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Inferno - Chapter 1: Fear of the Dark
Posted By: Skul<skulkrusha2000@hotmail.com>
Date: 4 May 2006, 7:35 pm
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2022 hours, June 11, 2553 (Military Calendar) / Fire Base Alpha Tango Omega, Planet Earth
Ever since he was a child, Private Gerry Taylor had always been afraid of the dark. Although his fear had diminished as he matured, the thought that something could be lurking in the shadows never faded. He rarely moved when he was in bed and surrounded by the encompassing blackness for fear that something would hear him. Even though he knew his fear of monsters in the dark was childish, he always slept with a flashlight clutched tightly in his hand with a death-like grip. Several times during the night he would activate the flashlight and slice through the darkness with the beam of light. There was never anything there, of course, but the feeling, the gnawing anxiety that something waited to pounce as he slept, always stayed by him, whispering terrifying things into his mind, using his fear as a kind of twisted amusement.
Even when he slept alongside other marines, Taylor's fears didn't dwindle and his constant flashlight checks annoyed his bunkmates so much, that they often took his flashlight from him, then removed and stowed the batteries away in a locker until morning. This caused many sleepless nights for the Private, as he was always unsure whether the soft breathing he heard between harsh snores was from other marines, or some mangled thing hiding in the darkness, making sure all of its victims were asleep before it began ripping their throats open one by one, killing them before they had a chance to scream.
Taylor had joined the UNSC Marine Corps in the hope that live combat would burn away his fear. However, all it did was add a real fear of death to his list of phobias. The constant battles with the remaining Brutes and their allies, the Jackals and Drones – not to mention the last few strains of the Flood – brought him closer to death each time. His few battles with the Flood had injected more dread into him. They were in every sense monsters. Beasts of the night. Creatures of the damned. They were one step removed from demons.
"I'm going to hit the sack, guys," Taylor told his friends, wearily. He had gotten little sleep the night before and he struggled to keep his eyes open. A good night's sleep would be all he needed.
He got up from his chair and stretched his aching muscles. Waving his friends goodnight, he exited the bright cafeteria and stepped out into the cool corridor. Taylor gasped at a sudden chill that penetrated him to the bone. He shivered in the low temperature and started walking towards his room. It seemed odd that it should be so cold. Even though the air conditioning was on and some of the windows were open, it was still a blazing hot summer. Earlier that day, Taylor had been sweating like a pig and was relieved when to be back inside where it was cooler and the sun in the cloudless sky didn't blind him. Now, he was wishing they would shut off the air conditioning or close the windows, at least.
Reaching the door to the room where his bed and flashlight were, the Private shivered in the cold once more, then entered the room.
The first thing he noticed was that the room was not as bitter as the corridor and gave a small prayer of thanks. Then he spotted his flashlight on the small desk. The room was dark and the light from the hallway was not enough to fully remove the gloom. He reached for the light switch and pressed it, but nothing happened. He tried again with no luck.
"Oh, you gotta be shitting me," he said quietly to the dark room as he repeatedly pressed the small button.
Giving up, he moved to the desk and recovered his flashlight, which he instantly snapped on and surveyed the room with. Seeing nothing, he gave a small sigh of relief. This passed instantly as the door closed and locked.
"Oh damn!"
He walked towards the door, but it remained closed. He tried the emergency release button, but it beeped harshly, indicating an error.
It didn't surprise Taylor; they were having nothing but errors for the past few weeks – doors locking, lights going out, alarms blaring and a host of other problems that had no justifiable reason.
Sighing, Taylor slipped into his bunk after doing nothing more than taking his boots off.
Alone in the room, surrounded by darkness, flashlight in hand, Taylor's breathing was shallow and quiet; listening. Every so often, he heard a sound and his heart raced, but it just turned out to be either ambient metal creaks and groans or other marines talking to each other as they passed the door.
Just as the depressing actuality of spending another sleepless night in his bunk encapsulated Taylor, he heard a deep exhale of breath coming from the opposite end of the room. Taylor's heart froze and his eyes widened. He played the sound over again in his mind. It had definitely come from inside the room! His muscles tensed, his throat tightened and his lower jaw trembled as sweat ran off him.
He was one hundred percent sure that nobody else was in the room. That sound came from something else.
Oh God, oh shit, oh God...!
There was a deep inhale and another exhale. Taylor was so paralysed by fear, that he was unable to breathe, himself. He certainly didn't imagine it. It had a definite direction and was distinctly real.
Gripping his flashlight in his sweaty hand, Taylor ever so slowly removed his arm from under the thin, brown blanket. Heart pounding like a piston in his chest, the Private took a deep, silent breath and then quickly sat up, turning the flashlight on as he did, pointing it towards the far end of the room.
What he saw struck more fear in him than he could have ever imagined. A black, four-legged creature, about as high as a Grunt, stood at in the light. It had bristling white hair in a Mohawk over its arched back. The four legs were disturbingly thin, more bone than flesh, and ended in three-toed feet with black, twisted talons. Its skinny body was littered with dark spikes and the shape of its ribs could be seen against the black flesh. The head was an expressionless, uneven ball with two, round, staring, compound eyes. Two dark-gray, insect-like mandibles clicked below the terrible gaze.
There was no sudden movement from the creature as it stood in the beam cast by Taylor's flashlight. Its arched back rose and fell as it took another deep breath.
Slowly and with purpose, it began to move towards the Private, its talons clicking on the metal floor. Taylor was so terrified, that he never thought to try and escape. The horror drew closer, its eyes locked on his and he stared right back, both species unblinking.
The thing stopped a foot away from him. It cocked its head, quizzically, as if it wondered what Taylor was. Without warning, it launched forward, burying its mandibles in the Private's face, ripping through his cheeks. He was shoved back by the force of the creature hitting him and impacted the wall hard, winded.
The monster's talons tore into him as it ate his face, ripping it open, viciously. Taylor, unfortunately, remained alive until the thing cracked open his head and pulled his brain out of the ruined skull, feasting on the heavy, thick mass.
The next morning, Corporal David Grey knocked on the door to the room where Private Taylor lay. When he got no answer, he knocked again, harder. Silence.
"Private Taylor? Are you in there? Get up!"
Grey banged on the door to accentuate his words.
Nobody had managed to get into the room last night, Taylor hadn't reported for duty that morning and nobody had seen him around since he entered the room, so he must still be in his bunk.
He's going to be in a lot of trouble, thought Grey.
Finally realizing that Taylor wasn't going to answer, Grey tried the button to open the door, even though he suspected it would respond with a harsh error beep. To his surprise, it slid upwards, releasing the stench of death, which had been fermenting in the room for several hours.
"Oh, Christ! What the hell...?" cried Grey, covering his nose.
A passing marine, Jack Stoat, another Corporal, heard him and walked over to find out what Grey was complaining about and wished he hadn't came so close when he smelled the stench.
"Pooh! What is that?" asked Stoat, waving his hand in front of face to waft away the smell.
"No idea," replied Grey, "Taylor's not reported in, so I have to get him up."
Grey walked in, still covering his nose, "Taylor? You--?"
The Corporal's face went white and his hand dropped to his side when he saw Taylor's mutilated, bloody body with the destroyed head.
Stoat, seeing Grey's face, frowned and joined him inside the room. He took one look at Taylor's ashen face and stumbled from the room, feeling nauseous. He opened a nearby window and took in several lungfuls of fresh air.
Grey just stood, staring at the body. It didn't seem real; it was too horrible to be real. But it was real and Taylor was dead. In his hand was the flashlight, still on. Blood thinly covered the lens, changing the dim light from white to red.
"Do you have any what happened?" asked Lieutenant Harry Pratt.
"No," replied Grey, "he didn't report in this morning and nobody had seen him around, so he could only have been in his bunk. It wasn't until I opened the door that we found out he was..." Grey took a deep breath, finding that he couldn't say the next word. Although Taylor was little more than a colleague, Grey knew him well from their brief conversations and skirmishes together. Although cowardly when it came to the dark, he was a good person and very talkative, which made Grey feel like he had lost a friend.
"Where there any signs of Covenant activity?" asked Pratt.
"No. A Jackal couldn't have done what it did and Brute couldn't have snuck in if it tried. Maybe it was a Drone…?" mused Grey, "But even then, how did it gain access in the first place?"
"We'll search for any non-human DNA. We'll find out what happened and, hopefully, stop it from happening again."
Grey nodded with a small sigh. Pratt put a reassuring hand on the Corporal's shoulder.
"Okay, you better get back to work," said Pratt.
"Yes, sir."
In the small, cool, metal autopsy room, Doctor Perry Richards pondered over the strange, gruesome demise of Private Taylor. He had seen many cadavers; ones with missing arms; missing legs; exposed ribcages; bodies sliced cleanly in two by Energy Swords; and a host of other deaths, but he had never seen a body with its entire brain missing. There were instances of the head being vaporized by superheated plasma, but that is not what happened to the young marine. It looked like something had reached in and simply pulled the brain out. But for what purpose? If the Covenant were responsible, why would they take a human brain? There wouldn't be much point. They couldn't learn much about humans by simply taking one of our organs. Besides, the Brutes and Jackals didn't seem to be the type to spend time looking at what makes us tick.
There was also the question about the damage to the cheeks. Why were they ripped open? It looked like it was either some kind of torture beforehand or mutilation after the Private was dead.
Doing a basic visual diagnosis was getting nowhere. The doctor was going to have to get a DNA sample. It most likely wouldn't answer why Private Taylor was killed, but it would give a better idea as to what had killed him.
Richards picked up the small device that would allow him to collect the tissue samples he needed. Moving closer to Taylor, he carefully passed the device over the lacerations. After fifteen seconds, a small beep emitted from the DNA collector, indicating that it was full.
Turning from Private Taylor's body, the doctor carried the tissue samples over to the DNA Sequencer. Inserting the small DNA collector into a small slot, Richards transferred the contents from the device to the observation slate, which was behind a glass screen to prevent any outside disturbances.
Richards peered into the high-powered microscope to get a good look at the tissue samples lying on the slate before siphoning out Taylor's DNA. He saw the foreign cells straight away. They were a solid black and were much larger than the human cells, which they seemed to be devouring. It wasn't long until the entire view was filled with the giant, black cells. Richards panned the view out a little and saw nothing but a sea of black. Frowning, he zoomed out further and saw more of the same.
He leaned back and looked at the slate inside the machine. What he saw startled him. The entire slate was overflowing with a black, sticky substance.
"What the hell…?" breathed Richards, staring transfixed at the oozing slime.
"…WWWhhhat tha h'll…" hissed a throaty voice behind him.
The doctor turned quickly to see Taylor walking towards him.
"Taylor?"
"TTTayl'r…" hissed the shambling figure. Suddenly, the Private lunged at Richards, the loose flaps of skin on his face fluttering horribly. Richards dodged to the right, avoiding Taylor's grasping hands and knocking over a small cart, sending various medical instruments crashing to the floor.
Richards ran for the door, but to his dismay, it wouldn't open. He tried the emergency release button, but the fuse blew with a small bang and he started. Glancing over his shoulder, the doctor saw Taylor coming towards him, again and he started beating on the door, crying out for help, but nobody heard him. Just as the doctor felt Taylor's cold hands grasp him, the lights shattered, plunging the windowless room into darkness. A deep, inhuman laugh reverberated through the doctor's bones and he screamed as Taylor sank his teeth into his neck.
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