His head, however, had suffered some sort of damage.
From what?
It ached. A killer headache dwarfing even the worst of the migraines he had suffered during his teen years. But he was not a kid anymore and things like headaches were not going to slow him down, no matter how goddamn painful.
He took a breath and tasted smoke, fuel, and dust.
This time, Biggy forced the impulse to go through and it worked. He managed to move his right arm and grasp something that was on his face, pulling away a broken, lightweight tile that had fallen from the hallway's dropped ceiling. Obviously the tile had been blown away by …
… by what? Oh yeah, the explosion. The explosion of what?
The pain in Ben Franco’s head was a hard, dull throb, probably caused when he hit the floor, but why, again, had he hit the floor?
… Pearson’s tanks must’ve exploded. That’s it, right?
While he struggled with his memory, his body switched back on, one nerve, one synapse at a time. He felt a tingling in his fingers, a warm ache in his shoulder and then—-and then an agony that chased away any concerns over a bump to the head. A raw, horrid, tearing pain roared up Franco’s right leg into his thigh, through his waist, and all the way up to his shoulders, where it joined the warm sting of a gunshot wound to create a hellish agony. His teeth clamped tight and a groan bellowed in the back of his throat.
Then he heard slurping sounds.
Franco raised his head as best he could. He saw smoke lingering in the air reflecting yellow flickers from small, scattered fires left over from the exploded flamethrower tanks. The unmistakable odor of burning human flesh drifted on the smoke.
He quickly located the source of the pain. It came because something knelt next to him and gnawed on his calf.
It was not one of the shadow-creatures that had attacked the unit. It was small, between four and five feet tall, although it was hard to tell since it was kneeling on the floor in a low-light environment. Still, the sergeant saw more than he cared to see.
Franco counted two arms and two legs, hands, and a head; it was very much human in general form. Yet there was no way this thing could possibly be human, not with the myriad of welts, sores, boils, and rashes covering its unnaturally pale skin. It appeared hairless except for some wiry thatch atop a small skull.
The face was difficult to see because that face was buried in Franco's calf, pulling at a strand of flesh with spindly fingers on two gnarled hands, slurping as it ate. Biggy saw a wisp of steam rise from the gaping wound.
Franco gasped, revealing to the diner that its meal lived. When it turned to face him, it showed flesh pulled tight on cheekbones as if shrink-wrapped onto the face of a gruesome doll; eyes seemingly all black, the result of pupils expanded to the widest possible size to survive in a dungeon of dark.
An escalation of pain as the bullet in his shoulder screamed nearly caused Franco to pass out. Only through pure willpower did he remain conscious — willpower driven by disgust and survival instinct, by knowing that if he slept again he would either not wake up at all or, worse, wake up half-devoured.
He looked about for a weapon and saw none within easy reach. Then he remembered his utility belt. He grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on: a portable ring wire saw.
Despite shaking from the volcano of pain electrocuting his body, despite a bullet in his shoulder near his collarbone, Franco grasped the wire saw's rings and pulled the cord taut. He then forced himself into a sitting position, coming eye to eye with the fiend tearing at his leg.
It seemed surprised at Franco’s ability to move. It seemed more surprised at how fast the soldier wrapped the cord around its neck.
Franco pulled the rings in opposite directions and the wire throttled the creature. In those few seconds the part of the soldier's mind that had been conditioned to observe and store information took stock of his foe, even though the incoming data was distorted by emotion, confusion, and agony.
First, the creature reacted to the wire around its throat, so it felt pain. Second, it appeared to gasp for air, so it needed to breathe and therefore was alive, and that meant it could be killed. Third, it was a small thing, almost childlike in its dimensions, but the blood caked on its cheeks, the jagged fingernails, the broken but dangerously sharp teeth, the guttural noises it screeched as Franco attacked, made this thing seem like something demonic.
Biggy Franco turned his pain into rage. He did not give the creature a chance to suffocate. He pulled the rings with all his strength, forcing his wounded shoulder to comply; the wires cut through its throat until there was no more resistance. Its head wobbled for a moment, then rolled away, teeth impulsively chattering for a second longer.
With the threat dealt with, Biggy's mind stepped back and took in the situation, except taking in this particular situation was a tall task. In fact, the incoming flood of emotion, information, and understanding tripped a sanity circuit breaker.
Franco glanced around. Bodies, gore, charred flesh, shell casings, and blood were scattered about, but no more of those things — wait, over by the stairs lurked another, this one a little larger than the first. Unlike the first, the second creature wore pants that were obviously several sizes too big. Franco noted a green camouflage pattern; a trophy, no doubt, from a past victim.
It took no notice of the sergeant or his actions; it was too busy ripping into Moss’s ribcage. Unlike Franco, Specialist Moss was definitely Not going to wake up to this unpleasant surprise. Specialist Moss was already pulling guard duty at some heavenly outpost far away.
No one … no Gant … no Campion — they left me. They left me to sit here and be eaten.
Franco turned his attention to his leg wound: a gaping hole, surrounded by teeth marks. He felt body heat rise from the gash as well as a current of blood. Then his shoulder chimed in, competing for attention by sending a burning tremor all along his arm.
Campion shot me. He wouldn't do that without Gant's orders. Fucking major wanted me DEAD.
Franco reached for and found the first aid kit on his belt using his right arm — the one that did not have a bullet hole in the shoulder — to find a trauma compress. He leaned back down and held it hard against the shoulder wound. After some more fiddling, he managed to free some adhesive tape and loosely secure the compress. It would not hold for long, but he had more important things to deal with before he could dress the bullet wound properly.
Next came his leg. He stuffed gauze into the torn flesh, bandaged it, and prepared a tourniquet.
Eating me … fucking eating me.
He pulled it tight and Sergeant Ben "Biggy" Franco screamed. He screamed from a deep spot far down in his merciless soul. It started as a scream of agony, but as the breath roared from his lungs it turned savage. It turned from agony into anger into pure rage. The sound reverberated up and down the hall and sounded as inhuman as any of the denizens therein.
The blood, the unspeakable creatures, this hellish underground complex, the smell of burnt bodies, a bullet in the shoulder and teeth marks on his leg, which had been the main course for something's dinner — all that could easily have killed a man from fear alone. But not Ben Franco. Hell, this wasn't any harder than an average day during his childhood.
He forced himself to stand. Despite the tourniquet, blood soaked through the gauze on his leg. On his shoulder, the pad slipped but, for the moment, held.
The thing that had been eating Moss — the creature — reacted to Franco’s cry and took notice, crossing the corridor with an ape-like gait.
"Come on! Come on, you fuck. You want a monster? You want a monster?"