west, more to the north.
Movement to her left.
Nina flattened against a barricade of white cases marked “Sysco Imperial Brand”, held her breath, and grabbed her M4 by the barrel upside-down.
Two pair of wheels rolling-closer-closer…
She stepped around the corner and waved her rifle like a club. The stock smashed into a Commando’s head. The casing cracked. The creature emitted an electronic wail one step removed from a turntable needle scratching across a warped LP. The metallic neck of the thing bent backwards and its red eye went dark as it hit the hard floor on its skeletal back.
As her swing followed through, Nina let go with her right hand and reversed motion with her left. The M4 twirled around and she caught it in perfect firing position.
The second Commando took aim with its forearm-mounted barrel. At a distance of three feet, Nina held her trigger on full-automatic. Flames burst from the gun as it spat a fatal storm of bullets into the gut of the thing. Impact after impact pushed the roller back on its skates, arms flailing wide, taking on the appearance of a tent- revival robot preacher channeling powers from above.
She stopped firing. The creature fell dead into a cluster of cookie tins.
Nina’s instincts gave warning: danger from behind.
Two more Commandos came around the t-intersection of crates behind her. One immediately knelt, the other stood, both took aim.
Nina darted left passed a pallet stacked with industrial-strength salts. Pursuing shots tore into cardboard boxes spilling grains like sand seeping from a punctured hour glass. She disappeared around a corner.
The robotic assassins skated forward, eager to catch their quarry. As they rounded the corner of boxes she fired toward them from the far side of a small open space. The Commandos halted. One returned fire. The other glanced down just in time to see the grenade at their wheeled feet. It howled a screeching electronic scream before an explosion of shrapnel tore apart both their metallic rib cages and splattered the biological mass contained therein. Two more red eyes went dark.
Nina turned away from the ambush and moved north again, racing fast but careful down a center aisle lined with crates of tea bags, shortening, and powdered soups.
As she passed one crossway, a flurry of enemy bullets whizzed by the back of her head. She heard their wheels gain speed in frantic pursuit.
The passage led to an open space. A sort of courtyard at the middle of the maze.
The wheels behind her to the south grew louder. But as she stepped forward she heard more wheels come from the north. And still more from the east and west.
The blood hounds had surrounded the wolf…
The Sergeant skated into the open section with twin grenade launchers on its shoulders ready to fire. It found only the other five of its number. Red eyes stared at red eyes with electronic bewilderment.
