Lost to the Madness Ch3 & 4

Lost to the Madness
Chapter 3-4

Chapter 3: Veins

The feeling stuck with me as we traveled. Russ and I were making slow progress, due to my injuries, which had begun to hurt due to the fact that the pain meds were beginning to wear off.
The two of us walked in silence, passing through a few corridors, which were fully lighted and undamaged. Oddly enough, we had no encounters with the mutants that roamed the colony, but that didn’t mean that left, I could still hear their claws dragging on wall and ceiling.
I pondered what was going on as we entered yet another hallway. Mutants that seemed to be able to pull their bodies back together, or adapt, like the one that had infected Sierra. Mutants that caused mutation with a single bite. Mutants that had suddenly appeared five hours ago. I wondered if this was connected to the outbreaks of space madness that had occurred in the past month, since Shid discovered that cave. The colony had suffered close to five hundred individual cases of space madness, and as time progressed, bodies piled up, which was the reason that I had been sent here. Someone had to do the paperwork.
Russ stopped. I did too, looking ahead, to the corner of the hall. I saw what he saw. Something following the corner, then disappearing from sight. All that I saw of it was rotting flesh that bulged and squirmed, and lots of it.
“Shit.” Russ whispered, so quietly that I barely heard him.
I flicked the safety off of the pistol and we began our journey again. We cautiously rounded the corner, firearms raised, but whatever it was that had bone before us was gone, leaving not a trace. I released a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. My ribs ached. Russ and I started walking again.
The comm. center wasn’t too far away, only down the long hallway, lined with open vents and open doors that contained darkness and who knows what else.
As Russ and I marched our way through the hallway, I became aware of a whispering, just loud enough to be heard, but too quiet for the words to be deciphered. I glanced at Russ, but he made no indication that he had heard anything.
The hall was definitely creepy. As we passed each door frame, I peered inside, trying to find the source of the whispering, but I could never see inside, the rooms or offices or whatever were all too dark.
As we reached the halfway point of the hall, the whispering stopped. I shivered, then told myself that I hadn’t heard anything. Then I told myself that the shiver was from the coldness of the hall.
I took another glance at Russ, and realized that I could see his breath. I stopped.
“Russ, you feel that?” I asked quietly.
“What?”
“The temperature is going down.”
“Oh, that.” Russ paused a minute, watching his breath mist out in front of him, then fade away. “One of the Temperature Regulators must be out. Those things have to have someone watching ‘em at all times or they’ll break down.”
I nodded, and we started to walk again, reaching the comm. center without incident.
The center was still powered up, lights flickering on a control panel. I looked over one of the panels until I found the button that activated the colony’s intercom system. I pressed it, and as soon as I did, the lights went out.
“Shit.” Both Russ and I said at the same time.
The only light in the room came from the large window that showed the barren, ash-grey planet and some more of the sprawling colony. Up in the sky, I could see stars through the gaps in the thick ash clouds, along with three of the four moons that encircled the planet.
“Generator must have gone out” Russ said, flicking a few buttons on one of the panels, to no effect. I went over to a table, brushing off a layer of papers to the floor, then pulling out my map, smoothing down over the metal table, but there wasn’t enough light for me to see much of anything on the map.
“Hey, Russ, see if you can find a flashlight or something.” I said, as I began to scour for on as well. Russ found one on another table and tossed it to me. I flicked it on and looked over the map, quickly finding the room marked generator.
“It’s not too far away, let’s go.” I said. The generator was only two halls away.
“Alright,” Russ said, and walked over to me. As we were heading into the other hallway connected to the room, I heard something.
“What was that?” I asked, the sound repeating itself, a low rasping. It seemed to be coming from the other hall, the one we had entered the comm. center from.
“You go, I’ll check it out” Russ said. He went over to the door frame and peered into the hall. Something screamed.
“Shit!” Russ shouted, firing three shots into the dark hallway, blindly. “Go!” he shouted at me, running to the closest table and dragging it to the open doorway, presumably to block it off.
As I ran through the hallway, I became aware of two noises, a frenzied scratching from the walls and a whispering, similar to the whispering I had heard earlier. I ran faster.
As I rounded the corner to the other hallway I had to pass to get to the generator, the thing that was stalking through the hall lunged at me. Before it had a chance to hit me, I had fired three shots from my pistol, each one slamming into the creature’s flesh, which seemed to crawl and ripple. The mutant was another Regurgitator, I could see its sucker-like mouth. The shots slowed it, but it quickly began to run at me again. I fired two more shots, one hitting it in the shoulder, the other missing, but it didn’t slow the Regurgitator down. As soon as it was close enough, I kicked at its left knee, my boot smashing into the repulsive flesh, I heard the bone crack. The monstrosity fell, and I kicked it again, in the stomach, the squirming flesh bursting, what seemed like bile pouring out. The mutant began to scream and I fired three more bullets into its face, its skull shattering, its head left a pulpy mess.
Not taking the time to worry if it was truly dead, I started to run, the generator room was only a few doors down. I soon reached it, and was glad to see that the door was open. The first thing I noticed in the room was the hideous, pulsing thing that stretched from floor to ceiling. I stared at it. My flashlight fell from my hand and hit the floor, the light still on the fleshy red tube, which was coated with a shiny slime. As I looked at the horrifying thing, I was struck by how much it looked like a red vein. I could see that it had come from the floor, the metal plating around it had jagged edges pointing up. The vein-like thing was unnatural, even more so that the mutants that roamed the facility.
I stared at the Vein, hypnotized by its slow, repulsive pulsating. I took a step towards it, then another. I noticed that the scratching had stopped, and it was replaced by what sounded like a heartbeat, a low thumpity thump. The sound unnerved me, a shiver passed through me, my ribs letting loose a volley of pain. I flinched and looked away.
I picked up the flashlight, averting my eyes from the disgusting vein, instead focusing on the metal plated floor. As I stood up, a wave of nausea ran over me, quickly followed by a terribly lightheaded feeling, so bad that I collapsed to my knees, one hand touching the cold floor. My eyes closed, and when I reopened them, I saw my wrist, not my hand, my hand was engulfed in a sea of reeking warm blood. The smell filled my nostrils. Immediately, I pulled my hand out of the warm blood, sending ripples through the red ocean.
My eyes flicked to the corner, and I saw the vein, pulsing rapidly, blood pouring in a frothy waterfall from a long, jagged slash running down it, making a sound like someone vomiting.
I stood up, the blood running down my pants from the knees down, pressing the fabric to my skin. I looked down, to see something start to float up, something dark, soaked with blood. The thing began to rotate, revealing the features of a face. My face. The thing in the bloody sea was a severed head, my severed head. It had roughly an inch of uneven flesh for a neck. The mouth of the head was open in a dying scream, its one remaining eye, the other just a blood filled socket, widened in horror.
I gagged, felt my bile rise, then everything was gone, and I was on my knees, one hand on the ground as though I had never stood up. As I got to my feet, I was trembling, bead of sweat ran down my face. I nervously pushed my hair from my face as I looked around. There was no blood, only the vein, still pulsing ominously, slime peeling from it and splattering on the ground. It must have been another hallucination.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I shook my head, remembering why I was here. I looked over to the generator, and immediately, a stream of cuss words came from my mouth.
The generator was wrecked, long narrow gouges running all over it, wires poking from the scratches, many leaking oil. They went deep, at least a foot deep. I punched an undamaged part of the destroyed contraption. Hard. My knuckles split open, blood began to drip to the floor. I looked at it, felt it running down my fingers, and remembered the hallucination.
I left the room running, fear acting as an effective painkiller for my ribs.
I made back to the comm. center without incident, aside from a short pause to notice that the Regurgitator I had beaten the fuck out of earlier was gone. When I arrived at the center, Russ was still standing at the other door frame, ore splitter raised in my direction.
“Where the fuck is the power?” he asked, lowering the splitter.
“Damn generator’s been destroyed.” I said, breathing heavily, my ribs beginning to ache. “Damn, it’s getting cold.”
Russ stared at me for a few seconds. “What the fucking hell did you do to the generator?”
Now it was my turn to stare at him. “What?”
“What did you do to the generator? Why the fuck would you sabotage it?!?” he shouted.
“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to it!”
Russ glared at me, and I could see the madness in his eyes, drawing me in, but then he blinked and it was gone.
“Ah, this place is getting to me. I feel like everything’s against me.” He collapsed to the floor, his hands over his face. “I… I can’t think clearly.” I didn’t believe him. The madness in his eyes, the way he was looking at me back in that lab where the others had died, his accusation, I just couldn’t believe that the place was ‘just getting to him’. What I did believe was that he had snapped, maybe contracted space madness. I would have to be careful around him.
But, maybe I was the one who was insane. Maybe these hallucinations were a sign that I was losing it. I turned from Russ and ran a hand over my face, my fingers brushing against the scab that had formed from the assault by the hulking mutant earlier.
The silence lasted a while.
“What do you think we should do now?” I eventually asked, for I had no clue as to what we should do, aside from maybe trying to get to the docking bay and get the fuck off of this planet. I went over to the partially barricaded hallway, my flashlight illuminating part of it.
“I don’t know”
The hall was drenched in blood I knew hadn’t been there before, but no bodies, not even a single drop. Something wasn’t right. He must have been attacked by Regurgitators, and if he was attacked by them, then they must have pulled themselves back together and continued to attack. Something must have intervened, or… there was a possibility that they could be killed.
“Russ, where are the bodies?”
“Huh?” he stood up and joined me at the table, which still partially blocked the door frame. “Oh fuck.” We both stepped away, towards the dead control panels for the intercom system.
“Karen, a few minutes after you went to for the generator, those things, the ones that bit Sierra, they stopped coming at me, or even pulling themselves back together. Hell, I chopped them up pretty good, then my light went out. I heard something moving in there,” He pointed to the hallway, “so I ducked, hid behind the table until the noises stopped.” He paused, and looked down the hall for a moment. “When it did, I got my light back on and looked into the hall, and I saw her.”
“Saw who?” I asked. Maybe there were other normal people out there, maybe we weren’t the only ones.
“My girlfriend. She looked at me. I told her to get over here, but she just looked at me, smiled and said she was going home. Then she left. I jumped the table, don’t know if the muties were still there or not, but when I got to the corner, she was just gone, so I came back to wait for you.”
My hopes were dashed, more craziness. “Looks like she’s gone crazy”
“I don’t give a flying fuck. She’s alive, and I’m going to get her the fuck out of here.” The madness was in his eyes again. I wondered why.
“Karen, I’ll go alone if I have to, I’m not going to leave her here if she’s still alive. I’m going to get her out of here.”
“Ah, fuck.” My idea of getting to the docking bay would have to wait. “I’ll go with you.” I didn’t think that either of us had a chance at doing anything alone here. I felt that I had to go with him, hope that there would be more humans wherever his girlfriend was, more of us.
“Where does she live?”
“Housing Ward B.”
“You know how to find it from here?”
“Yeah, I always went through here on my way home from the maintenance bay.”
“Let’s go.”

Chapter 4: Insanity

We reached the housing ward without incident, voyaging through the darkened halls. Russ led the way and we walked quickly. Our pace never wavered, aside from a few moments that we heard noises, at those moments, we froze, rapidly turning off our flashlights and clinging to the walls. It sounded like the mutants were moving through the vent system.
As we were walking, I occasionally looked at Russ, and whenever I did, I noticed that he was really pale.
The housing ward was huge, multiple stories tall with a large plaza and cutouts in the floors above, leading to a massive sky window. The amount of dorms in the place totaled close to five hundred.
Russ and I stared into the huge facility, our flashlights revealing destroyed chairs, tables and a vast layer of blood that coated almost the entire floor and spattered most of the walls. As we walked into the carnage, my boots squelched where blood had pooled.
“No bodies…” I whispered.
“What?” Russ asked.
“There aren’t any bodies. Whatever is causing the mutation must infect dead bodies, too. I mean, this is too much blood, people should be dead.” I explained, my flashlight revealing more and more blood, some dripping from the partial floors above.
“Yeah, you’re right. What’s going on here?” That was the question. What is going on here?
“What number?” I asked as we came to an elevator. Russ looked puzzled, until I pointed to the floor buttons.
“Oh… uh… four.” I pushed the button and the elevator went up. It must have been supported by an alternative power source. The doors opened with a ding and we stepped onto the floor, more blood layering the carpeted floor.
I drew my handgun up, pressing the flashlight against my hand holding the gun. I slowly walked out into the corridor, facing the left, Russ facing the right.
“Which way?” I asked, turning to Russ. He started walking, without answer or even a glance. I followed him, constantly panning my flashlight around, looking into every dorm, each of which were mysteriously open, their owners missing, blood staining the carpet.
I was incredibly nervous about this place. I had heard about outbreaks of space madness here, twenty-seven cases in all. A combined total of fifty people died here, one of the largest death totals in the entire western portion of the colony, which consisted of two housing wards, a large office complex, numerous single offices, a maintenance bay, security stations, the comm. station, the Main Communications Array, a hospital, and the morgue. The west sector covered five square miles across the planet’s surface. And it was the smallest of the four sections.
Russ turned into one of the dorms. “Alicia?” he called.
“Keep it down!” I said, suddenly hearing something moving above.
“Alicia?” Russ shouted again, obviously ignoring me. The sound came from above again, footsteps.
“Russ, she’s not here. We should go!” I whispered urgently, as more footsteps became audible, echoing through the sprawling plaza.
“You just don’t want me to find her! Maybe it’s just the wrong floor!” Russ muttered, rejoining me in the hall.
“Then let’s get to the fucking elevator!” I said, my voice wavering, I saw something from the corner of my eye. I pointed my light and gun at it, but there was nothing. Russ started towards the elevator, but then ducked into another dorm.
“Alicia!” he shouted again.
“Russ! Shut the fuck up!” I said as I sprinted towards the dorm he had ducked into. I started to go in, but I saw something from the corner of my eye again, but, same as before my flashlight revealed nothing.
Then, the body fell. It passed right over the ledge of the upper floor, descending down out of sight, then it hit the bottom floor with a loud thud.
As I ran to the short safety wall, I faintly heard Russ shouting “Stop her!” I looked back to see Russ staring at empty space, pointing. I just turned back to the ledge and peered over it.
The body that had fallen was sprawled on the blood-soaked carpet of the ground floor, his head at an awkward angle. Then, something with six, blood crusted talons reached out from just out of sight, its mottle arm skin stretched, swelled at several points. The claws sank into the man’s torso, in a way that made me glad he was dead, and pulled him from my sight.
Suddenly, I heard the elevator ding and I turned, and as soon as I did, I saw what had been evading me earlier. A blood soaked regurgitator was creeping towards me, but it was only half of one, half of its stomach ripped away, its intestines trailing on the ground like a macabre tail.
When it saw that I had seen it, the regurgitator hissed and ran towards me. I raised my gun, but didn’t have the chance to fire a single shot. the mutant plowed into me, sending me reeling backwards and I tripped over the short security wall. I screamed as I fell, then slammed into the ground, all the breath driven from my lungs, along with a mouthful of blood. My vision began to fade from the pain, and I was dimly aware that I was lying in a puddle of blood, which slowly seeped into my clothes and hair. The last thing I felt was someone or most-likely something grab my wrist and start to drag me by my arm, sending a jolt of agony through me, and my jaws clenched together, my teeth sank into my tongue. And then, I was unconscious.

When I came to, I felt the pain, the horrid pain. Then I saw that I was in a small cafeteria, laid out on a small round table, with Russ sitting in one of the chairs that was attached to it.
“Russ.” I said, though the word came out thick, and I remembered biting my tongue. The taste of blood was still in my mouth.
“How could you let her get past you?” he asked softly. I attempted to process his statement.
Painfully sitting up, I said “Huh?”
“She was right behind you when I shouted at you. But you didn’t stop her. You just ran to that ledge. I ran after her, she went into the elevator and it went down. I got into another one and followed her down, but I couldn’t find her.” He looked up at me, insanity so evident that I flinched away from him. “Then I saw you fall and I got you out of there.” He looked down at the table again. “Why didn’t you stop her?” Russ was angry now.
I didn’t answer, just looked at him, then realized the lights were on. Russ looked even paler than earlier. It had to be space madness.
“Lights are on.” I said, just to break the silence while rapidly thinking.
“Yeah, I think this place is on a different part of the power grid, just like the elevators.” Came the reply, but I barely heard it, I was thinking too hard.
Space madness can be complex, an intense paranoia, murderous impulses, mood swings, and sometimes, a person suffering it could create people who never existed, implanting them deep into their memories.
Russ had never mentioned his girlfriend before, and when he finally had, he didn’t seem right in the head. The gleam in his eyes that I had seen when he was talking about her, not knowing what floor she lived on, me not seeing her when he said she was right behind me. The suspicions about the generator, shit. Russ was insane. He had space madness. I had filed paperwork dealing with victims to people with the dread space affliction and the people who had it for close to two weeks now. I had assisted psychiatrists with interviews with colony workers after the murders had begun, testing them to see if they would fall prey to the mind fog. I knew the signs.
And Russ was showing them all.
I shivered. After a moment of debate, I decided to play it cool. I didn’t want him to snap towards me. I hadn’t done all of this shit the past twelve hours, I realized as I checked a running display screen, killing the mutated bodies of people I once knew just to get slaughtered by a crazy man. A crazy man who I was partially relying on for survival now that I had broken at least three ribs, suffered numerous shrapnel injuries and assorted cuts and bruises. Even sitting up took a lot out of me. It wouldn’t be possible for me to get out of here on my own.
“You want some food?” Russ asked, looking up at me, standing up.
“Sure. See if you can find a medkit, too.” I said, as he started towards a counter that held all sorts of pastries that had most likely been baked before this mess began. He smashed open a display and grabbed the plate that a couple doughnuts were lurking on. Russ brought the plate over to me and I slowly started eating, whilst he went looking for a medkit. My tongue ached.
“Nothing.” Russ said after searching the cafeteria. He rejoined me at the table and I shoved the plate towards him. He bit a chunk out of a doughnut, then immediately turned and vomited violently. I saw bloody chunks. The flow of vomit stopped for a moment, then resumed, pure blood this time. I slipped off the table and went over to him. Russ stopped and turned back to the table, resting his head on it. I could smell the blood, a nasty reek in the air.
“Russ, we have to get out of here. Now.” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder.
“How?”
“We have to get to the docking bay. There should be a planet jumper there. I remember someone talking about some new arrivals that got here not too long before this fucking mess began.”
“Karen, what is this fucking mess?” Russ asked, looking at me, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. It was definitely the question of the day.
“I dunno.” I said, then thought about it for a moment. “Maybe one of those terrorist factions with some bio-toxin, something we’ve never encountered before, maybe there’s something in the air that we didn’t find in the tests. Shit, maybe it’s alien. Fuck. I don’t know. All I know is that the colonists have changed, mutated and they want to kill us.” I said, then sat down, woozy and light-headed.
Russ stayed silent, and I did the same, placing my elbow on the table and resting my forehead on my hand, my hair falling over my face, soft against my skin. I closed my eyes and listened. Soft footsteps from above, in the vents. Claws running on the walls, a faint hiss, a groan and other noises that sounded so inhuman, yet at the same time, so human. There was a loud clang, from one of the lower levels.
Something wet dripped against my wrist, then trailed down my arm. I realized that I was crying. Then, without opening my eyes, I wrapped my arms around my chest, not really feeling the pain in my ribs and started sobbing quietly. Why did it have to be me that had been thrust into this nightmare? I’m sure that everyone has asked themselves that question once or twice in their lives. Here I was, asking myself over and over and finding no answer.
Eventually, my tears stopped, and everything was quiet in the cafeteria, the only noises coming from whatever twisted nightmares were roaming outside. I had read somewhere that Colony T91567 had a population of around twenty-thousand five hundred. Twenty-thousand five hundred murderous creatures out there, ready to mutilate the fuck out of us till there was nothing left.
A hand gripped my shoulder.
“Karen” Russ said, his voice hoarse. I looked up to see nothing.
The cafeteria had gone dark. The scratching on the walls had become more frantic, and I could hear the hissing of the mutants. Russ turned on his flashlight and helped me up, then handed me mine. He turned to the table and picked up is splitter and my handgun, which I hadn’t noticed. Russ handed me the gun.
“We need to get the fuck out of here.” He said.
As soon as he said that, the grate from one of the numerous vents that covered the ceiling burst from its holdings and clattered to the ground, quickly followed by a regurgitator. Both Russ and I had our guns on it at once, and I could see every goddamn detail of the festering creature. It had the familier intestine “tail”, its skin had begun to decompose, a nasty purple color. It looked like its back had been split open, its spine was jutting out, pearly-white amidst rotting flesh. Blood drooled from its sucker-like mouth. The regurgitator pushed itself up, revealing its torso, and from its shape, I could tell that it had once been a woman.
The regurgitator’s head rose up and a dread wail rose from its twisted vocal cords. Russ and I began to shoot at the same time. Two shots from my handgun struck the mutated woman. Russ had much better aim, and the regurgitator fell to the ground in four bleeding pieces.
The fleshy tendrils had spouted from the injuries as we were fleeing the cafeteria. The dorm facility was still as dark and bloody as the last time I had seen it, but we didn’t linger, as more regurgitators were lurking throughout the plaza, many close to the walls.
We ran. We just ran, occasionally firing at anything in our path. We ran through two halls before we began to slow down. The third hall still had power, supported by another part of the power grid. As we entered it, I went to a console on the wall and punched in my personal code, then input an order to activate the blast door. It slammed down, and we were safe from being pursued from that direction. For the moment, at least. We rested for a moment, then hurried along to the end of the hall, which split into four directions. Luckily, each of the halls still had light. Russ looked at me and I checked the map, which was now mostly soaked with blood, which still hadn’t dried, which reminded me that I had landed in a fucking puddle of blood.
After consulting the map for the best route to the docking bay, I ran my fingers through my hair. Every strand from behind my ears was beginning to crust together. Nasty. I ran my fingers through my hair a few more times, dried blood flaking off and coating my shoulders like a macabre dandruff.
Then, we went into the hall to the right. And immediately discontinued our walking.
Further down the hall, stood a man with his back turned to us. Russ started to call out to him, but I put my hand on his shoulder, then pointed with my gun to the ceiling. Further down the hall were several vents on the ceiling, lined from wall to wall. We didn’t want any attention here. Russ nodded and we approached the man slowly.
As we passed under the vents, I glanced up into one, to see the hideous face of a regurgitator. A hiss emitted from its round mouth, I blinked, started to move my arm, intent on shooting the wretched mutant before it had a chance to escape the vent. But when I reopened my eyes, it was gone. I lowered the gun to my side and could hear the metal parts clicking. I looked down and saw that my hand was shaking. I tried to still my hand, but the fear was overpowering.
I looked back to the man, who stood further down the hall, his bald head bowed. As Russ and I drew near, the man turned, and I immediately took a step back. The man had blood drying on his chin and lower lip. His eyes were open wide, but were swollen and completely blood-shot. The man looked at me, took a few steps forward, and then split open, from the top of his head to his waist, blood and something else leaking from the two halves of his body. But that wasn’t the worst part. He was just skin. The mutation was inside him, a rotting skeleton that was covered in slabs of muscle, red chunky gore and long, quill-like spines that were pressed deep into the muscle.
A terrible groan came from the mutation’s skull, and long, bumpy talons began to sprout from the ends of its wrists, which just ended in stumps. The… the… fuck, it couldn’t event be described as a mutant. It was an abomination. It began walking towards us, the two halves of skin just hanging at its legs, the flesh of its hands dragging on the floor.
“Fucking shit!” Russ shouted, a moment later, a vent burst in the hall behind us. He raised his splitter, but before he had a chance to shoot, another vent burst, right behind us, and I heard something hit the floor. Russ turned from the abomination coming at us.
I could hear the mutations behind me, screaming and hissing, there must have been a dozen, but I let Russ deal with them, and I focused on the thing in front of me.
I let two shots slam into the monstrosity, but they did little more than jar it, and it quickly began walking towards me, a strange gurgling from its throat, and as it took another step closer, I could see the inner workings of its throat. More bullets flew from my gun and soon, it clicked empty.
“Son of a bitch!” I screamed, uselessly pulling the trigger. The mutant took three more steps, then stopped. Its swollen red eyes leering at me. The decaying thing bent forward, the gurgling became a vomiting noise.
Taking advantage of its pause, I pulled the spare clip from my pocket and reloaded the handgun. When I looked up from the gun, the mutant had begun to heave.
What looked like an intestine came from its decaying mandibles, and continued until it began to coil on the ground, blood and gore chunks flowing with the organ. A scream tore from my lips as the creature looked back up, the intestine hanging between its jaws, blood-shot eyes lolling madly. I started to shoot, and as I did, the intestine started writhing, flopping all over the ground, leaving splashes of blood wherever it landed. Then, the intestine rose up into the air, and then stretched out, and before I could react, it had wrapped itself around my throat, surprisingly cold. I threw my hands around it, but I couldn’t get a good grip on it, my fingers kept sliding on the bloody exterior of the intestine. The tentacle tightened, and I brought the handgun up to the trembling thing and fired twice, the two bullets ripping through the pulpy innard. The mutant let loose a shriek, and the intestine unraveled from my neck, fell to the floor and then slithered down back down the mutant’s throat. I pointed the gun at the thing and shot three more bullets into its chest. Then, Russ slammed into me from behind and the gun left my grip as I fell, Russ landing across my legs.
“Shit!” I screamed, shoving Russ off of my legs. I lunged for the gun. As soon as I had the handle in my grip, the legs of a regurgitator came into view, blotchy skin directly in my face. I tried to shoot it, but when I had dropped it, I must have released the clip; for no bullets would come forth.
The regurgitator swung a long, clawed arm at me, but I was just out of its reach. I started back, crawling backwards, the rough metal floor scuffing my palms. My eyes went from the regurgitator’s feet to its face.
The familiar sucker-like mouth was present, blood drooling out, but the part I had never noticed was the eyes. Deep, sunken eyes, grey where they should have been white, the iris blood-red. The grey part was laced with black veins that stood out, as if the mutant’s eyes had dried and shriveled.
The mutant advanced towards me, its feet raw and bloody, leaving red foot prints, each made a pool from the blood that was running down its legs from fresh splitter wounds further up its mottled flesh.
The lights flickered, and a whispering took to my ears. As the lights flashed on and off, I saw the mutant moving closer step by step, closer every time the light came from the dark. I heard a shrill scream, and realized it was mine. The whispering seemed to taunt me, with horrific words of violence, promises of what was to come once the mockery of a human was close enough.
My back hit a wall and my hair fell over my eyes, clinging to the sweat that had dampened my skin. I wouldn’t be escaping this. Russ was still on the floor where I had left him, unmoving. The lights went off, and didn’t come back on. I heard a faint gurgle, slightly to my left. I kicked out, my booted foot connecting with flesh, a foul stench filled the air.
I stumbled to my feet and took a few steps to the right, accidentally stepping on Russ’s apparently unconscious form. I heard a hiss, close by and took another step back, then threw my arm out, then immediately drew it back with a gasp of pain. Apparently, the mutant had done the same, lashing out with its long, lumpy claws, which had torn open five thin, shallow lines across my forearm.
The whispering got louder, several disembodied voices speaking angrily, all at the same time, and I couldn’t sort one word from the other. I looked around wildly, peering into the darkness, unable to anything but black. I took another step backwards, and then was seized by two hands, both grasping my shoulders. I screamed and jerked back, somehow kicking myself in the back of my left ankle, and I fell.
As I hit the ground, ramming my elbows into the hard floor, the lights came back on. I looked up, expecting a mutant, but instead saw Russ, standing right in front of me.
“Karen, what the fuck?!?” Russ said the moment the lights came on. I looked around, one step from hyperventilating. Only twitching mutant parts were in the hall, most likely about to sprout the fleshy tendrils to pull themselves back together again, to arise again, a resurrection of a sort.
“Where the hell did it go?” I almost screamed, panic rising my voice and making it crack a couple of times.
“Where did what go?”
“That… that fucking thing! After you fell on me, one of those things” I pointed at the twitching limbs on the ground, “attacked me. I fell, then the lights came on and it was gone.” And, so was the other thing, the one with the appalling red eyes. I wiped my hand around my neck at the thought of it, the intestine trying to strangle me. When I pulled my hand away, it was covered in slimy blood. I wiped it on my pants. I took another look around, my chest heaving rapidly. It took another moment or two to calm my breathing down. I pressed my right hand on my chest, and felt my heart beating rapidly. I stood, my legs shaky.
“You know, Karen, we don’t have time to worry about it. Let’s just get the fucking hell out of here before it comes back!” Russ said, his voice rising to a shout. I took a step away from him.
As he turned away from me, I looked down at my arm. There were five scratches running down the length of my forearm. I recalled Sierra’s mutation, how she had sprouted a sixth finger.
Russ started walking, and I hastened to follow, but then remembered the pistol. I scanned the floor, found it quickly and went over to it. As I knelt down to pick it up, thoughts swam through my head. Why were there only five scratches? There should have been six. Had it really been a regurgitator that had been stalking me through the dark? Maybe… maybe I hadn’t seen Russ there on the ground, it had all happened so fast. Maybe it had been Russ that was attacking me. I rammed the clip back into my gun, which I had somehow managed to keep a hold on during the panicked struggle that had only happened a few minutes ago. As I started to follow Russ, one thought wormed its way through all the others. How much longer would I survive if I stayed with him?
I shrugged the thought away, brushed my hair over my shoulders and continued on, the quiet whispering accompanying me. I felt my body begin to tremble.

The power went out an hour later. Russ and I were walking through another hallway, when the lights dimmed. We stopped.
“Shit.” Russ swore quietly, then turned his flashlight on. I pulled out my torch and activated it, then continued on. As we strolled through dark, blood-splattered corridors, the whispering kept up, and eventually, Russ stopped and looked around. I caught a glimpse of his face, and his expression was most frightening. Here I was, in a dark hallway, surrounded by mutants of all kinds and possibly the worst threat was the man I was traversing said dark halls with.
“WHO THE FUCK IS OUT THERE?!?” Russ screamed, violence was overlaying every word. “SHUT THE GODDAMN HELL UP!” He could hear the whispering, too. Eventually, he calmed down, after causing some wall damage with his splitter, which I thought was a bit excessive.
I continued on, getting a lead on Russ. I occasionally looked back at him, carefully peering over my shoulder, making sure he didn’t see me looking, I didn’t really feel like taking verbal assault from him about why I was looking at him.
Russ was constantly fidgeting and flinched every time the whispering had a high note in its constant, never-ending voice. It definitely wasn’t human, the whispering never paused for breath.
The two of us rounded another corner, my flashlight illuminating a sign that read “Docking Bay”. It was the last hall to freedom. I looked back at Russ, a smile stretching across my face. Finally, this nightmare would be over. We quickened our pace, and reached a staggering disappointment moments later. The large doors that would lead to our escape were closed, the code pad next to it dead, just as the rest of the hall. I stared at the door in disbelief for maybe a minute, then backed up till I hit a wall and slid down until I was sitting. My handgun clattered to the floor and I brought my hands to my face, tears dampening my fingers.
I heard Russ screaming, mostly incoherent words that I suppose were cuss words, and then he started firing the splitter at the doors that now represented a crushed hope, a zero percent chance of a breakaway from the colony. Russ’s shootings were useless, the doors were reinforced steel, and the splitter had no chance at cutting through it.
“Goddamn it!” Russ snarled, as his splitter made a noise, telling him the power cell was depleted. He hurled it at the door and then turned to me. The next thing I knew, he had grabbed me roughly by my arms and had towed me off the ground, pressing me against the wall.
“This is all your fault, you fucking whore!” Russ yelled, pulling me from the wall, then smashing me back against it. A small gasp escaped my lips. “You goddamned bitch! This was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? NO FUCKING SURVIVORS!” Russ howled, ramming me against the wall again before I could say anything, then pressed his forearm against my throat, cutting off my ability to breath. I pushed at his arm, frantically clawing at his skin, but he just pressed down harder.
“I’ll kill you, you fucking slut. You aren’t good enough for those things. I’ll kill you myself.” He snarled, and with his other hand, he pulled out a pocket knife I hadn’t known he had. Dots began to swim in front of my eyes as he flicked out the blade. I stared into his eyes, hoping he would stop, but that just seemed to make him angrier. He placed the blade between his teeth and slapped me with the back of his hand, across the left side of my face, opening the scab that had formed. Fresh blood dripped from my cheek.
The dots got bigger and were darting faster. Russ took the knife from his mouth and pressed it to my shoulder, digging the point into my skin. He began dragging it down my arm. If I could, I would have screamed, but I couldn’t breathe, so it wasn’t an option. The knife slowly, agonizingly worked its way to my hand, getting deeper the further he went down, then slashing into my already scraped palm, blood running down from every part of the long cut. A rasping noise came from my throat as Russ drew the knife up to my face, tracing my jaw line lightly with the blade. Russ’s eyes were nothing but pits of lunacy, content with making me suffer for the plot he saw me concocting. “It’s a shame. You are really pretty, Karen. The Armada won’t think so when they find you though. If they find you.” All I had been doing was trying to help him and myself survive.
Before Russ could do anything, he suddenly lurched backwards, curving his spine forward and he began to throw up, as though his new goal in life was to puke his guts out. An image of the intestine coiling from the thing, the mimic’s mouth onto the floor seared itself to my retinas as I drew in breath after breath of air, the maniac now distracted. Quickly, I seized my handgun and pointed it at Russ. As I did, he stopped the bloody flow and looked at me, his hands on his knees.
“Karen, what’s the point? You’re just gonna die sooner or later.” He said, then started laughing, then began bending over, one hand going for the knife he had dropped.
I shot him. Straight through the back of his hand, the bullet carrying on through his kneecap. Russ made a startled noise, then fell to the floor. He didn’t get back up or move. I hoped that the bullet had nicked an artery or five. I stared at his unmoving body for an instant, then recoiled when I heard a distorted murmur, from somewhere nearby.
“Shit!” I almost screamed, though the effort of saying even that word strained my throat muscles. I darted into the closest doorway, which led to another office, which wasn’t that unusual of a find, as this section of the colony, and the rest of it had plenty of office space.
The office door was different from the sliding doors that I had seen previously, as it was on hinges. I closed the door quietly, then stood there for a moment, listening. The whispering had stopped, which was good, but I heard other noises that sort of made me wish that I could hear the whispering instead.
There was the sound of multiple footsteps, at least three people, or most likely mutants, were out there. I could hear the gurgling hiss of a regurgitator, and… some other noise that seemed to be a mix of a choking cry and a low moan. It scared me. A lot. That continued for a little while. There were no sounds to indicate that they were doing anything to Russ’s body.
When the footsteps and moaning had faded in the distance, the whispering took over, and to me, it sounded as though the voices were angry I was still alive.
I waited for five minutes after the whispering had resumed before going over to the chair that was tucked underneath a mostly clean desk. I set my pistol on the desk as I sank into the chair. I put my uncut arm on the desk and rested my forehead on it, my hair falling against my skin.
Somehow, I fell asleep.