Bravo Team - 6

Chapter 6 – Last Chance

Nigel felt the adrenaline rush. He had faced many horrific dangers before during the invasion, yet he had never been able to fully overcome his fears of those terrors. And now, much to his own surprise, he was more scared that Jill would be killed than himself. He had always secretly criticized himself for never caring about others and only fearing for his own life once it counted.

Hundreds of thoughts pounded through McGee’s skull, but the thought process only lasted a second. He was piecing things together and guessing why the demons were here.

Perhaps those bastards had been roaming the base ever since that fateful day where they arrived here. He had a rough idea on how things had happened.

The demons had used possessed humans to pilot spacecrafts from Phobos to Mars during the battle on Phobos. Nigel McGee knew that possessed soldiers remembered the skills they had acquired in their former life, so the demons had used possessed pilots.

The guys in charge on Mars had undoubtedly sent all their troops to Phobos and there were none left to defend the base when the drop pods filled with demons arrived.

“Nigel!” Jill whispered.
“Leave the barrel! We gotta trick those jerks,” McGee whispered.
“How?”
“Come along,” McGee replied. He sounded completely levelheaded, but he knew that he was terrified.

They left the barrel and jogged out of the room. Jill repeatedly looked over her shoulder. Nigel pulled out the plasma rifle, activating it.
Fifty-six cell units, he repeated in his mind.

They came to an intersection where another hallway joined their hallway. They could hear the sound of several pounding feet.
“They’re closing in on us!” Jill whispered. Nigel looked around feverishly. His eyes fell on a darkened opening suspended on the right wall near the intersection.
“Climb up there,” he told her. “I’ll help you”
“What about you?” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about me”
She didn’t want to waste precious time arguing, because she knew that every second counted. She nimbly swung herself up like a monkey and shuffled herself in place. Nigel was pleased to see that she was as good as invisible. He couldn’t see her even though she was only one foot away from him right above him.
“I’ll be back soon, just worry about not being detected – remember, these bastards can smell fear, so think about something positive”

He backed down the left hallway and then noticed a burly shape storming out of the darkness from where they came from. The bull demon briefly stopped and eyed McGee who calmly pointed the plasma rifle at the monster, then its eyes flashed yellow and it roared and charged. Nigel spun around and rushed down the hallway. He knew that firing a plasma weapon here would be really stupid as the bright plasma would illuminate the hallways and reveal Jill’s hideout. So instead he ran. He could hear the roaring demon behind him and more followed it in pursuit of the single human.

He turned a corner and entered a large hall. In the centre was a large set of pipes arranged in a complex pattern, swirling around each other, forming a single large pillar. The ‘pillar’ disappeared in a hole in the floor down to the next level. Nigel stopped and looked over his shoulder. The demons charged into the room.

McGee jumped the low metal fence surrounding the pillar of pipes and used the pipes to slide down to the next level. He landed unscathed, but he hadn’t moved more than a few metres away when the demons came crashing down. Their heavy bodies crashed onto the floor and they grunted in pain as they tumbled onto the solid metal floor. McGee pointed the plasma rifle at them and a loud zapping noise escaped the weapon as several pulses of bright, white-blue energy balls flew from the weapon’s muzzle and slammed into the demon flesh where they exploded, burning and searing the monsters beyond recognition.
One of the demons died with a grunting moaning, but there where still two of them and Nigel noticed that he had only 29 energy cell units left.

*

Jill sat as still as she could. She didn’t like to be alone.

Alone?

A snort sounded somewhere further down the hallway. She closed her eyes and pressed herself up against the cold metal wall. Something stomped out of the darkness. Jill kept her eyes closed so she didn’t know what it was, but it was big judging by the sound of its stomping feet and the vibrations caused by each stomp.

It moved slowly and relentlessly down the hallway, drawing closer to Jill. It was quite close now. She could smell it. It stank horribly of urine and excrement coupled with some indescribable smells that smelt worse than any animal.

The stomping stopped abruptly.

It felt like her heart stopped beating. She briefly opened one of her eyes, peeking out into the hallway.
A huge, dark shape stood right beside her. Its head was shaped a bit like a goat’s head, but its horns were shorter and bent forward. The demon bent over, looking around. She could hear it sniffle.

It righted itself briefly, then growled deeply. It looked around again. She noticed the thin, glowing white lights that made out its eyes in the dark. It sniffed again. Louder this time. She was horrified and couldn’t even close her eyes again, only stare in fascinated horror.

It can sense me!

She had barely finished that thought when the monster suddenly roared in rage. She recognized that terrible sound all to well.
A Baron of Hell.

She gritted her teeth as it roared and closed her eyes tightly, but before she knew what was going on, the demon hammered its clawed fist into the wall near her and the powerful vibrations caused her to slip and fall out of the shadows and onto the floor.
She now lay exposed to the beast.

*

Nigel hurled himself over a low fence with the demons hot on his tail. They flattened the fence with no trouble at all and barked angrily. Without thinking, he leapt onto a hanging chain and used it to swing over to another platform. The demons almost fell into the depth and into a vat with toxic waste that was still there. The humidity in this room was very high and thus prevented the liquid from drying out. Unfortunately, the pinkies weren’t dumb enough to just continue, so they stopped and snarled. His heart sank as he realized that the only way to get off his platform was to go back the way he came from. He had to get rid of these pinkies.

He could shoot them, but then he wouldn’t have enough ammo for other demons they might encounter. There could be worse monsters out there and there had to be a way to get rid of those creatures without wasting ammunition. His eyes fell on a control bridge several feet above him.

And then it dawned on him that this room could be sealed off in case of emergency, like a leakage. If only he could get to that control bridge. He looked up the chain and noticed that a nearby wall up there was quite rough with various gadgets sticking out of it. And he smiled.

*

The Baron stared briefly at the human female on the floor. Then it roared. A gruesome sound that reverberated throughout the corridors. Jill could only stare at the monster. She watched as it raised its right hand and green fire erupted around the hand, casting an eerie light on the cold walls. Just before the monster brought down death on Jill, she pulled herself together and rolled to the side. The floor area where Jill had just been lying exploded in green light and black smoke as the monster slammed a ball of combined green sludge and green fire into the grated metal. Jill leapt to her feet, wishing she had at least a shotgun even if it wouldn’t do much to hurt the beast.

The creature turned with a growl and hurled its claws at its elusive prey. Jill ducked, avoiding the glowing hand with a few inches.
The creature stomped in fury, causing enough of a shockwave to knock Jill off her feet. She smashed the back of her head against the hard metal grating and was knocked senseless for a moment.
The world swam before her eyes. The blow hadn’t been fatal, but it had rendered her vulnerable and she saw the demon towering above her, ready to finish her off. She closed her eyes and waited for the end.

She heard a muffled explosion and assumed that she was a goner. But then she opened her eyes and saw that the baron had turned around.
Painfully, she got up and stared in the direction the Baron was facing to see Nigel with his plasma rifle trained on the demon.

“Come and get me ya big galoot!” he bellowed.
“Jill, move it!” he added in a different tone. Jill didn’t hesitate, but got up quickly and ran towards him past the Baron, which roared in confusion and frustration.

The Baron roared again as she reached the SAS soldier. Nigel grabbed Jill by the arm and almost flung her through the door next to him, before he entered himself. The hulking goat brute came thrashing after them, roaring out its anger and frustration.


They ran across a metal bridge with the Baron on their trail somewhere behind them.

“The pinkies are locked inside the chemical waste disposal plant and too dumb to get out anytime soon – now to find a way to get this git off our backs,” he yelled to Jill. He noticed that the bridge was worn and seemed rather unstable due to lack of maintenance. The humans reached the other side of the bridge, stopped briefly, turning around and looked at the demon.

It moved slower on the bridge, because it was so big and heavy while the bridge was rather narrow. The metal bridge creaked in protest against the monster’s awesome weight. It bulged downward, but held.
Nigel could see that the bridge wouldn’t be able to take too much more of a strain and he smiled evilly.

“That bridge looks awfully weak,” he said, raising his plasma rifle.
“We’d better see if we can weld the cracks together!”

With that, he fired off a burst of hot plasma pulses at the demons feet. The burning energy plasma exploded on the metallic floor on the bridge, erupting in blue sparks and melting most of the metal away. The bridge creaked and snapped roughly at the middle. The separated parts of the bridge careened downward.

“Oops,” McGee exclaimed casually.
The Baron roared in confusion and tried to regain balance, but its weight forced the bridge section it was standing on down and it fell down with a howling roar.

“Let’s get outta here” McGee snarled and turned to face a door next to them.

A huge, clawed hand grabbed Nigel by his angle and pulled him off his feet. The plasma rifle flew out of his hands and smashed against the nearby wall with a metallic clank. Shite!
He grabbed onto a piece of the bridge and looked over his shoulder.
The Baron of Hell was holding onto the ruined bridge section. It had obviously made a leap for the bridge section opposite of the one it had been standing on and now it was clinging to it, trying to pull Nigel down with it.

And it was slowly pulling him down without too much trouble. Nigel knew that struggling to cling onto the metal piece would be futile as the demon was many times stronger than any man. The Baron reared its head above its body as if preparing to bite off his boot, when a pistol shot rang out.

A bullet slammed through its eye and green demon blood splashed out of it. The monster roared in agony and let go of both Nigel and the bridge section and fell into the shaft.

Nigel crawled to his feet, panting heavily.

Jill stood with Nigel’s smoking sidearm in her right hand. Her face was pale, but collected.

“Let’s move it,” she said tonelessly.

...

_________

If you feel that something's missing, don't worry - the holes will most likely be filled in in the next chapter.

Wow that was sweet. I like how you made the demons sort of smart. The B.O.H. was realy cool. The whole zombie thing was weard. I never thought the zombie would retain skilla that they leard in life. I think you realy put alot of thoght into what you writeing. Cant wait for part 7.

This forum has been a little slow for a while, this is just what it needed. I liked your story, looking very much forward to part 7.

I must have overlooked this one. Nifty.

Oooh, spiffy. Bravo Team frazzin' rocks man. Can't wait to see more. :-D

And . . . Didn't see any mechanical errors! *laughs* Kudos!

The zombified humans must remember some skills from life, how else could they know how to use thier guns?

I suppose the pilot ones would be a bit more complicated, but even in these times most airports take over control of a plane and land it automatically when it approaches, so i assume the mars spaceport has a similar system, and all the zombies would need to do to get the drop pods near to mars would be to point in the direction of the big red thing XD

Anyway, this story is sweet as usual, ive read all of DSM's doom stories and they roxor