As Good as Dead

by O. J. Anderson

Chapter 7

part 2 of 2

A short distance past the NO TRESPASSING. DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED sign, Jack halts his team. There’s a black vehicle at ten o’clock. Moving east. The men raise their weapons and duck behind the armored fairings of the snow machines, ready to drop the scunnion on these clowns.

With his non-firing hand, Jack flips down his night vision monocle. There’s nothing there. He flips it back up and sees the black vehicle still moving. It’s a mid-sized snowcat, treaded security truck. Driving across the crew’s front and not making a sound. Jack checks one more time with the NVM. Nothing there.

“It’s a hologram,” he tells his crew.

They lower their weapons. Wait for the image to pass; Jack is not aware of any hologram technology with motion- or sound-detecting capability, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were.

Once the vehicular illusion crosses over the hill, they move out.

* * *

The demo team and the entrance team have separated. By now, the three demo sleds should have separated also and should be making their way to their individual locations: three equidistant emplacements forming a triangle around the base. They will set up the Z-rods in a five-hundred meter arc shape at each apex and wait for targeting nodes to fire off their signals.

Jack’s team, going inside the base, races ahead toward a small structure situated in a snow bowl at the base of three rocky mountains. One of the buildings Jack identified on the satellite photo as a blow-off station: heat, gas, explosions, et cetera. The shaft is their entry point.

The machines stop short of the hill’s crest in front of them. Jack waves the recon team forward. Smith and Jones run ahead, flop down in the snow and crawl up the rest of the way to get eyes on the objective using a thermal imaging device. It’s a narrow, two-level structure with a dull light emanating from the windows on the second floor. No vehicles in sight. No tracks.

After five minutes of scanning, Jones holds up two fingers. Two men inside.

Smith shakes his head; he isn’t picking up anything with the thermal. No heat signature.

Jones crawls back down to Jack’s position and explains the situation to Jack. He whispers, “I got two inside with the NVD, but nothing on thermal. They’re not holograms, but they’re not human either... unless they’re wearing some kind of heat-reflective clothing. But still, there should be something.”

“Right.”

“Think they got aliens guarding the shack, boss?”

“Let’s find out.” Jack then instructs his men that he is going to bumrush the shack. Two sleds in overwatch. Hit ‘em fast and hit ‘em hard, that’s how Jack does business. He remounts his machine with Doc on board.

The others move up to the crest of the hill to provide support.

Jack guns the throttle and leaps over the rounded hilltop and down the opposing slope. When the snow machine is fifty feet from the chain link fence, Jack presses a button on the handle bars. A liquid-filled rubber ball shoots from the hood of the snow machine. It’s about the size of a tennis ball and filled with 10-Pam sodium-carboxylic acid.

The acid bomb hits the fence and explodes in to a mist, almost instantly dissolving a ten-foot hole in the fence.

Jack drives the snow machine through the new hole. Heads straight for the front door. Then jerks the handlebars and banks the machine to a sudden halt.

Doc jumps off first. Kicks the door in. Jack runs past him, entering the building.

A steel mesh stairway on the far wall. A commotion on the second floor. Jack can hear the bolts of weapons slamming forward. Not exactly crack troops, is Jack’s first thought as he tosses a flash-bang up to the second floor.

Jack follows the grenade upstairs, only two seconds behind it. After it goes off, he fires at the two guards. Two rounds each. Then two more. They don’t go down. They stumble back a few steps, but then regain their bearings and come back for more.

Jack dumps the rest of the magazine into them and drops back down the steps. He shouts, “Got a couple of hard cases, Doc!”

The support team begins firing from the hill.

Doc nods. A series of fragmentation grenades flies up to the second floor.

Jack and Doc dive out the front door and take cover behind the snow machine.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Then it’s over. The two men go back inside to see what’s left. Most of the second floor is sagging down to the ground floor now. Body parts are scattered about. But there’s no blood. A lot of clear liquid, but no blood. Unusual bits of rubbery tissue stuck to the walls too.

“What the heck were they?” Doc says.

“Programmable life forms,” Jack says. “PLFs. Non-intelligent I gather.” He then radios to the support team: “All clear.”

The two other snow sleds cruise down the hillside and sidle right up to the small building’s walls. They’re going to stash the machines right there on the objective. Another brash move on Jack’s part, but he doesn’t plan on being inside long enough to get discovered or ambushed.

“Let’s do it,” he tells the men.

Smith walks up to the metal door. Swings a 12-gauge “shorty” up from under his arm. Blows the lock. Six men move into the building.

There is a large iron grate on the floor. Below that a dark shaft nearly eight feet in diameter. Smith then goes to work on two heavy padlocks with the shorty. Lucky swings the heavy metal door upward and open.

They’re going down with two rappel lines. Each rope contained in a rap-bag strapped to the two rope leaders’ backs: Jack and Jones.

Jones begins rigging his anchor point. He then weaves in three figure-8 rappel devices before he puts tension on the line.

He clips in. Descends.

Smith is next. He clips in, goes down. Then Lucky.

Jack sets his anchor next. Then his team goes down the shaft.

This is an apt metaphor for the mission, Jack thinks as he pays out rope with his right hand, controlling his speed. A descent into darkness. That’s where they’re going. A dark place in more than one way. He reviews the competing theories on aliens and their motives: they are either colonizing Earth or preparing to move humans off it, both ideas popularized on TV and uploaded into the collective consciousness mainframe. Quick assumptions, like Joshua’s. Programmed responses to inevitable conundrums.

But David seems to be on to something new and more likely. Demons working against a cosmic timeline fighting to ensure their survival. This new theory explains everything. Cast a wide net over history, its wars, control mechanisms, enslavements, and tangles them all up into the same foul plot.

There’s only one problem with their plan: Jack Creed. Once he’s on the job, bad guys are as good as dead — although, this job being what it is, and barring any upcoming addendums to the first law of thermodynamics, their physical manifestations and the means by which those manifestations are made possible are as good as dead. Not quite as punchy, but the point still stands. Besides, Jack and his Crew shall continue to hunt and destroy their embodiment technology for as long as it takes.

Though he can’t see the evilometer in the darkness as they descend the shaft, he knows it’s getting a higher reading. He can feel it in his marrow.

There’s an elbow in the shaft. Approximately three hundred meters down. The shaft angle changes from vertical to about sixty-five degrees. Steep enough to fall, but not steep enough for a traditional rappel: too slow.

They’ll do the next leg using the speed rappel technique. No figure-8, just sling the rope over the shoulder, route it under the arm, over the forearm, and grip it in the lead brake hand.

The second man in each rope team affixes an anchor to the end of the first rope. They quickly continue down the shaft.

* * *

The air shaft ends with a system of giant blow-off fans. They’re not moving. A two man recon team squeezes through for a look at the far side. Four minutes later, they return and give Jack the all clear signal. The rest of the team passes through the large fan blades and enters a concrete room at the end of a long gray tunnel. Construction materials and building supplies are stacked along the walls. Some tools. Boxes stacked and covered with plastic sheets. A thin light strip is tacked to the wall, providing just enough light to walk without tripping over anything.

Smith takes a small can of infrared spray paint from his assault vest and marks the fans so they will be visible through their night vision eye-pieces on their way out; the power probably won’t be on at that point. He will mark the entire route this way.

The men divide, three on each side. Staggered. They move through the tunnel.

Jack can’t believe they have no security here at one of the most vulnerable points of the base. Someone could walk right in undetected. It’s either a case of gross incompetence or incredible arrogance. Or maybe just a lack of manpower, or evil biosuit power; can’t cover the flanks.

An intersection ahead. To the left is an unlit section of tunnel. To the right, nearly a hundred meters down, is a sheet of clear plastic hanging from the ceiling. The tunnel beyond the plastic lit with fluorescent overhead lights.

They go right. Passing the plastic sheet, the men enter a more finished tunnel, more like a hallway. White walls. Beige tiled floor. Cans of paint sitting along the baseboards. There are numbered doors every hundred feet or so on both sides.

Jack directs his men to check out one of the rooms. The next door on the right is 318. Unlocked. The men spread out and occupy the room; two men securing the hallway.

Inside is a large octagonal room. Semi-furnished. Looks like the workers have been using it as a break room. Some folding tables. Soda and beer cans. Cigarette butts in an ashtray. A deck of cards. Tools. On the far side of the room are more doors. One of the doors is open; Jack can see that it’s a kitchenette. He assumes the other rooms are a bathroom, bedroom, and probably some closet space. The room is like studio apartment. Billeting.

From behind one of the closed doors comes the sound of a faucet being turned on. Water runs for a minute. Then it’s turned off. The door swings open. A Zeta/demon wearing a leather vest with a Harley Davidson button steps out of the bathroom wringing out a red bandana in its four-fingered hands.

Jack is now standing in the center of the room, facing the demon, which doesn’t see Jack until he looks up after taking a few steps.

Its head moves upward. Stops, but isn’t startled at all. Doesn’t jump for a weapon or make a move of any kind. It just stands there motionless. It could be it’s communicating telepathically to other demon units. Or maybe it disembodied

The evilometer clipped to Jack’s assault vest is clicking. The needle has swung toward max. Jack looks down and sees a reading of 8.5 — that’s pretty evil. So no one will shed any tears after seeing what’s about to happen as Smith moves on the Zeta from the kitchenette.

He raises the shorty. Puts the barrel just under the base of the head.

BLAM!

The demon’s big head blows upward and sticks to the ceiling like spray-on stucco. The body collapses and the electrolytic gel oozes out.

Smith, looking up at the splooge stain now on the ceiling, asks Jack, “Hey, boss, does this count as a kill?”

It’s a good question. Jack doesn’t answer right away; he thinks for a second. Soon coming to this conclusion: another scumbag energy field getting back in line for re-embodiment, waiting for a new sack of jelly to walk around in. He holds up a finger and says, “Count it.”

The men move quickly back into the hallway. If the demon didn’t communicate to others, then the shotgun blast probably did. They form into the snowplow maneuver: three in front, three behind, running at a full sprint. Rampaging through the corridors. Anyone unlucky or stupid enough to stumble in front of the snowplow will be met with a catastrophic avalanche of firepower. They’ll be dead before they know what’s happening.

The men pass a sign on the wall indicating that BIOCON 2 is to the left.

Jack: “Oh yeah.”

The men go left. The first group of unfortunates is up ahead, just turning the corner in Jack’s direction. Two demons in their alien getup. They have pistols, but they won’t get a chance to fire them. As they see the wall of firearms coming at them, they try to turn and run — they’re evil but not stupid.

Jack’s men open up, but only for a second. The men are well acquainted with how easy the Zetas are to kill. The gunfire starts and stops in an instant, like a crack of thunder, and the demons disappear. They are now part of the decor. Little blobs of slime stuck to the walls and ceiling. Shredded biosuits lying on the floor.

The men continue moving without hesitation.

Jack doesn’t expect any resistance larger than two or three; they don’t have time to assemble and form an assault party. Even if they did, Jack and his men are moving so fast that they wouldn’t know where to go.

As they run across the dead biosuits, Jack’s evilometer starts clicking again. The manifestations are good and dead, but the negative energy is still present, and helpless in preventing the men from destroying the base.

The BIOCON area is straight ahead through a sliding glass door. Also an unfinished room, but very large, sealed, and festooned with ventilation shafts. Jack is now pretty sure that this area of the base is only the living quarters. The hallways with the suites coming off the center bio-containment area like spokes around the hub. In the event of a bio-event, the residents will assemble here and sit out the burn-off: hydrogen pumped in through the air system and ignited. After the flash burn, bad air is sucked out the blowoff shafts as new air is pumped in.

There are only nine Z-rod missiles topside, making this is a low priority target for the time being. Jack removes one of the targeting nodes from his assault pack. Looks like a hockey puck. One side has an adhesive backing, the other has two recessed switches. Jack flicks the first one to the armed position. The second switch is marked with a P and A: primary and alternate. He sets this one to alternate.

The targeting system on each Z-rod will seek the ping of the nearest primary targeting node first, but only the alternate node if the available primaries are out of range. Either way something will get destroyed; that’s what matters. Jack and Rivers have eighteen targeting pucks between them. They can’t take out the entire base with only nine Z-rods, but they can knock out the vital organs, leave the rest a rotting, unrepairable carcass. Air circulation units, power stations, evil manifestation equipment, UFO docks, command and control centers, communications equipment, those sorts of things, that’s what they’re after.

And no one is going to stop them. Especially not the three demons peeking into the BIOCON.

Jack hears the evilometer click away. Ripping a grenade from his vest, he spins, pulls the pin, and throws it full force at the demon’s face. It’s a straight-line pitch, a frozen rope. At least seventy-five miles per hour. Jack Creed can throw.

The frag hits the gray right between the big bug eyes. It sinks into the head like a cue ball dropped onto a warm pumpkin pie. With the grenade deep within its head, the demon stumbles back into the hallway, where the other two are standing.

The grenade blows. All three go down.

Jack sticks the targeting puck under a work bench. They move out.

* * *

Proceed to Chapter 8...