Prototype (2)
A monster with two heads. Worse — one bore the face of an adult, and the other that of a boy.
Well, what the hell is this one supposed to be.
It looked less like a zombie than an experimental subject birthed by a mad scientist — or some abomination that had crawled straight out of hell.
"Little, send that to Captain Baek."
The footage from moments ago went out to Captain Baek on the outside. The reply came back in seconds, crackling with panic.
"Sang-goo! Sang-goo? What the— it's a variant? I'm coming down! Right now!"
"Don't come down. I only told you what's happening so you'd know when we're pulling out. What I need from you is the location of the tray that thing came from — whether it's tied into the hangar door system."
Fortunately, Captain Baek caught on immediately.
"Damn it! Give me a second!"
He was in a hurry. So, presumably, was the thing up above.
The moment Sang-goo trained his rifle up at it from below, it stopped being so eager to run.
―Krrrrr….
The variant twisted its body this way and that, dodging the powerful light, slinking along the deck above.
Then something caught Sang-goo's eye as he moved forward slowly, weapon raised.
"I thought so. I did hit it."
Splotch — squelch. Something wet and heavy dropped from above.
It was blood, seeping from the creature's shoulder and back. Of the rounds he'd raked across where its head should have been, three had struck the thing's upper body.
"How in the hell does a zombie take a hit and stay standing?"
He wasn't asking because he expected an answer. He was keeping the standoff alive while waiting for the radio, watching how the thing reacted.
It was a beast unlike anything he'd ever faced, and all he gave the cornered monster was the faintest sliver of reassurance — just enough slack to lower its guard.
Beep―
A signal from Little Dog. Sang-goo glanced at the tablet.
On screen was Little Dog itself, alongside a single stun gun. So this was the special forces' newest operational support robot. Its situational reading was genuinely top-notch.
Little Dog advanced slowly. Then it flopped over onto its side.
Curious what it was doing, Sang-goo watched as the robot opened the alloy panel of its belly. Inside sat a pistol-sized stun gun.
The range was respectable, but he had no idea whether a few dozen thousand volts could actually drop that thing. And if the variant simply flattened itself up there and refused to move, this could get a lot more troublesome instead.
Even if it stays on my tail, I've got no choice but to push out.
Stun gun: on hold for now. Of course, he tucked it away in his tactical vest anyway.
Little Dog popped back upright and resumed its alert posture. Sang-goo had just resolved to open the hangar door with the thing still hanging behind him when the radio crackled again.
"Sang-goo! The power lines are completely separate! It's got nothing to do with the hangar door! Power's already been cut to this deck, so light it up!"
Now that was a welcome thing to hear.
"Say again your last. Over."
Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tack―!
Sang-goo emptied an entire magazine with loving thoroughness. Thick cable or not, it was nothing but rubber, plastic, and copper underneath.
―Kyaaaaagh!!
The variant, which had briefly settled, scrambled madly to move — but there was no dodging a wall of falling bullets.
And so:
Thud―
The creature hit the ground as a beehive.
Arms and knees bent and torn, it twitched on the floor. It tried to drag itself away by sheer will, but when two robots boxed it in with blazing lights it could only shiver violently in the corner.
Clack―
Having swapped in a fresh magazine, Sang-goo walked over at an unhurried pace, slung the rifle across his back, and drew the axe.
―Krrrk… krrk….
A shot to the throat, apparently — thick, congealed blood gurgled in its windpipe.
A two-headed variant.
Up close, the sheer horror of it was beyond words. And the stench — don't even get started.
For one brief, greedy moment he wondered whether he should bag the thing and send it to Charles or Ryan's people — then squashed the thought immediately.
And what if something goes wrong?
Ryan might well use this camp as a bargaining chip someday.
Crack!! Thud―!
It had two heads, so he split them both, generously(?), one apiece.
?!
His hands had grown so finely tuned that he no longer needed to look — he could feel exactly what he'd split.
Sang-goo examined the head of the creature he'd felled on the second swing. That is, the head of the boy(?) zombie that had seemed suspicious from the very start.
"It's empty."
The inside of its skull was hollow. Not entirely — but compared to the others, there was unmistakably far less in there.
"No way…."
Come to think of it, he'd had a feeling this thing was connected to those three brainless corpses from earlier.
Was the monster feeling a deficiency? A monster, of all things?
"What a load of horseshit."
The absurdity of it pulled a hollow laugh out of him. Well — what did it matter? He had plenty left to do.
Only after severing both heads completely did Sang-goo shake the gore from his axe.
"Ready."
Preparation complete. Time to hit the Deck 8 hangar — and the cargo terminal beyond it.
Screeeeee―
Whiiiir― Whiiiir―
Sirens wailed as the massive iron door ground open.
Sang-goo had made it all the way to Deck 8 alone.
The instant the door parted, cold air rolled out — and with it, a stench so overwhelming it hit like a storm front.
"Genuinely insane. This place."
What greeted him was a seething, black mass of zombies packed so tight they blurred together. The one mercy was that not a single variant moved among them.
He'd have to cut through this horde to find the hangar — and only then could he reach Colonel Oh's team.
"You two, hold position."
Leaving Little and Big behind him, Sang-goo raised his rifle.
A dozen-odd, and he might have gone for the axe. But even a rough glance put the horde at well over two hundred — who knew how long it would take to club his way through all of them?
His head was throbbing, pounding, killing him — better to kill them fast.
―Grrrrrgh―
―Kyaaagh―
The creatures had welcomed the opening door — food had arrived, or so they'd thought — and now they howled at the empty air in rage.
Not that he cared.
Just like before, he laid the muzzle across their headline,
Rat-ta-ba-ba-ba-bam―!
and raked it clean with sustained fire. The front row's heads burst, and the ones behind them burst in turn, one after another.
A grotesque fireworks display of brain matter and rotten gore.
Hundreds of exploding heads reflected against the yellow wall panels — gruesome, and yet something not far from a work of art.
Rat-ta-tack! Rat-ta-tack! Rat-ta-tack!
Ssssyt―! Splurt! Sssy-syt! Splurt!
When the crisp, head-popping percussion even landed on the beat—
how could this be anything but art?
The unrestrained explosion showcase of a B-grade movie. Something like that.
Tick― tick―
Silence arrived without warning.
"Almost."
One left. Exactly one.
The magazine he'd swapped in had run dry. If he'd dropped that last head cleanly at the same instant, it would have been a perfect finish.
Resigning himself to the near-miss, he drew the axe —
Whip-crack―!! SPLIT!
— and split a skull ten meters away.
"Little, can you retrieve that?"
A test order, thrown out on a hunch.
Tap-tap-tat― tap-tap-ta-tap―
Little Dog understood instantly and scrambled off. It bounded across the wrecked zombie corpses, then struggled and strained at the handle of the embedded axe.
"Figures."
They had said its upgrades weren't finished. It was built for scouting and hauling light cargo — axe retrieval wasn't in the spec.
That was when Big Cow moved.
Krring― kreeeing―
As if to say leave this sort of thing to me, Big Cow strode forward briskly. Little Dog tilted its head at the axe handle it had been wrestling with, then backed off.
Before long, two pincer arms sprouted from Big Cow's chest.
Whiiiir―
One arm extended a small circular saw and sliced the zombie's head free, while the other wrenched the axe out of the deck. Then it returned to Sang-goo, practically strutting.
"Thanks."
Keiiiing―
Big Cow bobbed its head as if to say, oh, this much is nothing!
"Little, Big — both of you, take point."
Having shut the rear door firmly, Sang-goo put the two robots out front this time. Some thirty meters ahead stood a double iron door, two-thirds of the way closed.
It was a large gate, wide enough for industrial forklifts to pass through — no problem getting by. Beyond it waited the cargo warehouses, and the hangar in question. Soon he'd know how Colonel Oh's team was doing.
Krring― krring― krring―
Tap-tap-ta-ta-ta-tap―
The robots pressed forward without a single complaint, quick and eager. Working in rhythm with machines for the first time, Sang-goo found himself quite satisfied. When he went around rescuing people from here on out, these two would make dependable partners.
Can't haul both of them everywhere, though.
There was no way to carry the pair on Dark Knight, his beloved steed. Bolt on one sidecar, though, and Little Dog would fit just fine. Come to think of the axe-retrieval business, modding Little Dog would be a good idea.
He was in the middle of that thought when—
Kreeeing―
Beep―
The two robots, moving so smoothly until now, stopped dead — precisely in front of the iron door.
Static crackled across the line, and the tablet that had been displaying their status flared NO SIGNAL.
So it starts here.
Colonel Oh's team had mentioned interference on Deck 8. Some kind of device had to be hidden in this vicinity.
Personnel who looked American. A two-headed variant. And a jamming array still drawing power five months after the end of the world.
Even a fool could put that together. This ship had been up to something.
By all rights, this should have been terrifying.
Instead, Sang-goo's heart pounded with curiosity and anticipation. Maybe the slaughter had finally soaked into him — or maybe he'd simply grown into a man whose nerve could no longer be measured.
Either way, he kept walking.
Whuumm―
The closer he got to the two machines, the harder every piece of electronics glitched. The special helmet, the tablet — even the battery-powered oxygen pack.
Leave them running and they'd fry, so Sang-goo shut every one of them down himself.
"Hoooh…."
He pulled a portable oxygen mask from his pack and strapped it on, then advanced leaning on the yellow wall panels.
Whether they'd been engineered to survive an EMP or just built to last, the panels glowed on, refusing to die.
He passed beneath the massive iron door.
Every sense stretched wide, Sang-goo moved one careful step at a time. To his left sat cargo warehouse A-1; to his right, B-1. Both were fitted with rolling shutters, each open just enough for a man to crawl under.
No zombies.
The bio-detector confirmed it. But if there was another two-headed variant lurking like the last one, that reading could be wrong. With the door shut he'd never know — and with his two escorts out of commission, he couldn't afford to leave his back unguarded.
Sang-goo slid himself under the left shutter first.
He flowed into the room and swept the rifle across his surroundings in a single motion.
The interior, lit by the same yellow panels. Nothing moved. The only occupant was a single corpse with its head blown off.
A research coat? But — he did it to himself.
Whether terror had broken him, or something had bitten him somewhere, he had blown his own head off. The shotgun gripped tightly in both of the corpse's hands told the story well enough.
And true to form, the telltale detail was a grimy, sweat-stained white research coat.
Sang-goo approached the body. Sadly, there was no name tag — only a single passcard in the pocket, marked 'J'. No telling when it might prove useful, so he pocketed it.
Then he surveyed the warehouse itself.
"Hah…."
Roughly three meters to the ceiling, a square floor of about forty pyeong. Nearly half of it was stacked with urethane crates. He pried a couple open — inside were German-made rifles, 5.56mm rounds, and 9mm rounds.
The absurd part was that every last cartridge was subsonic. And the German rifles looked strikingly similar to the customized HK-416 Sang-goo was carrying right now — the same model he'd scavenged off the ST mercenaries and used ever since.
Nothing good comes from staying long.
The goods could wait for a return trip; the urgent thing was finding Colonel Oh. Sang-goo left warehouse A-1 and slipped straight across the corridor into the one opposite.
"Well now…."
The first thing to catch his eye was a column pulsing with a faint glow.
More precisely: a circular pillar, exactly his own height and build. There were five of them in all, and each one seemed to breathe — brightening and dimming every two seconds, over and over.
He'd never seen such a thing before, but he knew it in his gut. These were the jamming devices.
As if to prove it, nearly every wall panel in this room had gone dim or dead. Too close to the source, they'd clearly taken the worst of it. Whatever mechanism had kept the things running until now, it made a strange kind of sense.
Sang-goo seized the interconnected cables and ripped them loose, then kicked the pillars over. Wham! Wham-crack! Blue-white sparks burst, and the columns shut down one after another.
At last—
Beep―
At his touch, the tablet came back to life.
And at the same instant, a sound carried from far away.
Boom―! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
What is that?
It sounded like some heavy iron door opening and slamming shut — and the rhythm was speeding up.
―Scree… hnnnngh… hnnnn….
Static washed over the auxiliary radio. Through the channel tuned to Colonel Oh's side alone, ragged, labored groans drifted through.
"Colonel Oh Sang-shik? I'm on Deck 8 now. Do you copy?"