The Bloodless Read online

  The entire hallway, dark as night, was filled with glowing green eyes, which was different than the people we had reanimated because they usually had an orange glow to their eyes. They may have been Bloodless at one point, they may have just been normal people who were captured and experimented upon, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was they all had menacingly blank eyes staring me down. We didn’t have much of a choice from there. We were going to have to fight our way out of the building.

  “This isn’t good,” I whispered as I pulled my head back around the corner. I didn’t know if whispering was necessary at the time, it just seemed appropriate.

  “I know, I just said that,” Fox said calmly. “We are going to have to fight. Daniel,” he looked me in the eyes, “are you ready?” I nodded. “Crowder?”

  Now, Crowder didn’t react right away, he may have been in his happy place imagining a world where he was on a beach enjoying an ice cold cocktail with the ocean breeze brushing gently against his face. I slapped him. He rejoined us and looked pissed. He then slowly nodded.

  “Right,” I said. “Lock and load boys.” I cocked my gun and spun around the corner. They had already begun to advance. I let fly a violent shower of bullets down the hallway and watched as they ripped through the bodies charging us. Some bullets found skulls and dropped the attached bodies, but others didn’t and those bodies kept coming.

  Crowder came out right next to me and mimicked my actions, dropping a few more of the creatures but still more advanced on us, now in a full sprint. Luckily the corridor was narrow and they couldn’t move as fast, but they still moved quite fluidly. I retreated backwards and nearly tripped over a prone mass. I looked down and first thought I saw Fox but then I looked around and found Fox sheathing his swords and moving down the hall. “Follow Fox,” I yelled to Crowder as he unloaded another clip into the oncoming horde.

  We turned and ran down the hall, right behind Fox as he twisted and turned through the web of hallways that comprised the interior of the building. As we moved through the building we could hear the sounds of more bodies moving on the floors above us, as if they were coming down all the way from the top. To say we were outnumbered would’ve been the gross understatement of the millennium. We had to get out of that building if we wanted to live up to Burns’ expectations.

  We met several stray creatures on our way to the exit. One jumped out from behind a door and tackled Crowder to the floor. It started to beat him up pretty good until I was able to get to him and remove the abomination’s brain from the inside out. The body continued to fight for a couple seconds but finally ceased and I was able to pull Crowder to his feet.

  Just as we were getting close to the exit one of the beasts from the crowd managed to separate from the pack and gain on us. It jumped on my back and took me to the floor hard, nearly knocking me out cold. I could feel its hot, fetid breath on the back of my neck. It grabbed a handful of my scalp and pulled my head back to my neck’s breaking point. As my neck was on the verge of snapping like a twig, it was released and my head slammed hard onto the stiff linoleum floor.

  Black and white spots erupted in front of my eyes and my head swam with pain. I could feel my brain swelling from the certain contusion it just received. I didn’t have time to take in what happened or how the thing was removed from me as the hammering sounds of bare feet smacking against the floor quickly grew louder. Fox pulled me to my feet and dragged me until I found my balance.

  Finally we burst through the service entrance but were met with a horrible sight. The first thing I heard was the flurry of sounds that bombarded my ears. Explosions riddled the air and sent bodies flying everywhere. The first thing I saw was Burns as he let loose a torrent of flesh-searing napalm upon an advancing cluster of Bloodless. I watched as single bodies dropped of their own accord, which made me feel good because I knew Saturn was out there doing her part to help get us the hell out of there.

  We came to a halt, running into a still Fox. I looked beyond our position to get a lay of the land but when I turned to look at our immediate vicinity my stomach nearly dropped out of my body. We were surrounded by Bloodless, outnumbered four to one, definitely a bad ratio. I looked around and saw the motorcycle still leaned up against the building.

  “Fox! Are you good by yourself?” I asked.

  “I am best by myself” I trusted him when he said that and I wasn’t going to argue with it. I grabbed Crowder and dragged him over to the motorcycle. He looked down at it.

  “Do you think it still works?”

  “It had better.” I sat down on it and kicked the starter. Nothing. “Shit.” I kicked again. Nothing. They were coming right at us now and Fox was nowhere to be seen. “Come on you piece of shit!” I kicked again with all the strength my adrenaline would allow. It sputtered a little bit then roared to life. “Let’s go,” I yelled at Crowder. He got down on the seat behind me facing backwards. I threw that bitch in gear and took off as fast as I could, pulling the throttle all the way back nearly throwing us off.

  We rocketed right at the surrounding crowd and I realized I wouldn’t be able to break through them with the midsized motorcycle. I cut the handlebars and turned back towards the building. There was nothing else to it but to crash through the windows and navigate through the building and find an alternative exit. As we careened back towards the building, the creatures from inside started pouring out from the service entrance.

  I only got a glimpse of them but they looked horrific. Large solid bodies, scabbed dark grey skin, and green glowing eyes. That’s all I was able to gander at just before we crashed through the floor to ceiling windows on the front of the building. Once inside we found the place crawling with those monsters. “START SHOOTING,” I yelled at Crowder over the roar of the engine. I don’t know if he didn’t hesitate or had the same idea but before I could finish yelling he was already unloading round after round. Spraying bullets like water from an unmanned fire hose.

  Luckily the outer portion of the substation was a little larger than the interior corridors, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get through the place. I will go on record here and say that driving through an enclosed space is way faster and far more terrifying than in open space.

  The motorcycle moved almost effortlessly though as I weaved between bodies and around corners. After a particularly long stretch of hallway that ran down the western side of the building with no exits, we came upon a set of double doors. I had to weave about to avoid the bodies coming out of every door on the way. Crowder’s aim was impeccable, or extremely lucky, and he dropped nearly every creature that came at us.

  As we approached the doors they flew open and even more hideous monsters flew out from behind them. In a move I’ll never be able to duplicate, I retrieved my sidearm from its holster and shot down two of them to clear the path and Crowder cleaned up the rest along the walls after we passed through the doorway.

  We made our way through what appeared to be a large gymnasium or cafeteria-like room. That’s when I spotted it: another set of double doors to our left that had an EXIT sign above it. My spirits leapt and I quickly turned the bike to head for the doors and certain freedom. As I got closer to the doors I noticed a large chain wrapped around the handles and immediately thought, Oh shit, this had better work! “Hang on,” I shouted back to Crowder and I heard his gun drop to the floor as he grabbed onto the motorcycle for dear life.

  The doors smashed open with a thunderous *CLANG* and we were out, we escaped. The open, Bloodless free space in front of us was a welcome sight and for a moment only triumph ran through my mind. However, as soon as I brought the motorcycle to a skidding halt, the unmistakable sounds of all-out war rushed into my ears once again and I was jolted back into our reality. It was imperative I got to my team to make sure everyone was still alive.

  “Saturn,” I yelled into my communicator, “come back, I need a status update.”

  She didn’t respond right away and the next few seconds dragged on like they we
re a few hours. Finally she came back, “It’s a real shit show out there sir, where are you?”

  “Just escaped that substation by the skin of their teeth. Where do we need to go?”

  “Circle back around to the South side of the building,” Saturn yelled as she fired off a couple rounds. “Burns and Pillar are entrenched pretty good, you’ll see as soon as you get there.”

  “Got it,” I put the bike back into gear. “Hang on,” I once again shouted to Crowder. He pulled his secondary weapon off of his back and loaded it up with a couple magazines. I yanked on the throttle and spun the bike around to head back towards the South side of the building. “Burns, Pillar, we’re on our way,” I shouted into my communicator. “Keep shooting!”

  We raced along the perimeter of the building and soon the larger battle was in view. It was the largest number of Bloodless we had encountered to date. Some of the experimented upon abnormalities were in the fray as well, but they appeared to be fighting both sides. Large explosions and plumes of flames shot up from a particular spot. That’s where Burns and Pillar were. I turned the bike parallel to the battle and Crowder let rip both of his magazines into the back of the crowds. This didn’t go over too well.

  The spray dropped a lot of the bodies but the ones that didn’t fall targeted us and changed course. We had the upper hand though as our speed advantage was significant. I decided to play a little cat and mouse so I slowed the motorcycle up and allowed the Bloodless to catch up to us. Crowder loaded his weapon up again and released another flurry of hyper velocity steel into the oncoming horde. More dropped but more still continued to rampage towards us. I allowed them to get within feet before pulling back on the throttle and speeding away.

  I made a large loop and flew by them again, allowing Crowder to dump off another load of bullets into the crowd. We had thinned their numbers considerably with this tactic and Burns and Pillar were able to fight their way out of the corner they were backed into.

  “Daniel,” it was Fox over the communicators.

  “Good to hear ya Fox!”

  “I have made contact with Burns and Pillar. They are wounded, but their wounds are not life threatening. I have procured the Crowd Pleaser from Burns. Everyone needs to evacuate and get as far away as possible. I will detonate the device.”

  “No! You can’t do that! You’ll be disintegrated,” I said to Fox. I did not like the plan at all.

  “No need to worry Daniel, I have no intention of being around when it detonates. It has to be done, however, as I have spotted Grendel amongst the ranks.”

  “Oh shit, are you serious?” Grendel was one of the most notorious Generals under Mendel’s command. He was quite easily one of the most brutal and vicious beings in existence at the time. Most people who met him on the battlefield didn’t live to tell the story, but there have been a few survivors.

  *****

  The Bloodless army consisted of five Generals, all of them more brutal than the next but none more so than Grendel. We don’t know the soul that occupied his body, that of a pro wrestler who died in a car accident, but it was a demented one even before it was torn from the plane where departed souls dwell. He was called Grendel in honor of the savage creature from the tale of Beowulf, even though our Grendel made the original look like a saint. Anyone who stood against him met a most gruesome death.

  He thought it would be a good idea to bring back some ancient torture and killing methods. The first one he reintroduced to the world was the “Drawn and Quartered” method. However, instead of sending four horses running in different directions, he would just have his soldiers play tug of war with his victims’ limbs until they slowly separated from the body. The most brutal tactic he employed that I heard only gets used on high value targets was something I think was called “Blood Eagle,” but I can’t be sure.

  Grendel was given a special unit, the only one like it amongst the ranks of Bloodless that mindlessly follow directions. This unit consisted of the hand crafted survivors of the initial assault on GoD Laboratories. They can be compared to Spartans of ancient lore, the soldiers that were nearly impossible to kill because of their skill and toughness in battle. To us they were known as The Hunters.

  They usually were not sent out with the regular army. Grendel would send them out on special errands, mostly ones that included eliminating high priority targets and bringing down known resistance outposts. Once targeted by The Hunters, you didn’t stand a chance of hiding because they would find you. However, much like the animals that humans hunt, one would never know he or she was being hunted until they spotted a Hunter. And unlike a regular hunter who likes a clean kill, these Hunters made sure to make as big of a mess as possible. This was how they sent a message out to anyone who was found to be a part of the resistance. They didn’t carry weapons. They were bare handed specialists and would use whatever was lying around at the time; the older and rustier, the better.

  However, The Hunters acquired all of their tactics directly from Grendel, who trained them himself. No one knows where Grendel learned his methods, they just relay what they see. Some say his skills were inherent with the body. Others say he just made them up and they happened to resemble historical methods. It all depends who you ask, but it doesn’t matter where he learned them or how, just the fact he knows them is bad enough.

  The following is a first-hand account of one of the first encounters anyone had with Grendel and probably one of the few to witness his brutality and live to tell about it. I found this in a journal on a battlefield. It seems to have been written by one of the commanding officers of the initial resistance army:

  “Our numbers were many and our morale was high, but neither of those things helped us on that day.

  “It was shortly after the failed Operation Prime Assault. I was ordered to take a small group of soldiers into the hot zone in an attempt to take out any lone enemy squads. After a few hours of patrolling we didn’t run across any. On our way back was when we were ambushed by the very enemy we were searching for. We were outnumbered at least four to one. In the front stood one of the most imposing figures I had seen in all my years. We had nowhere to go, no way to fall back as we were completely surrounded and once the attack order was given, we didn’t stand a chance.

  :The enemy swarmed us all at once. We tried to fight back and were successful in taking out several of them, but the numbers were far from on our side. We tried to surrender but apparently they weren’t taking prisoners as even after we laid down our arms they continued to slaughter my men. I was beaten within an inch of consciousness and was kept alive merely to witness the brutality this enemy corps operated behind.

  “Their commander, a tall man with muscles bursting from his skin, picked my soldiers apart piece by piece, literally. Some he had eviscerated and then fed them their own entrails while others were carved open and bled to death, like a stuck pig. The shrieks of agony and torment still haunt my nightmares. I expect the only reason I was allowed to live was so I could pass on what I saw that day, so that others would know a terrible fear whenever they saw this man, a man I can only dub Grendel, as that is the most brutal monster I can think of.”

  Yeah, that’s what we were up against that day. It wasn’t looking good for us at all. Like I said before, not many people escaped from Grendel’s squad, let alone seven people.

  *****

  I trusted that Fox wasn’t going to get himself blown up and was hopeful that we could finally cleanse the world of such a repugnant scourge. I waited until I saw Burns and Pillar running safely in the opposite direction of the Bloodless that were chasing down Fox before pulling the motorbike around in the opposite direction and wrenching back on the throttle as hard as I could. One tire lifted off the ground then thudded back down as we sped away from the blast zone.

  “Daniel, I am in position. Make sure everyone is at a sufficient distance,” Fox’s call came in over the radio.

  “Everyone report.” I yelled into my communicator. All clears came acros
s the wire, a moment’s relief stole over my body but was quickly gone as I realized what that meant. “Are you sure about this Fox?”

  He didn’t respond with his voice, instead a blinding light erupted behind us and shortly after the ground began to quake. A searing heat tickled the back of my neck and soon enveloped my entire body. It felt like I was being cooked from the inside out, but poorly like a cold hot dog in an old microwave. Just as it felt like my skin would catch fire the air around me was cool again and I could breathe properly once more.

  I slowed down the bike and looked back at Crowder. He was still there but definitely looked shaken and I felt just how he looked. That was something I hoped I would never have to experience again. Once I was sure we were clear of the blast zone I brought the bike to a skidding halt.

  I brought my radio to my face, “Status check! Everyone come back, start from the top!”

  “Saturn reporting and that was a helluva sight.”

  “Burns and Pillar here, we’re just fine.”

  “Buggs.”

  Then there was a long pause. “Fox,’ I said tentatively, “we’re all waitin’ on you bud. Come back.” Still nothing. We sat there for several moments but Fox didn’t respond.

  “Daniel,” it was Saturn, “I don’t-“

  “Get off the line Saturn,” I yelled back, “he’s gonna respond, he’s probably still hiding from the fallout.” Again the radio went silent, this time for even longer. Finally Crowder gently placed his hand on my shoulder. I ripped off my communicator and slammed it on the ground, shattering it into hundreds of tiny pieces. I was pissed off, sad, confused, and any other feelings you can think of. I felt them all at once.

  “Daniel,” Crowder put his hand back on my shoulder, but I barely registered his touch, “Fox died for a very worthy cause. He took out Grendel.”