by Jason Luthor
Hah. Yeah, there are more than a few perks to being a Scavenger.
About the only concern I have with marching every hallway is the fact that it’s so drawn out. The first day of the Scavenging is basically a marching show through those halls so other people can see us. I mean, of course, we don’t do it after Floor 11, but marching around seven floors on this parade wipes out nearly the entire morning. We don’t usually get to the Floor 12 checkpoint until the early afternoon, and then, before we can even think about proceeding, we’ve got to make sure with Security that we’re all who we say we are.
Again, for the record, why? It’s a complete waste of time. But Tower Authority wants it, so of course, we do it. Authority knows why it does what it does, and our job isn’t to question. Our job is to follow our instructions. Still, by the time we’re actually proceeding on from Floor 12, it’s well into the afternoon. Then, of course, we can’t actually just go straight down into the Creep. There’s always the checkups we have to do.
Floor 12’s where you start to first see the signs of it, the small growths on parts of the wall or along the floorboards. It’s Floors 15 and 16 where things get disgusting. The stuff looks like it’s taking over the walls. I wonder why we just don’t take a flamethrower to it down there, but no, I’m not stupid. I know using it at these levels would just instigate an incident like we had last year, when we provoked the Creep into raging up the stairwell. Anyway, we document the growth level as usual. Of course, our presence serves double duty. On the one hand, we get to see what the Creep is looking like on the lower floors, but we also get to chat with the locals. That’s a lot more important than younger Scavengers realize. They think it’s a waste of time, but in reality it’s an important part about being a member of our order.
An important part that Commander Abbott doesn’t care about, but again, that’s off the record.
Being a Scavenger is about more than just finding new materials for the Tower to use. It’s also about being an inspiration to people that sometimes find their lives hopeless. Yes, I understand that everyone above Floor 11’s relatively okay, but you can’t afford to lose the support of the people on the lower levels. Lose them, and you lose the people that work as parts of Cleanup, Maintenance, Service, and all sorts of other things. These people only get to head up to the upper levels when they’re working, but, you know, sometimes it’s just getting out of the Creep that helps you preserve your sanity.
Especially since, by Floor 16, you start to see them—the Demons. Don’t get me wrong, the fear and paranoia you start to feel on the lower levels can be a mind-killer. Still, you can adjust to it. You start finding ways to compensate. Still, there’s no compensating for the shadows you start to see. On Floor 12 they start appearing, but they look like tricks of your environment, as if the lights in the hallway are flickering in places. It can catch you off guard, but it’s nothing you can’t deal with.
By Floor 16, though, those same shadows are taking shape. Not quite human, but . . . something. I’m not sure whether it’s worse when they disappear or when they stay put. There are times you could swear you’re looking at a shadow person down the hall, and the person just stares back at you. It’s really unsettling the first time you hit the lower levels. At least most of the time you catch these shadow people in the corner of your eye, so it’s not so bad.
On the record, I find it worse when they just stand there. Not all my men agree, but for me there’s nothing worse than seeing a shadowy figure just looking at you.
Then they move. They walk toward you. If you don’t stand your ground, get control of your mind, well, I’ve seen men lose it. Worse, I’ve had to put down men that panicked and started firing blindly into the air. Firing off your rifle like that can get the entire team killed. As much as I hate to say it, it’s better to just take out one panicked man than put the entire group at risk.
We do as much training with new Scavengers as possible to prevent this, of course. We’ll take them into the lower levels without weapons and teach them how to maintain discipline, control their breath, and lower their pulse. There are a lot of things you can do to help keep yourself cool. Because of all that training, most of the time we’re able to calm a panicking man down.
If he starts pulling that trigger, though . . . well, you only have one option.
At any rate, that’s why we document those hallways. Not every single one of them, of course. That would simply take too much time. But we do patrol enough area that we get to talk to the local people, hear their concerns, and give them some promise that we’ll be heading down below to find stuff that they can count on to arrive in their food boxes. You know and they know it won’t be much, but it’s the promise of something coming, the promise of something to look forward to, that makes them happy.
You would be surprised how powerful hope is on the human mind.
Commander Vick’s Report Number Two
The funniest part about passing through Floor 16 is definitely the story. Creepy Sally. I know the administrators on Floor 1 don’t particularly care about the legends down here, but the story of Creepy Sally is told throughout the rest of the Tower. It’s powerful, and it makes kids think twice before touching the Creep.
I’ve been scavenging for six years now, and I’ve never seen her. I’m not saying she doesn’t exist. I’m just saying that I, personally, have never laid an eye on her.
Still, the locals are pretty insistent about saying she exists. Normally you brush off this kind of talk because locals on every floor tell stories about someone they know or saw that got taken by the Creep. The thing is, we know what the Creep does to a person if they get trapped in it. They don’t change, they don’t get warped, and the stuff doesn’t grow on your skin. Again, six years of doing this, and I’ve never seen anything like that.
Now, I’m quite aware that it will lash out at you. It’ll even engulf you, and at that point, you’re almost guaranteed to die unless you survive the flamethrower we apply to get your body out. If so, count yourself lucky. People who get trapped in the Creep when it gets agitated normally suffocate.
What the Creep doesn’t do is grow on you. It doesn’t infect your skin or get into your blood. Of course, I’ve never chosen to barricade myself inside an infested room and waited to see if it’d attach to me, but we come across people on the lower levels that spend their lives in moderate Creep conditions.
No. They are most definitely not showing any signs of the Creep covering their bodies or any of that nonsense. Still, the people on Floor 16 are particularly insistent that Sally does exist. And I will admit, they have some rather interesting proof. In particular, the far western halls are littered with Security gear. Vests, clothing, gloves, that sort of thing. Security doesn’t simply take their clothes off to dump it in the hallways, and yet Tower Authority refuses to send a Cleanup crew to remove all of it. So, does that make me suspicious?
Well . . . slightly.
Of course, the stories of Creepy Sally are old. They were old, apparently, when I was a kid. Even my father remembered hearing them when he was young, so that means they go back at least three generations. Stories like these mean a lot more to people like me that actually had to grow up in the lower levels. I lived on Floor 16, so I knew more about Sally than most people. I knew you didn’t go into the west wing unless you wanted her to eat you alive.
So, we never did. I never stepped foot over there until I was part of a scavenging team. Thing about the west wing is that it’s not heavily inhabited. There are a few families and people over there, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of those doors are red lights. Nobody living there. That’s creepy enough, but the worst part is wandering around and just noticing the thickness of the Creep. Even by Floor 16 standards, it’s pretty dense, so the infestation in the rooms must be out of control. It’s not just the Creep alone, though, that’s disturbing. What’s truly disturbing is the Security armor trapped inside of it. I’ve said that you find it strewn along the halls, but it’s not
as if it’s just casually lying around on the ground. It’s actually trapped in the Creep itself.
The locals say it’s from the victims that Sally claimed when she tried to force her way up into the upper levels. Obviously Security has a tight grip on any threats to the upper floors, but it’s apparent, from all the abandoned weapons and equipment, that there were some significant Security losses on Floor 16 at some point. The fact that nobody from Cleanup came afterward indicates that Authority felt they’d disturb or agitate the situation further by sending in more people. Even these days, we try to avoid the west wing. Still, every once in a while, I go through and look. It’s really more for people that live on that floor. It gives them some peace of mind.
Well, you can imagine that by the time we’ve finished our parades upstairs, then gone through checkpoints, and finally finished doing extended patrols, that we’ve already burned a lot of time. You’re right. This process is something that Authority might want to address later, but as for now, it takes nearly the entire day just to make our way down to Floor 21.
My personal recommendation is that Authority make a more consistent effort of using Security on the lower levels to assure the people living there that we’re actually protecting them. That they have no reason to fear the Creep.
Of course, I wonder if, by Floor 21, any of that would make a difference.
A description of the current condition of Floor 21 follows.
As Authority is well aware, Floor 21 has been the first line of defense against the Creep for as long as we can remember now. There are, of course, rumors that at one time we lived lower in the tower. However, neither I nor my team have found any proof of this on any of our excursions. The items we’ve found seem to have belonged to people that lived before the Before. Also, from a practical perspective, it seems as if it would be impossible to live any farther below due to the incredibly deteriorated nature of the deep lower floors.
The first time I set foot on Floor 21, I was eighteen. I’d volunteered for the Scavengers and was quickly accepted. I say quickly because some people are only conditionally accepted due to their mental state. Those that are prone to panic or fear are first put through more extensive training sessions to see if they can master their emotions. As Authority is well aware, I never needed this. Call it whatever you will. Perhaps I lack a healthy sense of fear or self-preservation. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t panic when things go sour, and I don’t lose my cool.
That stated, even I was slightly unnerved the first time I left for the Scavenging.
One of the first things I noticed, and it is still true today, is the rustlike haze that hangs in the hallways. Some say that trace elements of the Creep disperse into the air, causing the haze. Using the same logic, we assume that the Creep causes hallucinations because it hangs so heavy in the environment. If nothing else, the years have proved that the Creep has debilitating mental effects on human beings, due to its inherent properties.
Whether that’s true or not is for Science and Authority to determine. I simply know that the already rust and concrete walls of the Tower are that much more dim on Floor 21. This is the most despised rotation for all of Security, and you can see it in their posture at the door. Even though they have their gas masks on at all times, they’re rigid, yet constantly shifting around to see if anything is approaching. You’ll notice them take an occasional look into the stairwell to see if the Creep is coming up. It never is, but that fact doesn’t ever help to relax them. Or anyone, really.
The paranoia and fear are thick, and the shadow people sightings become a daily occurrence. The bases of the walls are lined with slimy piles of what looks like muscle pushing up from the lower floors, an infestation that has to be battled against on an almost weekly basis through the use of superheated rods. Of course, you don’t want to be using flamethrowers on open walls and risking the infrastructure of the building, at least not if you don’t have to, so one of the central jobs of people living on these lowest levels is to patrol the hallways and use those red-hot rods to force back the Creep. When it recedes, so does the sticky fluid it produces, but inevitably both return. It’s just a matter of when.
People living on these floors despise their jobs, and it is no secret that they often trade their rotations with neighbors. This does come at quite a high price, though. Given the lack of supplies provided to the lowest levels, a black market of sorts has sprung up as people barter among themselves for different goods. Sometimes a man is so desperate to stay away from the abandoned halls of Floor 21 that he’ll sell an entire week’s worth of food.
It is a problem, one Authority has not addressed either by finding permanent solutions to the infestation or by reinforcing the area with Security. Even the Morale officers rarely come below Floor 17.
To be frank, the infestation at these levels is simply too high for a representative from Morale that is adjusted to the upper levels. Without the proper training, they panic and run. It is a known fact that we have lost such men into the depths of Floor 21 when these untrained men or women have lost control of their emotions and, in a blind panic, vanished into the maze that is the Tower. Where they go is impossible to determine due to the failure of surveillance equipment on these levels, a failure that goes back before my lifetime.
Those that do take on the duties of fighting back the Creep are expected to wander deep into every wing. They burn away any overgrowth in the halls or excreting from doorways, but they’re also expected to monitor growth in the old elevator shafts as well as various nooks and hiding spots of the Tower. It is, of course, a massive building, and so a thorough patrol of every inch of the halls is impossible. When an overgrowth goes unmonitored for too long, it causes a chain reaction upward through the higher levels, leading to a lockdown situation. Fortunately we haven’t experienced this much since the emergency situation last year, when we lost multiple Security agents in the Stockholm Incident and engaged the Creep in a long battle throughout the night.
I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone in Authority about the Stockholm Incident, so I’ll continue.
My team uses the same room each time we spend the night on Floor 21. As I sit here on the ground, I can’t help but laugh. Due to constant vigilance, there is no sign of infestation where we stay. There is neither muscle nor skin growth, no signs of the fluid, and yet it takes daily scrubbing simply to keep this one room clean. It is no wonder we are unable to make significant pushback against the Creep if it takes this much effort just to keep it out of one room.
At any rate, the men are relaxed. They’ve become as used to this as possible, and a few are playing cards. We’ve got one young man, named Mike, looking forward to this being his last expedition before he puts in for his four-year reserve term. He’s a good person that’s always kept a calm head. It’ll be a shame seeing him rotate out of the team, but I hope he finds a real solid job on his floor. Guys like him deserve it. I know he’s said before that he has a few friends up there. At least once he’s mentioned a girl, Jackie, that he says is too young for him, but that he’s at least decent friends with. I doubt he’s completely honest about her being too young for him, but stuff like that keeps me laughing. Like I said, this is why Authority puts up with me, right? Because I can laugh in the face of conditions even when I’m about to plunge into the Deep Creep.
At any rate, I hope you all are at least happy with my report on conditions down here. I know Councilman Waters says I waste a lot of audio time recording things that aren’t important, but that’s just one of the ways I keep my calm. And I doubt Councilman Waters wants my team dying because their commander wasn’t allowed to do the things that keep him relaxed.
Do you, councilman? I know you’re listening to this.
Commander Vick’s Report Number Nine
It’s hard to explain to people just how we manage to find ways to sleep when we’re in the Deep Creep, but it’s pretty second nature by this point.
So, just a little over a week into the Sc
avenging, and we’ve managed to secure a room on Level 30 that’s actually not too uncomfortable. We’ve rarely been this far down the north wing. See, that’s the problem when people think about what scavenging is like. Most think it’s this mad plunge into the bowels of the building. In reality, the Tower is so huge that at times we can just wander into wings we’ve never set foot inside of before.
We’re actually following up on a hunch that Mike had. Not the most accurate guy with a gun, but I’ll give him some credit. That guy is a living map. He has a sense of navigation like I’ve never seen, and it’s one more reason that I enjoy having him on the team. A good sense of navigation is important to surviving in the Deep Creep, especially if you get separated from your team.
We’d just finished descending down the elevator shaft. As you know, there are many places below Floor 21 where the staircase is either sealed off, destroyed, or just too densely infested. So, we’d only just gotten down onto Floor 30 when he turns to me and starts asking about investigating hallway 30-15. It takes me a second to look it up on my tablet, since I don’t have the gift of guidance that he does. First thing I notice when I find it is that it’s an area we’ve been through at least a half-dozen times over the last two years. Basically, the hall’s been picked dry of any goods.
He won’t let it go, though. He looks pretty determined, and he tells me, “I’ve got a hunch.”
I stare at him for a second, trying to figure him out. Still, it’s Mike. Cool head, never panics, so I know he has a reason for saying this. “Fine,” I tell him. “We’ll head over there. Any particular reason why, though?”
“I’ve been thinking about ways to get through to Polar North.”
Polar North. I almost laugh at him. “That area’s impossible to get into,” I say. “I’ve been with more than a few teams that have tried to find their way in there, and we’ve never had luck. Not to mention 30-15 has no access to it.”