by Bob Williams
SORRY YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT!
WE STARTED WITHOUT YOU!
It’s horrendous. I hear Cole stifle his gag reflex. My stomach is churning, but I turn back and focus on Shields.
She ignores the rec center side of the building and enters through the Health Services doors. The doors are partially propped open by a protruding arm. The hand appears to be clawing for an escape. Shields steps to one side, nods towards me to open the door, and immediately turns to face the way we’ve come to protect my back. Cole is sweeping side to side.
I tell myself to go ahead and open it. Not giving fear any time to creep in, I pull the door open. Turns out the arm is just an arm. There’s no body in sight and the hallway is far reaching. We rotate and Cole shifts to the front, Shields to the middle, and Lexi and I bring up the rear. I have long since drawn my Glocks and am actually itching to shoot something. It’s an odd time to have the thought, but I haven’t actually seen a Freak since I left Chicago. That’s pretty odd, right? Why is that? We spend so much time and effort being afraid of the Freaks that you don’t often think about the fact that you can, on some occasions, go weeks at a time without seeing one.
We continue down the hallway, practically creeping. We investigate every open doorway in case of a surprise attack or possible survivors. There aren’t any. We know where we’re heading but it’s going to take a while to get there.
Shields explains that there’s an office in the rear of the Health Services section that houses the Network. Invisible to the naked eye of the uninitiated, a false wall had been constructed and a steel-encased room had been created to give the Network the highest available security and protection available within the MSZ. Shields also mentions rather cryptically that the Network has some of its own fairly unique firewalls and protections. However, she isn’t holding out hope that the Network has survives until she sees it for herself.
The carnage exhibit continues as we complete our walk down the hallway, through some double swinging doors and into an area that had undoubtedly been a lab.
“We’ve trying for over a year to get to the core of what makes a Freak a Freak. The one crucial detail that we never understood before the Network was why blood samples taken from Freaks showed nothing out of the ordinary. We took a sample from a Freak we’d captured on a scouting mission up on the plateau in Sewanee. Completely restrained and in a full-on break. Labs came back O-neg. That’s it.”
“It’s not about the blood,” I say. “It’s the essence of Chaos. It’s a… uh… mystical transference. Nothing is going to show up in any labs or tests.”
“We know that now. And I’m sorry, Cole. But at the time we felt like that kind of revelation could send our fledgling operation into mass hysteria. We couldn’t risk it. We chose to link up with the bullshit the CDC was putting out. Biological Hazard-2014 seemed plausible even though we knew it wasn’t true. It was the decision of the Three. Which I guess is the One now.”
Cole shrugs. “I know now. No use crying over spilt milk. They still die the same when you shoot ‘em. The origin story, well, it is what it is.”
So Cole has truly compartmentalized and isn’t letting anything get to him. I’m starting to feel a little better about Cole, to be honest.
We don’t hang around for too long in the lab. With the number of bodies splayed out all over the place, it’s clear the people within these walls never stood a chance. They were shot, stabbed, hacked, beaten, violated, and debased in every possible way by Kade’s army. I can feel the rage coming back. My breathing increases and my body seems to be feeling every single individual act of violence that I look upon. Lexi notices my body language and accelerates her breathing and starts to whine. She bites my pants leg and begins to pull with moderate aggression in what I can only guess is an effort to get me to stop walking.
I stop and look down at Lexi. “What’s up, girl? What’s up?” Lexi jumps up on her hind legs and pushes me backwards to the floor. Before I can even start to get pissed, she starts licking my face. That’s right. She licks my face. Her tail is wagging wickedly and she to lick me until it dawns on me what might be happening. I start to smile and rub her head. “I’m good now, girl. Thank you.”
I have no way of knowing if Cory Stalker was a veteran or not, but my guess is that he was. And he most likely had PTSD. Which would mean Lexi was trained to recognize symptoms and react if she saw them. Breaking out into a sweat and my erratic breathing most likely alerted Lexi that I was close to going dark. Shields is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Cole, without a doubt, understands what just happened.
“If you’re good, Prescott, we need to proceed,” he said.
“I am, Cole, and thanks.”
“Yeah.”
Turning left out of the lab, we quickly make our way down the hallway. We continue to check every room and in each one there are more victims. This isn’t going to get any easier. When we reach the end of the hallway, we come to another set of double doors that have been completely blown to pieces by a bazooka or possibly grenades. The walls, which are spattered with a combination of shrapnel and blood, have a message that says, “PRECIOUS MACHINERY AND SUPPLIES: PROTECT AT ALL COSTS.”
It takes about five seconds to determine that this room has been targeted and summarily destroyed by the invaders. There were, among many other types of machinery, an X-ray, an ultrasound, an EKG, an MRI, and two defibrillators. Those are just the things I can name. There are several other pieces of life-saving medical equipment that have been completely annihilated. This particular room’s devastation finally cracks Cole’s hard shell. I can clearly see upwards of fifteen or so men and women in various shades of blue camouflage with security patches who died violently attempting to protect the lifeblood of the Murfreesboro Safe Zone.
It’s starting to feel like something isn’t right. I understand there weren’t a ton of people here to begin with, but the way these rooms are looking… these people look like they were ambushed. First, there are more non-security personnel in this vital location than security. Understandably the location was under a full-scale attack, but this scene isn’t right. This feels… rushed? Sloppy?
No, not sloppy. These people were unprepared.
“Hey, hold up,” I say. “Are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?”
“What do you mean?” asks Shields.
“Cole, does this feel right to you?”
“You got a lot of nerve, Prescott!” barks Cole. “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that? What the fuck about this whole fucked up situation is supposed to feel right?”
“No. No. Hold up, Shields. Stop. Listen to me. I’m a Marine. Cole, you’re a Ranger. We’ve been in firefights before. I can’t speak for Cole, but I’ve had to stand ground and fortify a base camp from invaders before. This whole thing feels wrong. I don’t need to take another step to tell you your people had no idea this was going down till it started.
“Every safe zone I’ve ever been to had long-range security visuals. Communications. Intercoms. Don’t you find it the least bit odd that the only transmission you received said they were under attack? And then what? Nothing else. No follow-up. I get that all SZs aren’t created equal, but if we’d been in Normal, Illinois, where I just came from, they would’ve seen those guys coming from five to ten miles away. They would’ve taken precautions, enacted a plan to fight, taken position, and defended their posts. The number of actual security personnel in each room we’ve been in has been too erratic to be anything official. Not with the likes of Jim Hawkins running things. This was, for all intents and purposes, an ambush. They had a mole in here.”
“The Black Hand serves,” whispers Cole.
“What?” says Shields.
“Isn’t that what they say, Shields? The Black Hand?” he says, his voice dangerously soft. “You know, the Regulars that live to forward the agenda of the eighty-eight demons of Hell. The true reason for the Collapse, the Descent, and the deaths, not just of our allies today, but countless
others. The entity that we were never able to devise a strategy for BECAUSE YOU NEVER TOLD US ABOUT THEM! How the fuck were we supposed to know that other Regulars were going to stab us in the back when all we were looking for were Freaks? Answer me that, Laura!”
Cole is going ballistic, and for the first time since I met him, I’m in complete agreement. As a soldier, you simply can’t fight the battle if you don’t have all the intel. If you try, you end up with what we’re looking at now. A lot of dead bodies and the ripe smell of a dead carcass that used to be hope.
Shields is cornered and looks frightened. “It was a decision that was agreed upon by the Three,” she says.
“Well, what did that get you? About a hundred and fifty toe tags! Unfortunately the Three can’t answer for their negligence, only you can. I sure as hell don’t see Hellwig or Haberman anywhere.”
“You know as well as I do that if they had time they would’ve gone to the Pod. They may still be in there and not know it’s safe to come out.”
“Safe to come out? We don’t even know yet if it’s safe to be in here. Do you know something we don’t Shields? Does The Black Hand serve?” Cole shouts.
“Fuck you, Michael!”
It’s time to slow this party down. “Okay, okay! Cole, I was with you all the way till the bullshit at the end. Simmer down. You can’t actually believe Shields is with The Black Hand, can you?”
“I don’t know what I believe, or who to believe at this point,” he says. I can’t blame him.
“Shields,” I say, shaking my head, “you and your two pals screwed the pooch, sweetheart. The end. You got your whole damn outfit killed. And since we can’t seem to locate your damn One and Two, you are going to have to eat that shit sandwich for as long as you live.”
“You can’t—”
“Secrets get people killed,” I say. “Ask my sister, Emily. And since I’m on a roll, you people bought way too much into the X-Files. Was Chris Carter at this SZ? Y’all have way too many stupid ass monikers. What was wrong with Hellwig, Haberman, and Shields? No wonder people died.”
She says nothing to that.
“Now where the hell is this super secret whatever the fuck room the Network is in?” I ask. “You need to take us there now. Quickest route. We can’t afford to walk through this entire zone right now. If the Network is viable, we need it. If not, we gotta suck it up and make a new plan. I’m following you. Go.”
Shields looks like she’s been slapped. Hard. And in a verbal sense she has been, but she takes it standing up and agrees to take us—finally—to the Network. I think the fact that we stood there and loudly had it out like we did, and nothing happened, basically told us the place was clean. Because of this we’re moving a little faster, but we’re still weapons hot. Lexi will let us know if she smells any Freaks before we see them.
I mean no disrespect to the dead by glossing over the fact that we proceed through another seven rooms and another seven long corridors before Shields holds up her fist, telling us to halt. The bodies, too many to count, begin to blend into the canvas of the MSZ like an old Andy Warhol painting. Shields stands with her back to us, staring at a door that has no visible description or identification. There’s no lock and key to gain access, but instead, a numeric keypad that sits in a clear box meant for its protection, which has a slot for a key. The door is made of very thick steel meant to keep out anyone or anything that doesn’t belong. Both the door and the keypad box have taken a beating, and a shooting, and possibly a bombing, but they still held. This was the home of the Network. Whatever’s behind this door is what the Murfreesboro Safe Zone just died to protect. I need to know what it is. Cole deserves to know.
She stands in silence, staring at the door for close to minute before she turns around. Her eyes shift around and she shuffles her feet more than a few times. She’s reeling. What the hell is in there?
“I can’t argue a single point you made back there, Prescott,” she says. “You’re right. We haven’t come across their bodies yet, but it appears I am the only remaining member of the Three. So I will have to suffer for all of us for the rest of my life.”
I just stare at her, not sure how to react.
“You know, you remind me a little of my late husband, Robert,” she says. “I haven’t had anyone be so brutally straightforward with me in quite a while. In more ways than you can imagine, your words cut deep, so deep I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to recover. But in some way, I find your honesty refreshing, and it provides me a sliver of hope for a future where there are no secrets and a new foundation of trust can be created. So let me begin anew right now.”
THE NETWORK
“Gentlemen, the fantasies of literature and culture, whose words and stories have rested comfortably under the banner of terms like “folklore” and “parable” for centuries have been revealed to us in a destructive and deadly manner in the last couple of years. However, if the Network did indeed survive the assault from Kade and his forces—and from the looks of things here, it did—what you are about to witness will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. And the wall of words that was constructed thousands of years ago to intentionally blur the focus between reality and fiction will fall under your scrutiny in the most glorious fashion.”
Cole and I look at each other and share the same thought: she’s crazy.
“Shields, you okay?” I ask sympathetically. “I can understand if you’re cracking. This has been a traumatic experience for you. You’re under a lot of pressure and right now, maybe it’s just a little more than you can handle.”
“Yeah,” says Cole, “maybe we should just… take a minute or two to regroup. We can talk if you need to. I know talking with you has helped me in the past when I thought I was losing my shit.”
“Look, I admit I’m far from all right, but you have to understand that I have knowledge of an entity to which there really is no introduction, but I’m trying anyway.” She sighs. “And failing. Trust your eyes, gentlemen. Follow me, and please do exactly as I say.”
She turns and walks back towards the severely damaged, yet somehow still-standing door and approaches the keypad. She reaches inside the collar of her shirt, fishes out a chain, and pulls it over her head. There’s a key on it.
“You keep the key to your most valuable asset on a chain around your neck?” I ask incredulously. “Who the hell made that decision? Henry Blake?”
“Shut up, Prescott, you asshole,” she says. “Yeah, I’m liking this honesty thing better by the minute. You two come up here and watch this.”
Shields puts the key into the clear box and turns it all the way to the right until a green light comes on. She then turns the key 360 degrees to the left, back to its original position. Another green light appears. One more turn to the left brings the key back to twelve o’clock and its original position. A final green light appears, and I hear a sound similar to a breached vacuum seal. The clear protective box retracts into the wall, exposing the keypad.
“This is a three-step process. Step one was the key. Step two is the keypad.”
She types the code 092470 into the keypad and to my surprise, the keypad rises upward, then retreats back into a thin pocket the size of a card slot on an ATM. Once the keypad disappears, a thin mechanical arm protrudes several inches from the wall. The end of the arm has a four- or five-inch bar with a flat red line in the middle.
“Part three,” says Shields, “is the scan.” She pulls back the sleeve of her coat and on the underside of her right wrist, tattooed right over the veins, is a barcode.
“That must’ve hurt like a son of a bitch,” I say.
“Focus! Once this barcode is scanned, the door will open. You and Cole go first. I’ll follow you. For now, the dog stays out here.”
She places her wrist under the scanner. I instinctively back up, not knowing what to expect. For a moment, absolutely nothing happens.
“Maybe the Network’s offline?” I say.
“For once, Prescott
, will you please just shut the hell up!” I put my hands up in an “I surrender” gesture and slide back another couple of steps behind Cole, who probably also wished I’d shut up.
It’s quiet at first, then grows in volume—the groaning and squealing of bolts, electronically coming to life and releasing. Honestly, it’s one of the most unpleasant sounds I’ve ever heard. Shortly after, a loud clanging signals that the bolt or bolts have made it to their destination, and the door swings into the room about a foot.
I want to charge in, but the unknown is too much to risk. This whole production is way past the point of a computer or super-charged CB radio. A weak stream of light filters out of the room into our hallway, giving us the opportunity to look inside before we enter. As we approach the door, the power goes out. A single light is coming through a small square window down the corridor.
I look at Cole. “You ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
With my Glock drawn and a round chambered, I start to push the heavy door open.
Shields puts her hand on my arm. “A gun at this point is absolutely unnecessary.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. I have no idea what you have in there, there’s no light, and personally, I’m over all the cryptic bullshit.”
“I’m with him,” says Cole. He produces a small Army spec flashlight, points it towards the door, and we walk into the room.
We use the extremely bright LED flashlight to tour all four corners, and there is no getting around it. The room is empty. There has to be an explanation Granted, on one wall rests a very generic military cot, but the walls are devoid of any decoration, and if someone stayed in here there was no plumbing. Was this a cell?
I turn back and Shields is standing right behind us. I grab the flashlight out of Cole’s hands and shine it in her face. She has a look of absolute horror that scares the shit out me. She clearly did not expect this.