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-Note from Traumatised Marine: OK, this story follows up the painful, tragic last few hours of Private Kennedy, after he survives the encounter with the Flood on the Jenkins video.
So you could say it's a bonus chapter to 'Under The Sergeant's Cap', and although you won't need to have read 'Under The Sergeant's Cap' to be able to enjoy this one, you might find if you really liked this one that you want to read 'Under The Sergeant's Cap' also.-

The Traumatised Marine

"URGH!! ARGHHH!!! GET IT OFF!!" Cried Kennedy through pain-gritted teeth, he could feel the little monster worming it's tentacles into his chest, burrowing relentlessly. The pain was like being skewered with crooked bits of white hot, jagged barbed wire.
"HOLD STILL! HOLD STILL!!" Cried someone, tugging at the furious little creature.
The little monster gave Kennedy one last malicious tear before it was wrenched from him.
Kennedy lay back in dazed agony, he couldn't fight, and if he could of he wouldn't have wanted to, he wished he could sink through the floor and disappear.
The chamber echoed with the sounds of gunfire and the cries of men being ripped at, alive.
Kennedy tried to sit up to see what was happening, and it was at that point he realised something that saved his life.
He saw the creatures, how they swarmed around the flailing soldiers as they fell, he saw the Sergeant roaring and thrashing and trying to smash the creatures that ripped at his body, yet this just seemed to encourage more of the creatures to latch on.
They were attracted by the Marines' movement.
And so, (in act of desperate, split second, self-preservation,) Kennedy lay back, motionless, closed his eyes, and tried not to listen to the agonised screams and moans of his suffering comrades.
And nothing attacked him.
He lay motionless there until the agonised screams became whimpering moans, then despairing gurgles, and finally silence.
The room was silent but for the horrible, skin-crawling sound of the scurrying, burrowing little creatures. It was a squelching, hissing, crawling sound, the sound of all the things that human beings find repulsive rolled into one.
He lay there for a further five minutes, before, finally, he risked it.
Slowly he began to sit up.
Slowly and quietly.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Until finally Kennedy had risen to an upright sitting position.
He had to hold back a terrified cry.
The bodies of his friends, his comrades, lay on the ground, motionless but for the occasional twitch and the horrifying movement that came from inside their chests.
There was a creature inside each of their chest cavities.
Kennedy counted them, the Sergeant, Jenkins, Mendoza, Bisenti and the two Marines wearing bandanas whom he didn't even get the chance to know.
Though he couldn't see the Captain's corpse, it was missing, all there was, was a pool of blood where he remembered Keyes had been.
Oh the blood! It glistened in great pools on the floor, flecks and spatters of it everywhere from the thrashing of the Marines when they had been getting bored into by dozens of the little monsters. It was surely still warm.
Kennedy began to tremble.
There were more of the little monsters still left, those who didn't have a host and hadn't been exterminated by the Marines.
The little monsters sensed Kennedy's trembling, they all turned and paused, motionless, scrutinizing the air in front of them with their three sensory stalks.
Kennedy tried to stop his trembling, but he couldn't, it was uncontrollable, his traumatised body was going to give him away.
All of a sudden the creatures scurried towards him, now convinced he was there.
Kennedy cried in terror, leaping up as if he'd been electrified, and grabbed an assault rifle from the floor.
He let rip into the little creatures and didn't take his finger off the trigger. Bullets tore through what remained of the creatures. In fact there were now few left, about a dozen.
He might actually survive this.
But then Kennedy's gun stopped ringing it's powerful staccato, it merely gave a despairing "click" and then silence.
Kennedy's hands were shaking too much to reload, he was cornered in the room and the creatures were nearly on him.
Desperately he charged, trying to leap over the scurrying creatures.
He did it!
He had leapt over them, he could still hear them scurrying after him but now he had somewhere to run.
He sprinted desperately to the other side of the chamber, picking up a new assault rifle as he ran, he prayed it still had ammunition.
He hit the other chamber wall with his back, facing the monsters.
He roared and squeezed the trigger, to his relief it fired, he fired and didn't stop until they had all burst, leaving smatterings of thin, green fluid on the floor.
Kennedy gave a struggling breath and fell to his knees, shaking uncontrollably, in trauma.
He may have lain there for a few minutes, falling into madness, before his sanity made one last desperate attempt to reclaim him.
"" came the Sergeant's voice in his mind, he sounded distant and muffled, as if he were shouting from the bottom of an ocean.
""
Kennedy managed to stutter a whisper,
"Y-yes S-s-sir!" He whispered weakly.
He stood up and supported himself against a wall.
With a shaking hand he drew his hand comm.
He forced his trembling finger to be still long enough to activate it.
"A-any UNSC f-forces, p-p-please respond..." He croaked.
No response.
He waited a bit longer, every second of silence making him more and more desperate.
"ANY UNSC FORCES!! PLEASE RESPOND!!!" He wailed into the comm hysterically.
No response.
It had to be because he was underground, he assured himself, once he got topside he would be able to get help, he would call for a Pelican.... and then... then he would kill the pilot... he would steal the dropship and he would fly away from this godforsaken ring, away, away, away!
He would fly to peace and safety... no damn monsters... all he had to do was get to the surface.
He shakily reloaded his rifle, his face convulsed with manic resolve.
As he began to go to the door that the squad had originally come through, he heard a gurgling plea.
Kennedy swung around and tried to aim his rifle, shaking uncontrollably, his eyes wide and bloodshot, filled with insanity.
He saw movement.
One of the bodies hauled itself up to an unsteady stance.
It was Mendoza, he was alive.... barely.
Mendoza began to stumble towards Kennedy.
"... Kennedy......" He gurgled, "We've got to get evac....."
Kennedy backed to the door, away from the stumbling, advancing Marine.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!!!" He cried.
".....p-please....." begged Mendoza tearfully, weakly holding out his arm for help.
"NO!!" Cried Kennedy insanely as he backed into the door, and then reached for the MF scrambler, about to key the door shut to trap Mendoza on the other side.
"....don't leave me....." gurgled Mendoza, who desperately made a stumbling run for the door.
"NO!!!!" Yelled Kennedy, Mendoza was a meter from the door; he fired a burst from his rifle into Mendoza's stomach, sending him wheeling forward.
Kennedy keyed shut the door and heard Mendoza's limp body slump against the other side of it.
"Must get out of here.... must, must, must, must, must!" Babbled Kennedy to himself.
So Kennedy retraced the steps his squad had taken into these metal catacombs.
As he ran along one of the energy bridges he saw a group of Elites trying to fight off a mass of the little squid-like creatures, who were stubbornly refusing to retreat from such small enemies.
They were too busy to bother with him.
As he ran along the passages he came across a terrified Jackal. He charged at it, roaring, knocking it's shield out the way and slamming his rifle butt down on it.
The poor creature was dead on the floor but he continued to brutally smash at it's corpse with an insane passion, and only stopped when it was smashed beyond recognition thick fluid glistened all over the passage walls.
It was when he was running across the final energy bridge that he saw the first of the mutated bodies.
They were green and decayed, they moved with speed and power, but with no care for the state of themselves.
Kennedy somehow knew what these creatures had been and why they were that way.
He could see from the size and basic shape that they were Elites, (or at least they had been Elites,) those creatures had gotten inside them and mutated them, it was like something from a bad sci-fi horror film.
The monsters ran about the floor attacking a group of hapless Grunts and Jackals, the way the mutated monsters moved was without any real regard for the actual mechanics of the body. It was as if the little squid-like creatures that now controlled the hosts' bodies couldn't care less if the hosts' legs were broken or the chest had a gaping hole, it continued to force the body to try to run and fight, until the body was so damaged that it was physically unable to do so.
Kennedy had run to the other side of the energy bridge, and was now stood on the landing, watching the spectacle in horror but yet with a strange fascination.
Suddenly one of the creatures seemed to notice him, and with a powerful leap it jumped and landed on the centre of the energy bridge, it turned and began to charge along the energy bridge towards Kennedy, flailing it's arms like a demonic apparition.
Kennedy shrieked in hysteria, panicked, but once again his quick thinking saved him, he turned to the holo panel beside him and keyed the bridge off.
The energy bridge disappeared from beneath the creature, and it dropped back down to the ground below.
Kennedy smashed at the holo panel projectors until the translucent screen frizzled out, nothing would follow him out now!

Kennedy reached the hover lift they'd come down in and tapped the holo panel, the lift shook, chimed, and started flying upwards.
Kennedy hopped from foot in anticipation of finally getting radio contact.
The lift rumbled and he stepped off, seeing the jungle beyond the huge entrance of the echoic great chamber he stood in.
He opened up an all frequency channel to the command shuttle and spoke.
"Does anyone read me? Respond! Please!" He cried.
A voice crackled back, it was laced with static and very distant, but it was a response.
"At last! //*/-_//..... trying to contact you lot..//--**//..lost contact with Keyes ship ages ag..//-**.././/-the hell's going on?"
Kennedy hopped up and down
"You have to get me evac, now!!" Grated Kennedy urgently.
The voice crackled back,
"Before we lost contact///**-//.. 2nd squad requested reinforcements; they said they were under att..//--*//.. we sent in Pelican Victor 933 and the squad of Marines that had been rescued from the..//**-_//
that were on board. Now we've lost contact with Packham from Vict**///-_// need to tell us what the hell's happening!!"
Kennedy's heart sank.
"NO!!" Shouted Kennedy hysterically into his comm, "YOU have to get me out of here."
The voice sounded sorry.
"//***//-/ left, repeat, there are no Pelicans..//**//-//"
"What about Foe Hammer!?" Begged Kennedy desperately.
There was a pause.
"///**// is out of contact range //**// you hold on we can get her to pick you up when we get contact //**-// just have to wait!"
"I'm gonna die if you don't get me out now!!" Wailed Kennedy, who began to break into tearful sobs as he looked around fearfully.
There was an even longer pause.
"//**// we've got no Pelicans.. //**// we do have that Covenant dropship that Captain Keyes stole..//**//
use that to get to you!"
"OH THANK YOU!!" Cried Kennedy joyously.
"Hold tight, Marine, we'll get there as soon..//**//"
Kennedy switched off his comm.
He had to find a way of signalling the craft when it came.
His hope rekindled, he began to run into the steamy jungle ahead.
However as soon as he stepped into the open he began to shake again, he felt so vulnerable, there could be more of those monsters hidden behind every tree.
As he slid down a steep muddy bank he began to sweat feverishly, his heart pounded.
He went splashing through wet marsh.
The environment around him started to feel distant, he felt detached from his body, the sounds of his splashing strides were distant and slightly warped, while the sound of his heart got louder and faster, until it sounded like the beating of rocks against a cavernous cave wall, far louder than any other sounds.
And it was when he began to hear voices he knew that he was going insane.
Whispering, malicious, evil voices.
"We will get you. You ultimately run in circles."
Kennedy shook his head, trying to run from the voices, but all was warped, for all he knew he was running in thin air.
"We've taken more than you can imagine, we've survived for longer than you can imagine, we are more unstoppable than anything you can imagine. Others have run, they ran faster, longer and further than you have, and they did not escape us.
We will get you!"
Kennedy was about to fall to the ground whimpering, when he spotted a blue light cutting through the mist.
He drew strength from the little light, he ran towards it in, he wanted to be in it's glow.
The voices in his head disappeared as he got back hope, but they still called maliciously in the back of his mind,
"We will get you!"

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