U.S.S.A Umbra

Chapter 7 Eldritch Vehicular Activity

Damien stood his ground waiting for the dark creatures to get closer as they twitched and shambled towards the survivors. "Wait for them to step into the light." The sergeant said over the comms. There were four lamps on each side of the hallway. As they stepped into the light they covered their eyes and began making a gurgled hissing sound. "Open fire!" Damien aimed for the legs of the creature at the front of the pack and fired, blowing its leg apart and sending it crashing to the ground. Its head hit the ground splitting it open, killing it. The rest were eventually shot to pieces by everyone else.

"Is that all of them sir?" One of the guards asked. "I don't think so, that shadow is still there so load back up and get ready for more." As he said that more started crawling out from the shadow in the hall. As they approached the lights they stopped. Instead of walking into the light several of them each went for the lamps on the floor and tore them from the ground. "Dammit! Those things were bolted down too, turn on flashlights."- "Oh god, my flashlights not working." The panicking guard said. But before he could look up, one of the lamps was sent hurtling towards him, knocking him to the ground. "We got a man down! I'm gonna throw a flash." Damien shouted. He threw a flashbang at the creatures to give him time to check on the downed guard. Damien rushed over to the guard by the barricade. "Are you alright soldier?" -"Kind of, ow. I think that bruised a few ribs; oh shit my visors cracked." –"Here'll stick with you." When Damien looked back at the lamps, they had all been ripped off the ground and thrown at them. This group of creatures was much larger. They had killed enough of the things that the creatures had to climb over each other's corpses, but it was only a slight hindrance as the bodies seemed to liquefy away after a short while. After the injured guard killed a few creatures his helmet started malfunctioning enough to where he could barely see.

"Goddammit, I can't see anything." As he started to bang the side of his helmet one of the creatures from the other side of the barricade sprang up towards him, grabbing on to him. "Oh! Oh god, get it the fuck off me!" The Guard began moving around frantically trying to get the creature that had been blown in half off him. Before Damien could get it off of him the frantic guard swung his gun at Damien knocking him aside. The guard ran out of the barricade and pulled out his knife and began stabbing the creature repeatedly. The panicked Guard began screaming and crying loudly as he stabbed the creature over and over again until it collapsed off of him. When Damien got back up, some of the creatures began climbing into the barricade and started grabbing at him. He grabbed its arm and pulled, ripping its arm off spraying black liquid on him. "Get off me; I've already had it with you creeps!" Damien gave a forceful push, knocking them back. Damien blew the heads off two of them and vaulted over the barricade as one was still on the ground he began stomping on its limbs, crushing them and splintering bone everywhere, and then he finally gave one last stomp to the head killing it.

After the sergeant and the other guard dealt with the last of the creatures they and Damien walked over to the scared guard. "Are you alright?" The sergeant asked. -"No I'm not alright, I just want to get off this godforsaken ship, I just want to go home." He slumped down crying. "Sir what are those things?" Damien asked. "I wish I knew soldier, all I know is that they were the people we're supposed to protect and now we're killing them in droves. We started calling them splinters because well you can see why." "Last time they attacked they killed a few of our people. Thank you for your help. We could use you here."-"With all due respect sir, it's not safe here, we need to get comms back online if we're gonna get this situation under control. "The sergeant was too tired to argue back."Then what do we do hmm?" -The cafeteria is safe, we were there when this all went down, there are people and food there."-Alright, what are you gonna do then?"-There's someone I need to find. "Damien cleaned himself off and restocked while also taking another pistol as Simon had his."All right you two let's head out." - "Right!" Simon said, Frank, nodded. Damien walked over to the other side of the hallway where the shadowed part of the floor is, where the splinters had been crawling out from. "There's nothing here, how could they have just crawled out of the shadows like that?" Damien said.- "There aren't any grates here, even as old as deck 13 is those were all replaced years ago, but they couldn't have just come out of nowhere could they?" -"I have trouble wrapping my head around whatever the hell is going on too but we should carry on."