The Berserker

Mortimus pushed through the room, trying his best to compensate for the idiots he was saddled with. Stealth and subtlety were clearly foreign concepts to them, and he was certain the one lugging a rusted stub cannon would be the death of them all. He crept, stepping over a maze of cables that spat from a broken cogitator like entrails, leaking faintly glowing fluid. The room had a mezzanine - a railing around three sides that would offer the perfect vantage for an ambush, had these creatures the cunning to do so. His employers, for want of a better word, had assured him the prey had no such subtlety - they were more beast than man, and had no bullets. That’s all this group seemed to care about - bullets. Their chests rattled with strings of them, like amulets, and they wore them like plugs in their ears. The whole thing was wierd, but they paid well, and this job was easy. An old munitorum dump, full of loot, and all he had to do was help them clear out some creature. It was child’s play.

Something cracked underfoot. He examined it - broken glass. It glistened with the same glowing ooze that leaked from everything in this place. He sniffed it. Not promethium, but equally as noxious. It made his head swim slightly, and he cast it down sharply. He shook his head to clear it, and that is when he saw it - a creature, bandy and skeletal, straight ahead, and coming toward him. In its hands, it swung a vicious-looking axe in wild arcs as it ran. His instincts kicked in, and he sent a slug at it with a boom of his stub rifle. It spanged off the ground, his shot wide; the creature was freakish fast. He yanked back the action and fired again, point blank, as it bore down upon him. Again, it went off, his aim shot and his head hazy with the fumes of that damn green ooze. The creature barreled into him, all bone and clanking metal. He hit the ground hard, with a crunch of bone. Agony shot up his arm as he tried to push the creature away, but it was too fast, too strong. He felt the thing bite down into his neck, spurting arterial red over his vision. He panicked, he thrashed, but it was to no avail, and he fell into the eternal black, there on the blood-soaked floor.