The creature pushed its upper body through the manhole. Its limbs were thin and its torso almost starved, but the muscles along its arms shifted strangely beneath the skin as its red eyes fixed on Dmitri and Rex.
It hissed and hauled itself higher until sunlight reached its face, and the creature recoiled so hard that one hand slipped from the edge of the manhole.
"Well, that's something useful."
Dmitri raised the MP7A1 and fired a short burst into its head. The creature dropped against the concrete, thrashed for several seconds, and went still after a sharp wail escaped it.
Several ordinary infected farther across the parking lot turned toward the sound while another scrape came from below the manhole.
"Everyone, weapons ready. Keep your lanes."
Dmitri stayed near the opening while Rex went after the infected approaching across the surface. The dog accelerated, slammed into the first one, and dragged it off balance with a bite to the leg, sending its head into the concrete before moving on to the second.
Dmitri looked down into the manhole as another bald head appeared. He fired before the creature could pull itself completely through, sending it back into the darkness, then caught a second pair of red eyes farther below.
You want to scream too?
Another burst struck between them, and the underground went quiet.
Dmitri considered the fragmentation grenade on his gear, but he knew nothing about the space below, much less whether gas or anything combustible had collected there.
"Nobody goes down."
Rex returned several minutes later after dealing with the infected drawn toward them, trotting back with his tongue hanging out and looking far too pleased with himself.
"Good job, boy."
The first creature still lay beside the open manhole. Dmitri crouched to inspect it again; the thing was thin enough to look weak, yet it had moved the heavy cover from below, which mattered more than how starved it looked.
"Adam, Ethan, Noah. Take this body back to Building One. Let the Commander see it before we burn anything. Come back if there's enough daylight."
"Understood."
The three wrapped the corpse as well as they could and carried it toward the secured route behind them while Dmitri dragged the manhole cover back into place.
It took more effort than he expected.
"Damn. And that thing pushed this from underneath?"
He made sure the cover sat properly, marked the location for later, and sent the remaining soldiers back into the parking-lot sweep.
He added a second note beside the warning about Building One's maintenance staircase. Both routes went underground, but that did not mean they connected, and Dmitri had no intention of proving it by sending someone down with a flashlight. For now, two unknown entrances were simply two places to avoid.
The three Conscripts returned after delivering the corpse and rejoined them soon after. Dmitri adjusted the groups before they moved farther, putting Alexei and Selene on the nearer rows, Adam's group through the middle section, and Ryan with Nadia along the far side.
Rex moved wherever the parked vehicles created the worst blind spots while Dmitri stayed far enough back to watch all three groups.
Building Three's section held more infected than the earlier rows, but most were ordinary. The teams kept using knives whenever possible, with Ryan helping wherever the numbers became awkward, and Dmitri only fired when several infected pressed the same lane or one was about to break through a group's spacing.
The suppressed MP7A1 was quiet, not silent. A few infected from the road still wandered toward the lot after hearing it, but the cleared rows gave the soldiers room to deal with them without being boxed between cars.
Several promotion notifications came through during the afternoon. Alexei was among those who crossed into 2-Star before the final rows were done, returning to the work with more ammunition and noticeably less fatigue.
The last section took the longest because the cars were packed closer together, forcing the soldiers to check every gap before moving on. By late afternoon, however, the final visible infected in the parking lot had been killed.
Dmitri checked the time and the lowering sun. "Ten minutes. Rest, drink, then we return."
The soldiers used part of the break to gather valuables and other useful items from cars they had already cleared, leaving anything that required more work marked for another day.
They headed back as the sun began to drop, following the cleared route toward Building One and passing the parking section beside Building Three on the way.
A cold pressure touched the back of Dmitri's head. His pace slowed, and the others started losing their rhythm as the same pressure deepened around them.
For a moment, the road ahead looked slightly darker than it should have, with a faint voice scraping along the edge of his thoughts, too distorted to understand.
The meteorite fragments.
"Keep moving. Don't look at Building Three."
The soldiers obeyed, but their steps became uneven. Nadia stumbled before Ryan caught her arm, and even Alexei and Adam looked unfocused as Dmitri forced himself to keep walking through another wave of pressure.
Rex howled.
The sound cut through the strange sensation hard enough for Dmitri's vision to clear, and the others drew sharper breaths as though waking from a bad dream.
"Again, boy."
Rex barked repeatedly while the team picked up its pace, and the pressure finally disappeared once they cleared Building Three's parking section.
Dmitri stopped near the entrance to the secured lot and checked everyone. They were pale and sweating, but nobody was missing.
"Rest here for a minute."
Rex walked between the soldiers, sniffing each of them before sitting beside Dmitri as if nothing unusual had happened.
Dmitri stared at him. You're not affected at all, are you?
He looked back toward Building Three without letting his eyes settle on the embedded fragments. The rooftop warning had been bad enough, but this was worse.
"Nobody should take that route alone from now on."
After a few more minutes, the team continued toward Building One and reached the entrance just before six in the evening.