Ceaseless by S. A. Lusher

Allan reached the first of the two buildings opposite the one they'd come into, he stopped for a moment.
    Just for a second, he actually tried to make himself leave. To turn around, gather up the others, get into the jeep and just drive for Lansing. But it wouldn't come. He simply could not do it. He shook his head and moved into the first building. Judging by the fact that the two buildings he'd come to were identical, Allan figured that they were both garages as he looked around the interior. It definitely looked like a regular garage.
    A pair of jeeps occupied the center of the area. Around the exterior of the room was a ring of tables, workbenches, lockers and shelves. Everything had a gritty, worn feel to it. The whole area felt very used and lived in. Allan did a quick sweep of the area, then stepped back outside and moved on to the second building. He wasn't really sure what he was looking for or what he was expecting to find, only that it was standard operating procedure to check out the area. He moved to the second garage and opened it up.
    There were more bodies inside. Base personnel, no doubt. He wondered, briefly, what a vehicle report station was doing way out in the middle of nowhere, and realized that it was because they were out in the middle of nowhere that it existed. It'd be a huge pain in the ass to get stuck out here where there were no roads and civilization was spread thin, where you were lucky if you could find a single outpost every twenty miles.
    He wondered if it was independent or government funded. Not that it mattered anymore. It seemed likely that everyone was dead. Besides the corpses, there was only one thing that seemed out of place. A large, sliding door at the back was open and there was a large, empty space in the center of the room. The scattering of tools and spare parts, as well as a foldout table that had been set up, seemed to indicate that there had not long ago been a vehicle there. In a flash, Allan realized the killer must have taken it after murdering everyone here.
    He turned and left, spying the others stepping out at the same time.
    “Anything?” he asked, heading back towards the initial storage room they'd first come through.
    Lucy was shaking her head. “No. Everyone in there is dead.”
    “Same,” Johnson said. He looked pale and sick with fear.
    As they headed back to the jeep, Allan took a moment to really take stock of the man. He was thin but looked like he still had some wiry muscle packed onto his narrow frame. He wore a sleeveless blue jumpsuit and his head was shaved bald. His eyes were wide with apprehension and he kept looking around constantly.
    They got back into the jeep and Allan fired up the navigation database once more. Going off the assumption that the killer was, for whatever reason, going to continue in the same path he had been, Allan tracked a route along that path. After another thirty five miles, he saw that there was another outpost, meant for storage.
    “Okay, here we go,” he said, firing up the engine and setting off once more.
    “ Where are we going?” Johnson asked warily.
    “There's a storage facility along the route the killer's taken so far,” Allan explained. “Maybe we can catch up.”
    “He's got a good lead on us,” Lucy pointed out as they pulled out from behind the facility and began driving across the wastelands again.
    “And why aren't we just getting out of here? Letting the guys with big guns and ships take care of this nonsense?” Johnson asked.
    “It's our responsibility with the radio dead. We can't just...give up,” Allan replied, his voice hard and edged, brooking no argument.
    A long moment of silence passed, and Allan decided to try and get some information. “So, Johnson, what the hell happened back there, at your base?”
    Johnson was silent for a long moment, staring out of the miles of desert. When he began speaking, he continued looking out the window.
    “The bastard came out of nowhere. I'd been