S79 The Horror in the Swamp

by Brett Schumacher

  Overhead, a small glass tube, filled with a substance that looked similar to gelatin, stretched from one side of the room to the other. The substance glowed, dimly at first, and then growing in intensity as the gelatinous matter thinned to a liquid. The far end of the tube was attached to a motion sensor, which was attached to a contraption that looked like a miniature nuclear reactor. A pinprick of ultra-bright light glowed in its center. It was too bright to look at directly, and it left black spots in his vision when he looked away from it.

  The creature intermittently thrashed at the door. The sound was muffled by the contents of the other room, and even more so after he shut the door to his room. Two large tables had been pushed together in the center of the room. On them were stacks of three-ring binders and notebooks.

  He felt safe in the room. He thought the beast couldn’t get through the first door. If it did, though… Preferring not to pursue that course of thought, he turned his attention to the books on the table. Maybe there’s something in one of them that will show me the way out, he thought.

  He flipped open one of the large binders. The scientific writing and symbols made absolutely zero sense to him. There were sheets full of meticulously drawn equations that he could never hope to decipher in a million years. He turned past those pages and found writing.

  Whoever had written on the pages had used a pencil, which left the pages in pristine condition for reading. Pencils don’t bleed through pages over the years as ink tends to do. The writing was small, tight, and precise. The letters barely larger than those produced by typewriters, and every bit as neat.

  The first page of notes read:

  Page 483

  January 1981 – February 1981

  Experiment Continuation from 1968

  Series 13, Specimens 1-104

  Duration: 52 weeks

  Hybridization of Human and Extraterrestrial Lifeforms for Survival

  Purposed outcome: Successful hybridization of two different species to facilitate survival of aliens on earth and humans in space

  Environmental Changes: None

  Variable Changes: Creating Hybrids in Pairs

  Subjects held in suspended animation until hybridization process begins

  Supervision: Dr. Greta Weiss

  Specimens 1 – 16 failed to completely conjoin resulting in failure of the experiment. S1 (human female) and S2 (human male), once introduced, seemed to bond on a social level only. The human halves were of reproductive ages and from like socioeconomic circumstances.

  S13 (human male) and S14 (human male), once introduced, struggled for alpha position as theorized. The human halves were of differing socioeconomic circumstances. S13 and S14 engaged in violent behavior that resulted in their deaths.

  All other specimens had to be eradicated shortly after hybridization processes were complete due to failed conjoining. All other specimens were never paired.

  S7 (human female) and S8 (human female) were deceased before hybridization process was complete due to system malfunction. This experiment will be duplicated at a later date.

  The process of screening prospected human subjects grows more complicated. Subjects must be free of disease and not likely to be missed among social circles. Cover stories are beginning to raise questions and spawn gossip among citizens that could cause backlash for facility. I have recommended acquiring subjects from more distant regions and am awaiting an answer from Director Arliss. All requests for more alien material from Nevada have been rejected. This facility is low on alien material necessary for hybridization program and does not possess the necessary equipment to duplicate it.

  Robert pulled another binder from the neat pile and opened it. It contained innumerable pages of similar notes written by the same doctor.

  Gleaning what he could as he sped through more of the notes, Robert learned that an alien craft had crashed in New Mexico in the 1940s. The government covered it up and took the bodies and the craft to a base in Nevada where they remained intact until the mid-fifties. There was too much attention being directed at the Nevada base, so the U.S. government issued orders to transport the bodies and part of the craft to a base in Texas. Realizing the place was coming under the same scrutiny as Nevada, officials took measures to make the base more secure and private. In the mid-sixties, a base was constructed in the backwaters of Louisiana—a place no one was likely to get too close. In 1968, part of the alien bodies and bits of the wrecked craft were transported by helicopters and boats to the new base. Doctors were recruited from the stock left over from Operation Paper Clip after World War II and forced to work and live in the Louisiana base, most of which was constructed underground. The base had been constructed to be sealed quickly and easily in case of any emergency.

  Rubbing his eyes, Robert nodded. “This must have been one hell of an emergency. Leave it to the Nazi’s to create a hybrid alien-human monster and let it loose on us.”

  Robert had never been a big conspiracy theorist and had only heard rumors of Operation Paperclip. He had shrugged them off as the conversation catalysts of the mentally unstable. He could not wrap his head around the fact that his government had funded a program that took American citizens off the streets and made them subjects of experiments that would kill them. He could not imagine the horrors those poor souls had to endure before the sanctuary of death came to them.

  He shoved the binders away and then he stood with his hands on his hips. Surely not all the people who had worked and lived on the base had escaped. So, where were there bodies? He had not found a single human bone. Where had they all gone? If they had been sealed in, had that monster killed them? Had they starved to death? Had they resorted to cannibalism for survival?

  He moaned in disgust and knocked the books to the floor. A country he loved and would gladly die for had duped the people, used them, lied to them. And for what? Some science-fiction type of experiment?

  Apparently, it became science fact at some point, he thought as he looked toward the door. That monster out there seems to have passed all parts of their experiments. All parts except how to treat others with respect.

  He blew out a deep sigh and looked at his gashed arm. He had trailed blood all over the table and most of the books, but he had nothing to wrap around it, no way to stave the bleeding. The best he could think to do was sit and press the wound against his thigh and hope for the best.

  As he sat on the table, he leaned on his wounded arm, pressing it painfully against his leg. He could not recall when he had heard the last poundings from the monster.

  “Hope you crawled off and bled to death, bastard,” he spat angrily at the door.

  The odds of the creature bleeding to death were very slim, he knew. It could not have survived out there for all those years without sustaining serious injuries. It was even likely that the military personnel had tried to kill it during the evacuation and sealing processes. If they had not succeeded, he held out little hope for his own ability to kill it with his axe.

  If the specimens in the tubes were in suspended animation, did that mean they were still alive on some level? How long had they been in their tanks? Would any of them have family left? Did they age in suspended animation? He was clueless. He didn’t feel like reading more of the notes to try to find out, either. It was likely that he would not be among the living much longer; it was a possibility that he would die trying to escape.

  The thought weighed heavily on him, and he suddenly felt as if he weighed a thousand pounds. He didn’t think he had the energy to run and hide from that hybrid monster any longer. It hurt his heart to look at the white line where his wedding ring had been. Julie would be worried out of her mind because he hadn’t called to check in lately. How long had it been since his last call to her? Maybe hours, or days. There was no way for him to be sure. It already felt as if he had been in the abandoned base for a lifetime.

  The sm
all popping sound from behind made him jump and his heart pained. The lighting began to fade and the bright sunspot in the miniature whatever-it-was was gone. He let the light fade until only an ethereal, dreamlike glow remained. He thought of Julie, her enthusiastic hugs and kisses, lying in bed at night with her head on his chest, her comforting, rhythmic breathing as she slept peacefully, and his assurance that all was right in the world.

  He thought of Lilli. On the day Julie had announced her pregnancy to him, he had been elated and terrified, of course, he never let Julie know how scared he was. He had feared he would be a terrible father, unable to provide for his family, unable to form the strong bond between parent and child that came so naturally to others. Growing up, he had feared his father. On the day he found out he was going to be a father, he feared becoming his father. Emotionally crippled, distant, cold, violent. He knew from experience how devastating those conditions could be to a child.

  Throughout the pregnancy, he had his ups and downs concerning fatherhood. At one point, he had decided Julie and the unborn child would be better off if he were not in the picture at all. He went so far as to make plans to move to the West Coast, but he could never pack his bags. His love for Julie had delayed his plans. Then, she had woken him at three in the morning and it was time to go to the hospital.

  At six that evening, Lilli Jane Tolliver was born. From the moment he held her in his trembling arms, all thoughts of leaving, all worries about becoming his father, all doubts vanished. The bond between father and daughter had been instant and all-consuming for him. From that day forward, every choice he had made, every hour of overtime he had worked, all of it had been for Julie and Lilli. They were his oasis of peace, comfort, light, and love in a hard, chaotic, uncaring world.

  With renewed reasons for surviving, Robert swiped away a tear and looked up at the light tube. He nodded as if to confirm his resolve and slid from the table. The bleeding had slowed to a minor trickle, which did not surprise him given his state of dehydration.

  The light burst to life again as he neared the door, but he did not startle as he had before. His jangled nerves and jumpiness had been replaced with a sort of deadly calm and laser focus. He would get out of the facility alive, and the monster be damned. He would find his way back to the little shit heap gas station and kill the redneck thugs who had tried to hand him over as a sacrifice to the monster.

  He would get back to Julie and Lilli.

  As he made his way through the suspended animation room, strength flowed back into his tired, overtaxed muscles. It was not the rush of adrenaline that would eventually ebb away and make him sick. This strength came from a deeper place, a place that he thought maybe only men were capable of harboring. It was a violent, blood-thirsty place in a dark recess of his soul where emotions died, and all things were equal. Murder and mayhem, revenge and brutality had the same effect on his emotional equilibrium as going grocery shopping or taking out the trash. It was a dangerous and secret reservoir he had willingly opened.

  The monster’s severed arm lay by the door. Blood splatters decorated the wall, door, and the floor, and had puddled around the wounded end of the limb. How much of it had come from the hybrid and how much from his own wound, he couldn’t tell. The twitching and flexing had ceased. It was just a dead, useless arm. He pushed it with the toe of his shoe. It remained lifeless. Picking it up by the thumb, he studied it.

  The light that had shimmered under the skin was almost completely gone. Only the ghost of it remained visible. It was enough that he could see it was similar to the tube of light in the lab. The glowing substance resided in a vein-like network. The skin was tougher than a human’s skin; thick and grayish-green, it reminded him of something that would live in the swamps—tough by necessity and colored by the tannic acid of the environment.

  The smell of wet decay emanated from the thing, and he tossed it back to the floor. The three-inch, shiny black nails clattered on the hard surface. He held his arm up and looked at the wound made by those claws. If they had been sharp, like the claws of a cat, it might have ripped his arm off.

  How much had the government covered up during the Roswell incident? The aliens that were supposedly recovered from that site had been small, peaceful, thin, and gray. If that was the alien DNA they used to create this hybrid, how had it evolved into the huge, strong, and violent thing he had encountered?

  “Doesn’t matter. In the end, it can die. If it can be wounded and bleed, it can die.” He put his ear against the door. Silence.

  He stepped into the hallway. Motionless blackness lay in both directions. Turning right, he moved along the wall, the axe gripped tightly in his left hand. Heading back for the lantern, he thought the damn thing was becoming more of a problem than it was worth. Flicking the Zippo to life, he held the flame overhead as he thought he was nearing the lantern.

  Sitting innocently against the wall was the nearly empty and useless lamp. He grabbed it up and immediately headed in the opposite direction, debating on whether to light it. The hallway was easy to navigate and had been free of obstacles. He had even managed to sprint a short distance in that total blackout earlier.

  His eyes never adjusted to the complete lack of light, though. It was a darkness so complete that one’s eyes could not simply adjust to; but he reasoned that he would be able to see the creatures glow farther away if he remained in the dark.

  For a while, he carried the axe in his right hand, pointed in front of him to detect large obstacles, like the block wall, before he crashed into them. After several minutes, he reached the blockade. He used the Zippo and searched the blockade for any sign of weakness, damage, decay that he could manipulate into a way out.

  Logic dictated that if the blockade was there, freedom lay just beyond.

  The mortar work was sloppy at best. At the left side, where the blocks should have been very close to the wall, the mason obviously had a problem getting the blocks and the wall to line up correctly. There was a steady widening of the gap as it went up. Thick globs of mortar had been used to seal a gap that should have been sealed with a quarter of another block.

  Understandably, the mason was in a rush. Robert thought the mason’s oversight might be his only salvation. He fired the wick on the lantern and set it a little distance behind him. Using a corner of the thick plate of metal at the end of his axe, he scraped at the mortar. If the worker had been in such a hurry that he was sloppy, there was a good chance he had not mixed the mortar to exact specifications for the extremely humid environment. That humidity, over the years, would ruin the mortar, making it easy to break loose.

  His efforts were rewarded with bits and pieces breaking away and falling to the floor. Encouraged, he scraped harder. The block was still solid, but the mortar was not. The metal plate removed about half the thickness of the mortar, but he needed a longer implement to dig through to the other side. With any luck, there would be something he could use in the lab beyond the room of bodies.

  Damping the lantern, he made his way to the lab, where the lighting came to life of its own volition. He moved to the worktables around the room, opening drawers. Below the shelf holding various sizes and shapes of glass vials, he found a long metal rod. It was sturdy and about half the thickness of a pry bar.

  He hurried back to the hallway, leaving both doors open so any reflected light would spill out. He didn’t take time to relight the lantern. He could see well enough to follow the mortar line to the large patch he had broken out at the top and rammed the metal bar into it.

  The impact sent a large chunk to the floor on the other side. The bar moved freely as he pushed up and then pulled down on it to clear the hole. Tiptoeing, he could not see through the slit. It was a few inches too high. Using the bar, he began to work at the mortar again, opening up a narrower slit that came down to eye level.

  He lit the lantern and angled it so the light fell through the hole, it was tough but he mana
ged and soon he could make out a portion of the path beyond. It looked identical to his side of the wall. Confused, he strained his eye harder trying to find an exit of any sort—a door, the open end of the tunnel, a bay door, anything, but nothing was visible after a few feet into the dark. The opening wasn’t large enough to permit light to shine farther in.

  Not completely disheartened, Robert put the lantern down and rammed the cinderblock with the axe’s end. The sound was a high-pitched tink followed by a hollow thud that reverberated through the corridor on both sides. Louder than he would have liked, but necessary under the circumstances. He would tear that block wall down bit by bit, if it meant getting out.

  The noise made his ears ring. Every time he jammed the wall with the axe, he immediately looked over his shoulder to make sure the hybrid was not sneaking up on him. He knew the noise would draw it back eventually.

  Probably crawled off to lick its wounds, he thought, grinning at the surge of pleasure brought on by the thought.

  After only a couple minutes of bashing at the wall, his arms burned with the effort and the block had only partially broken away. But he refused to stop and he hammered the wall angrily. It took his anger and rage to be able to continue. If he let hopelessness set in, he knew he would never get out.

  A few minutes passed, and Robert was beginning to wonder if the creature had indeed crawled off and died from its wound. When he stopped to take a break, most of the cinderblock was rendered into fragments at his feet. His head was ringing and his ears felt as if they were stuffed with cotton.

  The lantern’s light had dimmed to almost nonexistent. He bent and doused it. The light from the lab was dim by the time it reflected out into the hallway, but it did more good than the lantern. Taking the lantern and his axe, he stepped inside the creepy room and closed the door.