Part 21

    The walk to the comms array was uncharacteristically quiet for the events of the rest of the time that he had been awake - and somehe it was almost worse. So in his mind it wasn't too strange that he felt a sense of relief at the next attack of the toothy monsters. Graves noticed them first, coming in a group of four, and Kevin brought his pistol to bear. They were just outside of range for a shotgun blast to take one out, but since ammo conservation was going to be important, he was okay with the smaller firearm.

    After his first shot felled the first monster - Graves had sent a shot wild above the group - and the other three broke off into a run, splitting as much as possible. They all ran generally toward the pair of men, but this hall being a bit wider than the one before - a vague memory of pallets being moved through this area came to mind - and with the now common mushrooms growing in thicker groupings near the middle of this hall rather than the outer edges, the monsters were able to take cover when they split. One had gone left, the other two to the right. Kevin put his focus on the latter. He didn't need to be any sort of soldier to know that they would be the most dangerous, and he didn't quite trust Graves with the greater number.

    Movement in a flash as one - then the other - toothy thing zipped through a small clear spot in the mushrooms, a bit more further along. With a quick second of deductive reason, he fired two rounds - all he dared to spare - where he thought the creature was bound to be. He was met with a pained squeal and a thud. Good.

    The other on the right hand side leapt out from behind cover, still running full tilt directly at him. Saliva ran back behind it off of its outstretched and flapping tongue, splaying in long droplets. Disgusted, Kevin fired, missed, fired again and only clipped the things leg. It slowed by a fraction but still came, dodging two more rounds and suddenly Kevin could feel his heart pounding and it was like the world slowed around him.

    He fired again.

    He barely clipped the other leg.

    Again, and he missed, cursing to and at himself for not only missing when it seemed to count the most, but for wasting ammo when he - not moments, but seconds before - was just thinking about ammo conservation. He was down to his last round, and so he slowed himself down. His breathing all but stopped in the seeming forever of his heightening perception. He could not hear his partner firing, but most every sound had gone muted as he re-aimed and pulled the trigger.

    The last round found purchase in the target and the toothy monster slid forward. Rather, part of it did. The bullet had entered the things body right between the eyes, and below a a bony outcropping. The bony growth, and what he assumed could only be brains - though he was no xenobiologist - flew out behind it in a mimicry of the strands of saliva that had flown from its tongue mere seconds before.

    He was reloading even before the viscous mix of blood, bone, and brain scattered tot he floor, turning on his heels to raise the weapon against the final target. Not to say that he didn't trust the Rear Admiral to take care of it, but...

    It turned out that the Rear Admiral could take care of himself when needed. Either that or he had just needed to shake the rust loose. Kevin had thought to himself that maybe he had been the same way a few hours ago, but it had been a long few hours and he had trouble recalling.

    Silently, the two men continued walking, stopping briefly to check the few, partially eaten corpses they passed to strip them of ammunition. They didn't find much - it could have been that another survivor had done the same - but enough to ostensibly refill their emptied magazines from the last fight.

    Shortly they came to another larger troop of monsters. These weren't rushing at them like the last group had been, and Kevin motioned for Graves to duck down behind a clump of mushrooms growing by the bulkhead as he himself ducked behind another. Peering over the stalks - thankfully none of them seemed to be the living incubators - he counted the meandering group of monsters.

    They seemed to move in no pattern that he could determine which made an accurate count tough, and by the time he lost track a fourth time, he was pretty sure that there were a dozen of the standard toothy things, maybe half as many of the speedy ones, and definitely two of those that he had dubbed alphas.

    This was going to be a problem...