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ransacked. Bins had been overturned and products pulled from the racks and
strewn across the floor. Behind the register a large glass gun case had been
smashed open. The guns were missing.
Perhaps this was what Sarah Kerrigan wanted him to find, thought Michael. The
signs of an armed struggle. Against the Confederacy s evacuation? Or against
the Protoss?
Mike looked over his shoulder to see Swallow crossing to a two-story tavern on
her side of the road.
He stepped into the mercantile, and his foot struck something crunchy.
Mike knelt down. The floor was covered with some type of mold or fungus. It
was a dark grayish
substance, its edges crusty but slightly elastic to the touch. It contained a
spiderweb pattern of darker bands, almost like arteries.
Something had spilled here, and some type of native mold had taken quick
advantage of it. Very quick, he realized it could not have happened more than
two days ago.
There was something else about the mercantile. There was a sound from the back
of the store, the sound of something sliding over the wooden floorboards. It
shifted once, then was silent.
A wild animal? Mike wondered. A snake? Or perhaps a refugee who had escaped
the initial evacuation, or returned later. Mike took another step into the
room, the fungus crunching under his boots.
He was suddenly very aware that he didn t have a weapon on him.
Swallow gave a shout from across the street. Mike looked at the door to the
back room once, then back to Swallow. He backed out of the general store and
crossed over to the bar. Swallow was plastered against the wall outside the
door.
I think there s something over in the store Mike said.
I found the inhabitants, Swallow hissed. The veins were pounding along the
scars in her neck and thundered at her temples, and her eyes were wide. She
was terrified, and the fear was eating into her resocialization programming.
It was clear that she had hit the stimpack again, as the discharged unit now
lay on the porch floorboards.
Despite himself, Mike looked through the open doorway in the bar.
It had been transformed into an abattoir. Once-human forms hung by their feet
from thick ropes attached to the ceiling. Many had been stripped of clothing
and flesh. Others had had limbs removed, and three had been decapitated. The
three skulls were set along the bar, and had been neatly carved open to reveal
the brains beneath. Something had been gnawing on one of the brains.
As he watched, something like a gigantic centipede writhed around on one of
the bodies. It was like a huge, rust-colored maggot. And it was feeding on the
flesh.
Mike suddenly found it very hard to breathe, and wished he had a stimpack. He
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took a step into the room.
His feet crunched on the crusty fungus that covered the room. And he realized
that he was not alone.
He felt its presence before he saw it. The sudden feeling of being watched
returned.
He started to step back, out of the doorway. He started to turn. He started to
say something to
Swallow.
Something blurred from behind the bar, bolting forward in a single impossible
leap, barreling for the doorway.
It didn t hit Mike. Instead, something larger slammed him to one side.
Mike hit the porch floorboards with a thump and twisted to see Lieutenant
Swallow, who had struck
him, firing at a large dog in the street. No, it wasn t a dog. It had four
legs, but the similarity ended there.
Patches of orange-shaded flesh were skinless, muscles showing through. Its
head was adorned with a pair of huge, underslung tusks.
And it was screaming under the barrage of metal spikes from the gauss rifle.
The hypersonic rounds riddled it in a dozen places, and it flailed in the dirt
as Swallow kept her finger clenched on the trigger.
Swallow! shouted Mike, It s dead! Lieutenant Swallow, quit firing!
Swallow let go of the trigger housing as though it were a live snake. Sweat
rolled down her face, and the sides of her mouth were flecked with foam. She
was breathing hard, and despite herself, her free hand went for her knife.
Mike realized that her resocialization had been stressed to its utmost, and
she was about to lose it.
Sweet Mother of Christ, she said. What that!
is
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