Free Necropolis 3 by S. A. Lusher

for a few moments, unable to tear their eyes from the torn and bloodied thing that had once been a living man named Reed, and finally, Carter knelt and frisked him, retrieving his infoclips and spare ammo.
    They moved swiftly through the remainder of the bay, hoping to avoid any more of the things that might remain, and came to the next door. Mike opened it up and they moved cautiously in the primary storage warehouse.
    “ We should name the new ones,” Greg murmured.
    “ I've got a goddamn good name for them,” Kyra replied.
    “ What?”
    “ Ripper.”
    “ Yeah...that's a good one. Carter, will you report this to Lynch?” Greg asked.
    Carter nodded, pale and shaken, and made the report to the woman in charge. Greg turned to Mike, who eyed a nearby terminal.
    “Can you find the part we're looking for?” he asked.
    “ Yeah,” Mike replied. “I just need a minute. I'm used to navigating these things. Did it all the time when I used to pull storage duty.”
    He went to the terminal and booted it up. Greg moved closer to Kyra, who was looking grim, staring out across the stacks of crates.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “ Yeah...well, not really, I guess. This is all getting pretty bad, isn't it?”
    “ Yes, it is. Very, very bad. Two new kinds in an hour, both of them downright deadly, and then that thing that roared. God, this place is hell. Sometimes I really wonder if I'm dead, and this is some kind of hell environment. I mean, we keep getting closer and closer to escape...but then something else goes wrong. It's like two steps forward and eight steps back. And my friends keep dying. Everything just keeps getting worse.”
    “ You've still got me,” Kyra said.
    Greg chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, they'll take you away later, because you mean the most to me.”
    “Oh, stop it. You aren't in Hell, for fuck's sake. We're just in a really, really shitty situation. We'll make it out, I promise...okay?”
    Greg stared at her for a long moment. She was focusing wholly on him now, no longer paying attention to anything else.
    He nodded uncomfortably. “Yeah, okay.”
    After a moment, she smiled. “I matter most to you, huh?”
    “Yep, I'm afraid so. No other pretty girls around.” He chuckled.
    “ Well, I dunno, Linda was pretty nice to look at...”
    “ Oh my God...are you jealous ?” Greg asked, disbelief obvious in his voice.
    “ No ,” Kyra snapped, hitting in him the shoulder. “I most certainly am not . Maybe I just like to appreciate women, too.”
    “ I will definitely have to remember that.”
    “ Oh, lord,” Kyra muttered.
    “ Found it!” Mike called. “Come on, let's grab it and get the hell out of here.”
    They followed him deeper into the warehouse, coming to another courtyard-like area that sported three of the mobile platforms. Mike climbed up onto one and began to manipulate the controls so that it rolled along the floor.
    “Just cover me, I can find the part,” he said.
    Greg replied affirmatively and rounded up the others. They followed him out of the courtyard and into one of the alcoves. They moved along as quickly as they could comfortably manage, eying the lingering shadows.
    “Okay, almost there,” Mike called down.
    Greg glanced up. He'd pushed the platform up nearly twenty feet and was perusing the ranked crates. After a moment, he finally stopped, selected one, and opened it up. Greg returned his attention to the ground floor. Kyra, Campbell, and Carter were all on edge, their uniforms covered with fresh blood, red and black.
    “Okay, here I come,” Mike said.
    He lowered the platform and hopped off it. As he opened up his radio to report the update and they made their way back out to the main corridor, their radios all suddenly squealed to life in a burst of static.
    “Mike! Get your squad up to the armory. Half my men are down and the bastards just keep coming. We're getting overrun!” Lynch called.
    “ We're coming. Just hold on,” Mike replied.
    They bolted through