by Steve Wands
Torrent watched Terry leave, giving his words a moment of contemplation. Was he hellbound? John didn’t think in his heart that he’d be bound to hell for the lives he’d taken. John didn’t relish in killing. He had no taste for blood and no malice in his heart. He felt sorrow for the civilian casualties he’d caused, and no glee in the death of enemies. He was a soldier, a warrior, and he felt no guilt for being these things. Sharks don’t question what they are. They just are. They swim, they eat. They have no guilt. They obey their nature as John obeys his.
4 QUICK, GET TO THE ESCALADE
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Rachel pulled over to the side of the road and pushed the phone button on her steering wheel. “Call the boss lady.” The speaker replied, “Calling boss lady.”
After a few rings, Rachel’s supervisor answered her call. “Rachel, are you okay?”
“Hey Misha, I’m fine, just a little freaked out. Did you leave for the office yet?”
“The office?! Are you serious right now? There’s zombies on the fucking news, no I didn’t leave for the office. Fuck the office.”
“I thought it was bullshit, so I went for a drive to se—”
“Stop driving around. Go home. Lock your fucking doors and windows, Rachel, seriously. This is no hoax. Call me when you get home.”
“Whoa, Misha, calm down, I’ll go—”
“No, turn back and go home. I’m hanging up, be safe.”
“Hello? Misha?”
“Call disconnected. Goodbye.”
Her mind whirled with terrible anxiety and she started breathing erratically. She hadn’t had a panic attack in years—since high school—but felt one coming on now. She gripped the wheel till her knuckles turned white and tried to calm herself down. She took deep breaths and closed her eyes. She could turn it off. She’d always been able to, but this time she felt fit to burst. She had fully intended to go to work, to pass off the news as a hoax and continue on her merry way to work. She thought of her mother and brother taking the news far more seriously than she had and immediately her anxiety climbed even higher. Her chest began to tighten as her heartbeat raced and no amount of breathing exercises were cooling her off. This was it, she was having a panic attack on the side of the road during the beginning of what could be a zombie apocalypse—some stupid B-movie bullshit come to life.
Then something knocked on the window and she screamed so loud it surprised even her. She turned to the window, expecting to see a rotting corpse clawing for her, but it was just a man. A man in a black hooded sweatshirt as tall and lean as a basketball player. He peered in and asked, “Are you okay?”
She couldn’t hear him and must’ve looked utterly confused because he then motioned with his hands to roll down the window. An archaic gesture manually rolling down an invisible window. She never owned a car with a manual window, but after a moment she brought hers down a crack. Just barely enough for a hand to fit through, certainly not the would-be basketball players hand, but probably her own.
“Are you okay?” He asked again.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m okay, just…uh, having a panic attack,” she smiled, hands trembling.
“Okay, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Day like this we all need to look out for one another.”
“That’s really nice. Do…do you need a ride?”
“No, that’s my truck right there,” he said, pointing to a truck on the other side of the road. “I was just going to fill up the truck and get some extra milk and stuff. Make sure the kids have enough food for the next few days. I’ve seen enough zombie movies to know the best place to be is home.”
“Well, good luck. The gas line was crazy. I…I should be going back home too. I’m still having a hard time swallowing the news.”
“There’s no zombies tearing up the town, just yet. It could all be bullshit—fingers crossed, or maybe it’s just Ebola,” the large man smiled as he crossed his fingers and walked away.
Rachel pulled herself together and turned back around towards home. She knew the man was being sarcastic about it being Ebola, but she couldn’t help but think of how much the media had been warning people about the potential of a massive outbreak.
What she found waiting for her at home wasn’t any sort of living dead nightmare, but a startling scene regardless. There was an ARMY HMMWV with a black Cadillac Escalade just behind it. Two soldiers stood in front of the Humvee with weapons drawn while two federal agents dressed in their tactical gear stood by the door to her apartment. As she crept to her parking spot, a third federal agent walked over to her. He approached slowly, and tried to smile, but Rachel knew whatever was happening wasn’t a smiling matter.
“Ms. Lucas, I presume?”
“Depends who’s asking. What’s going on?”
“Agent Cole,” he said, offering his hand. “Have you seen the news, Ms. Lucas?”
“Of course,” she replied, shaking his hand, and trembling at the touch.
“Then you’ve seen the reports of the recently deceased returning to a state of life?”
“I was hoping it was a hoax.”
“It most certainly is not. And it is in this matter that the Department of Homeland Security request your assistance. We’d like you to come with us.”
“How could I be of any assistance?” Rachel looked around and could see her neighbors staring out the window.
“If you’ll just come with us, all will be explained.”
“To where, Mr. Cole?”
“Agent. We’ll be taking you to Mount Weather, the High Point Special Facility. Right now, it’s one of the safest places on the planet. You’d be foolish to refuse.”
“And what if I said no?”
“Your country needs you, and like I said, you’d be foolish.”
Rachel stared at Agent Cole’s eyes for only seconds, but she could tell there was no refusing the request. He was pleasant and forthcoming, and almost charming in a way, but she knew if she pushed the question again, she would find a harder side to Agent Cole. She could see a fierceness just behind his kind eyes, one that could show up with the ease of flipping a switch.
She wanted to help, she wanted to be in one of the safest places on the planet, but she did not like being pushed around. Agent Cole had at least given her the illusion of choice, even if it was thinly veiled.
“Should I pack some things?”
“Be at the Escalade in fifteen minutes. Agents Saxon and Asselin will help carry your things.”
“Thank you, Mr…Agent Cole.”
“No, Ms. Lucas, thank you,” Agent Cole said, allowing his hard expression to soften. “Hopefully you and the others can find us a way out of this mess.”
She thought, “What others?”, as she hurried into her home to pack her things.
5 AND AWAY WE GO
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Just as she said she would, Niko started the Hawk twenty minutes later. She polished off another cup of coffee, grimacing as she did. The coffee in the mountain tasted awful, but what it lacked in flavor it made up for in effectiveness. Like a vehicle, she kept herself fueled. But instead of gasoline, she drank black coffee and as much Mountain Dew as she could find—which was already growing scarce. But in the mountain she didn’t fear starvation or a lack of caffeine. Not at all. The mountain had pallets of MRE’s, pallets of water, not to mention a self-sustaining water recycling system.
What Niko did fear, however, was staying inside the mountain. She feared the next ten minutes of her life would be at a standstill. That not another minute more would pass. She didn’t fear going on the potential suicide mission she’d accepted, or what securing the prison might have in store for her. She feared that fighting the dead would be the next unending conflict. She’d gone from the middle east to this and in some ways they looked the same. They looked futile.
Minutes did pass, however, and in ten minutes the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was rising up into the sky, away from the mountain and out of the copse of trees that hid them
so well. The team and all their collective gear sat strapped in. Dusty and SIGO sat at the door guns. While Dusty looked calm behind it, Harburn did not. As a matter of fact, he didn’t know why the hell he was behind the damned thing at all.
Niko piloted the bird, wearing a helmet that made her look like a bobblehead due to the size of the helmet against her small frame. Though it wasn’t quite the second skin she felt when behind the wheel of an HMMWV, she’d spent enough time in the cockpits of Black Hawk and Apache helicopters to feel comfortable. Part of her was nervous. But nerves and fear were in every soldier’s toolkit, it’s what you did with them that mattered. And what Niko did was tell them to chill the fuck out.
The massive propeller blades above her cut through the air, making a thunderous noise. It wasn’t the roar and rumble she loved on the road—this was something more. She was piloting the machinated equivalent of thunder and lightning and she was enthralled.
Nature surrounded them and gradually gave way to rural West Virginia. Niko, and just about everyone in the mountain that she’d talked to, had agreed that it was a beautiful area. But much like a tombstone surrounded by nicely landscaped cemetery grounds, Mount Weather was a cold place to spend eternity.
The sunlight felt warm on her face, and for the first time in days she felt alive. She wasn’t ready to see the destruction and desolation that so casually lay scattered across the horizon of her vision, but she expected it. And she preferred it to the sheet metal gray color of her quarter’s walls. She pictured the world would be worse when she finally stepped out of the mountain. What she saw was terrible, but somehow her mind’s eye concocted an image even worse. It gave her hope. Not much, but enough hope to believe that the world outside was still salvageable.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been outside since taking up residence in the mountain. Niko had been on ground patrols outside the immediate perimeter of the mountain, and topside in the Operations Center and throughout the compound. She’d done so frequently—as often as possible—many times volunteering for an extra shift while others were all too glad to give them up for the chance to grab a few extra hours of sleep. And while those patrols often involved an encounter with the living dead, they tended to stay close to the mountain, rarely going further than the confines of Bearden Park or the Shenandoah River. The ground patrols certainly didn’t give her the bird’s eye view of what she was now seeing. They had grounded regular helicopter missions as to not give away their position.
The natural surroundings and what little distance was between the mountain and the world-gone-to-hell was just enough to dull the razor sharp nightmare of her new reality. Seeing it now, though, Niko knew there was no dull edge to the nightmare landscape.
They sat for some time in relative silence. The unit had been reading over their dossiers. They followed the desolate Blue Ridge Mountain Road towards the Harry Byrd Highway. They mapped out the trip to lead them Northwest, heading just southwest of Pittsburgh and coming to an end near the Ohio River. The trip would’ve been a 4-5 hour drive had they taken an HMMWV, but up in the air, away from all the destruction below they’d be there in under two hours.
“Jesus, man, look at this shit,” Terry yelled, his voice barely audible over the roar of the machine as he stared out the window, surveying the destruction as Niko navigated above it.
Blood-streaked vehicles littered the highway and blood trails left a warning that spoke louder than any language, but simply stated BEWARE. Terry was impressed by the amount of shattered glass and burnt-out vehicle husks.
“We’re just getting started, Red Rover. imagine what I-81 must look like.” Torrent said, his face like stone and his mouth a thin slit.
“Thank Christ we took the whirly bird.” Dusty said, sitting back with an air of relaxation.
Below them was a warzone. They’d seen similar scenes on foreign soil, but the magnitude was hard to swallow. As far as the eye could see was ruin. Overturned eighteen wheelers. A derailed train. A bus half-buried into the side of a building.
“If this was ground mission I doubt we’d even make it there,” Torrent said, “Just keep your eyes open. Though we’re not to get involved in anything that we might see down below, I’d like to know what’s going on.”
“Roger that, sir,” Dusty said, as he looked at the world from behind a large machine gun behind the pilot’s seat. He saw movement and then realized it was half a torso crawling out from under a wrecked car, it’s spine moving like a tail.
“Everyone read the dossier?”
They had. The dossier went into great detail on the West Virginia State Penitentiary, it’s history, it’s decommissioning, it’s time as a tourist attraction, and eventually it’s resurrection of sorts. The dossier read more like a scary campfire tale than a special operations breakdown.
The prison became operational in 1863 though construction continued into the 1900’s with the completion of the facility’s library and several new classrooms. By 1959 the prison had doubled in size and would ultimately remain that way. In 1979 a notable prison break involving just over a dozen inmates would stain the public’s opinion of the facility, leading up to its eventual closing. Fifteen prisoners escaped, fleeing into the nearby city of Moundsville where they went on a homicidal rampage. Some of the escapees were caught years later, but most ended up back behind bars and on mortuary slabs that same night.
In the winter of 1986 the prison would make headlines once again, this time for one of the most notorious riots of its time. The prison had become overcrowded, the plumbing was in disrepair, insects had infested the facilities, and various diseases were spreading amongst the populous. Bloodshed during the riot was minimal as the prisoners were trying to improve their standards of living. It had become a national news story and stirred up more controversy, putting the final nail into the prison’s coffin.
After the 1986 riot a ruling by the West Virginia Supreme Court stated that the facilities cells were too small and confining, to the point where it was considered cruel and unusual punishment. This resulted in the prison’s decommissioning, which took nearly a decade. Many smaller riots and several escapes took place during this time. When the prison finally closed in 1996 there had already been plans to renovate the majority of the building and section off the facade for tourism, mainly as a haunted attraction. Paranormal investigation groups and travel guides considered the Moundsville Prison one of the most haunted prisons in the United States, with ghost stories dating back as early as the 1930s. Some of the legends include the prison occupying the site of a Native American burial ground, guards reporting phantom inmates, and a very popular local legend known as the "Shadow Man" wandering the premises.
Only a few years ago, once renovations were complete, did the prison re-open. In it’s new incarnation it was part prison, part historical haunted attraction, and part psychiatric hospital. The last documented record had the prison housing just over a thousand inmates, a fraction of what it was now capable of holding. The historical haunted attraction part exhibited the facilities original electric chair, old prison uniforms and shackles, and many drawings by the inmates of the legendary shadow-man.
The dossier went on to highlight some of the building’s architecture as well as blueprints and photographs. Grant Harburn, the young SIGO, stared at the picture of the prison and couldn’t help but think of Arkham Asylum from the Batman graphic novels he loved. The villains always found a way out, he mused, and he wondered if the real life villains housed in the gothic structure had found a way out as well.
6 GAZING INTO THE ABYSS
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Rachel ran her fingers along the spine of the book. It was tough, like leather. Old, dry leather with large cracks running down the spine. But she didn’t open the book, not yet. Her fingers ran from the spine to the edges of the cover, along the stitching that held together the fabric…? Was it fabric, she wondered. It had the appearance of leather, but softer. She ran her finger over a softer spot—was this hair, s
he thought. Then she looked closer and saw what looked to be a nostril. It couldn’t be she told herself. Then her fingers lingered along the curve of what might’ve been an ear lobe. Then it hit her. This wasn’t fabric. It wasn’t leather. It was skin. Someone’s skin. A person’s skin.
Wasn’t she supposed to be packing things, she thought.
Inside, the pages were thick and stiff. She looked at the pages; words written in blood, perverse imagery rendered in varying shades of red. Demons depicted in brush strokes with fiery eyes captured in thin, needle-point precision. The blood-ink glowed at her touch and began to feel moist, but left no trace on her fingertips.
Where was Agent Cole? Where was the Escalade?
She began to feel aroused as she turned the pages of the dark tome. Her nipples hardened, and the sensation of moisture on her fingertips returned. Instead of running her fingers along the pages, she was drawing on them in blood. Her eyes went white, the pages glowed as if lit from inside the book, and she smudged around her finger on the page. She was making a spiral. When the spiral was complete she closed her eyes. The book grew dim and darkness surrounded her. When she opened her eyes she was walking towards her mother’s house.
“Mom?” She called as she stepped into the house without knocking.
She called a few times more and quickly her mother and brother appeared from the hallway. They walked slowly, mouths agape, eyes dimmed of their once vibrant color, now dulled and gray by the curse of living death. Rachel stepped back, screaming, then tripped, falling on her ass. She crab-crawled backward away from the lurking things that used to be her family.
She screamed again and again until she woke herself up. She saw the drool on the keyboard and realized instantly what had happened. She was left with the feeling of how real her dream felt. She could still feel the skin of the book on her fingers, and something internally told her the book was real.