Never Dead: Beyond Nightmares

XXIII

Gavin Borne stared out of the pod's windows and back at the Jericho. He saw the nuke, a mere half-mile away from the ship, and reflected on how his brother had shoved him into the escape pod and launched them all.

"Why'd you do it, Fred?" Gavin asked his brother hoarsely, turning to one of the seats in the pod where Fredrick Borne was sitting, strapped in safely like the good boy he was.

"Because, Gavin, we would have died if I hadn't. I need you. We need you," Fred replied.

"But, the other pods! Why'd you have to launch them, too? The others... they could have escaped..."

"We had to be sure, Gavin. We couldn't have those other ships firing on us, now, could we?" Fred's eyes had begun to glow white, but this didn't seem to bother Gavin all that much, if he even noticed.

"I suppose, but... at that range? I don't think they could have hit -" Gavin cut off as the nuke detonated. His eyes snapped to the Jericho in horror as it exploded. The pod's windows auto-dimmed so its occupants wouldn't become blind in situations like these, but they were still too close to the explosion and the shock wave hadn't dispersed enough to be harmless to the pod. When it hit, the pod rocked and shook like it had been struck directly by a missile, and it began to spin horrendously fast. Gavin was flung to the wall and began to throw up as the spinning got to him; Fred had vanished, and the pod was crumpling and breaking, pieces of it flying around on the inside and out. The one holographic monitor that remained was flashing red, flickering in and out, and a robotic, static-y voice began uselessly informing the pod's occupants of the sustained damage to the hull and interior of the pod.

"Emergency crash-landing procedure activated... time of impact esti- CHCKCHHHHCK five min- CKKKKCHKCHK," the computer voice said. The red screen flickered, glitched a few times, and then went dark as all electronics died. The pod was flooded with darkness as the windows cracked. A bit or two of glass flew out into space, and air began spilling out of the pod. Luckily, a few bits of floating debris soared towards the holes like rubber ducks to a drain, and temporarily sealed them off, but the cracks spider-webbed and began to grow larger.

Moments later, Gavin blacked out.

When he awoke, his vision was completely white and he couldn't see anything; he also had an annoying ringing in his ears. After a few minutes, the white had mostly faded as well as the ringing, and he could navigate. He looked around and saw only darkness, though not pitch-black darkness – just very shadowy and dim – and a spot of bright light not too far off. He saw bits of metal around him, and that he was resting on a metal wall. Shards of glass were around him, some small stuck in his flesh, and some sand could be seen on the floor. He ached all over. Gavin looked up and saw crumpled metal above him, with some sand trickling down between cracks and piling up next to him. There was a sudden loud groaning noise, and the metal shifted, vibrating heavily. The sand began to fall at a terrifying rate. As the sand began to build up around Gavin, he saw that he had but minutes until it would fill up completely, suffocating him in the process and burying him alive. Frantically, he began to search around in his immediate vicinity for an exit. Seeing one, he crawled to it through the building sand and managed to squeeze through a small hole out of the small area he had been in. He was now in a maze of fallen rubble and metallic debris, all roofed by a large panel of metal that was too heavy for him to move by himself. He began to try and maneuver his way through the sandy debris-filled area, army-crawling as the "roof" was too low for anything else, cutting himself at times on extending bits of metal that could not be avoided. Soon he saw that his only way out – a blindingly bright point of light just ahead of him – was far too small for him to get through. Cursing, he began to dig sand from under the small hole. He soon saw, to his terror, that the sand was concealing another metal panel, and the two were very close together. It looked like he might be able to fit, but he was hesitant to try; what if he got stuck, and a few of those things from the Jericho got to him? But he soon saw that if he stayed inside the debris field he would starve to death. So he rolled onto his back, gripped the top of the small hole, and pulled. For ten minutes he wriggled about a quarter of the way out, but suddenly the grinding noise could be heard once more and the metal shifted again. He felt pure terror grip him as the metal sheets began to squeeze closer together, knowing that they were so big that they wouldn't even find resistance trying to crush him, but then suddenly they lurched and shifted so that the side on his right widened. He felt glee take hold of him now, but the movement finished by squeezing the metal on his left side, pinching his left arm in a death grip.

"Damn it!" screamed Gavin in pain and fear. He wriggled out a bit more, but soon his progress was halted by his pinched left arm. Gavin pulled on the arm, hard, but it still would not come free. Gavin looked around, to his left and right, and saw, to his utter amazement, lying there on the sand to his right, a plasma saw. He reached out as far as he could with his free arm, and just managed to grip its handle. Pulling it carefully closer to him until he could get a good grip on it, Gavin looked back down at his left arm.

"You've served me well, arm," said Gavin. Suddenly, he began laughing hysterically as he turned the plasma saw on and watched its plasma blades whirring round and round faster and faster until they were a solid streak of blue light, like a chainsaw of plasma. He raised his right arm, his laughter reaching a new peak, and began to swing down, when suddenly a hand caught his forearm. Gavin halted mid-laugh, and looked up to see Frank, looking none the worse for the crash, with a look of total disapproval in his eyes, which seemed to flash white briefly.

"Frank! Praise Allah, am I glad to see you!" Gavin said with relief obvious in his voice.

"You shouldn't be," said Frank sadly. "This is going to hurt terribly, but there's a medical bay nearby, so it shouldn't kill you."

And with that, Frank grabbed Gavin by the armpits and explosively pulled outward. Gavin screamed as he felt his arm being mangled by its removal from the pinched position. Pain erupted such as he'd never felt in his life in his arm, burning from fingertip to shoulder, and Gavin nearly passed out there and then. Frank continued to drag him across the sand quickly as Gavin looked down at his arm. All he saw was a bone-deep cut and blood everywhere. Gavin passed out.

When he awoke, he was strapped to a medical table. His left arm was completely stasised, and the telltale glow of green could be seen; the glow of a medical pack hard at work. He saw some machinery stitching up the cut, and a small magnetic module directing the liquid around the wound to work in synch with the machine. Gavin knew he was heavily drugged up with pain meds, and he looked to his left to see his brother Frank sitting in a waiting chair smoking his cigar blissfully.

"This place is shit, brother," was the first thing Frank said.

"Why? What do you mean?"

"This is what I mean." Frank stood up and opened the door to the medical room. There, standing on the other side of the door, was one of those things. It stared at Gavin with dead eyes, with those weird spike-arms sticking from its collarbones, but what caused Gavin to really scream was the fact that it had Frank's face. Frank laughed gleefully and launched forward, the plasma saw whirring to life in his hands. Moments later, a torso, four limbs, and a head lay on the ground. Frank laughed again, closed and locked the door, and kicked the head once. Everything turned white all of a sudden; symbols sprayed across the room, unintelligible to Gavin, whirling around and forming incomprehensible words before fading to nothingness only to be replaced by other symbols moments later. The white light grew and grew until it was all-encompassing.

When it vanished, Gavin was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, a plasma saw near his right hand and chunks of dead Lurker all around him. He stood up screaming, and saw the head of the thing nearby. Terrified, he rotated it and, bracing himself, looked into its face. Heaving a huge sigh of relief, he saw that it was not the head of his brother, but that of some unnamed poor soul.

Gavin scanned the medical room and saw only the plasma saw, lying still on the floor, and the medical supplies in with him. The door was locked. Other than that, the room was empty except for the bed he'd been strapped to when his brother had been there.

"Frank? Frank, are you here?" Gavin shouted. There was no response. He picked up the plasma saw and gripped it tightly, taking a deep breath before unlocking and opening the door. He stepped out of the room and into the hallway. Somehow, that step was momentous, and he would remember it for the rest of his life.

***