Kenopsia (Book 1 of Pandora's Wake: The Nomad Chronicles)
Into the Pit

“Good Boy! You stay with Delphine, Daddy will be back soon!” Ronan rubbed Karloff vigorously behind the ears as the dog licked his face excitedly. Delphine looked on, a slight smile on her lips. Ronan rarely displayed any form of emotion, but when he did it usually involved Karloff.

“You’ll take good care of him while I’m gone?” he asked Delphine.

“Don’t I always?” her English was flawless, and Ronan had to admit, sometimes he worried it was better than his own.

“Aye, you do that lass!” he patted the dog on the head one last time before Delphine took over.

With his customary disloyalty, Karloff immediately began to nuzzle at the French girl’s neck.

“Traitor!” Ronan grinned at the dog before turning to where Shamus stood checking his equipment.

The two Irishmen locked eyes for a second,

“You got your head straight now?” Ronan asked bluntly. Shamus just nodded.

“You sure? Only I don’t want to be racing around in a darkened fecking basement with something coming up behind me that you just ‘forgot’ to mention!”

“I’ll be fine!” Shamus snapped, then, more level-headedly, “Look, I’m helping to carry the gurney. It’s not like there’s much I can screw up this time. I know my mind’s been wandering a bit, but I’ve got it under control. I just need to concentrate harder!”

Ronan grunted. He didn’t like that they were taking Shamus, not since the incident when he’d neglected to mention seeing something on the stairs. The man was struggling to keep his mind on anything. He knew it wasn’t his friend's fault. The spore poisoning was making him muddle-headed, but that was scant comfort if there was a chance it might put Ronan’s life at risk. Still, the nomads were short-handed and surely Shamus could be trusted to carry a gurney! The group would be taking it with them to load the medications onto when and if they found them. It had wheels which could be raised and lowered, so in truth they would be pushing it most of the way, only lifting it up and down the stairs.

“Everyone ready?” asked Uberfeldwebel Ulrich who would be leading the pharmacy raid. His assault rifle hung from its sling, in case he needed it. He also carried one of the squad assault weapons – or SAW’s – as his primary for this action. The rapid-fire, drum-fed weapon could fill the basement corridors with flying ordinance at an alarming rate and would be far more effective than the rifle.

The other five members all confirmed their readiness.

Esther Yadin seemed calmest of all. The small Israeli woman had checked her weapon and was now limbering up as if in readiness for nothing more deadly than a session in the gym. Next, to her the big Congolese nurse, Cherubin, was breathing deeply, his hands trembling slightly. He was, as was often the case, unarmed, which made Ronan a little anxious if the truth be told. None-the-less Cherubin would accompany them since his knowledge of medications and what they might need was second only to doctor Allmendinger, who would be staying behind to care for the sick. In the event that the pharmacy was carrying generics or had the medications under different brand names, Cherubin could be trusted to replace what they needed far faster than the rest of the team.

Mathias Forrell was the sixth member of the team. His pistol holstered at his waist and his shotgun at the ready, he would provide part of the security team for the raiding party, since the shotgun had proven so effective against the alien insects the last time.

“That’s the signal, let’s go!” Joanas ordered. The raiding party exchanged quick glances and then dashed through the fire doors as the nomads on duty there wrenched them open to let them pass.

Mathias and Joanas dashed ahead a short distance and knelt at the stairs which Shamus had reported seeing something on earlier. Their weapons at the ready, Ulrich covered upwards as Mathias covered down.

“Clear!” they both called in unison, and Ronan led the way past into the main reception. With the main party passed, the two Germans stood and rejoined the rest of the group at the rear.

They were moving at quite a pace now, jogging through the reception area with Cherubin pushing the gurney, its wheels moving almost silently as they ran.

“Contact!” Esther called as she loosed two rounds from her pistol. There was a sudden splash of yellow-beige as her rounds found their mark, smashing one of the alien insects into oblivion. Ronan had barely a second to contemplate how easily she hit the mark, despite its small size and her rapid pace of movement. The insect had been stationary when she fired, taken by surprise by the group's sudden appearance. Still, hitting a small target while on the move was an impressive feat of arms. One many professional soldiers struggled to manage. Two more of the insects scuttled towards the party, their mandibles clacking. It was a small enough group and far less deadly for its lack of numbers, but Ronan didn’t want to get caught up any longer than was necessary; the gunshots may already have alerted others.

The raiding party didn’t stop. Ronan snapped off a couple of infective rounds as the creatures closed in on them. With a single powerful swing of his bat, Shamus caught one mid-air as it leapt towards him, sending it sailing across the room and into a wall. The last was too slow and crunched as Joanas’s boot came down heavily upon it. It let out a sharp hissing noise as they passed, flailing about on the floor, alive but with several of its legs broken. Mathias risked a single shot from his shotgun at the one Shamus had sent hurtling across the room. It was struggling to right itself where it had hit the wall and slid down to land on its back. The shotgun blast blew it apart and riddled the wall behind it with shot.

In the next instant, they were out of the reception area and dashing up a passageway, doors flashing past them to the left and right. Up ahead a second, larger passage opened off to the left. This time it was Ronan and Esther who sprinted ahead, rounding the corner first. Both dropped to their knees to aim down the passage. The corridor opened to a nursing station, not unlike the one in the emergency department. Doors lined both walls, with a door every two metres on one wall and about half as frequent on the right-hand wall. At the far end was another flight of stairs, the one they had identified on the map as being the closest to the pharmacy.

“Clear!” they both called and in an instant Joanas and Mathias Forrell ran past them, taking the lead once again as the gurney, Cherubin and Shamus followed them. Esther and Ronan joined the rear of the formation as it sped past.

Mathias crept down the stairwell one step at a time, with Joanas at his side. Each man covered their zone of control with his weapon stock tucked tightly into his shoulders. The rest of the formation held on the landing. The need for speed giving way to the need for stealth as the raiding party descended into the bowels of the hospital basement.

The passageway was still shrouded in gloom. Here the lights hadn’t come on when the power was restored earlier. Ahead, a pool of light marked where this passage met the northern corridor which itself ran east to west.

Somewhere in the ceiling above them a faint fizzing, snapping sound hinted at the reasons the lights here had failed to come back on – a short circuit of some kind. Perhaps the alien insects had chewed through something they shouldn’t have. Mathias risked a faint smile a the notion of one of the revolting things suffering the shock of its life or – he rather hoped, its death – when it severed the cable, although in truth the power may well have been out when the creature cut the wires with its wickedly sharp mandibles.

The air was stale and heavy with an all too familiar smell, the stench of death and decay. Joanas had smelled it too and was the first to see its cause. Tapping Mathias on the arm, he pointed at the base of the stairs. What lay there was not a pretty sight.

Whoever it had been must have been here for several days. The flesh was stripped back from the cadaver’s bones, exposing a ribcage that had clearly been gnawed upon. Mathias tried not to dwell overmuch on where the missing organs had gone but where the man’s... or had it been a woman? It was hard to say – intestines should be there was little left but the odd bloodied gobbet of viscera.

From several yards away the severed head of the body gazed back at them with empty eye sockets and a rictus grin. The flesh had been stripped from most of it, leaving little but bare bone and bloodied scalp.

A dry, brown stain covered the floor where the blood had pooled. It also stained what was left of the turquoise medical overalls the body had worn, now reduced to little more than rags.

“Recent,” Joanas whispered,

“Looks like they didn’t all leave whoever was in that treatment booth behind then...” Mathias whispered back, “...I’d say this is about contemporary with what we found upstairs.”

Joanas nodded, his face set into a grim countenance. Mathias realised his own teeth were gritted as if the gesture would somehow lessen the horror of what he saw.

The trip up the corridor had been tense, with doors lining it every few metres and forcing them to stop and check the rooms beyond. What they had found was much as the plan that Delphine had pulled from the computers would have led them to expect – a laboratory, storage, x-ray department and three examination rooms. None of them held much evidence of the alien creatures, beyond a broken air vent or gnawed desk leg. Certainly, they lacked the extensive concretions that Mathias was looking at now, his eyes narrowing and teeth still clamped tightly together.

The sight was nightmarish as if H R Geiger’s visions had come to life. Sickly beige concretions covered the walls, ceiling and floor of the northern passage. Where the two passages met there was a wide waiting area and the concretions extended down into it, partly covering the rows of patient’s chairs. It gave them the appearance of emerging from the body of some alien beast of monstrous proportions. Here and there holes led inside the structure to tubes within that Mathias presumed the creatures used as some form of passageways. Across from his position, on the north wall of the northern passage, three elevator doors could be seen, partly obscured by more of the secretions from the creatures.

The net effect gave Mathias the impression of looking inside the body of some alien being and he shuddered involuntarily. From the look of disgust on Joanas’s face, the soldier must have been feeling much the same way. Behind them, the others were approaching rapidly, eager to be done with their mission and to get out of this place as fast as was possible.

Joanas nodded at Mathias before dashing diagonally across the waiting area to where he could look eastwards down the passage. He found himself looking back towards generator room which lay at the far end of the corridor. Reaching his position he dropped low and set the SAW on its bipod, covering his zone of control.

Mathias followed suit and took up position on the opposite side of the waiting are, his shotgun aimed west and down the hallway towards the dispensary and pharmacy areas. If anything the alien construction seemed to intensify as it ran west towards the target area. Cursing under his breath Mathias took a knee and aimed down the passage, ready for anything that might come from that direction.

The dispensary window was several metres down on the right. Beyond that, there was a wide area that opened up into what was listed on the plan he had seen as ‘reception’. Out of sight from here, around the corner to the right, was the door to the decontamination area that pharmacy workers would have once had to pass through to get to the pharmacological labs or stores. To the right were the doors to stationery cupboards and more restrooms. These were glued shut by more of the secretions that had formed over them – but directly ahead was a door to what the plan labelled as an office. Unlike the others, this one had been held open by a concentration of the strange alien concretions which formed an oval tunnel into the darkened room beyond. Despite the gloom, Mathias was certain he could see movement inside. Conscious that the rest of the team were almost at his position he held a hand up, signalling them to wait.

Esther Yadin broke off from the others and crept over to Mathias, moving with the grace and stealth of a cat, as she often did.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Without speaking Mathias indicated the tunnel through the doorway at the far end of the passage. She squinted down the passage and nodded. Silently she signalled that she saw movement there too.

“What’s the holdup?” Ronan whispered from is position in the waiting area.

Esther and Mathias glanced at one another and then back at Ronan, both placing a single finger to their lips to silencing him.

“What now?” Esther whispered as softly as she could.

Mathias thought for a moment before speaking,

“The pharmacy is right down by that office, on the left, we can’t get to it without coming into close contact with whatever is in that room”. He glanced about, seeking other options.

“What about the dispensary window?” Esther asked, recalling the plan that Delphine had shown them all when they were plotting the raid on the pharmacy. “It opens to the dispensary station, the pharmacy stores are right behind it, and the window is half way between us and the office – we don’t need to get as close.”

Mathias looked dubious, it would mean having to climb through the dispensary window silently. The window was waist height and not much wider than a large man’s shoulder span. Getting in quietly would be hard enough, but if there was anything on the other side...

He weighed up the odds, he didn’t much care for the idea but he didn’t have a better one, and frankly, it was marginally better than getting up close to the office and whatever was in there.

Squeezing his eyes shut briefly and sighing he nodded,

“Okay, we do that. I’ll stay in the corridor with Ronan, covering to the west just in case, you take the others through the dispensary window, grab what we need and get out. Leave the gurney by the window, load what you get on it and we exfil as fast as we can, ja?”

“Yep!” Esther nodded and slid back to the others to tell them of the plan.

Mathias crept down the passageway, passing on his right a door that was so completely covered by the strange alien construction that he almost didn’t see it, and may not have done if he hadn’t already known of its existence from the hospital plan. He came to a stop by the second door, marked as a bathroom on the floor plan. This door too was partially lost behind the alien structure. Here he knelt down and waited, his weapon trained on the opening to the office, his heart hammering in his chest.

Behind him, Esther, Ronan, Shamus and Cherubin wheeled the gurney down until it was near the dispensary window. Ronan took to a knee slightly west of the window and trained his weapon down range at the open doorway. Behind him Shamus slid the glass panel back as quietly as he could, all the while covered by Esther who watched for any movement in the dispensary beyond.

What she saw filled her with some hope. The dispensary seemed empty of life and of the strange structures left by the insects from the Other-Verse. It was, in fact, oddly untouched. Beyond the glass, it seemed as if the staff had done nothing more than step out for lunch.

Once Shamus had the glass panel open enough, Esther holstered her weapon and placed her hands flat on the ledge of the dispensary window. Pulling herself up and through so her stomach lay flat on the window ledge and then sliding in over the desk beyond, almost silently. Regaining her feet she recovered her side arm and waved the others through.

Shamus was next, passing his bat through the window to Esther he followed her example and wriggled through. His boots kicked a pad of paper off the desk as he went. Everyone froze, the sound, soft as it had been, seemed thunderous to them in their anxious state. When, after a moment, nothing had responded to the sound they began to breathe again, and now it was Cherubin’s turn to squeeze through the window.

Gazing at it the big man looked sceptical. It seemed awfully small to him, but none the less he lay flat on the sill and began to wiggle through. Shamus took him by the arms and pulled him gently to help him in.

He was almost inside when his feet caught the glass window and with one sharp impact – shattered it.

The sound of breaking glass was almost heart-stoppingly loud in the relative quiet and for an instant, everyone froze again before Esther snapped them out of it,

“That’s torn it! Come, hurry, let’s get what we need and get out of here!” She had nearly finished speaking when the sound of a shotgun blast from the corridor tore the air apart.

“Contact!” Mathias’s voice called out before the sound of gunfire recommenced.

“We don’t have much time, hurry, follow me!” Cherubin called as he ran from the dispensary into the pharmacy stores and began searching for what they needed. Without further encouragement, Esther and Shamus followed.

Almost as soon as Cherubin’s boot broke the dispensary window, the dark forms in the office at the end of the passage grew agitated. Within moments the first showed itself. The creature was clearly related to those same insect-things they had already encountered but this one was larger and its carapace seemed more rugged, sporting several nodes or studs. Its colouring differed also, being tinted with shades of red and lowlights of black. The creature seemed to look directly at Mathias and for a split second man and monster gazed directly into one another’s eyes. The creature rushed forward at alarming speed and at the same moment Mathias fired his shotgun. The pellets rattled off the monster’s carapace and blasted shards from the strange concretions in the doorway but didn’t stop the thing in its race to get at the humans.

“Contact!” Mathias yelled and fired again, the report of his weapon joined now by that of Ronan’s as more of the larger insects began to emerge from the tunnel they had created to the office.