The Aeschylus

1

“Come in Delta. This is Alpha team leader. Please respond, over.” He paused. “Delta team… goddammit Reiner, where are you?”

Mason was half a second away from ripping the mic out of the console, but he stopped and threw it to the floor of the chopper instead. He thought he had come to terms with Reiner's disappearance on the island, but now back on the rig, the unreality of it hit him again. He'd had men die on him before, but he'd never had one up and disappear. Still, not a single fucking answer to be found.

While he and Vy had been at the island, the rest of the team had rounded up the bodies on the platform. Not counting the Argentinian military, there were sixteen. Sixteen workers out of two hundred and thirty-eight. That didn't jive with what their contact had told him. It didn't jive with the level of damage here. It didn't make any goddamned sense at all.

He swung his feet out onto the helipad and saw it had gotten darker. Another few hours, and the sun would be setting for the first time in months.

Hal was waiting for him outside. “What do you want to do?”

Mason grabbed the man's mouth, fished inside, and pulled out his gum. He threw it to the ground. “Get in the goddamned chopper, McHalister.”

The pilot frowned.

“Now!” Mason screamed.

Hal crawled into the S-70 and took the pilot's seat, knowing better than to speak another word. Mason didn't want to hit him; he wanted to hit Reiner. He'd given the man a simple set of orders: scout the perimeter, investigate the island, return to the platform and offer air support as they secured the upper decks. He'd been dependable for years, and now… now, he was just gone.

Nothing about this mission made a goddamned lick of sense.

“Maybe it's not that bad, sir.” The new kid was hobbling towards him, bent over a crutch Melvin had made him out of scrap metal.

“What's that, Worsch?”

“Maybe it does make sense, and we're just not seeing it.”

Mason grunted. He'd either spoken aloud without realizing it, or the expression on his face said it all. It wasn't like him to start slipping.

“Maybe the workers aren't dead. Maybe they got into the boats, evacuated the facility, and drifted out to sea. I mean, if they're not here and they're not at the island, it's the only thing that makes sense.”

“And Reiner?” Mason asked.

“I don't know. Maybe he landed somewhere you guys couldn't get to on foot. The radios still aren't working.”

“Kid ain't dumb,” Melvin said, coming over to stand by the chopper. “But you ask me, I think it'll be a cold day in hell before we find out what happened to that fool.”

Nick shrugged. “At least we're all secure here. What did you do with our guests, anyways? I haven't seen Kate or our football buddy since you guys came up.”

Mason looked at Melvin, and Melvin shrugged. Did Black Shadow really not tell this twerp their plans when they brought him in? Christ, their leadership was going to Hell in a hand basket.

He was saved an explanation by Hal, who had deemed it safe to speak again. The man returned to the bay of the helicopter. “Well, we got one bird that does work. And if you gentlemen don't mind, I'd like to run a systems check on her before we light out.” Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the sound of an approaching engine. He stuck his head to the windshield, his eyes fixed on the approaching object. “I'll be goddamned.”

Five seconds later, he was dead.

2

Peter gleeked another strand of tobacco across the drilling equipment, and it landed all of the way on the other side. He grinned. He had, after all, been practicing since he was twelve.

“Got any more of that stuff?” Christian asked.

“No more whacky tobacky, man. But I got something else for you.” He produced a pill, round and orange, and held it up for inspection. “I was saving this for when we had the all clear, but I guess this is as good as it's going to get. You want one?”

The other man shook his head.

Peter shrugged and popped the thing into his mouth. He bit down hard, letting it split down the middle. The sensation hit his teeth first like it always did, running ice across his gums. He swallowed.

Shivered.

Laughed.

“Oh-doggy!” he yelled. The yellow gold was good stuff.

Christian sighed, settling back down on the box he was sitting on. Peter slapped him on the shoulder. He liked Christian. Melvin would have have lectured him, or at the very least given him shit for calling his dip the whacky tobacky. “Whacky tobacky means it has weed in it, motherfucker,” he'd told him. “You as dumb as you look, you know that?” That always made Peter laugh, and it got Melvin madder than hell. But Christian didn't say much. He was laid back. Cool, man.

Now, Peter thought there was something wrong with him. The big guy was huddled up, hunched over like he might hurl. At first, Peter thought he was just coming down off of the battle high, but this was something else. “You don't look so good. You all right? Sure you don't want a little pick-me-up?”

Christian shook his head. Then, he stood up with a sudden force. “You hear that?”

At first Peter could only hear the wind, then he realized his buddy was right. There was something like… like a sucking sound.

And then below them, a bellowing yell. No, not a yell, he thought. A scream.

“Jin!”

They rushed over to the railing, looking down to the level below. Peter's first thought was one of sheer delirium, and his mind jumped to his dealer. He gave me the wrong batch. He gave me the wrong batch. Good God, he gave me the wrong fucking batch!

They were coming from the tentacles. Hideous, blackened shapes were dropping and slithering from the tentacles like roaches. They crawled over the supports, naked and deformed, dropping onto the catwalks in droves. Peter's eyes darted to the left and right hoping — praying — that he taken something that had melted his mind. But that was stupid; nothing worked that fast. Below him, Jin was being pulled into a tentacle and… devoured, Peter thought crazily. He was being sucked inside and eaten by whatever lay within, the ropes hanging off his body like strands of cheese.

The blackened shapes moved across the platform, scurrying and stumbling like animals. But they weren't animals. Those shapes, no matter how twisted and blackened, had once been people.

Peter had a sudden memory then, as clear as anything he had seen in his conscious mind. He was six again, standing with his parents outside of church. “Is there really such as thing as the devil?” he'd asked his mother. She had told him that there was, and that he should always be a good boy, because the devil was watching. But he hadn't been a good boy, had he? Jesus Christ, he killed people for a living. And now, the devil was here.

Christian fired. It snapped him back to reality, the rifle blazing fire beside his head. Vy hit one of the shapes, sending a spray of black blood through the air. They were fast; within moments, he had abandoned the fast-moving targets and was spraying the tentacles, sending streams of black and green fluid raining through the lower levels.

Peter grabbed his grenade launcher and clicked the safety off. By the time he had his head straight, there was no need to look down over the rails. The things were crawling up the stairs. They were crawling up the drill shaft and over the catwalks, and they were running straight for them.

3

Hal's body exploded in a red spray as the bullets tore through the cockpit. The front of the chopper was mangled in an instant, the glass shattered and the metal perforated with holes.

Mason hit the deck before he knew what was happening. The other chopper—his chopper — was hovering thirty feet from the platform. A shape stood at the open bay door, turning the mounted fifty caliber in a deadly arc. Mason stared at it from his back. Up until this morning, he would have believed nothing could surprise him any more, but he was wrong.

Across the pad, Nicholas was yelling something, and he read the kid's lips: “Markus!” he was shouting. “It's Markus!”

At first, it didn't register. The shape in the chopper doorway looked like Reiner, but it was too gaunt, too discolored. And it was wearing a grin, a cutting, eerie rictus unlike anything Mason had seen on the man. That grin bore a hole straight through him. I'm going to cut you in half with this thing, old buddy, that grin seemed to say, and I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it!

Mason jumped to his feet and tore ass across the helipad, throwing one arm around Nick. A spray of gunfire cut the ground behind them, missing the kid's legs by inches. Mason lugged him into the stairwell and threw him into the corner like a garbage bag. Melvin was already there, staring like a dog in headlights.

“Can you get a shot off?”

Melvin stuck his head up to helipad level and was greeted by another barrage of gunfire. “No!”

Mason slung the AR-15 around his shoulder. He could hear the chopper circling. The Aeschylus was big, but the hostiles could move around the derrick and get a better vantage. Hostiles was the only way he could think of them. Anything else, and he'd have to stop moving and sort the shit in his head out.

Calle looked at him. “What do you want to do, boss?”

“Draw their fire.”

“Say what?”

“Draw their fire!” he barked.

The kid looked at him from the floor, his eyes wet with pain. “Where are you going?”

“To find the other fifty cal. Now get moving and make yourself useful, goddammit!”

Mason jumped down the stairwell, then bounded out the second level and onto the deck. He could see the heavy gun on the crate where they had left it, near the bridge. In the wake of finding Doctor Grey, nobody had bothered to dismantle it.

Then a sound from below: someone else was shooting. He stopped. The Aeschylus suddenly felt too big, a thousand miles separating him and his men. He put his hand to ear and felt his earpiece, forgetting it was inutile until his fingers touched the transceiver. A second later, he ripped it out and threw it to the ground, screaming to the sky.

The fifty cal was waiting for him just across the deck, and he hurled himself at it, sprinting full force until he reached the crate. It was then, in that moment, that he he saw them.

Human shapes were slithering from The Carrion tentacles and crawling up onto the deck. One of them found footing on the barracks bridge not fifteen feet away. It stared at him as it gained its feet, its eyes nothing but milky pits.

Mason stared back. The thing in front of him was… it was a woman. He tried to reconcile her figure with the alien look of her skin and couldn't. It was too freakish, like something at a circus sideshow after dark. She hissed, an awful, animal sound from the back of her throat, and that broke the trance. He squeezed the trigger on the fifty cal, and the top of her head exploded.

Not twenty feet away, St. Croix came hustling up the stairwell with Vy in tow. The man fired a grenade round into the space behind them, shaking the foundations of the platform with fire and dust.

“To me!” Mason yelled. “To me! To me!”

Vy sent two more targets to the ground, then followed Peter to Mason's side. Mason didn't know how many were left, but if he had to guess… well, he'd guess about two hundred. Crazy, he thought, and suddenly realized just how well Doctor Grey had been holding it together.

Mason unscrewed the bolts holding the mounted machine gun and removed the ammo belt. He was about to let it drop into his arms when a human head rose from the railing in front of him. This one was a man, his bald head and mustache covered by black lesions and spider veins. Mason could see a small tentacle growing out of one ear.

His right hand flew to his knife, and he jammed it through the thing's skull, shoving it straight through. It hissed, the blade showing through the back of its mouth. When Mason yanked the knife away, it dropped backwards into empty space.

Another explosion rocked the deck behind him, and he could hear St. Croix cackling in triumph. “Put that thing away, you idiot!”

Before he could say anything, Mason tossed him the machine gun. St. Croix caught it with a huff. He tossed Mason his grenade launcher, then shouldered the fifty. “Where?”

“East side! Tripod it to the deck!”

The three of them ran back across the platform, and St. Croix hit the ground, reassembling the mount before he even stopped moving. The barrel of the gun could shoot just beneath the railing, making the spot an ideal roost.

The shapes were coming up the stairwells now, and Mason counted a dozen more. Three of them toppled as Vy squeezed off a controlled burst. Mason fired and popped two more. The next wave came in a group, and he shot low, taking out their knees. Whatever the hell they were, however they'd been changed, they died just like men. And so Mason shot them just like men, chewing their bodies to bits with his rifle.

He looked around and could see the outline of the chopper through the steel supports on the northeast corner. “It's circling into position!”

St. Croix pulled back the lever on the fifty cal, aiming out through the beams.

“What is that?” Christian yelled.

“Be quiet!”

Mason listened, and he realized he could hear voices.

He jogged back to the railing, and when he reached the side, he saw exactly where the rest of Doctor Grey's Carrion things were. They were clustered around the metal supports beneath the barracks, hissing and spitting and climbing. In the middle, directly beneath the building, he saw Angus dangling from a hole in the roof. AJ was down to his underwear, clutching a rope that looked made of clothes.

One of the shapes leapt from the supports and grabbed at the man, but he swung out of the way. The thing fell, banged into a cross beam, then splashed into the water.

AJ looked up then, his gray eyes blazing. When he caught sight of Mason, he took one hand from the rope and made the little point-and-shoot gesture Melvin had done when they'd locked them in the room.

Spitting fury, Mason leveled his rifle straight at him. At that instant, the chopper rounded the platform behind him, and St. Croix opened fire.

4

AJ prepared to drop. He looked at the makeshift rope above him and calculated its length at about six feet. Well, only a forty-four foot drop instead of a fifty foot drop, he thought insanely. Then a bray of machine gun fire erupted from somewhere in the sky.

Mason lost his bead as bullets clanged off of the ground and ricocheted off of the steel. One of The Carrion shapes near him caught a stray round in the hand and dropped, following his hideous companion to the waters below. AJ could see through to the other side of the platform, the chopper hovering in the distance. Bruhbaker's men fired back in a steady stream.

The makeshift rope shook and tottered. Above him, Gideon's parka had taken a bullet, its orange sleeve sporting a tear the size of a prison snitch's asshole.

“Swing me,” he called upwards.

Gideon's face appeared. “What?”

AJ looked at the top deck where Mason was recovering. “Swing me!” he yelled again. “Get me over there!”

The rope began to sway, two sets of hands attached to the line. AJ tucked his knees to his chest and swung towards the deck, ending up about six feet away. His body rolled back in the other direction, and then he swung again. Four feet.

Mason stumbled to the rails, his AR-15 in hand.

AJ let go of the rope on the up-swing. He flailed through the air and slammed into the side of the deck, grabbing Mason's shirt through the rails. The big man slammed into the side and planted his feet, his rifle dropping somewhere behind him. He closed one hand around the steel bars, the other around his assailant's throat. AJ felt the cartilage in his Adam's apple crunch, the karmic reversal of his bout with Doctor Grey. Then AJ's hand groped something on Mason's belt: his own M1911, dangling loosely in Mason's holster. His thumb slipped upwards, and suddenly, the pistol was his hand. It was so unexpected that the gun went off, firing into Mason's meaty thigh. The shot blew the pistol backwards, and it flew out of his grip, falling into space.

Mason grunted, bringing a hammerfist down like a brick.

AJ dropped into free fall, but his hands shot out and grabbed the edge of the platform, saving him by inches. He let out a gasp, hanging over empty space like a failed rock climber. Mason grinned, raising a boot to mash AJ's fingers to pulp. But then, an object clanged off of a nearby support and hit the big man in the shoulder. It looked like an empty paint bucket. The man stumbled back on his bad thigh and collapsed to the deck.

“Hey monkey man!” It was Dutch, hanging off of the clothes rope behind him.

“Hurry up! I'm slipping!” AJ called.

“Throw me the gun first!”

“What gun?”

“The one you shot him with!”

“I lost it!”

“What?”

“I lost it! Just… swing over here! Hurry!” He could already hear Mason scrambling to his feet.

“Jump!” Dutch yelled.

“I can't make it!”

“I'll catch you! Jump!”

AJ did. He threw one foot up and kicked off of the platform, using every last bit of strength he had. Their bodies snapped together, Dutch throwing his free arm under AJ's armpit. AJ grabbed at him, expecting to fall straight after impact.

But he didn't.

“Nice one! Now for Christ's sake man, get your hand off my dick.”

AJ looked down. “Sorry.” He shifted.

“Get to the rope beneath me. You're on point, Ace.”

AJ looked back at the platform. It seemed a hundred yards from where he was holding on, and he couldn't believe that he had made it.

Mason was leaning over the rails, now without a rifle and without a pistol. He was staring, that look of rage etched onto his face. With a final glare, he turned and disappeared from sight.

“Hey!” Gideon shouted from above. “You okay?”

AJ squirmed. “We're a little busy!”

Dutch tapped him on the head and pointed. “Think if we jump over to those crossbeams, you can climb down?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You can stay and die, I guess.”

AJ let himself down to the end of the rope. He could hear the fabric around Gideon's coat tearing bit by bit.

The crossbeam supports were closer than the platform though, and he grabbed onto one easily. He was completely below the body of the platform now, nothing but empty air and steel beneath him. And the tentacles, of course. Before he could start climbing, he found himself face to face with a large one, almost close enough to touch. Like Jin, he could see the hideous shapes trapped inside of it, but unlike Jin, he knew the thing for what it was. Gideon had made sure to tell them exactly where his crew had gone.

“Uh, Dutch…”

The thing inside the tentacle moved and a slit appeared, the flesh parting like vulva. The thing beyond — not five feet from him — stirred and squirmed.

“Dutch!” he yelled.

A pair of arms shot from the inside of the tentacle, swiping the air in front of his face.

“Go! Go, go!”

Dutch got moving, and AJ followed, wrapping his arms around the steel supports and climbing down one section at a time.

“This is a bad idea,” he whispered, feeling the ocean winds whipping at his back. “Oh yeah. Definitely a bad idea.”

He heard a squeal from above and saw Gideon climbing down their makeshift rope, his face scrunched in terror. They were all on borrowed time. If Mason found a gun or grabbed one of his men, the three of them would be nothing but big, barely moving targets. That wasn't even the worst of it: the chopper was coming around.

“Nobody told me I would be climbing things,” Gideon yelled. “I hate heights!”

“Don't think about it!” AJ said, panting now. “The height's not a problem!”

“Yeah,” Dutch said. “It's more the falling, really.”

“Just hurry up!”

The sound of the helicopter got louder. The S-70 circled around to their side of the platform, sputtering and coughing smoke. It was chewed to bits, metal and shrapnel dangling in pieces from the hull. There was blood spatter near the open door, the gunner—the cowboy, AJ thought — long departed.

“Oh shit…”

The chopper wobbled as it flew, bending and then twisting on a path straight towards them.

“Guys!” Dutch yelled.

“Move your ass!” AJ finished. He climbed down to the next girder and dropped the last few feet to the boat deck. “Jesus, it's going to crash! Hold onto something!”

A final bray of gunfire echoed from somewhere on deck, and then the chopper spiraled into the center of The Aeschylus, metal tearing and splitting with a deafening crack. One of The Carrion shapes was chopped in half right before the rotor hit a beam and sheered off. Something caught fire and exploded. Whether it was the chopper's fuel tank or something on deck, AJ didn't know.

They held on for dear life, the world around them quaking on a biblical scale. Something big splashed into the ocean behind AJ, and he heard someone scream. Looking up, he realized the clothes rope had torn.

5

AJ saw Gideon dangling from one of the support beams above him. Whatever had splashed into the water was long gone.

Beside him, Dutch cupped his hands to his mouth. “Get your feet back! You can do it!”

The surviving Carrion shapes were coming, and Gideon didn't have much time. Slowly, he swung his feet to a support beam and began shuffling down, his dirty boxers blowing in the wind. AJ was almost sure that he would slip, but he didn't. The doc's arms wrapped tightly around one beam, then the next.

A wave of heat drifted down the shaft, and AJ wondered how much time they had left before the whole thing collapsed. Not much, by the looks of things.

A moment later, the doc was hovering over the boat deck, scared to drop the last few feet.

“Come on!” AJ barked. “Drop!”

Gideon looked down, then clutched the beam even tighter. “I can't!”

“Yes, you can!”

“No!”

The Carrion were slithering down the shaft behind him.

“Come on, you idiot!” Dutch yelled. He reached up and grabbed the doc by the foot.

“Dutch, you better get that boat moving, buddy,” AJ said.

When Dutch saw the things coming, he gave up on the good doctor and started sprinting towards the boat.

Gideon cried out again. One of the blackened figures was pawing at his chest hair.

“Drop,” AJ said. “I'll catch you!”

“I hate heights!” Gideon repeated.

“Goddammit, Doc! If you don't let go, that thing is going to rip your bloody arm off!”

Gideon let go.

He fell with no coordination at all, like the blind partner in a trust exercise. For a moment, AJ thought the doc was going to fall wide, but he took a step forward and caught him like a cheerleader on a pyramid jump. If Gideon had been any heavier than a cheerleader, he reflected, the two of them would have toppled into the water. AJ turned and ran with the doctor still in his arms, peddling across the deck to the boat.

Dutch was pulling the ropes in. “You ready for the honeymoon cruise?”

“Shut up,” AJ said dropping Gideon into the boat. “I told you to get this thing started!” He scanned the upper decks for signs of Black Shadow survivors, but the smoke was too thick. High above them, a piece of the oil derrick suddenly collapsed and banged down the opposite side of The Aeschylus. The cacophony was immense. It created a terrific splash when it hit the water, sending a spray of ocean all of the way to the boat and beyond. Gideon put his hands to his ears and shuddered uncontrollably.

AJ shielded his eyes. “Dutch, get us the hell out of here!”

The boat's engine sputtered up, and suddenly they were lurching forward, the motor kicking into high gear.

“Hold onto your butt!”

They blasted through the support columns and into open water. AJ thought they were free and then heard a series of firecracker pops coming from the decks above. Two splashes, and then the shots were on the boat, kicking up sparks and splinters by his feet.

“Jesus!” Gideon yelled.

“Can't this piece of crap go any faster?”

“No, I figured I'd take things leisurely! You know, see the sights!” Dutch yelled.

AJ pushed him aside and took the wheel. Another spray of pops came from The Aeschylus, but the boat was too far now, and they didn't come close. The platform began to shrink, the boat heading further into the blue.

“We're not going west,” Dutch said. It was a statement, but AJ read the question in his eyes.

“You know why.”

“You think she's still alive?”

He looked at the hull, then back to his friend. “Doesn't matter. We'll never make it back to the mainland like this.”

Dutch nodded. He put a hand on AJ's shoulder, then went to see the doc. AJ heard him yelling at the guy to get off of the floor and make himself useful. Dutch was maybe the only real friend he'd ever had, but if they made it through this, he thought he might have two. Even three, if they were lucky.

If.

Either way, his days of living with regrets were over.