The whole place was on fire. The freaks were dying left and right and I was hiding in a hole like a coward. My friends were dead, and I was probably going to join them. I was going to die here, in this fucking eldritch mineshaft shithole. I was about to put the gun to my head when something went flying past. It was Virgil. He hit a ridge of burning meat and fell, shotgun in hand to the ground. I got off my ass and ran to him.
Just as I heard something slide down behind me.
It was Whitewall, of course. Still burning. Shrieking like a cornered animal, he looked like something straight out of a kid's fever nightmares. This spasming mass of bones and teeth and skin. He was flailing and screaming just about every obscenity I'd ever heard, and some that I hadn't. Virgil and I started shooting, and Whitewall shot right back. One of his arms, with a few bits of flesh left over, flung out like a knife and impaled Virgil on the wall. I kept shooting. Whitewall closed in. He had the worst smile on his face. A halfway melted head, I could see the inside of his skull as he reached out for me.
Something hit him from behind and he stopped, one bony finger just inches from my face. He whipped around and we both saw that the suits were lowering themselves into the chamber from above. Bulky forms in gun-metal gray armored suits, carrying machine-guns and flamethrowers. They went to work on the remaining freaks, and Whitewall turned to me. His voice seemed to crackle alongside the fire as he spoke.
"This isn't over" he said. "Even if we fall, another Church will just take our place. You've accomplished nothing."
I wasn't sure what to say. My mind just kind of drew a blank, like the horror of it all had just knocked any sense out of me. All I could think to say was "Fuck you." He laughed.
"You think they're going to save you, don't you?"
As if on cue, one of the suits shot off a rocket in our direction. It skimmed the ridge above us and struck the wall. As it did, a whole squad of the suits came around the corner of the ridge I'd been hiding behind. Up close, they didn't look like anything I'd ever seen. Heavy suits that looked like they were made out of kevlar or maybe even metal, guns bigger than my arm, and masks that looked like they'd be more at home in a lion taming show. They opened fire the minute they saw us. Whitewall tore at them, and they opened up with flamethrowers.
I took my chance. Virgil was stuck to the wall fast, though the stomach. We both knew what that meant. He didn't say anything, just shook his head when I tried to wrench him loose. He pointed off in the distance. Deb was waving towards us, screaming that we needed to run. Virgil shoved me off of him, kicked the shotgun over to me and told me to go.
I ran, again. Feeling a little less like a coward and a lot more like a bastard.
