Feldana cringed under the blanket at Dreamer's outburst.  She wanted to ask him what he saw, what was going on, was her aunt all right... but she bit her lips and squeezed her eyes shut.  She had to stay quiet, or the bad humans would take her.<br/><br/>The road curved slightly to the right, just enough to hide itself among the fields about a half-mile ahead of them.  As the wagon took that curve, a large grain truck, loaded with whooping and yelling humans, came barreling around at them, driving directly down the center of the road.  Its horn blared.  The humans in the truck yelled.  The truck's headlights flooded the wagon's cab with light.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Halvorson and the others all froze when Baz whispered.  After a moment, just as Halvorson was about to whisper a response, there was a loud splash from just around a bend in the line behind them.<br/><br/>O'Toole spun, raising her assault rifle, but Halvorson caught her, laying a hand on its barrel.  She looked at him.  He shook his head at her and jammed his flashlight down his shirt, letting its dim light illuminate his face and hands.  O'Toole, taking the hint, quietly lowered her gun, letting it hang from the strap on her shoulder.  Silently, she slid the button on her flashlight into the "off" position.  The medic did the same.<br/><br/>Halvorson pointed at the quarterstaff slung over O'Toole's back, then to his own sword, sheathed at his waist.  He gestured at Baz's Claymore, the medic's machete, and Sara's blade.  O'Toole carefully slid her quarterstaff off her back and into her hands.  With equal care, the medic stuffed his handgun into his belt and drew out the machete.<br/><br/>Then Halvorson pointed at O'Toole and indicated a secondary line that intersected their path just ahead of them on the right.  She nodded, slowly and gently making her way to that opening.   Halvorson made the same gestures at Sara and the other opening to that secondary line ahead of them, on the left.  Then he made an encompassing gesture of himself, Baz, and the medic, pointing down the shaft in the direction they had been heading.  With great care, using his left hand to silence the blade, he unsheathed his sword, then started backing down the corridor in that direction, the medic alongside.<br/><br/>O'Toole rounded the corner and stepped into the secondary line on the right, backing into the darkness, her grip tight on her quarterstaff.  This line was shorter and narrower than the one the group had been using; she didn't have to crouch, but she could feel the roaches on the ceiling teasing errant strands of her hair.  Swallowing hard, she watched as the others took their positions, with Halvorson, Baz, and the medic set to walk past her, further on down the tunnel.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Faust didn't have to wait long before he ran into something.  The stench of rot filled the air quickly as he barreled down the tunnel, and suddenly there was something in front of him.  Something large, made almost entirely of tentacles.  Something that made a gurgling noise, and had a single, yellow eye in the center of its mass.  A writhing mass of tentacles reached for him, lined with suckers and dripping sewage.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>((OOC:  You used the right name, Heretic!  No worries.<img alt=":D" src="./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif" title="Very Happy"/>))<br/><br/>Janus listened beside Heretic at the door.  He could hear it too - scratching, like something was running its claws over the wooden floor.  More scratching joined it, but this was from behind them, at the window.  Cultists were scrabbling at the plywood over the window, trying to pry it loose.<br/><br/>Janus motioned at the door with his gun.  "You open it.  I've got you covered."<br/><br/><br/>There was a series of scraping noises on the outside of the building.  The First Sergeant knit his brows, trying to figure out what was going on.  The scrapes were receding... heading upwards along the wall.<br/><br/>Then he heard Jenten's scream.  The door burst.  Marice fell backwards, taking a plank to the chest.  The First Sergeant reacted from adrenaline more than anything else.  As splinters rained on his face, he swung his pole downwards, bringing the machete on its end whisting toward the bulldog's head.  Troops within the first floor were in the first milliseconds of reacting to the enemy, raising from their crouches as if in slow motion, their eyes on the First Sergeant.<br/><br/><br/>The major's team was in position.  Without a word to his men, he put the syringe in his mouth, biting onto the cap over the needle, pulling it off and spitting it away in one motion.  Without a second thought, he jabbed it into a prominent vein on his arm.  It seemed to take forever to empty the syringe into his bloodstream.  His vision clouded, then sharpened.  His sense of pain wrenched into intensity, then drained away altogether.  He could smell blood - his own blood, his men's blood, the blood of the archers...<br/><br/>The needle broke off in his arm.  The syringe clattered to the pavement.  The major had no idea who he was or who anyone was around him.  The rage that filled him tinted his vision red.  He was hungry.  He was angry.  He wanted to kill the first thing he saw.  He saw the band of archers.<br/><br/>The three men who had not taken a syringe watched in a mixture of fear and macabre interest as their major and the three others suddenly pelted into the mass of archers, their blades swinging madly about them.  Veins bulged on their necks and arms.  Their eyes were wide, bloodshot and seething.  Saliva foamed in their mouths.  Their noses bled.  Their muscles stood out harshly under their skin.  The roars they uttered were almost inhuman - guttural cries of anger and torment.  Archers fell in groups around them.  Confusion threw the archers into disarray.  The three stable soldiers rushed around the edges of the fray, cutting down archers that tried to escape, or that threatened to wound their comrades.<br/><br/><br/>Merelli saw a mass of cultists sweeping around his eastern flank.  Quickly, he ordered some reserves in that direction to stop the maneuver.  As the men rushed past, he looked and saw, to his horror, that cultists were swarming the hospital doors in a large clump, pushing with all their might.<br/><br/><br/>Inside, the medics were pushing back on the crates that held the doors shut, desperate to keep the enemy from getting to their wounded.  Fenson lay in a corner at the rear of the building, forgotten for the moment, but sweating with terror.  The medics had left Iln in her curtained-off chamber, forgetting her for the time being.  Again the crates strained inwards as the cultists heaved on the doors.  Again the medics pushed back.  But the doors would eventually be open - it was just a matter of proportionate strength.