The Iso-Stasis Experiment (The Experiments)

by Jacqueline Druga

  THE ISO-STASIS EXPERIMENT

  by

  Jacqueline Druga

  The Iso-Stasis Experiment

  By Jacqueline Druga

  Copyright 2011 by Jacqueline Druga.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ann, again, you pulled through, thank you for the super hard work.

  Wolf Photo Used with permission from © serge-b - Fotolia.com

  PREPARATIONS AND INTRODUCTIONS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Iso-Stasis Experiment Nine - Coville River, Alaska

  March 3, 1982 - 4:42 A.M.

  Seeing was not something Jasper Herring had to do in order to know how close he was to death. The cold air clashed with the hot breath of the silver back wolf and caused a stench filled steam that laced the inside of his nostrils and lungs with each deep running breath he inspired. With each panting growl the putrid smell had grown stronger and Jasper sensed the wolf was only a mere few feet behind him.

  He knew he was losing ground. His pace had slowed; his movement had become sluggish and difficult as his pounding feet sank into the muddy river bank. Running for his life, fighting for freedom, Jasper then made a fatal mistake. He looked back.

  One scream, one harrowing scream was all he released. With a snarling lunge, jaws wide, the wolf struck. Jasper was silenced as the wolf’s teeth penetrated his throat and the weight of the animal drove him to the ground.

  “He’s over here!” Sergeant Jed Lambert cried as he raced through the wooded area and emerged in the clearing near the river’s bank. He lowered his revolver when he saw the battle taking place at the water’s edge. A battle Jasper had long since lost.

  The wolf violently shook Jasper’s lifeless body as if it were nothing more than a rag doll. Sgt. Lambert debated on whether to at least try to do something but quickly realized any effort would be futile. He turned to head back to the compound just as Ben Owens raced from the woods.

  Ben couldn’t speak. He let out a gasping shriek when he saw what was happening to Jasper, cocked his revolver and raised it to shoot.

  The soft but firm ‘no’ spoken by Sgt. Lambert grabbed the attention of the wolf. Releasing Jasper’s body, the wolf turned his head. The glow of his yellow eyes met Sgt. Lambert’s only briefly before his attention returned to his prey. Grasping Jasper’s head in his powerful jaws, the wolf pulled and twisted until he tore the head from the body. Carrying it in his mouth like a trophy the wolf took off down the river bank.

  “Let’s go,” Sgt. Lambert said. He grabbed Ben’s arm and pulled the much smaller man back into the woods. “We can hole up at the compound. It’s safer there.”

  “But IT is back there.”

  “Three hours, Ben.” Sgt. Lambert raced forward. “Wolves are out. We stand a better chance back there. We have three hours left of this experiment.” He stopped running when he no longer heard Ben’s footsteps behind him. He looked back and saw Ben had stopped a few yards back. He stood paralyzed with a look of sheer terror on his face as he desperately scanned the woods around him. “Ben?” Sgt. Lambert called.

  Ben looked at Sgt. Lambert and then up as the loud chesty growl that was neither animal nor human echoed through the trees. “I . . . I can’t. I’m scared,” he cried, unable to move.

  “Fine, but I’m surviving this. With or without you, Ben, I am surviving this. Good luck.” There wasn’t time to waste. The compound wasn’t that far away and Sgt. Lambert took off.

  Ben stood alone, but only for a moment. With wobbling legs he sped forward to catch up with the only man with whom he felt safe— the only man other than himself that was still alive.

  Once inside the compound Ben huddled in a corner, knees pulled close to his chest, body trembling. His hands, one clutching his revolver, were pressed so tightly to his ears that blood trickled down his face where the gun’s handle had dug deep into his temple. He hid in the corner of the windowless room and watched as Sgt. Lambert placed every piece of furniture in the room against the steel door, barricading them in, safeguarding them from what seemed to follow them no matter where they went. It called for them in the most horrifying of screams. The cries grew louder and louder. They no longer came from outside the compound... but from within.

  Backing up, gun aimed at the door, Sgt. Lambert took a deep breath and readied himself to face the beast.

  Ben lifted his eyes. “We’ll never make it.”

  “We’ll make it!” The Sergeant heard the heavy footsteps of the beast as it rumbled through the compound and neared the door to the inner room where they hid. “Three hours, Ben. We can beat this. We can do this! Raise your weapon.”

  Ben used the wall as leverage and slid himself up on his feet. “I can’t die like the others. I’ve got only two bullets left.”

  “I’ve got five. Goddamn it, we can take it down!” Sgt. Lambert yelled with determination, not fear, in his voice. The bellowing cries sounded so close they could have been in the room. He watched as the steel door began to bend with each hard pound it took from the other side. “Ben, stay with me. Are you with me?” Sergeant Lambert needed to feel Ben’s presence next to him. Side by side they stood a fighting chance. Firing together they could take down whatever this beast was that was trying so desperately to make its way in. His eyes were focused on the door as it began to give way. Hearing Ben whimpering angered him. “Ben, I need you with me on this. We have to do this together.”

  “I can’t die like the others. Like . . .” Ben paused looking at the limbless and bloodied body shredded in the other corner of the room, “. . . like her.”

  “Then damn it, give me your weapon and I’ll do this alone!”

  Ben raised his gun. As he extended the weapon toward Sgt. Lambert, the noise level in the room grew louder. The growling and the banging were unbearable. The final blow for Ben was the crack of the archway that fought with its last splinter of wood to protect him and the Sergeant. Ben screamed. His ears were filled with the sound of rushing blood and the loud beating of his heart against his chest. He was consumed by the smell and fear of death. “I can’t die like this. Neither can you.” Without another word, without another thought, he fired a single shot.

  Sergeant Lambert stood for only a second, his eyes shifted to meet Ben’s and then he dropped his weapon and fell to the floor.

  The crashing of the failing archway brought Ben’s eyes from Sergeant Lambert to the door that was seconds from crashing inward. Knowing he had only one shot left, Ben lifted the revolver. No longer was he frightened. No longer did he tremble. He put the gun to his temple and fired.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Iso-Stasis Experiment Twelve

  Caldwell Research Institute, Atlanta, GA

  June 14 - Present Day

  The glow of the monitor gave an odd blue tint to Dr. Randal Jefferson’s grey hair as he peered at the freeze-frame view of the woman sitting at the long interview table. Blonde straight hair, she was a plain sort of pretty, and looked at the interviewer rather than the camera he stood behind. Dr. Jefferson pressed ‘play.’

  “Ms. Reynolds, what would you say motivated you to apply to take part in this experiment?” asked the interviewer.

  “Seclusion… Challenge…Money.”

  “And what makes you confident you will emerge successfully from the experiment?”

  “The fact that I fear nothing,” she replied coldly.

  Off went the tape and with a bite to his bottom lip Dr. Jefferson chuckled. Perhaps
the reason for watching the tape again was reassurance, reassurance that he had not made the wrong decision in his selection of Cal Reynolds. She was so unlike the other female applicants and the participants in earlier experiments. Cal was petite and frail looking, and yet Dr. Jefferson sensed she would somehow defy her seemingly obvious physical limitations and emerge successfully from the final stage of the screening.

  She didn’t try to put up a front or convince them she was ‘the perfect candidate.’ Cal didn’t try to act cold and fearless—she was cold and fearless. It was evident just by looking at her. There was no life in her blue eyes, none at all. Dr. Jefferson attributed that to the loss of her thirteen year old daughter who had been tragically murdered less than a year earlier.

  Decisions had to be made and Cal was one of ten women left. Only two would be chosen to go and Dr. Jefferson knew which two were his choices.

  Closing the thick folder that contained the application and test results of Cal Reynolds, Dr. Jefferson stood up from his desk, scooped up the folder and slowly moved his short, stout body toward his office door. He looked and acted older than his fifty-three years. Dr. Jefferson blamed that on the Iso-Stasis experiments.

  “Ms. Reynolds,” he called out as he stepped from his office into the small reception area.

  Cal put down the magazine she was holding and turned around to face him.

  “All ready.” Dr. Jefferson handed the folder to her. “All your paperwork is in there. You’ll move forward to the physical testing now. This is it . . .” He took a deep breath and extended his hand. “Good luck.”

  Handshake first, then Cal took the folder. “Thank you for the opportunity.” She bent down to her small knapsack that rested against a chair, lifted it and tossed it over her shoulder.

  “All the way down the hall, last door on the left.”

  A woman of little words, Cal nodded with a polite smile. With the folder stuffed under her arm, she opened the door and stepped into the hall. Dr. Jefferson hadn’t said whether it was left or right, but since he used the term ‘all the way down,’ Cal made the deduction that the seemingly endless hallway to her right was the correct direction.

  This was literally the final step of the process. She had come so far. Cal knew her chances were good. During the six month screening procedure the applicant number had gone from over seven hundred down to less than one hundred and she was still in the running. She had envisioned in her mind what the other applicants were like even though she never met any of them, or at least didn’t know it if she had. And she wanted to. There was nothing wrong with seeing the competition. It had become an obsession to look for them, like hidden Christmas gifts, whenever she went to the institute. Staring at everyone she passed in the hallways who didn’t wear a ‘Caldwell’ name tag, she’d wonder, ‘Is he one? Is she one?’

  She wasn’t ‘nosey’ by nature, but the folder in her arms dealt with her and she was curious. The journey to the testing area was a good walk and Cal used that time to leaf through the papers and scan them quickly. Occasionally she’d glance up from her reading and walking to see if she had reached the end of the hall. She figured she’d run into it if she wasn’t paying attention and got caught up in the file. Unfortunately, for her, she was right. She came to a sudden halt when she hit, not the wall, but a person. He could have been a walking, moving slab of concrete for as solid of a connection as she made with him. With the surprise of the hit, Cal’s hands released the papers which went flying about the hall. “Shit.” Cal frazzled, lifted her hands and looked down.

  “Ma’am, I am very sorry.” His voice was deep and soft. It had a resonating sound to it, almost as if he was trying diligently to speak softly but had to put out an effort to do so. “Here, let me help you.”

  “No, that’s all right.” She crouched down, catching glimpse of his blue eyes as he bent down also to help her. “It’s my fault; I wasn’t paying attention . . .” She noticed his uniform, full dress, and Army, something she knew well. “ . . . Major.”

  His eyes shifted to his lapel and the military give-a-way of his rank that graced it. He gave a slight smile of ‘impressed’ as he helped gather and straighten the mess. “You recognized the oak leaf?”

  “I should.” She stood up, taking a breath when she noticed how much he actually towered over her. She was surprised she hadn’t knocked herself unconscious. “Thank you. Again, I’m sorry.”

  “No problem. Have a good day.” He handed her the rest of the papers and continued on his journey in the opposite direction down the hall, eyes forward, not looking back.

  Cal looked forward also, not looking back at him. She was standing a mere five feet from the last door on the left. There were no other doors and she wondered if he had just emerged from the testing area. In her mind she decided he probably had. The Major she had just encountered was exactly the type she envisioned would apply for the project. No doubt he was probably exactly what they were looking for. His score would probably kill hers in the physical division. Trying not to let it bother her, she entered the lab. Cal knew she had one thing in her favor—determination. She needed the project more than she would ever let them know.

  ^^^^

  Dr. Jefferson was a bit shocked when Major Jacob Graison entered his office. That he was a quiet man of few words had been noted in the reports, but what took Dr. Jefferson by surprise was his appearance and also the way he handled himself. He had prepared for his first meeting with the Major, but he wasn’t prepared for what walked in. Major Graison was a man who led and trained the Rangers. Dr. Jefferson had expected someone crass, someone rough, someone whose demeanor came off as frightening as his size. But even with the deep scars scattered about his face, Major Graison didn’t project ‘fear.’ Instead, the big, brown haired, rough featured man came across as meek and almost too polite. There had to be a mistake. The Army’s recommendation had coded him as deadly and yet he gave Dr. Jefferson the impression he’d try to reason a person out of smashing a bug.

  Major Graison sat up straight in his chair, perfect posture, yet relaxed, his hands loosely folded on his lap, forefingers tapping quickly on each other. He sat stone faced, watching only with shifting eyes as Dr. Jefferson paced back and forth reading from the folder.

  “It says here, Major . . .” Dr. Jefferson stopped pacing and lifted his eyes, “that you consider yourself a very private person. You do know son, that if you are selected to participate, information about you will be placed in a manuscript for others to read.”

  “I do know that, sir. What I do is no secret and who I am is no secret either. I would expect them to learn about me and I expect to learn about the others as well.”

  “Including details of your personal life?” Dr. Jefferson asked.

  “My career leaves no room for a personal life.”

  With the open folder, eyes still focusing on it, Dr. Jefferson moved behind his desk and sat down. “As you know Major, this study is done to show the mental and physical effects of isolation from civilization on different types of people. If chosen, you will be placed in an isolated compound with seven others for a period of seven months. No communication whatsoever with the outside world will be possible. You’re here because we notified the Pentagon we were repeating the Iso-Stasis experiment. As always, they selected the top forty men who best met the physical and mental qualifications for the experiment and you are one of six left. Only one of you will go on to represent the United States Military. You’ve made it quite far.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “In fact, your psychiatric scores are the highest of all the military we’ve interviewed.”

  “I expected as much.” Major Graison nodded. “I’ve taken many of those tests and have always scored high.”

  “I’ve seen your scores.” Dr. Jefferson looked impressed. “I also have a copy of a mental evaluation done on you after you completed a similar military experiment. You were locked alone in a room, eight by eight by eight, for thirty days, with no human conta
ct, just the clothes on your back. They gave you a notebook and pencil to journal your experience.” Dr. Jefferson continued reading. “Your handwriting never altered and you emerged in top form, both physically and mentally. That’s very impressive.”

  “Thank you, sir. That’s why I feel this project will seem like a vacation compared to those thirty days, especially with the institute providing some entertainment stimulus . . . reading materials and so forth.”

  “You really think so? For seven months? Is this something you would like to do?” Dr. Jefferson asked.

  “It is something asked of me to do. It’s my job. I’ve no family so I won’t be missed nor will I miss anyone. To be honest, if I’m chosen to go—I go. If not, it’s no sweat off my back.”

  “What about the compensation?” Dr. Jefferson fiddled with the pen in his hand. “A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money for someone in the military.”

  “Yes, sir, it is. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s a very tempting amount. However, I’m in no financial bind so the money isn’t my drive.” Major Graison still sat in the same attentive position.

  “What will be your drive, Major, the will to survive?”

  “The will to survive?” The corner of Major Graison’s mouth raised and he tried to hide his smile. “Being isolated with seven people in a remote spot with entertainment, food, and the freedom to move about the compound is not surviving, it’s merely biding time.”

  “It doesn’t even sound challenging to you?”

  “No, sir, it doesn’t. Now perhaps that’s not the answer you’re looking for. Perhaps that’s the answer that will be the deciding factor in not selecting me to go. But it’s the way I feel.”

  “I see.” Dr. Jefferson wrote down. “You have a lot of confidence, and rightfully so.” Dr. Jefferson did want to add arrogance to that statement but refrained. “As I said before, you scored highest out of all the military we interviewed, second highest of all the other applicants.”