Unleashed: Halloween in the Bunker
Copyright© 2025 by TMax
Chapter 2: It’s not a party
John and I marked the expected incursion spots in festive little black cat faces on the walls and floor, while Jackie brewed more coffee. While I love the smell of a fresh brew, the reason behind these pots made my stomach turn. Jake suggested that we shoot the ones that emerge from the ceiling, but Jackie yelled at him until he stopped his argument.
“We have orders. We stay and fight until they’re all in, then boom, NNEMP, and west to bunker C41,” Jackie said as she nibbled on a cookie. Only two cookies, out of the two dozen, remained on the table. I had messed up the plate of cake to make it appear that we had eaten more of it. The cinnamon cake’s aroma helped to remove the slight tremble in my fingers.
“They won’t all emerge at once. How the fuck do they expect us to survive until they all arrive?” I asked. Jackie held the half-eaten cookie next to her lower lip as she stared at the green dots on the screen. John had pushed the brown cake with orange icing to the side of his plate. Jake sat in the first seat, a plate of four cookies in his lap, and stared at the ceiling above him.
“Armor and zap zap,” Jake said.
“And how do we blow the NNEMP if we’re dead?” I asked.
“Squad dead switch, but we live and activate remotely,” Jackie said with a smile. Hands on her hips, a yellowish brown cookie crumb on her chin, she leaned back against the airlock door. Her black outfit and dark skin against the dull silver door made her look badass. A leader. Dragon Slayer, we called her, because her axe-wielding barbarian in D&D usually made the final kill.
“I can’t fuck it up to wait for all one-twenty-eight. What hive mind type?” John asked.
“Chernoski,” I said, and looked up the predicted emergence pattern.
“One to scope, report, then fifty percent for targets, before the rest,” Jackie said.
“How do we fry them then?” I asked.
“Like this,” Jake said, lunged out of his chair, and thrust his electrode rod toward the nearest cat face on the wall. Like a classic fencer, he stood with the rod fully extended, no wobble, right foot forward, the opposite of a zombie. Jackie glared at him, while John stared at the four broken cookies on the floor. The white plate hadn’t broken, but it had rolled under the computer desk.
“Sixty-four, not possible,” John said.
“Twenty percent will reduce the intelligence enough to cause them to swarm,” I said.
“Twenty-seven, never gonna happen,” John said.
“Sure, I’ll bag the most,” Jake said with his rod, sword, in the air, and gazed at the ceiling. John had picked up a cookie and ate half, while Jackie covered her mouth with her right hand.
“Jackie, Liz, will be less than useful. You and I couldn’t do more than two a minute, so fourteen minutes, no fucking way we’re alive after five,” John said.
“We turtle and protect Jackie,” I said. With the ability to heal faster, she had the best chance to survive, still too low, though.
“Not more than two minutes,” John said.
“Where?” Jackie asked.
“Not the worst guess, there,” John said, and pointed to the top south-west corner.
“Geared?” Jackie asked.
“Yippee,” the three of us answered in unison. Helmet on, which ruined my wild woman hair and reduced my costume to two useless, pathetic pieces of brown cloth, I held my stick like a spear, two-handed, ready to thrust. John had eaten a second floor-cookie and held the last two in his left hand, while his right held the rod that rested on his shoulder. Jackie’s rod rested on her thighs, and she gripped it with two hands just outside her hips. She scowled, but her brown eyes sparkled and reflected the monitors’ light. She once confided in me that she always dreamed of a glorious death, one that matters, something that will make her parents cry and wish they had paid more attention to her. Something better than her brother, who had died in the back of a transport when the vehicle struck a landmine.
“Jake, you hit it, we wait,” Jackie said as the three of us gathered in the northeast corner. The men smelled like sweat while Jackie smelled like coffee, like Mom used to when she woke me up in the morning.
Jake stood under the spot, his arm back, ready to throw the rod like a javelin. I stood against the east wall, Jackie on my right, and John on her right, against the north wall. The hum of the fans stopped. The slit vibration in the ground stopped. Our breaths matched each other’s, and I breathed in burnt sugar and wished I had eaten more than one cookie, although the wonderful chocolate chip flavor still lingered on my tongue.
Scrapes and clicks echoed around the bunker, and the smooth wall distorted outward, then black legs pushed through the white wall. Two, three, six, seven legs, the black metal underbelly. My rod pointed to the spot, while my heart skipped beats. My insides twisted, and my legs weakened as I leaned against the wall and Jackie for support. Jackie had her left hand on my shoulder with her rod straight up like a flagpole. John mumbled as his rod shook in his hands, the tip too fast to see. Jake, poised to throw, had lowered the rod’s end almost to the floor, his feet wide, his body taunted and bent like a bow, while he stared at the spot.
Nothing moved.
Then the thing twitched, the eighth leg broke the white surface, and Jake threw the electrode. A blue spark on its black body, a direct hit, and its legs stopped. John’s breath came out in gasps, Jackie squeezed my shoulder, and I held my breath while my heart hammered in my ears.
It didn’t move.
“One,” Jake smiled, retrieved his rod, and returned to us.
“Sixteen next, and any spot, they will prioritize the lights, and access to the computer storage,” I said. Jackie held up a grey hand-sized box, the computer’s memory. We turned on our body lights, the small helmet light, and the larger chest light. I glanced between the main ceiling light, the secondary kitchen, entrance, washroom, and east/west wall lights, then the tertiary light in the middle of the floor that glowed yellow and the red emergency light above the airlock. The back of my neck tingled while bile replaced the chocolate taste in my mouth.
Jake hummed. John murmured, and Jackie reported our progress to Command. With nothing to do, I began to sing, quiet, soft, ‘Let it snow.’ Jake joined, also gentle, almost under his breath. John switched from his murmur to our song. Jackie joined, and the four of us, waited, and in quiet voices, sang, “and since we have no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it...”
Black legs erupted from the south wall, the ceiling, the west, and the east walls. Jake hit one while John missed his. Jackie and I moved too slow to hit any. Black beetles emerged from the walls and scuttled toward the lights.
Jake hit a beetle beside the kitchen light, and John rushed but missed the one beside the kitchen light. I swung and missed a beetle that scuttled toward the east wall light while Jackie kept two beetles from the entrance and emergency lights.
They moved too fast, but because we knew where they wanted to go, we could anticipate and strike close enough to thwart their attempts. Each light had its own power source, and at full brightness, any one of them could keep the room bright.
The ceiling light sparked, destroyed. I missed a beetle, and the metal bug ripped apart the east wall light with its two front legs. The pause gave me time to hit it, but not before it had destroyed the light. I hadn’t noticed the west light’s destruction.