SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

Knight had fired one of Rook’s tailor-made spear gun-like bomb-spikes. The compressed-air weapon was strong enough to send the metal spike across the catwalk to drive itself deeply into the man’s chest. Pawn could see the small red LEDs on the ring of explosives around the shaft were lit already, indicating that the bomb was armed. As the man fell backward into the others still standing, Knight and Pawn took off running the other direction along the catwalk.

The remaining three men opened fire on them, bullets pinging off the metal catwalk near their feet as they ran. Suddenly the wall to their left began sparking from additional bullet impacts, and Pawn swept her SCAR over the railing to her right, firing several blind shots down at the floor of the lab, where she assumed the other guards were standing. She knew there was a risk of hitting the vats of fluid down there, and she had no way of knowing what they contained. But since the mission was essentially to break everything, she figured it would all work out okay.

As Knight reached the corner of the catwalk, and another doorway to their left — most likely to another watchtower, he darted inside, holding his arm up to show her that he held the transmitter for the bomb-spike. He was going to flick the switch.

Pawn darted into the doorway, just before the pressure wave ripped along the metal floor, nipping at her heels. As soon as it was done spewing shredded fabric and shattered, blood-stained chunks of rock their way, she darted back out onto the catwalk, which was now mangled and on fire at the end. She leaned over the railing and fired a bomb-spike from her own spear gun down into the lab. The spike implanted in the ground right next to the largest vat of lime green fluid. Pawn then pulled back and swept her SCAR up to cover Knight. He had reloaded his own spear gun and leaned over the rail, as she had done, firing his spike to a far corner of the lab’s floor. They took turns, laying suppressive gunfire and launching their deadly cargo, until Knight had loosed four of his seven remaining spikes and Pawn had fired all eight of hers.

Wordlessly they turned to ascend the darkened stairs of the new tower, hoping there would be an exit, because the space behind them was about to erupt in a fireball of chemicals, pulverized stone and slivers of metal and bone.

* * *

“What in the name of Michigan J. Frog happened to the friggin’ storm?” Rook asked, scrambling to his feet and racing toward the distant brawl between Queen and one of the patrolling guards.

With the air suddenly clear of ice and grit, he could see she had already taken one of the men down, but while she grappled with another, there were four more men. Two had turned already and were rushing toward their fallen comrades.

Rook loosed a controlled burst of fire from his FN SCAR, dropping one of the men, and winging the other. He kept running toward them, firing again as he got closer. He dropped the second alarmed guard, just as Queen plunged her huge knife in the chest of the man she had on the ground. Rook kept advancing and was pleased to see the last two guards hadn’t even turned yet.

Queen climbed to her feet. Rook was still half-a-dozen yards from her position and heading for her at a run. He was about to fire on the last two guards, when one of them turned and the other simply dropped. Rook raised his weapon to fire on the turning man, but he dropped as well.

Queen felt the ground trembling again and then saw Rook heading her way, aiming past her. She turned back and saw the last of the guards fall down. Then she and Rook both understood what had happened to the men.

King, approaching from the back of the building, he had taken both men down with single shots from his rifle, as he’d come around the corner.

But something was wrong. He was running toward them, and moving full out.

“King, what’s—” Rook started to ask.

Then Rook noticed the vibration beneath his feet. At first he’d written it off as another of the tremors Aleman had mentioned. But it was stronger now, and the ground was bucking and jumping, as if this earthquake was going to be a huge one.

Then the source of the quake became clear, as a monstrous thing followed King around the corner, hissing and frothing.

5

King ran faster than ever before, but it still wasn’t enough.

Once he’d heard there was a bioweapons lab concealed underground, he’d planted four bomb-spikes — one in each corner of the ground-floor courtyard inside the outer wall, then he’d headed out a rear gate. That was when the trembling had begun. He’d sensed that it was closer than the rumble they had experienced the last time, and that its force was increasing at an exponential pace.