Surface: Doomed Planet

Excerpt 14: Martin's Harvest

About half way back to the hotel, Ryu came over the radio, sounding rather....displeased.

"Skyline", he told me, "relay this message to your tank commander, do not come back to the hotel, go straight to the resort maintenance office, your friends require urgent assistance."

"Okay", I replied tapping the tank commander on the shoulder.

"Yes sir?", he asked.

"Ryu said to head to the Resort's maintenance office", I said over the engine.

He nodded to me and shouted to the driver, "head for Resort Maintenance."

There was an unintelligible shout from inside the tank and we soon turned off into a tunnel I hadn't seen on the way here. It was barricaded and upon looking hard enough, I realized my natural night vision was kicking in. I couldn't see a whole lot past the very nasty looking barricade staffed by two M11 Sentry Guns and two Autonomous APC's packing some serious heat.

"Why the hell do we have guided missile trucks out here?", The tank commander asked shutting off the engine and exiting the tank.

"Did Ryu put them here?", I asked as the Medic trucked pulled in behind us and the driver put the transmission in park, but left the engine running.

"He would have told me", the Commander said checking over the trucks visually and then checking their computers with his PDA, "well...that can't be right."

"What?", I asked.

"It says they've engaged over 60 hostile targets in the 8 days they've been here", the commander said, "doesn't make any sense though...both these trucks don't even carry that many missles, never mind the fact I can't get any video feed from their cameras."w

"Maybe the Sentry Guns did most of the fighting", I said, "two .50 BMG's can do a lot of damage, seen it done myself."

"Maybe", the commander said checking the ammunition reserves on the Sentry guns, shaking his head when he was done.

"What?", I asked again.

"Topped off", he said, "either Ryu put these here and forgot about them, or someone else is coming back here to resupply them."

"He did forget he had those guys out there on the bridge", I said, "so I suppose it is...."

I stopped mid sentence as I heard the unmistakable sound of zombie breathing. A low gasp, like that of someone whose suffocating that no matter what your doing just freezes blood.

This was different though.

It was more strained, like the zombie was actually trying to get a breath and having severe problems. I could also hear the sound of a heartbeat, though just barely. It wasn't normal rate for humans, or even Xeno's for that matter, it was much faster. From what I could hear, maybe a thousand BPM, possibly 1250. What ever was making these sounds seemed to be path finding towards us, given the pattern of the sounds of it's footsteps and the occasional annoyed sigh.

"Uhhh...sir?", I said, "I hear something."

"What do you hear Skyline?", he asked coming back to the tank.

"A zombie I think", I said.

"You think?", he asked.

I nodded, "breathing kind of matches, strained and difficult, but it seems to me as though the entity, whatever it is, is trying to breath, I can also hear a very fast heart beat and what maybe sounds like it's attempting to path find it's way here."

"Someone injured maybe?", the commander asked as the tank roared to life, shaking the entire tunnel and prompting a blood curdling scream to echo through the tunnel back at us, drowning out the sounds of both the Diesels.