by Glynn James
“Oh, they found the stores already,” said the Ilya voice.
With the Ilya’s voice constantly chattering about every new discovery, the two of us, we – I mean I – sat watching the screen change. I spotted them on three different cameras. They’d spread out, heading down different routes, but some of them were definitely following my trail. A large group, maybe a dozen of them, from what I could see, moving very fast and using quad bikes to zip down the tunnels. So my original thoughts that I would have a four-day head start on them is probably not very likely. Maybe I have a day.
I'm pretty sure I saw a tracking drone flying ahead of one of the groups.
:: Record Date 02:07:4787 04:31
The tracking drone is outside the door.
Already.
Damn it. Those things move so fast when they have a trail to follow. It must have picked up on the APV tracks and my footprints.
Good job it has no way to get in and no armaments.
Still means I’m stuck in here now, and I can hear the digital babble the thing makes even through the doors.
I’m so glad I locked that door shut.
:: Record Date 02:07:4787 06:28
“What do you mean?” I asked the Ilya voice. “You were a person once?”
“I do have a name, you know,” Ilya said.
“Sorry,” I replied. I didn’t know why I was apologising to a thing that jumped into my head. Then it occurred to me.
“Can you hear me thinking?” I asked.
“No,” replied the Ilya voice. “Probably a good thing, yes?”
I didn’t reply to that. “So, you were a person?” I asked again.
“Yes,” Ilya said. “I mean, I was once, though it was a long time ago. I've been stuck down here, like this, since the experiment went badly wrong,”
“Experiment?” That made me a little nervous.
“Yes,” it continued. “Well, we tested a lot of equipment down here. You know, new inventions and upgraded machinery. You've probably seen some of them. I know you saw some of them.”
“Huh?”
“I saw you cross the bridge to go and look in the labs,” she said.
“You did?” So much for my covert skills. “I thought I was sneaky.”
“Not so much,” Ilya replied. “Good effort, though.” I think the latter comment was just to avoid offending me.
I sat there, stewing over the documents my mother had left behind, silently waiting for the Ilya voice to carry on.
“Well, I was helping on one of the experiments when it went a little messy. I thought I was dead, but I kind of ended up floating around like this with everyone freaking out.”
“You were a scientist, then?” I asked.
“No, I was a trooper, a guard. I used to accompany the scientists and help carry the kit, set it up, guard the area and make sure no critters got anywhere near them. When they were testing the latest phase chamber, I was…”
The Ilya voice stopped talking. I waited for a minute or so, but realised she wasn’t going to continue.
“You were too close,” I suggested.
“Pretty much,” Ilya voice said.
After that, the Ilya voice was quiet for a long time.
I’m presuming it’s a she, for the moment. I don’t know if the voice is something my own mind is creating, but I’m going with it. Anyway, I think she’s gone deep into thought, or something like that. Maybe thinking about the accident has depressed her. I think it would do that to me. To be honest, it doesn’t bother me, as cold as that may seem. I have no reason to like this voice in my head.
I know that sounds terrible.
I can’t help it. I’m just happy not to have a voice in my head, though I suppose that just saying this into this recorder might spark it off at any minute. Somehow I think the Ilya voice went deep inside somewhere, hiding, and can’t hear me, otherwise it would reply.
Now I'm trying not to think about wherever it is right now. Inside my head. I don't think it's anywhere where my thoughts are.
I need to concentrate on how to stop the Resistance Vigilants from following me through the portal. It’s a one-way trip, I presume, so whatever I’m going to do will have to happen on this side.
“How can I stop them?” I asked myself.
“Who?” asked the Ilya voice.
Damn. Ilya voice is back. Oh well, here goes nothing.
“I’m being followed by Vigilants,” I said.
“Oh,” Ilya voice replied. “That’s why they are searching and in such a hurry?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You let them in?” Ilya voice said, sounding surprised.
“I didn’t exactly mean to,” I said.
“Well that was stupid.”
“Hey,” I shouted, then realised I didn’t need to. I was effectively shouting at myself. “I was followed, okay? They tracked me and were hunting me. I found this bunker by accident.”
“Alright, alright. Don’t get your pants all twisted up,” Ilya voice said.
“What? Don’t what?”
“Calm down,” said the voice. “There has to be a way out of this. Give me a situation report.”
Like now she was in command.
“Okay,” I said. “I was followed here.”
“I know that bit,” said Ilya.
“You’re really starting to annoy me.”
“Sorry, I’ll shut up,” she said.
I stood up, and started pacing the room, waving my arms around. Frustration mostly. “So they followed me, and now they’re in here. There’s a tracking drone outside, and I have about a day before they get all the way through the facility and reach here.”
“Go through the portal,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied. “I intend to, but I need to somehow stop them following me. I can’t think how. I need a way to shut the thing down, or even put it out of action permanently, but I need it to happen after I go through.”
There was silence for a long time. I was about to speak again when Ilya cut in.
“I have an idea,” she said. “But you may not like it very much.”
:: Record Date 02:07:4787 08:04
I can’t believe that worked.
Firstly, how.
I was sitting in the middle of the larger room – the one with the gate platform in the middle – listening to the noises outside the entrance room. The damn tracking drone was making enough racket that I couldn’t help but hear it. I wished there was a camera looking out into the passageway outside, but there isn’t. The security camera must be broken. It wouldn’t matter anyway.
“Go on,” I said, after the Ilya voice suggested it had a plan.
“You can blow it all up,” Ilya said.
“What?” I replied. “Are you crazy? Why would I try that?”
“A delayed and controlled explosion,” she replied. “Finish getting all your gear through the portal, set it off, and run for it. BOOM.”
The BOOM part was loud in my head.
“Sorry,” she said.
I thought about the idea for a moment. It would work but there was one small problem.
“I don’t have any explosives,” I said.
There was a laugh, and I thought I heard it in the room, but it had to be in my head.
“Of course you do,” said Ilya, when she had stopped laughing at me.
She is very annoying.
“I don’t,” I insisted.
“Yes, you do,” she said. “You have four shredder guns, all of which have batteries. And I bet you have a bunch more in those packs that you stole from the stores.”
I frowned. I was about to remark that it wasn’t stealing, but couldn’t be bothered to argue. “And how does that help?”
Silence for a moment.
“You know, I do wonder what folks are teaching kids these days,” she said. “In the Journal of JH, he opens the battery, twists the wires and throws it. It explodes. It’s a standard, last stand, tactic.”
Of c
ourse.
“He also does it later, on the wall in The Corridor, to get rid of a Shambler Storm.”
“I remember,” I said.
I also remembered during training that we were shown the damage that could be done by one of those things being set off, and we were also told that under no circumstances were we to meddle with the batteries in that way. Apparently, or so my instructor told me, there were numerous accounts of major injuries, and even deaths, caused by people emulating JH’s use of batteries in the journal.
I even had spare batteries.
I even remembered the technique that JH mentioned using in his diary. It involved short circuiting a power battery for a shredder. So there I was, looking for a way to stop the resistance from following me through the portal, and it was right there all along. I just needed to have the guts to do it. Oh, and a GhostThing to remind me.
Of course, she knew all about how to do it anyway and insisted on detailed, step by step, instructions. I was impatient, and grumpy, but really, I was relieved that she was taking me through it, even if it creeped me out that she could see through my eyes.
Blowing up a shredder battery can take down buildings, and if I was honest, I didn’t want to injure any of the troops following me, even though I had been shot at a number of times. I was one of them, not long ago, and they were only following orders.
So, I checked back through the diary, yet again, grabbed one of the spare shredder batteries, and prised off the side. It was exactly as described, and exactly as Ilya rambled about.
I guess they still made them the same.
I stood there, right in front of my one-way escape, holding the battery in my hand and swallowing nervously.
Should I just wait? Let the Vigilants trying to break in get through and arrest me? I don’t know why I was questioning my resolve, at that particular time, but it was there. I didn’t know if I wanted to continue.
A buzzing sounding behind me snapped me out of my fears and into action. The damn drone was chirping away again, but it reminded me that my time was running out.
“Let’s do it,” shouted Ilya. “Go, soldier!”
It was the strangest thing I’ve ever done. I pinched and changed the wires, as Ilya explained, felt the heat rising in my palm, and heard the low whining sounds beginning, then I ran forward, dropped the battery on the floor and jumped through the portal.
I fell onto solid ground, instinctively covering my ears, and waited for the explosion.
But there wouldn’t be one, would there?
After a few seconds I rolled onto my back and stared into complete darkness. I felt a stabbing pain in my side, and rolled sideways, pushing myself up onto my knees.
It was pitch black.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
I waited in the darkness. But there was no reply from Ilya.
I waited some more.
“Ilya?” I asked. “Are you there?”
I sat there in the dark for a long time, my eyes gradually adjusting to the gloom, but it didn't really help that much. Wherever I was, it was void of light. I thought about GhostThing, the Ilya voice. A woman who worked for JH way back, maybe.
She was gone.
Dead? Had she not come through?
The first person I met that was mildly on my side, and now she was gone.
I hadn’t even been very nice to her.
I never thanked her for helping. I was too busy thinking about how I hated having her in my head.
I had to focus. Had to get moving. But a pang of sadness was there, unmovable.
As I felt around me, I realised that I’d landed on my own pile of gear. The floor underneath me was concrete, or something else flat and smooth. I couldn’t find my head lamp; I must have taken it off at some point. Eventually I located my maglight. It had been among the gear that I’d thrown through before setting off the battery. I flicked it on and shone the light around me.
I was in a large room, about thirty feet across, with concrete walls and ceiling and just one door that stood half-open. My gear was scattered haphazardly across the floor, obviously landing randomly as I’d thrown it through the portal.
But where the hell was I? Was I still in the bunker? Maybe another area far underground? Or was I in a building somewhere else?
I could be anywhere.
I drew one of my shredders and headed to the door, deciding that I could collect my stuff when I had a better idea of my location.
Peering out through the already open door revealed a small entranceway with two other doors leading off it. The first was a bunk room, with two sets of bunk beds, and the last was a much smaller room mostly filled with trash. The bunks were covered in a thick layer of dust, as was the trash room.
At the end of the small entranceway was a circular hatch. It was wide open. I peered out cautiously, wondering what the hell I would see out there.
A ladder. It appeared to lead up into more darkness, but I thought I could see some light up there, though it was faint. It was a shaft, and there didn’t appear to be any other direction to go in – just up the ladder.
I went back into the larger room, gathered up some of my stuff, and headed up. I’d have to come back and get the rest if I found something to carry it in, but right now I wasn’t going to try and haul it all up the ladder. Just my rucksack, weapons, basic gear.
I reached the top and found a small ledge leading out onto yet another ladder, but this one didn't go up very far, maybe another ten feet, before it reached a circular hole at the top. That was where the faint light was coming from. Below that, puzzlingly, the second ladder went down into yet more darkness and I could smell something awful wafting up to me.
I climbed the last ten feet and rolled onto my back outside the shaft…onto an old road surrounded by even older looking buildings. My heart started thumping in my chest, my nerves on edge. It was night, and there were no stars in the sky. I was standing in the middle of long road lined with houses that had been abandoned a long time ago. Just thirty or so feet away, across the road, was the first of a row of empty shops, some boarded up and some just left with gaping holes where windows would once have been.
It was as I scanned the street, gun in hand, that I settled upon a rusted and cracked street sign forty feet away, barely hanging from the wall on one rusted bolt.
Charleston Way.
:: Record Date 02:07:4787 08:44
I can’t believe I’m actually here. I’m in The Corridor, actually in the place that JH was trapped in, and CutterJack.
This is really it.
And it’s much stranger than even the journals depict it. And even weirder is how untouched it is. I resisted the urge to explore immediately, still paranoid that The Resistance could burst into the place at any moment. I have no guarantee that my planned explosion actually went off, and no way to check it, so I wanted to get everything out of there as soon as I could. And boy was that an effort. I hauled all the gear out and dumped it just inside the front porch of a building nearby. It had a door that I could pull shut but there was no way to secure it. I’d just have to chance it. I moved everything essential that I thought I could carry into just three rucksacks, one I could wear and the others I could carry. Everything else would have to stay here unless I could find a way to move it, which I thought was unlikely, so planned for the eventuality of not returning. Most of it was junk anyway.
And now what? I hadn’t expected to get here so soon. I’m not sure where I was expecting to end up, but straight into The Corridor wasn’t it. My mother must have somehow found something, the coordinates maybe. She’d have to have found them. Thinking back, I remembered a section in the journal that mentioned a way to get to the bunker, but I thought it had been through the shop that is just down the road, not straight into the bunker. Somehow my mother found details of how to get there. The very same bunker that my great grandmother, Abegail, had hidden in with Chione and Andre, my grandparents.
I guess all she needed after that
was to get access to a portal, and it seems that she found that eventually.
The urge to explore is overwhelming. I’ve read the journals over and over, and now, if I choose to, I could go and visit every single place that JH went to. The Junkyard, the shack up near the waterfall, The Warrens. All of these places should, if they just sealed the place up and left, still be here.
I grabbed my rucksacks and headed to the nearest place on a very long list of tourist locations that I could visit – the house on Merriwether. The house Professor Adler had occupied during his time in The City.
I was in The City!
:: Record Date 02:07:4787 09:38
The streets are quieter than I could imagine, not a single sound, and the light is odd, kind of sourceless, apart from small clusters of what look like mutated plants that pop up here and there through the broken cobbles. They’re a weird colour, sort of green and sort of blue at the same time, and glowing.
I’m not going to touch them.
When I turned into Merriwether I had this strange feeling in my gut and a tickle of something cold down my spine. This was where it all happened. The fight with CutterJack. The discoveries at the house.
But which house was it?
I walked down the street, looking for an open window with music playing, but none of the windows on the top floors were open. From what I could remember, the house would be about half way down the street.
So I decided to go around the back, into the alleyways, gun drawn just in case there were things about. I had no idea if there would still be Shamblers or Kre’esh in here, after all these years, but I wasn’t going to risk being unprepared. At least I was armed to take them on.
From what I remembered of JH’s tale, he shut the place up and then escaped out the back window. That was how I’d have to find the house.
Look for the rope. It should still be dangling there. I hope.
The alley was pitch black and none of the ambient light, coming from wherever it came from, pervaded the long path, but I could see something through there, a faint glimmer of the light on the other street. I edged forward, pointing my flashlight into the darkness. Junk was piled up against the walls, and as I made my way slowly through it, I wondered who had put it there. It had to have been there a long time, but there was no smell coming from it. It mostly comprised of stack up boxes, some cardboard that were collapsing and falling apart and others made of wood. Crates. They had to contain something, but my curiosity was overridden by my need to get into the house.