Dulce Base (The Dulce Files Book 1)

by Greg Strandberg

  Bobbie could only stare wide-eyed as Charlie fired off the four shots, western-style with his palm running over the hammer after each shot. A few seconds later the floor was littered with four more Grays and Bobbie knew that Clint Eastwood didn’t have shit on Chargin’ Charlie!

  “Shewww!” John whistled, coming into the room next, Emil and then Jake from Bobbie’s CAT-2 following close on his heels. He smiled and was about to crack a joke – even with Bobbie still on the ground and favoring his shoulder – when something on one of the numerous TV monitors in the room caught his attention.

  “Holy shit!”

  Bobbie turned his attention and quickly went up to the monitor John was looking at, just as Tommy and Sammy came into the small security facility next. There, in cages and spread all out on what looked to be a massive open floor area, were human females, most crying piteously for help by the look of it, though there was no sound coming from the monitors.

  “So many…” Tommy said, walking up to the monitors, his eyes wide. “There were never supposed to be so many…”

  “What is he talking about?” Bobbie asked, coming up to the two. Charlie turned about quickly and gave him a strange look.

  “How’s that shoulder?”

  Bobbie gave him a hard look, then slammed his shoulder into a pair of low-level cabinets hanging from the ceiling.

  POP!

  “Aaahhh!”

  “Shit!”

  Charlie continued shaking his head after the curse, once again surprised by the sheer strength, and outright stupidity, of Bobbie and the rest of the super soldiers. For his part, Bobbie just laughed and shrugged, though it was clear he was in pain.

  “Fixed now,” was all he said as some tobacco juice drooled from one corner of his mouth, then pointed at the monitors. “So what gives?”

  “What gives is that–”

  “We were had,” Walter said, and the men turned to see their commander coming into the room. It was clear he’d been in some fire fights, as one side of his face was covered in the greenish-goo that was either the Gray’s blood or the liquid they bathed in…maybe both. He took one look at the monitors then shook his head. “This isn’t just a search and destroy mission anymore, gentlemen – it’s a rescue mission.”

  “A rescue…” Charlie scoffed, then just trailed off, shaking his head.

  Walter nodded. “A rescue mission.” He nodded at the monitors, as if that should make it all obvious.

  “What…what is it…Walter?” he asked after he’d threw up his arms, for there were two different scenes, depending on which monitors you looked at, which side of the room you could handle. One held the women, the other….

  “Hell,” Emil said, “Hell – that’s all I can think.”

  “Not Hell, but close,” Tommy said, “The Hall of Horrors.”

  On the monitors ahead of them it was clear that there were two main areas. The one on the right side of the room, stretching for as far as they eye could see by the look of it, held row upon row of large, glass vats. They looked like huge, monstrous fish tanks, though instead of clear water, each was filled with some kind of greenish…goo, was all anyone could really describe it as. But it was what was floating in those vats that really set the men’s nerves on edge.

  There were humans, rows and rows of them, most not moving, most looking dead. Several of the vats had Grays in them, some moving about, treading water if you will, others looking about as dead as the things that were floating with them. And those things were often human arms, legs, internal organs, cow parts, and even other animal parts and appendages. Walter took it all in and then thought he’d have to turn about and empty his dinner onto the concrete floor of the level ramp.

  “Easy,’ Emil said, coming up to him, “you’ve been here before, remember?”

  “Yeah, and I sure the hell don’t remember this.”

  “This wasn’t here back in ’75?” Jake asked.

  “Hell no it wasn’t!” Walter said. “I mean, we knew they were doing genetic testing, we knew about the stuff the Dutchman and Gus and all the rest told us about…but this,” he shook his head and scoffed, “this is just…”

  “It’s Hell,” Emil said again, his pipe moving about nervously, “now let’s destroy it.”

  “And what about the other side?” Bobbie said, his teeth gritted but his pain looking under control.

  “That’s Nightmare Hall,” Walter said with barely a pause, “that’s where the testing’s always traditionally gone on, where the abductees wound up.”

  “Abductees?” Charlie said. “What the hell?”

  “It was supposed to be less than a hundred at first, then it became hundreds.” Walter shook his head. “That was in ’75…who knows how many are there now.”

  “Over 30,000 captives on that one level alone,” John said, and everyone spun around to see the helmeted major looking down at some kind of clipboard…though one that looked to have a small TV screen in it.

  “What’s that?” Tommy said coming up, but John just swatted him away.

  “Some kind of hand-held computer, what’s it look like?”

  “Hand-held computer?” Bobbie laughed, but both Walter and Charlie were already moving past the other men to get a look at it, and the data it held.

  “God, it’s in English and it’s talking about places like the ‘testing facilities’ and ‘pleasure centers’ and–”

  “Where are they?” Walter said, and from his tone it was clear he was ready to rip some heads off, hopefully Grays’.

  John shook his head, the overlarge helmet swaying back and forth. “Says they’re in over sixty different locations…and there’s more than 4,500 of ‘em.”

  “Pleasure centers?” Emil said with disgust, his tongue sticking out, something that almost caused his pipe to fall on the floor…almost.

  The room grew quiet, and everyone looked to Walter, for there were only two commanders among them, and he was the only to have seen this area before. He frowned, then gestured down to the satellite phone strapped to Jake’s leg.

  “We’re calling this in to headquarters,” he said, “the mission has changed.”

  Part IV

  31 – A Change of Orders

  Kirtland Air Force Base – Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Thursday, May 24, 1979

  General Harry Anderholt sat behind his large mahogany desk and couldn’t stop tapping his fingers. He was nervous, out of sorts, and on edge. Right now the four CAT teams were in Dulce – Ellis’s son hitting the ground level, two teams fighting up to the top, and one team holding the base against enemy intrusion. Besides that there was the Fast Action Team of astronauts and engineers, plus the cleanup team held in reserve. It should be enough, he kept telling himself, but then why were those damn fingers of his tapping incessantly? Anderholt frowned at the thought and stopped tapping them, and just then the phone rang. He picked it up, unknowingly tapping his fingers all the while.

  “Anderholt,” he said in a gruff voice.

  “Sir, we’ve had developments,” the Dutchman’s voice came to him over the line.

  “Shoot,” Anderholt said. If there was one word to portray multiple feelings and answers and states of mind, General Harry Anderholt was going to use it.

  “CAT-2 just reached Level 7…Nightmare Hall.” There was a slight pause and an audible sigh and Anderholt pictured Ellis shaking his head and rubbing at his brow back at Blue Lake. “Sir, there are thousands of them, thousands of abductees…the vast majority of them women.” He paused. “The men found a report saying there were 30,000 females alone.”

  Anderholt took in a deep breath. He was afraid of this.

  “That many, huh? And how many of them are in the shape to move.”

  Once again it was a kind of loaded question, one with a double-meaning, and Ellis immediately took it both ways.

  “The ones that aren’t too far gone genetically are mostly just drugged-up…at least by what Captain Leathers is reporting,” Ellis said. “O
verall, I’d say eighty to ninety percent of the victims are salvageable.”

  “Salvageable,” Anderholt repeated with a laugh, “Ellis, they’re–”

  “They were human, at least in the case of most of them,” Ellis shot back quickly, cutting of the general’s words. He didn’t’ like challenging authority, yet it was something he did on an almost weekly basis.

  “And what are they now?” Anderholt shot right back.

  There was a tense silence on the line as the two men stood their ground. Finally Anderholt broke it with a sigh.

  “Listen, Ellis – this wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “The plans have changed sir, doesn’t this prove it.”

  “So what do you want to do…save them all?”

  “I want to give it the ol’ college try, sir?”

  Oh, Hell’s bells, Anderholt thought, but said, “it’s your show, Ellis, and your boy is running it on the ground.”

  “Not anymore, sir – I’m going in.”

  Anderholt was about to protest, but the other end of the line went dead.

  32 – The Platform

  Dulce Platform (Level 7)

  Thursday, May 24, 1979

  “Aaahhh!” First Lieutenant Robbie Biscaye yelled, bringing the two Ingram MAC-10s up and out so they were balanced on his hips. Looking on from a few feet away, Major Fred Sayer could have sworn that the four Grays that’d been rushing toward Robbie had their huge, black eyes go just a bit wider. There was really no way to tell. A split-second later Robbie pulled the triggers, and besides the ‘buzzing’ sound, sixty bullets shot out as if they were a saw cutting through air. They tore into the Grays, slicing through the frail bodies like they were twigs in a forest. The bodies were shot apart and arms and torsos and heads and necks all hung suspended in the air for a brief moment before falling haphazardly to the floor, greenish-goo everywhere.

  “Ha!” David shouted from nearby. “That was good, but check this out!”

  David waited until at least one of his team members’ eyes was on him, then turned his attention back to the small pocket of Grays huddling beside the ruined tube train that he’d already twisted to hell with the earlier grenade launcher blast. He gripped the AR-15 tightly, then pulled the trigger to the China Lake grenade launcher positioned on top. A 40x46mm grenade shot out at 249 feet per second and, making David’s heart skip a beat in delight, two of the Grays just happened to turn to look at the flying projectile right before it reached them.

  BOOM!

  The grenade hit directly in front of the Grays, and since they were standing right in the midst of the ruined tube train, each of the creatures was ripped apart as the blast sent them flying into the sharp and twisted metal still sticking out at all angles. Another black char-mark was left on the tracks and part of the platform and much of the wall and once again, there were alien body parts lying everywhere.

  “Heh,” David laughed, “how you like them apples!”

  Robbie frowned, not liking them much at all, but liking being shown-up even less. Of course the situation they were in really took the cake when it came to things he didn’t like. He may have been the only super soldier on this small four-man team down in the bowels of Dulce, but he sure felt like an insignificant crumb. A lot of that had to do with the Reptilians.

  The creatures had first arrived just a few seconds before, on one of the many trains that kept rushing to Dulce’s underground platform…from wherever the hell they were coming from. It didn’t matter much, Robbie knew, just stopping the damn things. The only consolation was that while the Grays were capable of mind attacks, the Reptilians weren’t – that’d been drummed into all the super soldiers back when they’d first trained to become the elite special forces alien killers…and protectors. For no matter how many of the vile creatures, or the equally-vile Grays (for Robbie wasn’t one to discriminate, growing up poor in the South had taught him that) came at the men, he knew that his primary responsibility was protecting the men around him…and that something he could do just by being there.

  “Here’s another one!” Donlon yelled out, breaking Robbie from his thoughts for a moment. The four men looked over, and sure enough, there was another gaggle of Reptilians coming up the tube train tracks, the sheer number of stopped trains now blocking the platform ensuring that any additional alien security forces sent in to stop the attacking human teams would have to hoof it down the tunnels, oh, probably a good 300 feet by now at the least, most of them figured. Already there were more than a dozen trains on either side of the platform, and who knew how many further back where the darkness became too much for them to see.

  Robbie bit his lip and swallowed a curse, for no matter how many invectives he hurled, the damn aliens would keep coming. He gripped the twin Ingram MAC-10 submachine guns tightly before pulling the triggers. Immediately .45 caliber ACP Parabellum bullets spit out of the 146 mm barrels, and at the astonishing rate of 1,146 rounds per minute. He arced the two guns in two steady streams, back and forth, sending wave upon wave of bullets out.

  CLICK!

  David looked over at Robbie, who frowned.

  “Damn things only get thirty to a clip!”

  David scoffed and shook his head and looked back to where the Reptilians were still charging down the tunnel, just then reaching the platform and beginning to hoist themselves up. He patted the 40mm pump-action China Lake grenade launcher at his side and smiled. “Time for the big dog to eat.”

  He pulled the trigger and the grenade launcher spat out a single grenade right into the midst of the oncoming Reptilians, blowing them to bits and pieces every which way. The creatures were something else entirely. They wore no clothes, just a sort of utility belt that held some of its weapons, and had large claw-like talons on their dinosaur-like feet. Their yellow, slit-serpentine eyes shone out of those hideous scaled-bodies as they jumped forth, a God-awful hissing sound shooting from their mouths.

  David laughed and pulled the trigger again, sending another round out and right where the first had landed. As he’d expected, there’d been another five to six Reptilians rushing right through there, expecting the route to now be clear. He pulled the trigger a third time, sending the gun’s final grenade, but this time only two of the creatures were taken out.

  “That’s the big dog!” he growled at Robbie before laughing and quickly sticking the shotgun-like grenade launcher in it’s holder at his thigh before pulling out his AR15 assault rifle.

  “Now it’s time for dessert!” Robbie shouted back, his twin MAC-10s loaded once again. Another wave of sixty bullets tore into the oncoming line of Reptilians, but on they came.

  “Shit,” Fred muttered, seeing yet another pocket of Reptilians coming down the opposite track. He put up his Colt AR15 Commando, the same assault carbine each of the men had in addition to whatever ‘toys’ they’d carried along, and the gun spat out several short bursts of small caliber rounds at a rate of 750 rounds per minute. A few Reptilians fell to the bullets, but the onrush continued.

  “They’ll overrun us,” he said, lowering the gun. Around him the men of CAT-4 frowned, and started to wonder how much time they had.

  33 – Nightmare Hall

  Nightmare Hall (Level 6)

  Thursday, May 24, 1979

  Jake rushed forward, and then tried his best to skid to a halt. There before him was a man…a hideous, deformed man.

  “Ugh…” he moaned, his head whipping down to catch sight of Jake, the movement catching his eye. Jake saw those eyes go wide, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Jake couldn’t believe what he was seeing, either. The man was stationed on some kind of large platform, at least ten feet up off the ground. It had to be that tall for the man’s testicles were as tall as small trees, and looked like large, overfilled balloons ready to burst. And between them, where Jake imagined the man’s penis was, or at least some gross caricature of it, was what he could only describe as a milking machine, like he’d seen on some dairy farms grow
ing up. The man was being milked for his sperm, his balls somehow modified to produce the stuff endlessly. Looking up into his eyes again, Jake didn’t know if that meant he was in constant pleasure, or constant pain.

  “Kill…me…” the man said, and a teardrop fell from his right eye, skimming across the black teardrop tattoo there.

  Jake didn’t have to be told twice. He raised his M16, took aim right at that small tattoo, and let off a huge burst of gunfire and a hideous yell, hoping to capture some of the man’s anguish at what he’d been put through for the past…God only knew how many years.

  Jake lowered the gun and saw that the man was dead, the aliens robbed of one of their ‘cows.’ He shook off the terrible thought and continued on, his boots drumming on the metal walkway as he ran.

  Ahead was Walter, still rushing forth into the larger, open-area of Nightmare Hall. He and Emil had gone ahead, expecting their super soldier Bobbie to be just behind. Thankfully both were just ahead and firing like madmen, oblivious to the detour off the beaten path the two men had taken.

  After making the call to General Anderholt and then getting word that the mission had changed from one of search and destroy to one of rescue and run, Walter’s demeanor had changed. It was as if he were fighting for something more, something that wasn’t part of the regular agenda.

  Jake rushed forward, actually getting ahead of Bobbie, but not enough that he was going to worry about it. His adrenaline was pumping, his heart beating fast – safety was the last thing on his mind.

  He rounded the bend and the ramp began to level off, the next level-up of the base coming right up before them. Jake, Walter, Bobbie and Emil all made it up, shoes pounding on the pavement, that the only sound as they raced higher, and then reached the top and the opening. It was there that Jake finally stopped and stood, his eyes wide and mouth agape. The TV monitors of the security facility were one thing, but seeing Nightmare Hall in person was quite another. It was the endless screaming and crying and wailing that hit them hardest of all.