Part 11

    He blinked. Obviously he knew the woman with the ram. He couldn't place the name, but he knew the face was important to him. He shook his head, trying to clear the memory and in the process, saw - shoved behind one of the bullet-proof vests below the rack - the barrel of a 12-guage. He reached for it, an electricity in the air as he gripped it, pulling it up to a firing position. It felt natural, looking down the sights was like coming home after a long deployment. It was where he belonged.

    This was an interesting new feeling, sitting right alongside his claustrophobia, but where the claustrophobia came from a place of fear and helplessness, this feeling was at the opposite end of the spectrum: a feeling of being powerful.

    It also didn't hurt that this would work better against the monstrosities than his pistol...

    Counting the shotgun shells, he only had 10, which was less than half of the amount of rounds that he had for the pistol he carried. He searched high and low: in every nook, cranny, drawer, and locker in the armory, hoping that he could scrounge up any more of either ammunition, but he came up dry. "Oh well," he thought out loud. "The fact that I found this at all is almost miraculous." He was grateful, but he was also curious: if all these weapon racks were empty, where had all the guns gone?

    The second entrance to the room - the one opposite the door he entered - had been blocked from the other side by fallen ductwork and mushroom stalks. He made no attempt to pass. The only spot conceivably large enough for him to wiggle through the blockage was still small enough that it would absolutely trigger his claustrophobia. In fact, just the thought of moving through that space was tightening his chest, and with everything happening on the ship right now, he felt he shouldn't add unnecessary anxiety on top of his already fragile mental state.

    He exited the way he come in, making sure he visually cleared the hallway, then continued following the path toward engineering. Kevin had been on edge since before he hit the bridge, and with good reason: he felt like he'd been attacked, repeatedly, every few minutes since then. The fact that he hadn't been attacked in a growing increment of time was starting to make him jumpy.

    So when he heard the first report of small-arms fire, he hit the deck, more out of surprise than out of fear of being shot. He figured that anyone else firing a weapon on the ship would be firing at the monstrosities that had been harassing him, rather than shooting at other survivors. Or at least he hoped that was the case. On further reflection - and following more gunfire - he realized he was actually hearing wasn't nearby, but the echo of gunfire, coming from the same direction that he had been heading in the first place. 

    "They could need help." he thought to himself. "And more of us could probably fare better together." He jumped up from the floor and started a quick jog down the hallway, as more shots rang out in the distance.