Beth is still tending to Ellen for the time being. Ellen had fainted through the horror of the whole scenario. I’ve made the best tourniquet for Fred that I could with his torn sleeve. Still, there is a lot of blood, and that big fucking thing out there knows it. I keep seeing flashes of it moving in different directions. I think it’s feeling us out - testing us continuously. I got news for that motherfucker - I’m through being tested. I’m going to kick a fucking A+ out of the damned thing.
DAY - 83
It was a big ass tree. It’s definitely the Flora experiment that was talked of in General Ingram’s binder. The damned thing is probably the reason everything went to hell because they had it rooted into the ground in the middle of this huge lab - very much an animate and aggressive force. With vines extended from it as well as branches, the entire thing looked as big as a damned Redwood tree. Like a Locust tree, though, it was covered with massive thorns - the vines especially. But we found its weakness. Many times throughout the night a very bright light source came on, and each time it did, it would scare off our constant attackers, the vines. I finally took the chance at running towards the light source as it came on again this morning - a huge, synthetic light generator.
Beth and Ellen helped me move the damned thing onto a rolling cart - was heavy as hell. I also fixed the light to where it was on constantly - just a little twisting of some wires.
What made it so damned heavy was its power source - a huge cell attached to it that seemed pretty cold and encased in graphite. Ellen and Beth raised Fred and had become his new legs. We then strolled the long corridors with the carted light until we reached the middle of the lab and the base of the tree.
Everything - every animal or human and even some weird shit I couldn't begin to understand was impaled on huge thorns at the base of the tree. It didn’t like the light at all and took several swings from its vines at trying to smash it. We ended up getting inside a huge control room much like the one in the missile silo - with a huge bay window. The tree’s vines couldn’t penetrate the thick window, nor could it penetrate the thick, armored door to the room. I made sure the light shone brightly out the window at the tree.
We’ve done nothing but read as much as we can of the many binders in here full of information, tests and graphs of things done to the tree. After all of the research, though, the fact remained that it was just a fucking tree, and I found every flammable liquid I could in the control room, granted they were nothing more than cleaning supplies in a small, metal cabinet. I opened the thick door, and with all of the cleaning chemicals on the cart beside the light, I made a suicide run at the tree. Beth and Ellen provided every shot they could get off to distract the tree while I tossed the chemicals successfully onto its trunk. One more shot from Beth and Ellen ignited it. The tree actually seemed to scream while burning. The fucker was smart, though, and it smashed its vines into an area behind it that turned on a sprinkler system. Next thing I know, there was an alarm going off. The girls and I ran back into the control room to see that Fred had triggered something, and he screamed for us to shut the door.
We did so, and in only seconds later, we saw the entire outside area near the tree fill up with a white cloud. This lasted for a few minutes. We watched as the huge bay window started to freeze up. The alarm went off finally, and at nearly the same time, the huge bay window shattered. We all watched as the cloud seemed to vaporize. Fred had hit the failsafe that no one before us seemed to have been able to - a massive liquid nitrogen spray. We stared gazing at the huge tree, frozen and statuesque. Fred broke the awe and silence with a shot from his handgun, and the entire tree crumbled into pieces.
We’ve been searching inside the lab for hours, and we’ve come upon several weapons that we can use - flame-throwers and liquid nitrogen guns most importantly. Fred has found himself a decent medical bay and has Ellen stitching him up.
So far, I have found nothing in this lab that looks like a solution.
DAY - 84
Of all the things to find in the lab that offer importance, I’ve found a journal. Irony never seems to fail amazing me. It belonged to a woman - someone very much into the genetic splicing aspects of the experiments in this lab. More disturbing than anything, though, are the entries of her trips to the other labs - where the other experiments were being done.
There are labs underground in at least four more areas in the surrounding states of California, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. We just came from the exact area where we could have searched for information on our troubles. The island, Antelope State Park houses an underground laboratory in its mountainous core. The experiments were described as follows:
California housed the primary weapons division - lasers, sound pulse weapons and remote missile technology. New Mexico housed the flight technology and worked along with the nearby Arizona facility that focused on magnetics, antigravity and quantum physics energies. Here in Area 51, we have basically the animal and vegetation testing with goals in securing our oxygen sources - the primaries being to strengthen our atmosphere. They wanted to genetically alter cattle and other animals, even some insects - anything that posed a threat to ozone reduction or held some traits to survive despite massive heat. The insects we encountered and had attacked Fred were originally types of ants that can survive extreme heats atop the jungles in Africa. The tree we encountered was an attempt at giving a tree some way of defense like we’d see of a Venus Flytrap - the first attempts at this tree reversed the oxygen producing properties of trees and nearly poisoned everyone in the lab, so this last attempt was a juiced up version of more natural genetics. It seemed to be a stable and unaggressive experiment, though, until the day several canisters of nanotech were introduced from a small group of scientists visiting directly from the Utah facility.
The idea was to speed up the process of growth in the tree and to see if it would regenerate itself even if someone could get past its defense to harm it. Those scientists were said to have been doing much more nanotech experiments at their Utah facility - most on cattle, but also they were doing some experiments on recently deceased people from the area. The research journal pretty much ended there. Obviously, the tree then reached a level of intelligence and aggression that the ghouls have.
I told the girls that I needed to take a good long look at Fred’s arm before we made any more plans. I couldn’t see any type of immediate effects from the nanotech, but I still believed they would have to be transmitted to him from the insects - probably just not as many. I looked all about the medical bay until I found an external, portable defribulator. Fred looked like he wanted to punc
h my lights out, but I explained it worked for me. Beth was able to nod quite seriously to confirm it for him. The girls held him down, and I shocked his arm at full power.
Fred’s getting around to consciousness again. So far, he isn’t holding anything against me - no sour words or looks. It’s late evening, and we’re going to head back up to the surface. If the specific information on those insects is correct, then they have a great tolerance for heat and absolutely no tolerance for the cold dark air of a desert night. We should be able to get back to our truck and start heading back to Utah. I can’t believe we were at the right place that whole time. I’m hoping our boat is in good shape. If we have to drive through that big ass city to get to the island, then we might be fucked.
DAY - 85
I drove all night, and had driven the greater part of the day until Beth took over for me. Then, I ended up riding in the back with Fred. He’s doing well, but he kept apprehensive of me while I kept checking out our liquid nitrogen guns and flame-throwers. I was honestly just curious. Sorry about any assumed symbolism there, Fred.
It was at the outskirts of entering West Wendover again that Beth damn near wrecked our truck. The truck halted, and She and Ellen both jumped out of the cab of the truck. Beth looked white as a ghost, and Ellen was screaming at the top of her lungs. Fred and I sprang into action, hurried to our girl’s sides and then began to investigate what had scared them so badly. It didn’t take too long before we found the problem - a hitchhiker if you will. It’s a chameleon lizard, but unlike any we’ve ever seen - this one must be a direct result of Area 51 testing. This damned lizard can cloak to any background with perfection. I know that they can do that anyway, but this little guy is definitely better engineered because he rivals shit I've only seen in the Predator films. Fred wanted to blast him or cut him up, but I wouldn’t let him. If the lizard was a threat to us, then it would have taken after us with ease and certainly within the time we’ve been unknowingly riding along with it. I tried catching him but he ran up under the seats. Reassuring our girls to get back in the truck was a hard task.
By dusk, we were back on our toes and all learning to use our new weapons. Apparently the ghouls that had been in West Wendover were bored with their surroundings because they had begun venturing out on the freeway - our freeway. Beth got back behind the wheel with Ellen as her co-pilot again, and Fred and I armed ourselves in the back. I told Beth to just ram through the crowds at all costs, and she did just that. The thumps were loud and the jolts of running over bodies were tossing Fred and I all about in the truck. When we picked up our first straggler on the tailgate, Fred wasted no time in torching it with a flamethrower. He caught our damned canvas topping on fire as well, though, so I had to spray it with a liquid nitrogen blast. Either way, the ghoul was taken care of. We went through that routine a few more times until we passed through the city limits.
Thanks to Fred, we’re going to sleep under the stars tonight, literally - I mean, if no ghouls are near. The canvas top on our truck’s backend is in shambles. As we are now stopped on a desolate stretch of highway, we are all four stretched out in the truck bed and staring up at the amazing sight of our star filled galaxy. Staring out, I'm realizing that in the infinite abyss that is creation, it probably won’t matter to the great creator if our one, measly sign of life fails or succeeds.
DAY - 86
Another full day of driving brought us to the outskirts of Hill Air Force Base. There were still plenty of ghouls, but the heat from the sun had apparently done them in over the past few days. The ghouls weren’t looking fast or reacting sharply to anything we had tried - yeah, I was testing them. After studying their motions for a short while, I started throwing stones at the ghoul’s heads, and all I got for responses from them were turns, moans and stumbling about. All in all, they are dehydrating. Fred said it best in wishing for a good, hot summer this year.
Fred, Beth and Ellen started to arm themselves with our new weapons, but I just grabbed my old friend, the katana.
According to Fred, I have something beyond a psychotic urge to cut people into pieces - that there is a line dividing what is needed and what is extreme overkill. And here I thought that I was just being thorough. Haha. Maybe I am a little too giddy about taking them out with the sword, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t save ammunition and possibly more damage from Fred and his fucking flamethrower escapades. See, the only reason we were stopped was to refuel at the trucking depot before driving to the far side of the base to find the boat. So, again, I saved us from Fred and his flamethrower excited ass while near the gas pumps.
Once at the shoreline and looking for the boat, we found that it was floating many yards out in the lake. Immediately I started looking around for some of the floaters - those fucking, Waterworld, Kevin Costner, gill having bastards. I couldn’t see any, but I knew they wouldn’t be slow and dehydrated, so they had to be out there. My main hope was that they had starved in the lake and had to come on land.
Then Beth stepped forward. She showed me the badge she has kept with her all of this time - her water park, worker’s ID. She was showing me that she was all about the water, and when she made a lot of swimming motions with her arms, I realized that she thought she was the best candidate to swim out and retrieve our boat.
Had the Great Salt Lake been as deep as any real lake and not so much of a big ass kiddie-pool, then I wouldn’t have obliged Beth’s plan. As it was, though, Fred, Ellen and I found ourselves armed and waist deep in the water - walking slowly and being highly mindful of our surroundings. Beth stripped down and took off swimming quickly for the boat.
She reached it pretty quickly, too. As soon as she reached the boat, boarded it and climbed atop to the controls, she quickly started waving and acting jittery for us to hurry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen three people struggle in the water like we did. After all of that struggling, we came to find out that Beth was jumping out of excitement instead of some threat to us. Atop the control section of the boat, we could see the tops of many fires coming from the city. Darkness was quickly setting, though, and as soon as it set in well enough we moved a bit closer to the city shoreline - not too close, though. The safest bet was to stay on the boat and keep the boat motionless from that point. Whoever started those fires could be people we need to meet up with, or they could just be a bunch of crazed looters. We're better off waiting until morning to find out.
I found our little chameleon friend. Amazingly hard to see, he's become just as much a survivalist as the rest of us. I never even noticed him today, and I actually looked for him for a while. I don't know which one of us he hitched a ride on, but he's currently on the steering wheel.
DAY - 87
I had us docked at the boat pier by the time the sun was completely peaked this morning. I was pretty anxious to say the least. I had to see who was tearing Salt Lake City a
part and leaving a fiery trail behind. My first instinct and Fred’s as well was that it was a military, air strike, but upon further looks, we decided that it was more like a ground level attack.
The tops of the buildings damaged were still intact for the most part, but the base walls of all of those buildings looked like they took direct hits from explosives. We were then decidedly on the lookout for a platoon of soldiers with rocket launchers, mortars or just regular set charges.
Again, I had all but forgotten about the chameleon lizard until I noticed he had hitchhiked on my leg again. He revealed himself by changing color to a bright red. Immediately, a pack of ravenous dog ghouls came after us. We rushed back to our boat, grabbed the flamethrowers and made quick work of them. They were crispy critters within minutes. I’m naming this lizard, Camo - makes sense to me, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t going to come in handy after all. I grabbed him and put him atop my shoulder. Ellen asked me if I thought of myself as some sort of a pirate captain, now. The answer is, no, but if we do get limited to living on that boat, I might make her swab the deck for picking at me so often. She’s really been on me about crap lately. I don’t need a mother right now. Maybe I’ll put Camo on her back or worse, down the back of her shirt.
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