The roof of the Crawler was a killing floor.
Four Tech-Priests charged Marcus. They didn't move like men. They scuttled, their mechanical limbs clanking on the steel deck.
The first one lunged with a hydraulic pincer.
Marcus ducked. The metal claw snapped the air above his head.
[COUNTER: LOW KNEE STRIKE.]
JARVIS painted the target.
Marcus swept his Vibro-Gladius low. The blade hummed through the Priest's knee joint. Oil sprayed. The cyborg collapsed.
The second Priest fired a welding torch. A jet of blue flame.
Marcus rolled behind a smokestack. The flame blackened the paint.
He popped out the other side. He didn't stab. He kicked.
He booted the Priest in the chest.
The cyborg stumbled backward. It hit the low railing.
It tipped over.
It fell three stories down.
CRUNCH.
It landed in the grinding tank treads. The machine didn't stop. It chewed the Priest into scrap metal and wet paste.
The other two hesitated.
Marcus stood up, his sword glowing white-hot.
"Who's next?"
They didn't answer. They ran for the bridge hatch.
"JARVIS! Lock it!"
[HACKING DOOR CONTROL...]
The hatch slammed shut in front of them. The red light flashed. Locked.
The Priests turned around, trapped.
Marcus walked toward them.
"Surrender," he said.
One Priest raised a buzzsaw arm.
Marcus sighed.
Two seconds later, he was alone on the roof.
He wiped oil from his visor. He walked to the hatch.
[UNLOCKING...]
The door hissed open.
He dropped into the bridge.
It was cramped. Screens glowed with green data. A single pilot—a human, not a cyborg—sat in the chair. He was frantic, trying to pull a pistol from his belt.
Marcus put the tip of his sword against the pilot's throat.
"Don't," Marcus said.
The pilot froze. He dropped the gun.
"Stop the Crawler," Marcus ordered.
"I... I can't," the pilot stammered. "It's automated. Central routing."
"Override it."
"If I stop, the security protocol triggers. It purges the cargo."
"Purges?"
"Incinerates the specimens. To prevent capture."
Marcus looked at the screens. He saw the camera feeds of the cargo bay below. Hundreds of people in stasis tubes.
"Get up," Marcus said.
He shoved the pilot aside. He sat in the chair.
"JARVIS. Drive."
[INTERFACE CONNECTED.]
[OVERRIDING SPEED GOVERNOR.]
[DECELERATING...]
The floor shuddered. The massive engine groaned as the brakes engaged.
The Crawler slowed. 40 mph. 20 mph.
[WARNING: SECURITY ALERT.]
[UNAUTHORIZED DECELERATION DETECTED.]
[PURGE PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
Red lights flashed on the console.
[INCINERATION IN T-MINUS 60 SECONDS.]
"Cancel it!" Marcus yelled.
[I CAN'T. IT'S HARDWIRED.]
[ALTERNATIVE: OPEN THE PODS.]
"If you open them, they wake up," Marcus said. "They're zombies."
"Better zombies than ash," JARVIS typed.
"Do it."
[RELEASING STASIS LOCKS.]
On the screen, the tubes in the cargo bay hissed open. Green fluid drained out.
The "specimens" fell onto the metal grating. They coughed. They twitched.
Then, they stood up.
They weren't human anymore. The process had warped their minds. Rage took over.
They began to tear at the walls. At each other.
"They're loose," Marcus whispered.
A scream echoed from the corridor below. The zombies had found the crew quarters.
"We need to clear the ship," Marcus said.
He looked at the pilot.
"Get out. Jump."
The pilot didn't argue. He ran for the door.
Marcus stood up.
"JARVIS, stop the crawler completely. Open the rear cargo ramp."
[BRAKES: LOCKED.]
The Crawler lurched to a halt. The silence was sudden and heavy.
Then came the sound of the convoy arriving outside. Engines rumbling.
Marcus ran to the window.
The trucks were circling the stopped behemoth.
"Marcia!" Marcus radioed. "Don't come in! The cargo is hostile!"
"Hostile?" Marcia's voice. "You mean zombies?"
"Hundreds of them."
"Well," Marcia said. "We need the fuel. Send in the janitor."
"The janitor?"
A massive thud shook the Crawler.
Someone had jumped onto the roof.
Heavy footsteps dented the ceiling plates above Marcus's head.
The bridge hatch was ripped off its hinges. Metal screamed.
Narcissus dropped into the room.
The giant cyborg straightened up. He filled the small space. His gold eyes glowed in the gloom.
"You called?" Narcissus rumbled.
"Deck 2," Marcus pointed. "Clear the cargo bay. Non-lethal if possible. But don't get bit."
Narcissus cracked his knuckles. It sounded like gunshots.
"I am made of iron, brother," he said. "They can bite all they want."
He turned and walked into the corridor.
Marcus followed.
They reached the cargo bay balcony.
Below, it was a pit of madness. The Hollow Men were swarming. They saw Narcissus. They shrieked.
They charged the stairs.
Narcissus didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one.
He walked down the stairs.
A zombie leaped at him.
Narcissus backhanded it.
The creature flew thirty feet across the room. It hit a stasis tube, shattering the glass.
Another one bit his arm. Its teeth broke on the Sentinel armor.
Narcissus grabbed it by the neck. He tossed it into a pile of its friends.
He waded into the swarm like a man walking through tall grass. He pushed them aside. He threw them. He was an unstoppable force of physics.
"Open the ramp!" Marcus yelled from the balcony.
Narcissus reached the rear control panel. He punched it. Not the button—the whole panel. He crushed the circuitry.
The hydraulics groaned. The massive rear ramp lowered.
Sunlight flooded into the dark bay.
The Hollow Men screamed. Their gray skin blistered in the UV light. They recoiled, scrambling back into the shadows.
"They hate the sun," Marcus realized.
"Keep them pinned!" Marcus ordered.
He ran back to the bridge.
"JARVIS. Vent the fuel."
[TRANSFER PUMPS: ACTIVE.]
[DEPLOYING EXTERNAL HOSES.]
Outside, the convoy trucks pulled up to the Crawler's fuel ports.
Refugees—led by Decimus—scrambled to hook up the lines.
"Fill everything!" Marcus yelled from the bridge window. "Every tank! Every jerry can! We have ten minutes before these things figure out they can run outside!"
The diesel flowed. Thousands of gallons of lifeblood.
Inside the bay, Narcissus held the line. He stood in the center of the room, a golden statue. The zombies circled him, hissing, but afraid to attack the iron giant again.
Marcus ran down to the bay.
He saw something in the corner.
A separate row of tubes. Marked [PRIORITY: UNPROCESSED].
The people inside weren't gray. They looked... normal. Scared.
"Survivors," Marcus said.
He smashed the glass on the first tube.
A woman fell out. She gasped, coughing up green slime.
"Help me!" Marcus yelled to Narcissus. "Get them out!"
Narcissus grabbed two survivors under each arm. He carried them to the ramp.
They saved twelve people before the horde grew brave enough to charge again.
"That's it!" Marcus yelled. "Pull back!"
They retreated down the ramp into the blinding sun.
The zombies tried to follow. The first one stepped into the light. It caught fire. Not instantly, but its skin began to smoke and boil. It shrieked and retreated.
"Sunlight is the fence," Marcus said.
The trucks were full. The fuel lines were disconnected.
"We're heavy," Decimus reported. "Full tanks. And we found crates of protein blocks in the forward hold."
"Good work," Marcus said.
He looked at the massive Crawler. A tomb filled with monsters.
"Galen," Marcus said. "Do you want to study it?"
Galen looked at the machine. He shook his head.
"It's an abomination," the physician said. "It turns people into... that."
"Burn it," Marcus said.
Marcia stepped forward. She held a flare.
She tossed it into the open fuel port where vapor was still leaking.
"Fire in the hole!"
They ran for the trucks.
The convoy peeled away.
Behind them, the Crawler erupted.
The remaining fuel in the main tank detonated. The explosion gutted the machine. The roof blew off.
Black smoke rose into the clear sky.
An hour later.
The convoy was moving fast. Engines purring with rich diesel. Stomachs full of protein.
Marcus sat in the Rover.
"New map data," Lucilla said from the back seat. "I downloaded the Crawler's log before we torched it."
She projected the map onto the windshield.
A red line traced the Crawler's route. It didn't come from the front lines.
It came from the North. Turkey.
The line ended at a massive facility nestled in the Taurus Mountains.
[LOCATION: TAURUS PROCESSING PLANT]
[FUNCTION: BIOMASS CONVERSION]
"That's where they make them," Marcus whispered. "The Hollow Men."
"It's directly on our path," Marcia said. "The only pass through the mountains goes right past that factory."
"We can't sneak a convoy past a fortress like that," Lucilla said.
Marcus looked at the map.
He looked at the survivors they had pulled from the tubes. They were sleeping in the back of a truck, traumatized but free.
"We aren't sneaking past," Marcus said.
He zoomed in on the factory.
"If we leave it... they will keep making monsters. They will keep harvesting people."
He looked at Marcia.
"We're going to shut it down."
"How?" Marcia asked. "It's a factory."
"We're going to break the assembly line," Marcus said.
He leaned back in the seat.
[OBJECTIVE UPDATED: DESTROY THE FACTORY.]
[REWARD: SOUL CLEANSING.]
"JARVIS," Marcus thought. "Find me a blueprint."
[ALREADY DOWNLOADING, SIR.]
The convoy sped North. Toward the mountains. Toward the nightmare factory.