Entry 3

[zesty_pinto]

It was not entirely dark. The airlock was open and it provided some light between the dead air and the hollowed out metal room. There were flashlights in one of the crates that held supplies, but it was hard to look through a box of supplies when you know that there is something around that may be ready to kill you with a silent and quick death. There was ammunition, but not enough; most of it was now smashed with what was left of the ship and I reluctantly snatched the firearm from the dead man after one of the soldiers commanded me to. This was not the first time I had held a gun, but it was the first time I remember being so nervous holding one. He had three clips of ammunition by his belt, which I was also told to take. Just out of curiosity, I checked the weapon and found the safety still on. He did not know what killed him.

"Through the lock!" I could hear the man with the machine gun command us. I took those steps forward, not wanting to go forward but not having any choice. The hallways. I could see the expressions of the programmer and engineer as they also entered and we were surprised. I could not blame them; the hall used to be carpeted, covered in white walls that hid the metal panels of the ships, hung with plastic plants and portraits.

Now it was stark, clean and unmarked. Only uncovered bulbs of light were all we could see aside from an endless number of metal panels. I looked down with a flashlight and noted how it was dustless, and there was no sign no one else had gone here.

"This way," the man commanded with his gun out again. He took to one of the directions and we followed, but then stopped when the lights flooded red. We looked around, and then right before us, before me; there was a door sliding in of hard metal rushing before us. Everybody was running ahead. I was lost for the moment and in a blink of an eye, the wall slammed in front of me and the lights stopped glowing red, shutting dead back to the dim light of the emergency halls. Then the sounds. The sounds of the hall grew dead, except for one sound. The sound of my breathing.

I was alone. I would never see those others again in a ship that was stripped of everything I remember. As far as I knew, there was no way I could think of escaping. My heart may as well have been war drums. My fingers cradled the handle of the firearm, looking left and right as I went ahead. The ship had escape pods, I remember them being in the lower bay, but remembered it was in the lower bay that could only be reached through the part of the hall that just closed behind me.

but I didn't know that there would be something even louder coming. In the background came the grumbling thump of steel clamping. Then a grinding noise of the floor rumbled. Before my eyes, I could see a metal hulk floating forward, grinding slowly, a roach. A nasty metal roach with a pair of antennae that pointed towards me. A clicking noise rattled the air. I ducked for the doorway back to the locks.

Ricochets. You could hear the metal twang come all over the area, then a white light flashed by, I saw it come and leave for a moment. A laser. I swore to myself at that point. A laser!

Lasers were Class A technology, illegal to the public; government technology that was not meant to be used except in war. I never remembered there being anything like that on this ship before.
Even the security commander was told not to carry this sort of thing in the ship since the electromagnetics involved might foul with the drive. I looked at the belt on my hand. Three clips.

Slowly turning by the side of the doorway, I watched for the slow treading tank sliding forward. I clicked off the safety, turned, aimed, and pulled back the trigger as the weapon climbed out of my hands. The bullets ricocheted hard, but I knew I did something to it when the crawling monster had turned to its side and was unable to move. I sat to the ground, only to see the lights run red again.

I ran towards the robot, turning behind me as another wall began to snap itself closed. It was as large as my legs, a flat, beetle-shaped thing with a head that was mostly cameras and a laser eye, a wing where the gun barrel rested. It continued to run into the wall, as though it believed that the wall was not there. I pointed the barrel of the firearm into the critter and set the weapon to single shot, pulled the trigger, and listened to the gears of the thing as it finally fell dead.

Things were worse than I thought, as I checked the creature. It was not even marked with military insignia or company names. This only seemed to confuse me more, but as I turned from the wall, another flash of light hissed and fouled and another quick duck as I almost felt the heat of a laser flash emanate on my back as it slipped above me, enough to be safe. My gun ran ahead as I scrambled to the side of a wall and rattled the weapon free of bullets until all I could hear was an endless flashbang of the gun screaming, and then click. Click-click-click-click-click. My clip fell free, so I nervously reached for my clip and locked it in, stepped ahead through the dim lights. I wanted to think, but I could not, not easily. My arms shook, and I could hear myself breathing hard.

There had to be a way around this. Then I remembered the area by the engineering room, the one way that I had been most familiar with from all that time I spent there back when the ship was being built. Not that far from it was the master control room for the switches. The switches also included the doors and maybe get myself to an escape pod.

I looked at my clips again. One spare clip. I turned to the beetle not far from me, fuming with ozone plumes. I banged the flashlight against a bulging case by the gun of the beetle and freed a case that rumbled out with bullets.

Whatever was here, I was not sure what I could have done with it. I took the ammo belt, pulled it out with a snap and looked at it as I pulled a bullet out from one of the free clips of my handgun with my weapon. Different calibers. I shook my head and sighed.

I don't know if I could have made it, but I was the only person I could rely on. There might have been another four clips I could have picked up from that corpse, but that wall was closed up too. I would have to go through hell with only two clips of ammunition.

I wandered ahead, my gun ready. Living quarters were not too far. Stepping ahead, I could see the doors with their sanitary clear metal frames, their panels left the way they were. I pressed the button to open it and found what happened to all that was in the hallway.

Debris. The room was filled with the debris of shattered beds, wood frames, plastic things, bones.

I revolted back for a moment at the sight of bones, but knew that at least in here it would mean less of the bugs. I stepped carefully ahead into the pile and began to sift. Perhaps a weapon would be available, perhaps something to help. As I stepped through, I then saw something that could perhaps be useful; a simple plastic device; a pda. I prayed that it would be still operational and I smiled when it came to life, dust caked over its screen as it told me the past of its last owner. I was even more thankful knowing that it had belonged to one of the scientists I knew, though it only troubled me to know that if he owned it, he was probably dead like the bones in here.

"Log 5: The trip seemed to take a simple turn. Only minor problems, something to do with something fouling up the drive. Sometimes the chaplain I talk with would talk with me about this. The scientists blame it one something getting in the way."

I continued to scan.

"Log 17: The headaches are now so terrible and I'm not the only one that hasn't been suffering from it. Some of the security is complaining about why so many people have to be sent to confinement. I think the good doctor is starting to act strangely from all of this pain too, this damn pain that's throbbing and the doctor has been abset minded and-"

"Log 32: I don't know why we are alive. I don't know why, but there is so much pain. I can barely even continue typing this. The doctor has found a way to fix the problem, but I don't like how he's been. Whenever I see him, there's always something marking his clothes whenever I see him. I think it's blood. The others are not making more sense either. Security opened fire on several men today compared to ten days ago when it was only when they assaulted them. God, I don't like how-"

"Log 51: God, god on high. God will save us for I have seen the vision. He came today and-"

I blinked when I read that. The entries only continued to become stranger, more demented. He had babbled on about god, about damnation, about killing the sinners who had broken the seals and how he never understood why he could not have heard the voices before while they were attempting to come to his unclean mind.

"Log 65: The gods came and damned them all and then we feasted of the glories of the land. The beasts came, the heathens tried to take us, but I followed them, and they cleared the monsters, cleansed this place and grew in glory. I was pleased. Today I will give myself and then we will return to paradise thanks to god."

Somewhere in my head, I could feel something tremble in my head. The voices.