Gas Mask Girls Issue #9

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Gamble’s world was swallowed up in darkness. She stopped abruptly, Doze closing in behind her struck her back. Doze’s curse was cut short as she realized the darkness was a cage and neither of them could proceed forward. Gamble let her eyes slowly adjust, emergency lighting flickered dimly, doing little to stave off the shadows.

“Please! Come!” Gamble could hear Samantha’s urgent pleas fading down the hallway, all but drowned out by an emergency alarm that only added to the disorientation.

“Can you see?” Doze asked over her shoulder.

“A little, but I can’t go forward like this. A Dancer could be anywhere!” Gamble's reply was edged with panic. The need to push forward to protect almost overriding her survival instincts. But she couldn’t forget her recent disaster. She had almost died because her emotions had controlled her. She had to be able to see to help these people.

“Let me lead,” Doze said, carefully pushing past Gamble. “I can see okay now, just watch my back.”

Gamble hesitated, unsure. “Put your hand on my shoulder, Gamble. Till you get your night vision back.” Gamble reached out and found Doze’s reassuring form in front of her. She had never realized how terrifying it could be to follow someone into the dark, putting all your faith in that person to lead you true.

Doze cautiously moved forward, her probing steps slow and deliberate. As Gamble adjusted to the new environment, she became aware of the cries of fear and pain echoing above the droning alarm.

“Hurry Doze!”

“I can’t…we’re not going to help anyone by getting ourselves killed.”

Gamble had to concede that Doze was right. Though her tense body cried action, she knew they had to be patient, careful. To her great relief, her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom. She was shocked to realize it hadn’t only been darkness obscuring her view, but smoke as well.

“Is that smoke?” she cried out as her vision improved.

“You’re just picking that up?” Doze asked, slowly but surely sliding forward to an intersection in the hallway.

“I guess the masks hid the smell,” Gamble added lamely, feeling useless behind Doze, an unaccustomed feeling for her.

Doze only grunted, turning quickly to the left passage. Gamble was blinded and deafened by the roar of Doze’s shots. The sudden flash of the muzzles in the dark was a burst of blinding light. The loud concussive sound in the close corridor was even worse.

“That’s one,” she thought she heard Doze call over her shoulder. Gamble’s ears still buzzed but her eyes mercifully adjusted quickly after the flash.

Doze asked another question, but it was drowned out in the cacophony.

“What?” Gamble yelled, perhaps a little too loudly. Dancers could hear too.

“I asked how many do you think got in?”

“I don’t know, Doze,” she answered, her mind desperately trying to remember what she had seen after the bus had crashed through the gates. “Thirty maybe? A couple dozen at least. The settlers on the wall killed quite a few before they reached the mine entrance.”

“Yeah, but not enough,” Doze said, moving forward again.

“Definitely not enough,” Gamble agreed. She felt a shift in the air, a rush, and a primitive instinct told her she was under attack. A predator had spotted their prey and was pouncing.

Without a sound, she turned away from Doze, stepping forward, swinging her bat with all her strength at what she hoped was head level. A dark form was racing towards her, its arms outstretched, the red glow of emergency lights reflected in its ravenous eyes.

Gamble’s instincts served her well and she connected with the assailant's head, an all too familiar shock traveling up her arm from the wooden bat’s contact point. She brought her bat around quickly to follow up, but it was not needed, the form lay unmoving on the cold floor.

“Gamble?” Doze cried out, unsure of her friend's sudden departure.

“Here! I got another one behind us. I think I can see well enough now…but we should stick together.”

“You think?” Doze responded, shaking her head. “And here I was about to suggest that we split up to cover more ground.”

Gamble smiled, despite the terrible situation. She took comfort in Doze's reliable sarcasm, even in the pits of Hell. She turned back to her previous position, putting her hand back on Doze’s shoulder. Even though she could see reasonably well, she still felt better having her hand on Doze’s shoulder. To her surprise, Doze reached up with her left hand patting Gamble’s hand before moving forward again. It seemed Gamble wasn’t the only one that could use the reassurance.

The next twenty-two minutes dragged on like an endless nightmare. Gamble knew she would be haunted by this ordeal. She had thought herself a hardened veteran of the waste, after spending over three years traveling with Doze. She thought they had seen it all, faced the worst the world could offer. She had thought wrong.

The flashing lights, the grey smoke, hid many of the atrocities from her, but she saw enough. She saw too much. Ravaged, still forms littered the hallways, some far too small, and her brain refused to fully process what she was seeing. She moved forward, carried by Doze’s implacable movement, down hallways, down stairs.

Doze was on the prowl now, ceaseless, cold, and methodic. The tables were turned, and though the creatures did not know it, they were now the prey. Doze hunted without mercy.

Gamble lost track of the number of Dancers they killed after the 19th. She remembered getting knocked to the ground twice, locked in mortal combat. She had felt more like an animal, fighting by instincts alone. But her instincts had served her well and in each encounter it was Gamble who arose, her broken enemy a testament to the fierce triumph. Her body ached from countless scratches and bruises, but she moved forward following behind Doze’s unstoppable advance.

It wasn’t until her breathing was steadier and her heart no longer thunder in her ears that she realized they had not encountered any resistance in some time. The alarms had become a background noise, her brain filtering them out. She had not heard any cries lately either. Was that a good thing?

Doze stood in front of her, looking around, she seemed almost confused now that the hunt had ended. Gamble was surprised to see Doze held her knife in her hand, her pistols back safe in their holsters. When had that happen? When had Doze run out of ammo? As she thought back, she realized it had been some time since she had heard the loud boom of her guns.

She shook her head, trying to clear it after the long, terrible experience.

“Is that all of them?” Gamble asked.

Doze shrugged, “We’re down as low as I know how to go…I haven’t seen anything at all on this floor. We should head back. There could be more. We didn’t cover everything.”

Gambled nodded, trying to relax the cramping in her shoulders. Now that the battle seemed over, or at least at a reprieve, her body was starting to react to the stress. It was too soon, she had to keep it together. There could easily be more.

The alarms suddenly stopped. The silence was deafening. The ringing had been a constant companion for what had felt like forever and now the absence felt louder than the presence had ever been.

“Is that a good sign?” Gamble asked. Her teeth were starting to chatter. That was bad. She fought to breathe slowly, deeply.

Doze just shrugged in answer, turning to return to the staircase to start the ascension.

Their world exploded into light! Both cried out in shock at the sudden change, Gamble swinging her bat in pure, blind panic. Doze dodged backward to get out of range.

“Watch it, Gamble!” she cried, stumbling, the wall keeping her from falling over.

Gamble stopped, embarrassed by her panic swings. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

It was the lights, they had come back on. The regular light level was blinding after an eternity in darkness. Gamble looked around searching for any Dancers or victims. There was no one on this level, no one they could see.

“It’s empty.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Now that IS a good thing,” Doze replied, heading to the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go see if we missed any.”

They hadn’t. At least there were no creatures alive as they climbed the stairs back to the surface. The Dancers may be gone, the threat eliminated, but the horrible damage they had done wasn’t over.

Gamble counted at least 14 adult settlers down. She was relieved to find the toll on the children was much lower. It seems the creatures had pursued the larger adults, not interested in the smaller prey. That tiny mercy had saved most of the children. Most.

Gamble pushed off the haunting thoughts. She’d deal with that later. For now, she was alive, Doze was alive, and they had saved many of the settlers. Like so much of the trauma she had endured since the Incident, she pushed her sorrow and grief into the back of her head, a problem for future Gamble to worry about.

The climb back to the first level took over an hour. They checked every corner for lingering Dancers. They found a few that were still alive but crippled from attacks. Whether the work of Gamble and Doze or other settlers, Gamble had no idea. In the end, did it matter? They put down every monster they found, eliminating the threat permanently.

To their relief, the fires had been minor. While the smoke had been heavy in parts, it appears that the fires had never gotten out of control and had already been dealt with before Gamble and Doze reached them. The injured were another matter entirely.

Doze’s Aunt had been a nurse before the end. And while Gamble didn’t know much about her companion’s family, she knew Doze had admired and loved her Aunt even considering a career in nursing. She had done some volunteer work, taken a few classes in High School. While her skills were meager, they had proven to be a great asset in the new world.

Doze did what she could for the injured she found. Some where far beyond her help, but many had injuries she could treat.

Gamble did her best to help where she could. She always felt in the way in the aftermath of a fight. During the fight she was focused, she knew what to do, she knew what she offered. After? Between the post-combat stress attacks and the lack of practical medical knowledge, she felt useless.

Doze stood up from her latest patient. She looked over at Gamble shaking her head. “A lot of these people need stitches and probably antibiotics. I hope they have something.”

“The first aid station was on the first level wasn’t it?” Gamble asked, trying to remember their abbreviated tour of the facility.

“Gamble! Doze!” a familiar voice interrupted Doze’s reply. Jay ran towards them. With his mask off, the surprise and relief was evident on his face. He stopped as he took in their disheveled state. Their clothes were ripped, stained with blood and mud.

“You guys are a mess!” he muttered, staring at them.

“The raiders?” Doze asked. “Are they gone?” Surely Jay’s presence inside the mine was a good omen.

“What?” he asked, shaking his head. “Oh yeah, yeah, at least for the moment. But Michael, he wants to talk to you. He says he’s gotta talk to you now.”

“Michael is alive?” Gamble asked incredulously. “He survived the impact.”

“Yeah,” Jay replied, urgently gesturing for them to follow him. “At least he was when he sent me to find you…it’s not good.”