The Sleepwalker

Part Three: 22

​The Warden



Cogsworth came back to reality to find himself being quickly dragged by Sickle and Pilgrim in semi-darkness. Invoke and Vindicator were limping ahead, going pretty fast. Where were they? Why were they running?

Warden made an attempt to get on his feet, but ended up just falling limp, toes of his boots scraping on the floor. His shoulder burned, and it sent rivers of pain up to his brain.

Sickle glanced at Warden, fear in his eyes. Cogsworth was surprised the thin Overseer could hold him up, with Pilgrim's help of course. It was taking its toll on the pair to hold up Warden, who never thought himself fat but looking at it now...

"You're awake!" Sickle huffed. "Can... could you run?"

Pilgrim also looked burnt out; He was red in the face and gasping for air.

Warden shook his head as much as possible, but that triggered more pain in his shoulder. What had happened? He turned his head in Sickle's direction and caught sight of the thing they were running from, but he wished he hadn't.

What seemed to be a deer skull on steroids was chasing them, far away but closing the distance quickly as it raced on all fours. This made Warden try to get his feet on the ground once more, and this time he found his footing and helped the two Overseers carry himself.

Ahead, Invoke and Vindicator turned left at a corner and went wide-eyed before surging out of sight. Warden didn't know what they had been looking at until the three came up rounded the same corner.

The hallway ended when it turned left, with a set of double doors at the end. They would've been made out of glass, but someone had got two pieces of lockdown sheet metal and somehow wielded them onto the doors, adding protection. But it seemed to all be for nothing, because two Agents sat on either side of the door, each manning a huge, long barreled cannon that Warden realized was a modified turret from the Expanse. The Agents looked shocked to see the group, but right then the deer skull thing caught up.

It yelled in a voice that sounded familiar to Warden, but he couldn't quite place it. Somehow it still brought a wave of nostalgia over him.

"Come back!" It shouted in a young feminine voice, "please! I need you James! Don't leave me, please!"

But Warden had no power to stop and turn back. The beast got to the intersection and was met with rapid machine gun fire. Warden noted that the shots looked ballistic rather than energy-based, which was impossible since the turrets were supposed to be fully automatic laser firing. But alas, bullets peppered the monster, spraying black blood everywhere. It hissed and held up its smaller robot forearm. Sparks were sent flying as the bullets hit the metal arm, lighting up the dim hallway.

Suddenly twin ceiling-mounted spotlights flicked on, further blinding the monster. And, by proxy, blinding Warden, Sickle, and Pilgrim as well. They hadn't gotten behind the two machine guns yet like Invoke and Vindicator had, and were still pretty exposed. And the monster obviously knew it. It held out its hairy, long fingered arm toward the group, even though it was still almost ten feet away, and Warden felt the temperature plummet.

He'd never felt so cold in his life, he could even see his breath in the air in front of him, and he shivered. The burning blister in his arm didn't hurt so much anymore.

While he shivered and the monster further smiled, having seemingly won the battle, the two modified doors burst open and there stood a man dressed in a huge winter coat and a black metal arm covered in frost. Warden knew him as the Head of security. But his name was Agent Eerie. And he held a white, three-foot long rifle. He pumped it like a shotgun and walked right past Warden and the Overseers. He didn't flinch as the machine gun fire shot by him, or when the monster spoke in garbled voices. It apparently didn't know what voice to mimic, so it spoke in all of them.

"Boo." Eerie said as he lifted the gun to the beast and pulled the trigger. An ear-splitting scream sounded, so loud that Warden felt as if his ears had exploded, and a shockwave was blasted from the end of the rifle. It was ringed with electricity that arced all down the hall.

The monster screeched and scrambled down the hall on all fours. Eerie watched it go, not taking the gun off his shoulder, until the black-furred-deer-skull-thing was out of view. Then he turned and extended a hand to the three and helped them to their feet.

"Warden; Overseers." Eerie welcomed them in his usual gruff I-don't-care kind of voice. He was dark-skinned, muscle-bound, and had black hair that was mostly gray. He looked almost like an old version of Vindicator. But as they say, like father, like son.

Vindicator came right over to the group, walking in a tired gait with Invoke on his heels, and first went to Eerie with a strong hand clasp that eventually evolved into a shoulder-hug.

"Dad," Vindicator simply said. Warden had never seen him like this, and he only just noticed that they were missing two Agents. He wondered what could have broken Vindicator. And he also noticed there was a coiled human spine attached to the Overseer's belt.

When they let go of their embrace, Eerie saw the newcomers shiver and he gestured inside.

"I'm afraid it's not much warmer inside the Armory, but you'll atl least be safe."

"Sir," Sickle asked as they went past the twin turrets. But Eerie chuckled before Sickle could say more.

"I should be calling you sir, Overseer Sickle. I'm just an Agent."

"That's quite alright, but you saved our lives. You deserve much respect."

"Jus' doing my job, Overseer. What was your question?"

"What... exactly was that thing?"

They had passed through the doors now. And Warden couldn't help but realize how much he missed the Cellblock's warm interior.

The Armory was huge. Warden had been in here before the Second Incident and it hadn't been so big. It seemed as if Eerie and the others had broken down more than a few walls in order to expand the two-floor room. Agents bustled around in the below-freezing room, working on various workbenches and tables, wielding and hammering, or stacking resources such as wall parts, ration packs, and boxes of ballistics ammunition. A thin layer of frost covered almost everything, including their metal arms and tables.

Eerie waved for modified jackets made out of blankets to be brought over to newcomers, which Warden assumed they brought from one of the supply rooms and repurposed them. Which was smarter than Warden would like to admit. They took off their disgusting and damaged clothes, with Vindicator having the most wrecked armor.

Eerie also called out for a medic for Warden's injury. It became painfully obvious that there would be permanent damage to his shoulder when he saw the blistered skin when he shrugged off his red coat to put on the new one.

"Man, you guys look terrible," the doctor said, checking them all up and down. "Not much I can do without medical supplies and barely any of my staff. I lost two nurses in my medbay when it began... We have only collected three other medically trained Agents, from two other medbays."

Eerie nodded. "It's been rough. Anyway, Sickle, that was a creature from Canada. The Natives called it the Wendigo."

Sickle went wide-eyed and pale in a matter of seconds. "No... we only have one Wendigo in here, and it was missing an antler and was white. That was not..."

Eerie grimaced and passed his gun off to a white-coated Agent. "Come with me. I'll explain all of this. I don't know how much longer we have."

They followed once Warden's arm was bandaged, Pilgrim's nose was cleaned and mostly fixed up, and everyone had been protected against the cold. Eerie led them into some sort of command room that had three huge and glowing red heaters in it, most likely there to prevent the electronics from freezing. The electronics were situated on a table that sat in the middle of the room. Screens and computers covered it. Eerie tapped on one and a projector on the ceiling came to life.

Warden found himself looking at a huge picture of a Wendigo on the wall. It looked almost identical to the one that had tried to eat them, only it was covered in patchy white fur, covered in cuts and blisters, and it had only a single antler. The picture was high quality, as most normal cameras are, and the photo seemed to have been taken from a security camera judging on how it was a top-down view of the beast. Warden studied it with mounting disgust. It was human-like, with back legs like a dog, but much more... muscle. However, it was very thin. Its midsection was very flat, and had the tips of its ribs poking through, and its limbs were long and inhumanly narrow. The Wendigo was tearing apart a red mass; Warden was grateful it was freeze-frame.

"Well," Eerie sighed, "that's a Wendigo. They can make the temperature drop dramatically, mimic voices, and are bloody impossible to kill. This was the only one on this forsaken station, actually, as of yesterday. After the incident, me and about fifty others were holed up in the Cellblock. I didn't want any monsters getting out. But... three cells opened suddenly. The Wendigo came out first and... I lost so many good people. So many died. And before you ask, I do not know who opened the cells."

"You're sure?" Warden asked. The Agent shook his head, avoiding Warden's gaze for some reason, which he found suspicious. However, it could have just been Warden being on edge and he could have just been looking into it too much.

But Eerie also appeared to be very angry. Warden could see the fury in his green eyes.

"After that, I retreated to a supply room with the survivors. We picked up supplies and such before confronting the Wendigo once more. Nothing worked. It absorbed lasers and ate our bullets. So again we ran like bloody cowards, and we came here, to the Armory, and I tried once more, armed to the teeth again. With a scouting party of five I found it, but watched it a long while before going with a hunting party. We gave it everything, and everything didn't work. I... we... made it bleed, though. A knife to the chest did some true damage, but we were still unable to fully kill it. And it was very angry.

"I thought we were all dead until a Banshee walked in on our little fight. I noticed how she scared the Wendigo away easily with just a simple scream, so naturally, we tracked her down and ripped out her larynx..." Sickle paled, "... and we got to work on a weapon. Behold, the Mouthpiece."

Eerie held up his gun. It was covered in white material, like a towel but much thicker, maybe kevlar, and had zip ties holding it all down. At the butt was what looked like a repurposed mic from a karaoke machine, but at the business end where the business happens was a large speaker.


"I say something in here,into this mic, and it's shot through the Banshee's throat inside, which vibrates it. With some technological help, of course, and boom, instant bullhorn. Would rip apart your eardrums if aimed at a human."

"Did the Banshee make it?" Sickle croaked. Eerie looked at him as if he were crazy.

"Make it?"

"Like... did she survive?"

Eerie looked at the Overseer, bewildered.

"Overseer, I tore open its neck and helped the doctors remove the voice box."

Sickle looked expectantly, as if the Banshee could have still lived. Eerie shook his head.

"No Sickle, it did not make it."

Sickle let out a shaky breath and sat heavily on a metal chair nearby, not speaking and looking quite distressed.

Eerie sighed and pulled his coat more on his shoulders. "Anyway, armed with my new weapon, we left again. We found the Wendigo and used Yeti fur to set it aflame. The Mouthpiece pinned it down long enough to get a blaze going."

Warden saw Vindicator's thin line of a mouth just slightly curve upward to a smile. Using Yeti fur to make fire was his idea not too long ago, yet felt like last week. Warden again supposed, like father, like son. Or like son, like father. Depends on how he looked at it.

"We killed it. Stabbed it right through the heart with a roughly-made stake. And we took its arm for ourselves, planning on making a weapon out of it. But something happened to the party. See, I led the group ahead, quite a ways away from them, and that was... That was... A mistake."

Eerie closed his eyes, obviously remembering a painful moment. Then he slammed his fist down on the table.

"They turned into monsters. Almost all of them. I watched. They dropped the arm and convulsed. Their ribs grew and cut through their stomach. Flesh of their face peeled off. For a few it was almost instantaneous, for others it was a slow transformation. Out of my ten Agents, four escaped with me back to our safehouse."

Warden looked back at the screen, back at the white Wendigo. It looked more than formidable. And now he knew that six other Wendigos were running around, maybe more. And they were no closer to getting to the escape pods.

"But why?" Pilgrim asked, holding his bandaged nose. "How? It doesn't make any senth. An' I have studieth all sorth of poisons and shtuff."

"Great question. Cause I don't know." Eerie admitted, gesturing back to the Wendigo on screen. "We suspect it to be a virus, because once I sent out another scavenging crew who found another, younger, fresher Wendigo. They were able to end it with a stake, but when the Agents returned they showed cannibalistic tendencies. We found a girl eating a young man up in our makeshift dorms. The more meat she consumed the more she turned, it was a slower transformation than what I'd seen before, maybe because the viral host was unable to fully mature before releasing the virus. We had to cast her out, because none of us could bring ourselves to kill a friend."
"
"So she wasn't entirely gone?" Vindicator asked. His father shook his head.

"She begged. She apologized. She was there, alright, even with horns forming on her skull and ribs pushing her skin out. We assume the virus is released when the host is dead, so killing her would infect everyone who wasn't sick. Thankfully, simple antibiotics that we found in the supply room seem to slow the effects. Hence why I... and some others... haven't turned yet." Eerie's voice was dull and monotone. "But we are running out.

Warden shivered. The heaters helped, but not by much.

"The stupid Wendigos have multiplied since. I don't know how many I don't know where, but they know we're here. For a while they've been trying to flush us out with the cold."

Eerie didn't look away from the screen as he spoke, eyes dark. It looked like he hadn't slept in a while. "They know we're at the edge. And they're waiting for the right moment to shove us right off."

Silence.

"The virus theory works, actually." Sickle murmured suddenly, more to himself than anything, though everyone heard. "The Native Americans and Canadians thought it was a spirit that would latch onto you, make you become a cannibal. Some other myths state the spirit would possess you if you resorted to cannibalism. The original peoples' misunderstanding of viral pathogens might have made them think of spirits."

"Right." Invoke nodded. "A fact in every fiction. Most of the monsters in here are very different from the stories that they star in."

Sickle looked up at her, still pale. "Almost every myth had a reason for being. Whether the story actually happened, or got twisted by the tongue, or had a lesson to tell, or a story to enjoy, it all had a purpose. Usually, when someone saw something like the Wendigo, they'd tell what they saw, not necessarily what's true."

Warden's head was still quite foggy. What had happened back in the Cellblock? Why did his arm hurt so bad? But Eerie beat him to the question.

"What happened to you guys?"

Nobody spoke for a while, and it wasn't that they were thinking of good memories. The last... How long has it been? Warden guessed around thirty to forty hours, maybe more. He didn't know how long he was knocked out for. Either way, the last while had been bad.

It was eventually Pilgrim who told Eerie everything. Everything. From the Warden's mistake of listening to Hazard, to a fight with a spider lady, which still didn't jog any cogs of his memory.

Next, Vindicator described his fight with a headless horseman and the loss of two Agents. He spoke in an emotionless tone, but already Warden knew he was saddened by what he must have assumed was a failure. They also mentioned their goal of getting to Earth. But left out the deal with the two onis.

Eerie turned on Warden when their stories were finished. He looked... less than happy. "You tried to shoot my son!?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that!" Warden defended, agast. "I err... did what was necessary."

"I don't think murder of any sort is 'necessary' Warden." Eerie growled. "You were trying to save your own hide. Admit it. "

"I won't lie," Warden returned coldly, "I did it because I'm the best hope everyones has!"

"Really? So the Council will only send help because you're in danger, but won't send reinforcements if we are?"

"Maybe so!"

Eerie shook his head. "What makes you think your life is worth more than ours?"

Warden stood quickly, getting angry now. "What makes you think your life is worth anything at all?"

Eerie blinked, looking nonplussed. He didn't reply and after a few moments he instead turned to the others, ignoring Warden.

"We have food and beds. Stay as long as you need, dunno how long we can last with the Wendigos slowly..."

Suddenly, the room shook, sending everyone into a sort of messed-up dance as they tried not to fall. Warden was overcome by a sense of deja vu as his brain reminded him of the shakes of the beginning of this trip to hell. A hell he made, when he put Polybius and the Sleepwalker together.

Invoke steadied herself on the table, whilst catching a monitor that threatened to fall. "That sounded like an explosion." She said as she helped Sickle to his feet.

"Might've been the engines," Eerie looked around at the still swinging lamps. "I find the fact we ran out of coolant already both unbelievable and scary. We'll get cooked alive if we're not off this boat in a day."
They rushed out to the main room to find everyone in a panic. Warden figured it was because of the quake, but when part of the ceiling fell down and crushed a few Agents, he knew they were in trouble.

"Arms up!" Eerie shouted, trying to get some order around the room. But just then, a black furry arm reached through the ceiling and clawed at the metal sheets around it. Warden felt the temperature drop even further.

A few Agents took up assault rifles and peppered the arm with bullets, but they barely had any effect and the arm did not stop.

Eerie waved them over. He had crossed the room, skirted around the rubble, and was standing at a semi-open door. Warden and the Overseers ran past the shooting Agents, much to Vindicator's annoyance. Warden just barely dodged a falling tile that took the arm off a nearby Agent, who screamed as her severed arm hit the floor. The ceiling was not that high up; this such tile was violently thrown down by the Wendigo's arm.

Once they were in the room, Eerie tried to wave a few Agents in as well, but they didn't notice.

"Close the door!" Warden shouted frantically.

"I won't sacrifice my Agents for myself!" He replied, almost angrily. "Come on!"

Just then, a Wendigo came through the roof, landing on the pile of rubble with a thump. Confused, it laid there, limbs splayed, as guns fired all around it. Eerie cursed and closed the door, locking it by spinning a huge wheel in the middle. It was crudely put together, and as shoddy stuff usually works, it didn't, and the wheel broke off halfway through its first spin. Eerie held the broken wheel for a few moments, as if it were still connected.

"Shoulda tested that first." He said, dropping the wheel and spinning around after flicking a switch.

Yellow lights came to life, some flickered and died, but either way they revealed a long hallway lined with coats, weapons, and burlap sacks made from the same stuff as the coats.

Eerie tossed the Mouthpiece's strap over his shoulder and handed them some weapons and a sack each.

"There's a stake-slash-knife hybrid tool in each bag, along with some canned food and a bottle of water. Oh, and ten antibiotic pills. That's a day or two, maybe three, of cure from the Wendigo virus, give or take." He explained, handing a ballistic rifle to Invoke, two laser pistols to Pilgrim and Sickle that he said would amplify their Indexers' power ("They're experimental," Eerie explained, "expect issues."), and a small hatchet to Vindicator, along with a SIG sidearm that Eerie said had a magazine of eight, but also gave his son some extra shots.

"No more, no less." Eerie said. Vindicator ejected the clip, studied it with grim satisfaction, and shoved it back in.

"I hope I don't have to use it." He grunted, shoving the gun into his belt under his coat.

"As do I, Vindicator. But the Wendigos are not human anymore. It's either us...."

"Or them." Vindicator completed.

Sickle silently shook his head off to the side, trembling.

Invoke checked her own magazine before clicking it back in place. "Not that firearms will kill them anyway."

Eerie held up a glass cup with a piece of rubber on top and a filthy rag poking out. The cup was filled with blueish liquid.

"That's why we have these, just in case. We made more makeshift molotovs, but they're all back there." He gestured an open hand at the door with the broken lock, the door, which, Warden noted, had a few dents in it that were not there before.

"I have three." Eerie continued. "That should work. If we need them. They'll eat up a lot of our oxygen..."

"What about me?" Warden butt in, looking at the mix of weapons. Surely he'd get something to defend himself, as he was the Warden of the SSS, after all. Eerie got up close in his face, trying the tried and true scare tactic.

"Can I trust my back when you have another weapon?" His eyes drifted down to the Warden's metal arm. "A more lethal one?"

Warden ignored the fact that he was basically getting bossed around by a low-level Agent and nodded. Eerie turned and grabbed the nearest double-barrel shotgun that looked like it was made out of scrap metal and other assorted parts. It did not look reliable.

Eerie worked with his back to Warden, hiding whatever he was doing from view for a few seconds. Then he spun and presented the weapon to his superior.

"Two shots. Pull the trigger, pull back this little thumb-hammer here, and shoot once more." Eerie simply stated.

"Should I get more ammo?" Warden pointed past him two the two shotgun shells sitting on the weapon rack, in the empty slot where his new gun used to rest.

"No, we'll leave them for any Agent needing a way out if they come through here."

A quick glance down the hall showed that the small window of the door was splattered with red. Warden didn't know exactly what Eerie meant by 'a way out'. But he could give a good guess.

Was suicide a better option than becoming a monster?

"Come on, this way." Eerie started to run down the hallway, away from the door. Vindicator and the others were hot on his heels. Warden followed reluctantly, finger on the trigger of his shotgun.

"Are you sure we can trust him?" Vindicator whispered quietly, maybe thinking Warden couldn't hear. Warden strained to listen.

"He won't kill us," Eerie murmured back, sounding sure of himself. Warden thought he was acting objectively prideful. "To him, we're just a waste of ammunition."

Warden couldn't agree more.