Sun and Andy looked at one another. Then Andy nodded to the General. “Lead the way.”
Andy, Sun, and Jerry followed Kane over to a large pile of logs between two leaning pine trees. Close inspection revealed that they were fake, made of thick, painted plastic and secured to a large metal plate. The plate slid aside automatically as they approached, revealing a murky stairwell leading into the earth. It was Samhain all over again.
“The Spiral has recently been upgraded,” Kane told them. “But I’m afraid the entrance has seen better days. Mind your step on the way down as some of the steps have decayed after so long underground.”
Everybody headed down the staircase. The large metal plate slid closed above them and a line of naked bulbs on the ceiling switched on. Many of the bulbs had blown-out or were flickering.
After a few hundred harsh, concrete steps, the staircase ended at a set of modern aluminium doors. The doors slid apart as the group got closer, revealing the shiny interior of a burnished steel elevator vestibule big enough to hold an SUV.
“The refurbishments start here,” said Kane. “After the Samhain incident, a majority of our facilities were revamped and retrofitted with new security protocols. Each room and hallway has an alarm.” He pointed to the wall, at a red square with a lever on it. “Pull it, and the entire complex goes on lockdown. We also have a small contingent of armed security staff, so please don’t be alarmed by the sight of weaponry.”
Andy felt simultaneously better and worse. It was good that the facility was more protected than Samhain had been, but bad that it was yet another facility that needed to be guarded in the first place.
“Needless to say,” Kane said, “but everything you are about to see must be kept in absolute secrecy. You all know what will happen if you don’t. Now, please, step into the elevator.”
The group stepped inside the vaulted cabin. There were no controls on the wall. Kane simply said, ‘Spiral, Level 2’.
The elevator began to descend.
“It automatically detects my security card.” Kane produced a credit card sized piece of plastic from his pocket and showed it to them. “Without one of these cards or a visitor’s access fob the elevators will not work. Only a few key people have full access, and even if they have the card they also need specific codes to do certain things, like open cell doors. Just one of our many security features.”
“I feel like I’m on an episode of Fringe,” said Jerry.
“Believe me,” Andy said. “The awe wears off quickly.”
“Let’s try to stay positive, honey.” Sun took his hand. “We don’t know anything yet.”
“I am positive,” Andy said. “I’m positive it’s going to be awful.”
“Don’t be overly concerned, Mr. Dennison-Jones,” Kane said. “We’ve got a good team here, and a good facility. There hasn’t been an accident at the Spiral for eight years.”
“Let me guess why I’m here. Did you get some new addition? Something that looks like a demon from hell?” Andy folded his arms. “If so, your eight year safety streak is about to end.”
“We have a lot more here than demons, Mr. Dennison-Jones. You’ll find it is nothing like Samhain.”
The elevator shuddered to a stop and the doors immediately opened. What greeted them was like nothing they had ever seen before.
It was not at all like what Andy had been expecting. General Kane had been right.
It was nothing like Samhain.
Chapter Four
Sun was concerned about her husband. She knew that beneath his veneer of calm, Andy was terrified. How could he not be? After what had happened the last time they’d been underground courtesy of the US government, it was a wonder he’d managed to remain sane. The same was true of her, of course. Despite the contentment she had found in Andy’s arms, and the outright joy that her engagement and recent marriage had brought, she was still deeply damaged. She often lay awake in bed, knowing that Andy, too, was probably feigning sleep beside her. She would think about the terrors they had seen together and knew that if sleep eventually did find her it would be draped in a shroud of nightmares.
And now it seemed as though her nightmares were about to receive a follow-up booster shot.
When the elevator doors opened, Sun’s apprehension was alleviated somewhat. Samhain had been a technological kluge beneath the desert, much of it older than anyone working there. But what she was looking at now was an entirely different ball game.
“Welcome to Spiral level 2,” said General Kane. He stepped out in front of them and gestured like a magician revealing some great illusion. “Or as we like to call this area, the Nucleus. We’re fifty meters down. But there’s far more than just this.”
Sun stepped out of the elevator and glanced around, tilting her head in all directions. The vaulted ceilings were a hundred-feet high above an area the size of a football field. Glass partitions separated numerous banks of blinking computers and expensive modern desks. There were so many people milling about the area that it could have passed for the call center of some mundane corporation.
“This is where 80% of the facility’s staff operates,” said Kane. “From here we can control security, communication, and all other aspects of the day-to-day running of the site. Our entire network is powered by one of the world’s most powerful super computers and protected by the most sophisticated firewalls in existence.”
“I bet you get some killer frame rates on Call of Duty,” Jerry said.
“With a computer like that, why do you need a translator?” Andy asked. “With all this power you could translate the Voynich manuscript.”
“We did that already,” Kane said. “Interesting stuff.” Apparently they’d deciphered one of history’s most perplexing riddles. But before Andy could follow-up, Kane added, “Tell me, Mr. Dennison-Jones, do you know Manx?”
Andy nodded. “A Goidelic language, a dead branch of Celtic that was once popular on the Isle of Man.”
“In the Irish Sea?” Jerry asked.
Sun frowned. “Please tell me you’re just holding a leprechaun, and need my husband to learn where he buried his pot of gold.”
“Unfortunately, no, Ms. Dennison-Jones. But we’ve got some things that make leprechauns seem positively normal. Follow me.”
The group re-entered the elevator and this time Kane gave a different command: “Subbasement 1.”
The elevator began to descend.
“We’re heading another hundred meters down,” said Kane. “It will take a few minutes. In the meantime let me explain why this facility is not like one you may have seen before. Samhain was built in 1906 by President Roosevelt and was designed to contain a single subject. This facility is far older and grander in its purposes.”
“How much older?” Sun asked.
“The site’s footprint has changed dozens of times since its initial construction. It has expanded, been dug down deeper, reinforced. The very first facility here was above ground and much smaller. To answer your question, this site has been in operation in some form or another since 1812.”
“Bullshit!” Jerry said.
“Not at all. The facility was commissioned by the founding fathers themselves, including Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and James Madison, along with Joseph-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was king of Spain at the time. This area was New Spain back then, and the facility was built by the Masons and the Catholic Church.”
“Okay,” Sun held up a hand. “You’re starting to get Dan Brown on us now. You expect us to believe that there’s some sort of conspiracy dating back almost all the way to the birth of our nation?”
Kane laughed. “A conspiracy? I don’t know if I’d describe it like that. But it was for the greater good, most certainly. As for it dating back to the birth of our nation, things go back much further than that.”
Sun frowned. She rubbed at her arms and felt goose bumps. The air in the elevator chilled as they cut deeper into the earth. “How much further back?” she asked.
/> The elevator stopped. The doors opened.
“We’re here,” said Kane, stepping out into the corridor and gesturing to a huge painting on the wall in front of them. The focus of the picture was a saintly figure in wonderful, golden robes.
Kane smiled at them like a monkey who’d been taught how to smoke. He told them, “Our project was created by St. Clement the first. In the year 94.”
Sun shook her head. It couldn’t be. She scanned through her brain’s knowledge banks, fact checking her own thoughts. The man in the painting, St. Clement, was the third Pope in history, consecrated by St. Peter himself. Sun had taken a great interest in religious history since Samhain. Things she had once thought ancient and unimportant had become pressing concerns.
“What you are about to see,” Kane said, “was started by a group of devoted individuals coming together under the collective name of Deus Manus.”
Sun looked at her husband for an explanation.
He quickly gave one. “It means ‘God’s hand’.”
Kane nodded and smiled. “It does indeed. The reason this facility stands is to protect humanity from the worst evil to ever walk the earth. And with that cryptic introduction, allow me to introduce you to some of our guests.”
Chapter Five
The corridor in which they were standing had clean magnolia walls. They curved slightly, as if the hallway was circular and joined back on itself like a snake consuming its own tail. Spaced apart every ten feet or so was a collection of doors. They were thick steel, maybe titanium, and had viewing hatches like you would find in a prison. There were no locks, nor any handles on the doors. Instead, each door had a small LED touchscreen built into the wall beside it.
“There are four main levels to the upper facility,” Kane explained, “such as the Nucleus on level 2 and the staff dormitories on level 4. Below those four levels are five subbasements; with this being the first: subbasement 1. Each subbasement is a curved hallway with elevators on either end. The deeper you go, the more, well, colorful, the guests become. Of all the places to begin your tour, this level is probably the wisest place to begin. The lower levels may be a tad too much to take in without being properly acclimatised beforehand.”
Sun breathed in, and her olfactory senses were assaulted by smells of strange animals. It brought back, unbidden, memories of the last time she’d seen Bub. She saw him all the time in her nightmares. She didn’t relish the prospect of seeing him again. Or anything equally evil.
Kane stopped and turned around. Sun almost bumped into the back of him, and Andy almost into the back of her. Jerry was dawdling several feet behind with an anxious look on his face.
“Okay, let’s start with cell number 9. As good a place as any.” Kane went up to the nearest door and pressed his thumb against the LED screen. It flashed green and let out a friendly beep. Kane then prodded at the panel several times with his index finger, navigating various menus.
The hatch at the top of the door slid open.
“Take a look,” said Kane.
Sun looked over at her husband. Andy had grown pale. He was staring at the hatch but making no move towards it. She knew the memories of Samhain were flooding back to him, just as they were to her.
Sun touched Andy’s hand with hers. “I’ll go,” she said.
She took a step towards the door. And then another.
Then she was standing in front of the hatch. Taking a deep breath, Sun leaned forward. Her eyes went wide.
“What the hell is that?”
“That, Ms. Dennison-Jones, is an imp. Quite harmless in most instances, but they can still give a nasty bite. Real nasty.”
Sun stared into the cell. The interior was almost like a habitat at a zoo. It was a vast rectangle, stretching fifty feet backwards in a widening arc. Sun spotted a rock cave and a small pond amongst artificial reeds and rubbery plant life.
The creature inside was almost human, childlike in its stature and no bigger than thirty centimeters tall. What made it decidedly inhuman was its green, glistening skin, sticky as an earthworm’s. A ropey tail swished behind the creature and a pair of cranial bumps rose behind its ears like stunted horns.
The imp realised that it was being watched through the hatch and returned Sun’s gaze. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw its ears prick up and its tail begin to wag faster.
Is it happy to see me?
Sun stood aside so that Andy could take a look. His reaction was equally as shocked. As soon as he had seen enough, Jerry took his turn.
“You’re winding me up,” he said. “That’s some kind of animatronic. Either that or you’ve been messing around with nature like that dickhead in Jurassic Park.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t get the reference,” said Kane.
Jerry’s eyes widened. “You never saw Jurassic Park?”
“If you are referring to a movie then I’m afraid I have to admit to finding little time for such things. The recreation area of the Spiral has an extensive video library but I prefer books.”
Jerry huffed. “Jurassic Park was a book first, man.”
“The reference is still lost on me.”
“It’s about dinosaurs. Scientists clone dinosaurs so they’re no longer extinct.”
Kane chuckled. “Who says they’re extinct? We have several of them down here.”
“Cool!” Jerry said. “Which ones? Got any Velociraptors? Did you know Carcharodontosaurus was a bigger predator than T-Rex?”
“I don’t know their names, but some we have are big.”
“Excuse me,” Sun interrupted the exchange. As fascinating as dinosaurs were, they weren’t malevolently intelligent and plotting the destruction of the world. “Can you explain a little more about what you have in there? You said it’s an imp? As in a little demon?”
Kane nodded his head slowly. His aging eyes had narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned downwards. “I’d have thought you’d be willing to believe in such things by now, Ms. Dennison-Jones. As for it being a demon, I don’t know. All I can say is that the dirty little thing is an organic life form and that the first one was captured several centuries ago. It was housed in Sarajevo until the hostilities there led to the facility becoming compromised.”
“A Sarajevo facility? What the hell was the US government doing there?”
“You misunderstand. The facility did not belong to the United States. It was under the control of the Bosnian government. The society of Deus Manus goes beyond boundaries. It is older than many of the nations which exist today and has influence exceeding them all. It is a collective of societies, organizations, individuals, and governments, all unified in the quest to capture and contain evil.”
Sun raised an eyebrow. “Evil?”
Kane gestured to cell number 9. “I don’t mean the notion of evil—some philosophical debate about the inner nature of man. I mean evil as a living, breathing being, like that thing in there. This facility—and many others like it—were built to contain the predators that have haunted men’s nightmares since the dawn of time. We are the jailors of nightmares. The Spiral is a giant underground prison; the safest maximum-security prison ever built. And there are dozens of others just like it, all over the world. The cells are mostly automated. Food is released from shafts in the ceilings and water is piped in through several taps.”
“Live food?” Sun asked.
“It depends on the particular needs of the guest. If they require something live, or fresh, we ship it in daily. Imps, for example, prefer chickens. They eat everything, including the feathers.”
“Are they intelligent?” Andy asked.
“Maybe a bit dumber than chimpanzees.”
“How about the other creatures you house here?”
“None as smart as we are, Mr. Dennison-Jones. That’s why they’re in the cells, and we’re out here.”
Jerry tapped on the hatch. “This is mad. My blog readers—”
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“�
�will never know, because I’m never telling anyone. Frak, silence sucks. Last night I had breakfast with two guys dressed as Borg and a dude who insisted the Book of Revelation was happening right now. They’d flip out if they knew this.” He caught a look from Kane and quickly added, “But they never will.”
“How many guests do you have here exactly?” Sun asked, dreading what the answer might be.
“Each subbasement has eighteen cells. They are all mostly full.”
Sun did the math. “You have almost ninety creatures held here?”
Kane shook his head. “You’re assuming that occupancy is one per cell.” He pointed back at cell number 9. “Take a closer look.”
Sun went back over to the hatch and peered inside. She waited a moment, but then she saw it.
“There’s more of them in there.”
Inside the habitat, several more imps appeared from amongst the foliage. They were of varying sizes, but all had the same green skin and swishing tails. They gathered in front of the rock cave and faced the hatch, four in total.
“We let the dirty little things breed,” Kane said. “But we keep their numbers low. Once a year we cull any creatures that are over the thresholds we set. Either that or we use them for our research.”
Sun looked in at the group of childlike creatures and suddenly felt a tug of guilt. “They’re a family?”
Kane folded his bony arms. His demeanor had become much cooler. “You could call it that, I suppose. As much as you would call a pack of rats a family. Come on, I’ll show you the next cell.”
The group moved on like a tour group in the world’s most surreal museum. They stopped in front of cell 10 and Kane once again operated the LED panel beside the door.
The hatch opened.
Sun was again the first person to look inside. This time the interior was a blank canvass of grey bedrock. In several places the ground was puckered, rising up into small craters. The whole habitat reminded Sun of the surface of the moon.
I don’t see anything.
Then something caught her eye. It was about twenty feet inside. She adjusted her vision and focused on one of the craters. Something big was lurking inside. The only thing that distinguished it from the shadows was its brief fidgety movement.
Holes in the Ground Page 3