Do Not Enter Here
A loud noise startled me awake despite being in a deep slumber. It took no time for me to realize that I was receiving a video call. I jumped out of the bed and scurried across the room to answer it. The voice on the other end was one that I recognized.
“Hello, Commander. I need to speak with you about an urgent mission concerning a group of minors we have lost contact with on Mars.”
“Yes, sir. I will be down in the briefing room in five minutes.” I said.
I quickly hurried about my small space, throwing on my clothes before rushing out of my quarters and to the briefing with HQ. I saw that my team had already arrived upon entering the room. I greeted them with a quick nod and asked if they had any idea as to why we had been dragged out of bed at this ungodly hour.
“You and your team have been brought here to discuss your next mission. You will be charged with leading a mission on the surface of Mars. Your goal is to find and retrieve the lost minors. We have been out of communication with them for over 48 hours, so, we are sending in your team due to the fact that you have had a lot of success with these kinds of missions in the past. Good luck, Commander.” HQ explained.
Leaving HQ with an uneasy feeling, I went back to my quarters and reviewed all of the information that I was given, in the packet on information I was giving there was the last recording HQ received from the lost mining crew. I placed the tape in the player. I intently listened. At first there was nothing than a sharp burst of static static than the transmission began to play.
“No, no, no, no! We should not be here. Our mining has disturbed something that had been lying dormant but now it’s awake. Heed my warning if: if you receive this transmission, abandon all activities here and save yourselves!” One of the miners warned. The transmission ended with a deafening roar and the miner screaming.
The loud roar I heard at the end of the transmission was concerning so I went to work, trying to determine where it came from. I put it in an analyzer but it did not come up with any known matches. It sounded like it could come from a living creature. However, at the same time, it could be something different altogether. I was lost deep within my thoughts I hadn’t realized we had landed, that was, until one of my other crew members shook me.
“Sir, we have arrived. We are preparing for departure. I would suggest getting your suit on and meeting us at the loading bay.” The crew member said.
Getting my suit on and filling my pack with all of the necessary items that I may need to find and retrieve the lost miner, ‘If there is anything to find and retrieve that is’, that thought alone came unbidden but at the same time it was a likely possibility. The fear in his voice and the noise at the end of that recording has given me cause for great concern. Now that we were on Mars… I would be lying if I said I was not one jump scare away from pissing my pants. I made my way to the loading bay and prepared myself for whatever it is that we were about to stumble into.
I pressed the button watching as the ramp began the slow descent onto the red planet. I stepped out of the ship, pulled out the receiver to get the last known location of the minors and the result wasn’t too bad. The destination was just over two hours away from our landing zone on foot. We went and retrieved the rovers to reduce the amount of time it would take to get to our destination.
We pulled the rovers out of the loading bay, the trip would only take thirty minutes now. The drive along the planet’s serene surface was relaxing but now, here we are, finding ourselves at the mouth of a cave. The atmosphere had drastically changed upon entering the cave. I had a very bad feeling and it was validated shortly after getting further inside. We rounded a corner and came face to face with a fresh corpse, we walked over to it and analyzed the area around him. He had written his last words in the dirt ‘He who enters here… abandon all hope’, and I didn’t understand why he would choose those as his last words. I removed my scanner from my pack to recover his identity. He appeared to be one of the miners that we were searching for. I had no clue what happened to him. It looked like some kind of animal or machine chewed him up and spat him out. The floors started to vibrate, almost as if on cue, and an all too familiar sound was heard echoing deep inside of the cave.
“Get to the exit now! We can’t be caught here when this cave comes crashing down!” I yelled over the noise to my team. Turning around, we rushed to the entrance of the cave, however, there was a wall where the entrance once was.
“What do we do now?!” Frank yelled.
“Well now, there is not much else we can do other than bend over and kiss our asses goodbye, Frank.”
The floor cracked and a massive hole formed, swallowing everyone up like a maw of a gigantic beast, dropping us into a massive abyss but no one seemed to be injured from the impact. I retrieved my flashlight after regaining my bearings. I slowly made my way around the dark room with nothing but my flashlight until I finally came upon a light switch.
The room was flooded with a blinding white light. In the middle of the room sat a table with yet another dead body on it, however, this one was strapped down and had clear indications of someone or something performing a surgical operation on them. On closer inspection I realized that this was one of the miners we had been sent here to retrieve. I continued with my search of the lab where we heard a noise in the corner of the room. What came out was a humanoid creature, it moved fast, launching itself off its hind legs and taking flight. It cleared the entire length of the room in a blink of an eye. It tackles Ken onto the ground, we try to pull the thing off of him but the two front appendages shoot into his neck before we know it. The creature throws us off and spins around to face us. It stands on two of its hind legs, showing that this creature was also bipedal. It easily stands over eight feet tall while on its hind legs. Frightened, one of my team members open-fired. The bullets ricocheted off of its glossy black skin causing them to be sent back at the team. A big burly man came running up behind the creature during the chaos and tackled it to the ground. The creature was caught by surprise allowing the man to pull out a surgical saw and easily dismember the creature’s limbs. He started with the two front appendages and continued from there. Doing that caused the creature to bleed out but only after the chaos died down had I realized that the stray bullets ended up killing James.
“What the fuck was that and who the hell are you?” I asked the stranger. “My name is Anthony.” He replied. “And that my friend, was something that lives deep underground and trust me, our mining has disturbed it. Now, I call those ugly bastards insectoids, considering they are clearly mostly insect, however, having humanoid characteristics.”
I noticed that he is clearly in a miner’s work uniform after getting a closer view of him.
“You have been here for two full days and that’s the best name you can come up with?” Frank laughed.
“Well if you got something better to call them then I am all ears.” Anthony retorted. Frank shook his head. “Yeah, I didn’t think so numb nuts so just sit there and let the adults talk. These bastards are bullet proof as you have seen. They can’t actually see you but… they can damn well hear you. Any sound can bring them down to your location in seconds and they never hunt alone. Cutting off the limbs disables them and eventually causes them to bleed out, this... this is the only way I have found to be able to kill them. But as you have noticed, frontal assault is best avoided.”
“Yeah, I can see that.. This does not make things easy, we need to be quiet and avoid getting detected at all costs. There’s just one problem we have right now, and that’s finding a way out. Any ideas on that?” I questioned.
“You think I would still be here if i had found a way out? Seriously, like you think I was just waiting here for you fucks because you’re so high and mighty? Like I could not do it without you? Yeah, that makes sense. I have been hiding in this room since these creatures showed up. They are nocturnal, they don’t come out during the day unless they hear a sound. We just need to stay quiet and find a way out. I suggest that you search the area for any weapons considering the fact that conventional weapons are useless, before we head out.” Anthony grumbles.
I searched through the room, not finding anything particularly useful other than a few axe’s and a flare gun which happened to have a few extra cartridges. We prepared to set out further into the subtraninina structure once armed with our new weapons. The team turned on their flashlights and we cautiously exited the lab, slowly creeping our way through the structure. It looked much like the rest of it had up to that point. The walls were made of a metallic substance while ventilation pipes ran the length of the hallway and with no signs of insectoids we continued forward. I led the group, followed by Anthony, Frank Eric and finally Mike. We ventured down the hall and a sound that might as well have been a herd of elephants charging came from the back of the group. Mike had dropped his flashlight, the look on his face of one of pure terror. We all held our collective breath as we waited to see if anything would happen. A buzzing sound could be heard from above us. We all slowly turned our flashlights upwards only to witness the creatures diving down in the direction of Mike, much like a hawk, they dive down at their prey. The insectoids were on him before any of us could react. Having to sit there and listen to his screams of anguish for what felt like an eternity was; unbearable. We were all silent until they were finished, the mangled body of our former friend lay scattered all over the place. Our hearts were wrenched as we stared at the dead body of another of our friends, but the worst part was not being able to say anything. Performing the sign of the cross as a gesture of mourning was all that we could do. However, Frank was sent into a frenzied rage upon seeing his longtime friend laying, ripped apart on the ground and left to rot. The scream that escapes his lips is full of sorrow, this causes multiple of the insectoids to fly at him. Frank takes one of them out with a few frenzied slashes but the others are on him a mere moment later. Watching two of our friends die just minutes apart is not something that any of us had expected while on that rescue mission. The shock quickly set in but that was not the time to mourn our friends, we needed to get out of here now.
We were moving as quietly as possible, attempting to get out of range of those horrid creatures so we had to pick up our pace. We did not bother to try and open any door that was sealed, it was to prevent making any unnecessary noise. We finally rounded a corner, and the hallway opened up into a room that contained a bunch of cylinder pods which held more of those mutated monsters. Entering the room while making sure to stay quiet we began to explore. The room is circular, it contains many pods with insectoids inside, however, we had no way of knowing if they were alive or not. What happened next can only be described as the slowest act of stupidity that I had ever witnessed. Eric walked over to the pods and tapped on the glass. Yes, the stupid mother fucker tapped on the glass like he was some sort of goddamned aquarium. The eyes of the creatures in the tubes simultaneously opened up. I yelled for them to run as the glass began to break and the creatures clawed their way out of the pods. Eric was still standing there like he had no idea what was happening. We heard his screams as we ran down the hallway trying to escape the angry horde of creatures. They were far faster than we could have imagined. Coming from all sides, we were pinned up against a wall as they closed in. I grabbed the flare gun out of the pack and fired it at the group of creatures that had now slowed down as if to savor the victory of the hunt, ready to strike down their prey, that was my last ditch effort. The flare erupted and made contact with the creatures, they burst into flames much like a fire, if it were to make contact with deadwood. Noticing that the smoke from the fire was being blown away from us, I looked over to Anthony. I pulled him in the opposite direction. If there was a breeze then maybe, just maybe there was a way out. We noticed that the hallway we were following gradually went uphill, traveling for what felt like a lifetime, we had finally come out to a bright day on Mars. The red planet had never looked so beautiful. There, the two rovers laid, abandoned and inviting. We hopped onto one of them and made our way back to the ship. Upon our arrival we noticed that the loading bay was still wide open. Both the pilot and the security detail lay dead upon our arrival; it looked as if they had been dead since we left. I can only assume that the sound of the rovers drew them to the ship shortly after we left. Hearing a sound on the ceiling we looked up to see at least five of those fucking creatures and one of them was heading straight for us. Anthony pushed me out of the ship and I fell down the ramp. Losing the flare gun during the fall I looked up to see Anthony being eaten alive, his screams alone were gut wrenching. I heard him yell to shoot them. Going to look from the flare gun that I had dropped during my fall, it laid at least ten feet from me and I quickly retrieved it. Spinning around I noticed that a massive home had been dug underneath the ship with hundreds of them pouring out. I grabbed the flare gun, reloaded it, shot a flare into the massive group and watched as they were engulfed into flames. Whatever the fire did not kill, the massive explosion from the ship took care of.
I am now stuck on this rock now. With little else to do. I pull out my radio and make one last transmission to mission command.
“This is Jack. I was the commander of the search and rescue crew sent to retrieve the lost minors. Everyone else is dead except for me. Do not come to Mars, do not come and try to rescue me. This planet is infested with humanoid creatures that are extremely dangerous. Abandon all activities here and save yourselves, again, this is Jack singing off.”
After the transmission ended taking off my helmet and allowing myself to join my team.