The Last Mission of the Living (The Last Bastion #2)(7)

“Clear,” voices said over the comm, one by one.

The layout of the building loomed in the upper right-hand corner of Torran’s visor. There were only three other rooms the Scrags could have entered. The rest of the building was protected by blast doors at the end of the long, winding corridor. Torran knew for a fact that on the other side of those doors, only the truly dead remained.

When the gate to the valley had been compromised and the Inferi Scourge rushed through, killing everything in sight, the mine personnel had shut down the facility and retreated behind the safety of the blast doors. An underground train ran from the mining facility to The Bastion. There was a loading station inside the mine and an employee station beneath the building. It would have been a perfect way to escape into the city, but all the subway stations and tunnels had been cut off immediately when the gate had been compromised. Twenty people had starved to death waiting for a rescue that never happened because it had been deemed it too risky. Images of their mummified corpses had been part of Torran’s debriefing. He couldn’t imagine the terror and hopelessness they’d experienced. It was obvious from the way the Abscrags had burrowed through the safety glass that they had hoped to reach the train tunnels.

The shots from outside diminished to a few short bursts, and then were silent. The two squad members he’d left guarding the front entrance gave him the clear signal, and he nodded.

“Move on,” he ordered.

With deft motions, Torran ordered the squad to split into groups. Goodwin, Jonas, and two other soldiers followed him while the other teams moved deeper into the building through the long hallway. The vid screens that once displayed work schedules, the latest information on the amount of coal extracted, and city news were now white squares in the inverted realm the soldiers inhabited via their helmet night vision. Torran wondered what this building had been like before the gate failure. It’d probably been filled with people just like him that were happy to exist in a safe haven far from the ravaged world.

Then it had all fallen apart.

Torran hoped that the people within The Bastion would never suffer such a dreadful event again.

As the other two parties moved on, Torran pointed to his group’s destination. Two of the fortis plebis, the lower ranking members of the squad, Anya Helmich and Sydney Marshal, moved into position to watch the hallway. Both were new to the SWD, but competent. They’d enlisted when the gate closure by the special ops team had been reported on the news. Like many of The Bastion’s young people, they wanted to be a part of the restoration of their city and the valley. Torran had enlisted in the Constabulary and later with the SWD for the exact same reasons. Though he was terrified with each step he took further into the darkened building, he was also proud and thrilled to be part of the final destruction of the Inferi Scourge in the valley.

Torran preceded Goodwin and Jonas over the threshold into the next area. It was a conference room flanked with windows along one wall. The frosted glass revealed the darkness of the night. Since the windows were intact, the room had not been exposed the elements, but it had obviously been used recently and in a most gruesome way.

“What the f*ck?” Jonas exclaimed.

Flashes of memory from the failed battle outside the wall assaulted Torran’s mind and his stomach clenched into a painful ball of dread, but he shoved those thoughts aside and concentrated on the horrific scene before him. He’d witnessed terrible things the day of the battle outside the wall, but this was far worse.

There were human skeletal remains on the table with only bits of stringy meat hanging from the bones. A Constabulary uniform was tossed into a corner along with a shattered helmet.

Goodwin inched over to the discarded garment and squatted to check the nametag. “Cormier,” she said, her voice hushed with reverence.

“How does this make sense? What did the Abscrags do?” Jonas asked creeping toward the grisly scene.

“Ate her.” His words were gruff with grief.

Torran knew exactly who Cormier was and her apparent fate was far too gruesome to accept. She’d been a brave, highly decorated pilot who’d sacrificed her fuel-drained tiltrotor during the failed push against the Inferi Scourge in order to save countless soldiers boarding another aircraft. She’d barely escaped with her life that day. For her to die at the hands and teeth of the Scrags was a cruel fate. She must have been part of the special ops clearing the valley.

“They don’t eat us,” Goodwin said tersely. “That’s an old myth.”

“Abscrags do,” Torran answered. “There were rumors, but this is evidence.” He pointed to a femur that had visible gnaw marks on it. “They’re eating us now.”

“No f*ckin’ way,” Jonas uttered in disbelief.

Torran wondered what the higher ups at the SWD would have to say about the images being collected by their helmets. When he’d confronted them about the cannibal rumors he’d heard after the failed final push, they’d denied it.

Goodwin covered the body on the table with a plastic body bag she tugged out of her pack. “This can’t be real.”

“It is. Now let’s finish this,” Torran said, and started toward the doorway.

Helmich and Marshal were gone.

“Helmich and Marshal report,” he said, stopping short of the exit out of the room.

There was silence. The readout on his helmet flashed that they were alive, but why weren’t they answering? Their location indicated they were right outside the door.