There were four sets of steps between each floor with a small platform between each opposing staircase. The dim lighting allowed them to see what was ahead of them clearly for the first time since entering the underground section of the base and for that Cade was grateful. The stairs disappeared upward as far as he could see, which suggested that they extended all the way to the top floor of the facility. That posed an interesting tactical problem for him, as he wasn’t sure how he was going to keep anything from slipping down the stairs passed them while they explored each level. Posting a guard at the stairwell was the likely solution, but he was against leaving any one man on his own and that would mean the point team would be two men short. Still, it didn’t look like he had much of a choice.
He sent the team upward in groups of two, with a few feet between each group. Flynn and Riley went up first, with the latter in the lead. He and Duncan followed next. Behind them came Chen and Davis, while Ortega brought up the rear.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor without incident. Cade contacted Davis and Ortega over the tactical channel. “I want the two of you to stay here and keep an eye on the stairwell. If you get any kind of movement, let us know immediately. I’ll let you know when we’ve secured the level and have you rejoin us then.”
With that issue resolved, Cade turned back to the others and gave the signal to advance.
Knowing the enemy was still out there somewhere, they came through the door leading to level two as if it were a hot entry, moving fast with guns drawn. The lights, dim though they were, made it much easier for them to rule out potential threats and it wasn’t long before the calls of “clear” reached Cade over the tactical channel, letting him know that there weren’t any immediate problems they needed to deal with. After that, Echo began to make a slow, detailed search of the level before them.
The first six doors on either side of the corridor led to a series of storerooms, each one filled with an amazing variety of materials, twelve storerooms in all. It was as if Vargas had believed they would be down here for some time and wanted to limit contact with the surface as much as possible. Cloth, lumber, dried foods, medical equipment, potting soil, plastics; you name it and it was there, packed up and stored for later use. Most of it was in marked crates and after verifying that the markings matched the contents on the first few in each room, Cade ordered that the crates be left alone. They gave no real indication of what the facility had been designed for and they didn’t help them uncover the nature of their enemy, so as far as he was concerned they were superfluous.
The corridor turned left after the storerooms and Echo found itself standing at one end of a massive kitchen area. Large preparation stations ran through the center of the room, with racks full of shiny steel pots hanging above them, and a row of ovens stretched down the left wall. On the right, four refrigeration units stood next to the entrance to an industrial size walk-in freezer.
“All right, you know the drill. Top to bottom and let’s be swift about it.”
The men of Echo moved into the kitchen.
As the others began hunting through the pantry and cabinets, Duncan stepped up to the freezer. Cold air wafted out when he opened the door, surprising him. The power hadn’t been restored for that long; there was no way the freezer could have gotten this cold in such a short time.
The place had obviously been stocked for the long haul. Large steel shelving units stood on either side of the central aisle and many of these were covered with foodstuffs, from large bags of vegetables to frozen turkeys. To Duncan, it looked like enough food to feed a good-sized group for several months.
He grabbed a carton off the nearest shelf and used it to prop open the door. Satisfied that he wouldn’t be accidentally locked inside, he cautiously moved deeper into the space.
If the power had been turned off for any length of time, most of the contents here would have defrosted and begun to rot by now. Duncan could immediately see that that wasn’t the case. Water dripped off many of the packages, pooling on the floor beneath his feet in wide puddles, but the few items he touched were still mostly frozen.
Which meant whoever had trashed the generator had done so only a few hours before their arrival.
The thought was not a welcome one, for it was another clue that pointed to the fact that their arrival had been anticipated.
Past the shelving there was a large section of the freezer serving as a meat locker, with more than a dozen slabs of beef hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Here, too, the puddles were forming, but the beef was still coated in many places by a thick sheen of frost.
Just beyond the meat, Duncan found the first body.
The man had been in his mid-fifties, with a wide doughy face and only a thin wave of hair covering his scalp. He had pulled himself into a corner but kept his face turned toward the door; as if afraid something would follow him inside. His eyes were open wide and staring; Duncan could see ice crystals still formed over their surfaces.
He was dressed in a blue jumpsuit and had black athletic shoes on his feet. On his right shoulder was a patch showing a green and vibrant earth over which the word EDEN was superimposed. Duncan couldn’t see any wounds on the body, nor where there any bloodstains on the floor nearby. It looked as if the man had simply frozen to death.
A quick call over the radio and seconds later Cade and Riley had joined him beside the body.
“You haven’t moved him at all?” Cade asked, as he moved around the body, studying it carefully.
“No, haven’t touched him. That’s just how I found him.”
Riley pulled a digital camera out of a pouch on his belt and took a couple of shots, documenting the find and gathering evidence that they might need later to reconstruct what had happened.
Once he was finished, Cade squatted down in front of the body and stared at it for several long moments and then, after checking to be certain his gloves were firmly in place, reached forward and tried to move it from its position against the wall, without any success. “Give me a hand,” he said and Sgt. Riley stepped forward. Between the two of them they were able to peel the body away from the wall to which it had become frozen and lay it gently on its side, legs sticking out, on the floor. Cade then began going through the man’s pockets, looking for identification or anything that might tell them who he was or what he was doing here, but came up empty.
“Ever seen that patch before?” Duncan asked and both of his teammates shook their heads.
“Considering the quote we found back at the entrance, I’m guessing it’s the name of the project or of the facility itself,” Cade replied absently, his attention still occupied with the corpse in front of him.
Riley snorted. “Yeah, a real garden of paradise. And this one apparently comes with its own serpent, too. Why am I not surprised?”
Cade stood suddenly and walked back over to the freezer entrance. Putting his foot against the carton Duncan had placed there, he kicked it free and watched the door swing shut in his face.
“Hey!” Duncan cried, rushing over. “You’ve locked us in!”
“No, I didn’t,” Cade said without turning and reached out and opened the door from the inside to illustrate his point. “See?”
“Oh,” Duncan replied sheepishly and then hesitated, turning back to look at the corpse behind them with a puzzled expression on his face. “Wait a minute,” he said. “If the door isn’t locked from the inside, why didn’t he just get up and leave?”
No one had an answer and they remained lost in their individual thoughts for several long moments until Riley voiced the question that was hanging unspoken in the air between them.
“What makes a man so scared that he would rather remain in here and freeze to death than face whatever was on the other side of those doors?”
“I don’t know, but I think its time that we find out, don’t you?” Cade said. He propped the door open again and then, turning, walked back over to the body. Kneeling beside it, he pulled the flesh colored
gloves he wore off both his hands.
Riley said a few words into his throat mike and while Duncan was too far away to hear what was said, he figured he knew the gist of it. Their commander was about to use his Gift and their exec was letting the other men in the unit know that they needed to be extra vigilant while they were otherwise occupied in here.
Duncan had seen Cade use his so-called Gift shortly after joining the Echo Team. As he understood it, the commander had received a few extraordinary powers in his confrontation with the supernatural entity known as the Adversary. His ability to look into and actually travel through the Beyond, that purgatory-like realm between the lands of the living and those of the dead, was one. This was another. Following that fateful encounter, Cade had lost the ability to touch anything without picking up psychic impressions left behind by whoever had last touched the object or what that person had last seen. Psychometry, it was called. Because of it, the Knight Commander was forced to wear thin gloves at all times to protect him from accidental, and unwanted, readings.
The last time Duncan had been present when Cade had used his Gift, he’d ended up with a chunk bitten out of his arm when the commander had lost control and succumbed to the psychic residue he was channeling. This time, Duncan made sure he was standing off to one side, out of reach.
He needn’t have worried however; after laying his hands on the corpse for a time, Cade sat back and shook his head. “Nothing. He’s either been dead too long or the cold is interfering somehow. I’m not picking up anything.”
Unnoticed, Duncan breathed a sigh of relief. Despite knowing that Cade used his “gifts” for the good of the Order and that if he could, he would be rid of them in a heartbeat, Duncan was still creeped out when they were used around him. There were some things in Echo that were just going to take some getting used to.
Chapter Fifteen
The rest of the team found nothing of further interest within the kitchen area and so it was time to move on. There was a bank of elevators on the far side of the room just past the freezer, but having already determined that they would stay away from them as a matter of course, Cade ordered the team to regroup with Davis and Callavechio at the first staircase and resume their journey upward.
Flynn had point, with Duncan as back up, and he had just turned to begin the climb upward when something caught his attention.
Above them, something moved in the dim light.
He’d only caught it out of the corner of his eye and so he waited a moment, watching, wanting to be sure.
There! High above him a human-shaped figure was leaning over the railing, watching them. It was just a darker shadow against the general blackness above, but it was clearly human.
Flynn turned to face Duncan and stepped close, as if he were intending to hand him something. Using his body to shield what he was doing, he held his right hand in front of his chest and jerked a thumb upward, indicating that there was something on the staircase above.
“How far?” Duncan mouthed.
“Two flights, maybe three,” Flynn mouthed back.
The other man nodded, knowing without needing to ask that there was only one choice in front of them.
They needed to catch whoever it was.
Duncan flashed a series of hand signals to the man behind him, spreading the word, and then turned back to face his partner.
Flynn held up one finger, then two. On three, he shouted “Contact!” into the radio and turned to charge up the stairwell, Duncan following close on his heels. Between their footfalls Flynn could hear the slap of bare feet on concrete above them as whatever it was took flight.
“It’s moving,” he said into the radio and then redoubled his efforts, not wanting it to escape. Behind him, he could hear the rest of Echo Team following as Cade calmly sent orders across the tactical link, getting them into position to best support each other in case things escalated into a firefight.
Flynn felt every step pass beneath his feet, his senses hyperaware as adrenaline kicked in and his body went into combat mode. His heart pounded and he could hear his own breathing echoing in his ears. His hands gripped his MP5 firmly, ready to bring it to bear on the first target that presented itself if it came to that.
His boots hit the first landing and he turned the corner without slowing, heading up the opposite flight. Glancing upward, he saw with dismay that not only had they not closed any of the distance between them, but that their target had actually increased the gap and was now almost at the entrance to the level above.
There was no doubt in his mind.
Nothing human moved that fast.
“We’re losing it!” he shouted to Duncan and put everything he had into climbing those stairs, pulling away from his companion in an effort to shrink their quarry’s lead on them.
Two flights.
Three.
As he hit the final turn he could see that the landing above was blocked by a pile of debris, like the one they’d encountered in the south staircase, except this time there was an opening in the barrier. As he watched, whatever it was they were chasing slipped through that hole and disappeared into the darkness beyond.
There was no way he was going to follow without knowing more about what was on the other side of that hole.
The chase had come to an end; they’d lost.
When the rest of the team arrived, Flynn explained what had happened.
“You made the right choice,” said Cade, and although he knew that the Knight Commander was correct, it still bothered Flynn that their prey had gotten away.
“What now?” Chen asked, eyeing the barricade before them.
It was similar to what they had encountered on the south staircase, a jumbled pile of whatever furniture and equipment seemed to be at hand. Unlike the last one, however, this one appeared to have been designed to prevent access to the third level and seemed to have spilled out into the staircase. It would have been an easy enough task to climb the outer edge and continue upward on the stairs had they wanted to do so. Their quarry had gone through the hole before them and standard operating procedure said that you never left an enemy at your back, particularly one you knew next to nothing about, if you could help it. Cade was going to order them through the barricade; Flynn just knew it.
“I don’t like the idea of that thing running around in the darkness behind us. It went through that hole for a reason and right now I’m a bit tired of constantly being in the dark about what’s going on,” said Cade, confirming Flynn’s hunch. “It’s time to step things up. We’re going in after it.”
Cade would go first, with Riley playing rear guard. Once they were all through the barrier they would form up into their respective squads, ready for whatever might be waiting for them on the other side.
Squatting down, Cade carefully examined the opening in front of him. It looked like something had burrowed its way through the pile of debris; the opening was roughly circular and the tunnel beyond maintained its shape and size for at least several feet. He could see a faint sheen of light coming from the other side, so he knew the tunnel wasn’t very long. It was easily wide enough to admit a man and Cade knew he could get through it without much difficulty, though he didn’t like the idea that he’d have several hundred pounds of debris hanging over his head while he made the trek. A thick, cloying stench hung about the entire barricade, a stench Cade recognized, and he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant on the other side.
No sense worrying about what couldn’t be helped.
“Ready?” Cade asked and Riley nodded. Taking a deep breath, Cade entered the tunnel.
Five minutes later he radioed to his executive officer that he was clear and Riley nodded to Flynn, indicating that it was his turn.
One by one the rest of the team slipped through the hole in the barricade and emerged into the mouth of hell.
What they saw there made them all but forget the shadowy form they had been following, which perhaps had been its very intention.
Once a cafet
eria, the room beyond was now an abattoir, with blood and limbs and bodies scattered throughout like so much discarded trash. Several of the dead lay fallen against the interior side of the barricade itself, their positions making it obvious that they had died in defense of the breach. The members of Echo were forced to clamber over them to get inside the room, an experience none of them wanted to repeat.
The place stank of decomposition. The bodies were grotesquely swollen, so much so that it was often hard to tell if the victims were male or female, their facial and body features bulging and indistinguishable from corpse to corpse. All of them were dressed in the same blue jumpsuits found on the first body, complete with the Eden patch, confirming Cade’s earlier guess that it was the standard uniform for those involved in the project.
The team moved cautiously into the room, knowing in the back of their minds that they’d been led to this place intentionally. It was immediately obvious that the room’s previous inhabitants never stood a chance against whatever it was they’d made a stand against. Many of them had weapons in hand or lying nearby, but the vast majority of those were nothing more dangerous than sharpened kitchen knives and the occasional utility hatchet. There were only two handguns amongst them all and one of those was a snub-nosed revolver that looked like it had seen its better days thirty years before.
Clearly the weapons had done them little good, yet they had stood their ground and faced whatever it was rather than retreat to some other section of the complex. That suggested to Flynn that they’d known they hadn’t had any choice; fight now or fight later, it didn’t make much difference. Like the man they’d found frozen in the freezer, this group had been just as resigned to their fate apparently, though they had at least chosen to go down fighting.
Angels Scream (Echo Team Book 2) Page 9