Chapter 15 – Underground passage

I got woken up by David’s radio call.
- “Yes?” I responded.
- “Jim. I sent in the Bravo team a long while ago and they are having a tough time finding you. Where are you guys?”
- “Dave, you shouldn’t have sent them in. And there is no more guys, there’s just me.” I answered.
At this moment I noticed Jeffrey’s corpse lying next to me. I almost jumped when I saw it.
- “What? It can’t be!” David’s voice came from the radio.
The signal was a bit distorted. It must have a difficult time reaching this place. I slowly got up onto my feet and then answered:
- “Believe me, it’s true. But don’t worry; I will end this once and for all.”
I looked around and saw that I was in a dark tunnel. It was an underground passage of some kind. Jeffrey’s MAγ-sniper rifle was lying next to his dead body. I decided to take it with me as I lost my other weapons except for V pistol and few shockwave grenades back in that steaming chamber. I was not very experienced with sniper rifles, but it was my only choice. I saw Jeffrey’s footsteps and could tell that they are coming from where he came from, therefore I want to go the other way and so I began walking through the dark tunnel.
A few seconds later I heard noises. Must be the creatures again I thought to myself and prepared. I could soon make out a couple of Vagros in the dark. I put away sniper rifle for the moment and took out V pistol as it was not worth wasting powerful sniper shots on Vagros.
I aimed with the V pistol at one of them and shot a few times. He went down. I then repeated the same thing with another one and he went down too. At this moment the ground beneath me moved. I momentarily stepped to the side and here Crept’s mouth emerged from the ground with an eye looking for the source of the sound. I shot at the eye with V pistol and looked like that Crept didn’t enjoy that at all. He sprung out of the ground completely and began to bite everything in a berserk fashion. I then took out the sniper rifle and shot. Two shots put that Crept down for eternal sleep. MAγ-sniper rifle was a pretty good weapon. Unlike other sniper rifles it uses pulses of gamma radiation instead of bullets to damage the victim and the photons are so strongly concentrated in each pulse that the strength of gamma radiation is immense, making this the best weapon for penetration purposes.
I continued through the really long tunnel which seemed to go on forever. I then understood that this is probably where most crawler vehicles pass through. This meant that the secret base was definitely somewhere ahead, but how much left to walk was still unclear.
On my way through this long tunnel I came across more creatures. There was a big pack of Vagros, an odd Nix and a few Maliffs with more Vagros. I managed to survive them all and after probably hour’s worth of walking I finally reached the end of the tunnel. I was right. The area I came into seemed to contain a few crawler vehicles. Almost all were Crawler-9. These guys must’ve been very secretive about everywhere they go.