Butch returns to the Desperado to report what he saw.
The crew with vacc suits (Montoya, Crystal, and Samuel), then walk over to the domed colony with Brutus, to begin coordinating the transfer of miners to the Desperado. The dome covering the colony is two miles across and two thousand feet high at the center (being much lower at the edges).
As they near the transfer station, they see the gaping hole in the upper side of the dome, where the explosion of the fuel depot caused it to collapse. As Butch had described, smoke and flames still roar from within.
Once in the transfer station itself, the team sees that it is just a large air-locked hanger bay between the inside and outside of the dome. The hanger itself is filled with various pieces of mining equipment and a couple of terrain crawlers with flatbed trailers for hauling men and equipment to the mining sites.
To the sides of the hanger are some offices and rooms used for administration, operations, and logistical purposes, as well as a decontamination area to shower off sulfuric acid and other contaminates from vacc suits and equipment.
When the team enters, Brutus takes them through the decontamination area, before introducing them to the other miners guarding the area – a thuggish group of unshaven roughnecks, some dressed in vacc suits, and armed with a couple of riot guns and a wicked assortment of dangerous-looking mining saws and drills. They all exhibit the yellow tint of ‘Io eye’ - the long-term effect of continually using of the radiation-countering drug, Antirad.
After quick introductions, Brutus shows everyone the transfer station’s security room, where a panel of camera feeds show the area just outside the transfer station.
What Brutus told the team was true – the area inside the dome is crawling with zombies. Almost a hundred of them can be seen with the cameras; their radiation-sizzling bodies thrashing and shambling about, with the majority of them swarmed around the transfer station’s airlock doors, literally clawing at the metal in an effort to get inside.
It is apparent, from a few cars and a school bus crashed outside the transfer station, that the residents of the colony died almost instantly with the dome’s breach – as the vehicles in motion at the time of the accident have all continued forward with their dead passengers, until they ran into something.
It's a truly horrifying spectacle to behold and/or contemplate.
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The next three hours are spent slowly transferring miners over to the Desperado - taking a group in the available vacc suits, getting out of the vacc suits, taking the vacc suits back to the transfer station, another group suiting up in said vacc suits, and repeat... until all the survivors are finally aboard the ship.
At this point, the transfer station hanger doors are then opened, causing the irreversible loss of atmosphere within. The ship-plate, pumps, and gear, are all loaded onto the trailers and taken over to the Desperado via the terrain crawlers.
With everyone back aboard the Desperado, the miners get to work on the hull breach and engine repairs immediately.
All that remains now, is for the team to go in through the transfers station and get the critical engine component from the warehouse on the other side of the mining colony.
Brutus collects the spare vacc suits and refills their air supplies for any members of the team that will need one.
"Mighty heroic of you guys to risk your necks saving us," Brutus says, thanking everyone.
"Good luck getting that part. And don't worry - We' ain't going anywhere till you get it back to us."
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Topic: Did Somebody Say Zombies?!? (Read 234157 times)