by Josh Craven
“No ma’am, I did not,” replied the woman.
“Well, I guess you’re blind, too.”
Maldek turned back to the young man working the computer. “I really don’t think I’m blind since I can see you sitting there being useless, so why don’t you pull the records for the security door on the lab hallway, and tell me everyone that’s swiped in and out of that door today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The Airman stroked a few keys and then said, “Um… Colonel, I think we have an issue.”
###
Ben swiped his card, and the double doors to the dormitory opened with a swish. He and DeShaun looked out from the upper floor of the massive, three-level chamber before them. It reminded Ben of an indoor shopping mall, with a walkway around the perimeter and the middle cut out so that he could look down over the bottom level. The room was an expansive rectangle, twice as long as it was wide, and medical robots and medical personnel in white lab coats were buzzing about the wide walkways on each level. The middle area on the bottom floor was a football-field-sized nurses’ station, a blue and white hive of frocks and scrubs.
“Holy crap,” Ben said.
“The dorm rooms line the outside,” DeShaun said. “She’s on level two. Follow me.”
Ben fell in behind DeShaun as he turned to his left and followed the walkway until they were halfway down the length of the room. They stopped in front of an elevator, Ben swiped his badge, and the steel doors parted. Ben’s heart spasmed when an Air Force doctor followed them into the car.
She cut a sideways glance at Ben and DeShaun. “I don’t think I’ve seen you guys around. Are you new here?”
DeShaun hit the ‘2’ button to take the elevator to the next level down. The doctor hit the ‘1’ button.
DeShaun’s pulse fired like a strobe light, and the skin over Ben’s knuckles glowed white-hot as she reached over and looked at the name on his badge.
“Oh, are you the Ben Witter? As in, Witter Biotech?”
“Yes, I am.” Ben had to shove the words out of his throat. “This is DeShaun Downsen, my senior staff doctor.”
“Welcome guys. I hope you’re here to get your equipment back online. Great stuff when it’s working; not so much, when it’s not.”
“We are doing our best,” DeShaun said as the elevator doors opened to the second level and he and Ben stepped out. The doors closed behind them and he winked at Ben.
DeShaun turned to his left once again, and the pair followed the walkway past a dozen dorms. He stopped outside the one with MM-4162 on the small placard next to the door.
“This is her, Ben,” DeShaun said and put a hand on his shoulder.
Ben took a deep breath, vacated his lungs with a whoosh, and then he reached toward the swipe pad with his badge.
###
Maldek’s face was glowing hot like a raging blast furnace when the Airman explained to her that every time one of the two—either Witter or Downsen, he was unsure if it was one or both—swiped his badge, it registered as Colonel Maldek.
“How?” was the only word she could say. Anything more than that and a dam would have burst, unleashing a torrent of four-letter words.
“One of them must have hacked the security system and reprogrammed his badge. That’s the only explanation.”
“Well, UN-reprogram it!” Maldek said.
“I’m sorry, Colonel, I can’t. I don’t have that level of access. You’ll have to go through security administration for a change like that,” the young Airman said.
Maldek didn’t want to have to play by the rules. She knew that such a request would tip off the higher-ups that there was a breach of security. The brass from DC would swoop in like vultures to pick her apart. Men that had always raised an eyebrow at the idea of a woman being in charge of the Government’s most secret and important installation would pour in on a line of aircraft, one after another, chest puffed out, dicks semi-erect from the vindication coursing through their veins. No, for every single woman soldier in the United States military, she had to put this down firmly, quietly and off the record.
“That’s not necessary. Can you do me a favor and tell me where I last swiped my badge?” she said.
“Colonel, you just accessed a room on the mid-level of the dormitory facility. Dorm 81-B. Habitant is MM-4162”
“Thank you, Airman,” she said. The she turned to the four MPs that she pulled onto her detail. “You four, come with me, we need to stop by my office on the way to the dorms.”
While the four guards waited outside her office door, Maldek accessed the database files on dorm 81-B. What the hell are you up to Witter? she thought. When she reviewed the file on the dorm’s occupant, Meat Mother 4162, aka Lisa Rodriguez, formerly known as Hannah Witter, she nearly lost control of her bowels.
###
When the dorm door slid open, Ben had a hard time wrapping his brain around what he saw. In Ben’s mind, Hannah was still a child, but the beautiful grown woman sleeping on the twin bed against the far wall bore only a slight resemblance to the little girl he remembered.
“Hannah!?” he blurted.
Her drowsy eyes opened and blinked the sleep away. “Bonk-Bonk?”
“Yes! It’s me Bonk-Bonk!” His arms locked around her in a vise-grip embrace and tears tumbled down his cheeks.
“Bonk-bonk, I knew you’d find me. What took you so long?” Her voice quivered with the wonderment of a child walking into Disney World.
“I don’t know. I’m so sorry. I tried.” He pushed the words out past the sobs he was holding back.
“It’s ok,” she whispered in his ear and a tear rolled down her cheek as well.
DeShaun interrupted the reunion. “Ben, we gotta hurry up and find a way out of here. It’s not gonna take Maldek long—”
On cue, Maldek’s voice fell like acid rain from an overhead speaker. “Lisa… Hannah, this is Doctor Maldek. You are not to leave your dorm. Doctor’s orders. Stay right there until I get there.
“Ben, I know why you’re really here. I need you to wait there for me, and we will sort this out. We had no idea Hannah had family. Let’s talk about this, and I’m sure it will be no problem to discharge Hannah and send her home with you.”
Ben’s eyes, wide with adrenaline, searched DeShaun’s face for guidance. Deshaun spoke to Maldek:
“Colonel, this is Airman DeShaun Downsen. I have the situation under control. We will wait here for you. Mr. Witter is good now that he’s found his sister.”
“Thank you Airman. I’m on my way. Leaving my office now.”
Ben looked at DeShaun, unsure if the Airman has just sold him down the river or if Maldek really would honor her promise to let Hannah go. The answer was neither.
DeShaun held his index finger to his lips to shush Ben and Hannah, then he pointed to the overhead speaker. Then his eyes widened and he silently mouthed a single word:
“RUN!”
###
“Thank you Airman. I’m on my way. Leaving my office now.” Maldek punched the elevator call button as she spoke into the little microphone wire that extended from the telecom earbud in her right ear. As soon as she finished talking she tapped the earbud twice with her finger, muting her microphone.
“Lock and load,” she said to her MP team. “This is a clear and present danger to national security, and I am giving you the command to shoot to kill, on sight. Do you understand?”
The four MPs bobbed their heads in a unison nod, and racked a live round into the chamber of their suppressed nine millimeter pistols. The elevator opened onto the second level of the dormitory, and Maldek and her team double-timed it to Hannah’s cell. The MPs lined up with their pistols aimed at the door as Maldek gave them a nod of assent and swiped her badge on the control panel. When the door whisked open, the air was filled with the slams of the pistol slides and the sharp odor of burnt gunpowder as the MPs emptied their firearms. Smoking ammo brass leapt from the handguns and bounced off the waxed tiles with the tinkling of a thousand w
ind chimes.
When the MPs lowered their emptied sidearms, Maldek stepped inside the cell and peered through the firing-squad-fog, looking for the bodies of the troublemakers. She cursed the bullet-riddled furnishings in the otherwise empty room and stormed out, splitting the MPs like bowling pins. Her eyes scanned the perimeter walkway of the dormitory level, and she saw a black man in a lab coat exiting the dorms through the large double-doors on the far side.
###
“What’s going on, Bonk-Bonk?” Hannah said. “Something bad, right?”
“Doctor Maldek is mad at me,” Ben said.
“And me, too,” DeShaun said.
“Yes, him, too,” Ben said.
“But not me too?” Hannah asked.
Ben stopped and put his hands on Hannah’s shoulders. “Of course not. You haven’t done anything wrong. Doctor Maldek isn’t mad at you.” He smiled at Hannah and when she smiled and looked at her feet Ben cut a worried glance at DeShaun who was running his hands over the buzzed stubble on his head.
“Let’s move,” Ben said.
“Follow me,” DeShaun said, taking the lead. “I think she saw me. She will be on us in no time if we don’t find a way out of here, quick.”
As they followed DeShaun through the hallways, Ben asked Hannah about her time at the Ranch, eventually asking her if she had a child. He had no idea where the child would be found, and he knew that trying to find him or her would likely lead to all of their deaths. His knees nearly buckled when Hannah said she had been pregnant eight times, each time delivering multiple babies. He steadied himself against the wall.
“Wuh—where are the kids?” Ben stammered as his heart slid down his ribs and landed in his gut.
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “Doctor Maldek says they go to live with people that can’t have kids. She says I’m like an angel, helping people have babies to love.”
Ben pictured his infantile nieces and nephews on stainless steel tables, being dissected under Maldek’s blade. Ben tasted the lubrication that precedes vomit, but fought back against his body’s natural reaction. “Oh, wow, Hannah. That’s just… amazing. I am so proud of you.”
“C’mon kids, we gotta make tracks,” DeShaun said. He took Hannah by the elbow and led her away while Ben unleashed a primal scream into the inside bend of his right arm.
At the end of the hallway, the three fugitives came to another set of automatic double doors.
“Where are we at?” Ben asked.
“Not sure,” DeShaun said and swiped his card.
When the doors swung open and they stepped inside, Ben and DeShaun thought they had stepped through the gates of Hell. For as far as he could see, row after row of skinless, pink carcasses hung on eighteen-inch steel hooks that swung from a serpentine mechanized track on the ceiling. The carcasses were gutted and headless. All four limbs remained attached, but the extremities had been lopped off. However, there was no mistaking the anatomical form of the human body.
Ben looked to his right, and, through a large window, he watched a horrific silent movie play out. A grown man hung upside down, naked and thrashing around. A man and a woman donning blood-covered butcher’s aprons circled around the hanging man, careful to stay just outside the reach of his flailing arms. The woman was carrying a baseball bat, and she finally stepped in for a swing, catching the hanging man in the back of the skull. Ben saw the small spray of blood, and the hanging man’s arms fell limp, his fingers still a good three feet from the floor. The butcher man stepped forward and light flashed off his long, curved blade when he slid it across the man’s throat and unleashed a crimson torrent.
“Oh my God.” Ben turned away from the gore.
Hannah buried her face in his chest. She quaked like a leaf.
“That’s fucked up,” DeShaun said.
The tracks howled from above and the bodies lurched a few feet. Ben looked over and saw another upside-down, flopping person, this time a woman, arrive at the station where the two butchers were draining the blood from the human cattle.
The sound of the track snapped Ben and DeShaun from their mesmerized states. Ben pointed to a door in the far right corner of the cavernous meat locker. “There!” he said.
They were nearly to the door, weaving through swinging, skinless human bodies when Maldek called out from behind them.
“Ben! Stop right there!”
He stopped and turned, peeking around cadavers until he could see Maldek and her MPs, careful not to abandon his meat shields lest the soldiers start shooting.
“What the hell is this place, Maldek?” he asked.
“What does it look like, Ben? The nation has to eat!”
No sooner than the words left Maldek’s lips, a wet slap, like a sledgehammer hitting mud, erupted from the cadaver hanging to Ben’s left. The body twisted and swayed on its hook from the force of the silenced gunshot, and its cold, handless right arm smacked Ben across the face.
“You’re nuts, Maldek!”
“You think that meat in the grocery stores and your fancy restaurants just falls out of the sky? The government takes the weak and worthless dregs of society and we give their life purpose! They fuel the rest of us so that we can keep this planet spinning!”
Ben looked at the human meat that surrounded him. He thought about the babies Hannah had birthed, and he wondered if any of the bodies hanging from the meat hooks were his nieces or nephews, then he thought about his steak from the night before, and vomit shot out of his mouth before he realized what was happening.
Another bullet whistled by his right ear, and he turned to see DeShaun ducking out through the doorway, guiding Hannah, shielding her. ‘C’mon Ben!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Ben sprinted for the door as flecks of flesh speckled his face after another close cadaver was rocked with a moist THAP! Ben slammed the door shut behind him and jammed a metal-frame chair under the door handle.
“Let me help you with that,” DeShaun said. He pulled his sidearm and fired a round into the access panel, wrecking the keycard reader and leaving the three fugitives momentarily deaf. Ben gave DeShaun a thumbs-up.
Ben looked around at the large meat saws, grinders, and wrappers that lined the wall to his right. To his left were massive stainless steel tables, refrigerators and freezers. The slack-jawed, dead-eyed severed heads and discarded hands and feet made Ben feel more like he was standing in Jeffery Dahmer’s apartment than a United States government facility. His wide eyes finally registered what he had been searching for.
“Go, go!” Ben yelled to DeShaun and Hannah as he pointed to the sliding metal doors with a sign above them that read SERVICE ELEVATOR.
“Ben, I need help!” DeShaun said.
Hannah was sitting on the sticky floor with her knees pulled up to her chest, rocking gently while she rubbed her ears with her hands and mumbled under her breath.
Oh shit, she’s going into shock, Ben thought and shot an uneasy glance at DeShaun.
“Hannah, we need to keep going, okay. We need to go home. Are you ready to go home with me?” he asked his sister. No response, just more ear rubbing and mumbling.
A quick barrage of slams shook the door and Ben’s head snapped up; he spied four protruding, bullet sized pimples pointed at him like fingers leveling accusations.
“Hannah, please listen to me. We’ve gotta hurry.”
She held up a finger as if to say ‘just a second’, then she opened her eyes and smiled at him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. I just needed to talk to my friend. I told him I was leaving, that Bonk-Bonk had come to get me, but we need his help. He said he’d help us! Let’s go, Bonk-Bonk!”
“Okay, Hannah, let’s go!” he said, glancing up at DeShaun who was already halfway across the large room. Ben helped Hannah to her feet and shuttled her to where DeShaun was waiting in the open elevator. The panel had two buttons: ‘Up’ and ‘Down.’ Ben punched the ‘Up’ button. He could hear Maldek screaming li
ke a wounded lioness from beyond the barred door as the elevator doors closed.
Gravity pushed their feet harder against the floor as the elevator trundled upward toward daylight. Ben turned to his sister, afraid their reunion might be short lived.
“So tell me about your friend? Who were you talking to?” He couldn’t recall if she’d had an imaginary friend when they were kids.
“I was talking to my friend that lives here. We talk to each other in our brains. He says the humans think they’re studying him, but really he’s learning about them.”
DeShaun jumped in. “Oh yeah? What’s your friend’s name?”
“His name is hard to say. He’s not from Earth. I call him Bob.”
Ben smiled, put his left arm around Hannah and gave her a squeeze. He extended his right hand to DeShaun, who took it in his own and gave it a hard pump. No words were necessary.
The trio emerged from the elevator into a large refrigerated hangar. Meat, packaged on white foam trays and wrapped in clear plastic, spilled out of giant baskets with wheels. At the far end of the hangar, men and women in white meat market frocks sealed the packed meat in large, waxy, cardboard boxes for transport, then stacked the boxes on wooden pallets. Orange forklifts slid their prongs under the pallets, lifted them, and then drove up the ramp and through the heavy plastic drapes that held the refrigerated air in the cargo hold of the C-130. Its matte grey paint communicated no affiliation with the United States government.
DeShaun gawked with disbelief. “This… this… I knew the UFO thing was a cover for experimental aircraft, and I knew experimental aircraft was a cover for something else, but I never thought our government was capable of this.”
“We gotta roll, guys,” Ben said, taking Hannah by the hand and slapping his new best friend on the shoulder, breaking his trance.
Ben led the trio out of the hangar. A couple hundred yards down the airfield he spotted a twin-turboprop airplane, white with blue trim, sitting just inside the open doors of a small hangar. A JANET fleet Beechcraft 200C. Ben had familiarized himself with the aircraft in the JANET fleet in case it had come to this, and now he was glad he had been so thorough in preparation for this trip.