by Noah Mann
Two...
Sixteen
BOOM!
The blast pushed a wall of compressed air away from its origin, the wave, mixed with smoke and bits of debris, hitting us even where we’d taken shelter around a corner. It was nowhere near as violent as what I’d experienced just feet from the exploding grenade, seeming almost mild in comparison.
One look around the corner, though, showed the effects were anything but that.
The barrier, just visible through the parting smoke as we moved back into the passageway, had been bent away from us and ripped from its connection to the surrounding walls, just a single corner still attached. The steel slab hung there, shaking still from the explosion, the way past it manageable now.
“They know we’re coming,” Hart said.
“They’ve known we were coming before we even landed, Sergeant Hart,” Schiavo told him. “But we’re not here for a fight. We find Martin, back off, and regroup with the others on the flight deck.”
It wasn’t a full retreat, but I knew what Schiavo was thinking. Once her husband was safe, we needed to have a better plan now that we knew some adversary with unconventional intentions was aboard. Our tactics, if we were to figure out what threat, if any, the carrier posed to Bandon, would have to be adjusted.
“Let’s go get him,” I said.
Once more, Hart took the lead, squeezing past the mangled barrier. Schiavo and I followed, the scent of death almost overpowering once we’d entered this new space.
“Every room,” Schiavo said. “Fletch and I will check every space, quickly, then move on. You’re our cover, Trey.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We started moving. I took the right side of the corridor, Schiavo the left. Most compartments were open, their doors pushed back. A few we had to push inward to afford a clear view, each of those moments filled with tense anticipation. We could find anything. But, instead, we found nothing.
Until we reached a watertight door at the end of the corridor we’d followed.
“Cracked open slightly,” Hart reported, turning his head slightly from the stench spilling out.
There were no more spaces for Schiavo and I to check. Just the obvious way forward and whatever horror lay beyond.
“I’ll take the lead,” I said.
Schiavo nodded and I stepped past the medic. I kept my AR in both hands and used my shoulder to move the heavy steel door, stepping over its raised frame as it fully opened. The odor of mass death could almost be felt as I moved forward, like an invisible mist that clung to you as you passed through it. It was overpowering. I coughed, tipping my face against my shoulder.
“I can’t breathe,” Hart said.
“Focus, Sergeant,” Schiavo urged him.
It was difficult to breathe, and the desire to wretch was nearly impossible to resist. My stomach churned, its contents threatening to spill onto the floor.
“Where’s it coming from?” I wondered aloud.
“We’ve just got to get past...past it,” Schiavo said.
Martin was our objective. I had to remember that. But knowing where this horror was emanating from was a powerful draw.
That desire was fulfilled when I led us around the corner just ahead.
“Good God...”
The exclamation slipped past my lips without resistance. It was simply impossible to see what I was without reacting.
What had been some sort of recreational space, a gym or gathering room, it appeared, had become the place where dozens had taken their last breaths at the ends of ropes looped over pipes high above.
“How is this possible?” Hart asked.
I had no answer for him, even after a moment of trying to process the sights before us. Each and every person was unclothed, just as the naked man with the grenade had been. There were no bindings on any of them. Their hands and feet were free. In a macabre instant I thought the dozens of bloating corpses filling the space looked like air fresheners dangling from a car’s rearview mirror, swaying gently with the motion of the ship.
“Fletch, look,” Schiavo said.
She was pointing to a stool, a single stool, tipped over beneath just one of the bodies. The bare feet of each body, depending on the person’s height, dangled a foot or two above the floor. Each would have had to be standing on something to place the noose over their head and take their final step.
What Schiavo was pointing out, though, was the chilling manner in which they had done so.
“They took turns,” she said. “They all watched the ones before them do it, until the last one was on her own.”
It was a woman, I saw. The stool lay on its side directly beneath her. She’d stepped onto it, tightened the noose around her neck, and kicked the support from beneath her.
“Who does something like this?” Hart asked, the incomprehensibility of what he was seeing overpowering the effects of the smell for the moment.
His question, though, was one where some answers existed. Answers with precedence. Mass suicides had, in the past, almost invariably been tied to groups with apocalyptic beliefs. There was another term for them.
“A cult,” I said.
Schiavo nodded.
“How many people offed themselves waiting for that spaceship in California?” she asked. “Do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“And Jonestown,” she said.
Hundreds had consumed poisoned punch in a South American jungle back in the late 70’s. I was a child then, but the details of it had persisted in popular culture.
“Angela...”
She looked to me. I gestured toward the body of the woman who’d been the last to end her life in the space.
“You think that’s the woman grenade guy was talking about?”
Schiavo didn’t have to think on the question. She shook her head.
“That woman was the last in here,” she said. “But not the last on board. Leaders of these things are almost always the last to go. They have to make sure their followers stick to the plan. The fact that we’ve come across living breathing people means this isn’t over.”
“It is for them,” Hart said.
I shifted my position to look through the inverted forest of human shapes.
“There’s a door on the far side,” I said.
“Trey, are you still keeping track of our position?”
Hart tapped his temple and nodded, the tabletop gamer in him confident.
“Okay, Fletch,” Schiavo said, prompting me to get moving again.
I was more than glad to do so. The awful scent, which had been muted by the sights we’d come upon, was making itself prominent again. I stepped past the first group of bodies, weaving carefully between those beyond, trying to avoid any errant contact with the decomposing corpses, making it halfway across the expansive compartment.
Then the lights went out.
Seventeen
In the sudden rush of darkness, too many things happened in rapid succession for us to adequately respond.
The loss of the lighting, which had gone as unexpectedly as it had come, was most jarring. I brought my weapon up and activated its light just as a sound rose. Two sounds, actually. First, the creaking of metallic hinges, from ahead of us it seemed. The door we’d been heading toward had opened. Second was the sound of some impact, hard object striking a harder object. Something landing on the floor nearby, then skidding close to us, just off the right side of our short column.
The beam of my weapon light washed over the door ahead, and I had been correct—the sound I’d heard was it opening. I knew that because I could now see it swinging closed again.
“Grenade!”
The warning came from Schiavo right behind me. I looked fast, instinctively toward where the second sound had come from, off to our right. Enough of the light aimed forward from its mount on my AR had scattered back, revealing a cylindrical explosive not ten feet from us, resting beneath the swaying legs of those who’d already left this life.
I turned my face away just as the device detonated.
The eruption of light and sound far exceeded the concussive effect of the blast, though I was tossed left from the explosion, pinballing off the hanging bodies as brilliant, blinding sparkles overwhelmed my vision. In both ears I heard what I could only describe as a rapid series of thunder cracks, hundreds it seemed. My senses were instantly assaulted by the overwhelming fury of sights and sounds.
My brain, though, was able to craft one clear thought as I fell to the floor—flash bang.
* * *
A hand slapped my face, one cheek then the other. As I began to come out of the daze inflicted upon me by the concussive grenade, I realized several things. My hands were bound behind my back in some sort of wide plastic cuffs, my weapons and vest and backpack were not on or near me, and we were no longer in the room with the hanging bodies.
“Get up,” a harsh male voice said.
We were in a hallway, the lights back on, stripped to our boots, pants, and shirts. The smell of decomp and explosive residue hung strong in the air. The room where the flash bang had detonated amongst the bodies had to be adjacent to where I now lay. I shifted my head to scan my surroundings. I could see Schiavo and Hart, sitting against the steel wall, hands bound as mine were, and standing over them were two men wearing black hockey masks, each wielding short barreled M4s.
“Up!”
A hand jerked me off the floor and put me against the wall so that I was reclining as my friends were. I looked up and saw the one who’d manhandled me was armed the same as the others, and wore the same gleaming black mask, his raging gaze wide behind the eye holes.
“Name,” the one guarding me demanded.
I hesitated, not out of any desire to resist, but because my brain was still not processing what had happened, and what was happening, at anything approaching a normal pace.
“NAME!” he shouted, putting the stubby barrel of his M4 against my forehead, pinning my skull against the wall. “I’m not asking again.”
“Eric Fletcher,” I said.
He looked to his comrades and nodded.
“It’s him,” he said.
It’s him...
That implied knowledge of who I was, if not some outright expectation of my presence. The naked man had hinted that our arrival was anticipated. This seemed to be some further confirmation of that.
“This is the garrison commander,” one of the other guards said, pointing to Schiavo.
She looked toward me, coming out of the daze as I was.
“What about him?” my captor asked, gesturing toward Hart with his weapon.
“Nobody,” the one guarding the medic said.
I didn’t like the appraisal that had been offered of Trey Hart. He was not a ‘nobody’ to us.
“All the way up now,” my captor said, and, once more, took hold of me and hauled me upward until I was leaning against the wall.
“I can stand on my own,” Schiavo said as her guard reached for her.
She pushed herself off the floor, back sliding up the wall. Next to her, Hart was lifted to a standing position as I was.
“Now, you’re going to follow him,” the man hovering next to Schiavo said, pointing to his comrade near Hart. “Keep up or we’ll make you keep up. We’re on a clock.”
The one designated to lead us began walking, Hart and Schiavo falling in behind. I took my place next in line, the other two captors trailing me.
We’re on a clock...
That could mean many things, I knew. But in light of our situation, it pointed to a most ominous possibility.
A countdown.
Part Three
Project Utopia
Eighteen
We moved along a passageway at gunpoint, our bound hands useless behind us. At the back of our short column, I was urged to move quickly with the collapsed stock of the stubby M4 jabbing me between the shoulder blades. Schiavo was just ahead of me, and Hart in front of her. One of our captors led the way, the other two herding us forward like reluctant cattle.
“Keep moving,” the first man behind me said, ramming his weapon into my back again.
I struggled to keep up the pace, the second blast in just a few hours having done a harsh number on my senses. What balance I had was off, and the ringing I’d suffered in my ears had been superseded by a grating, erratic hum. The blinding flash which had washed over us from the concussion grenade had left a constant, painful rain of sparkles dancing across my vision.
“Move!”
Once more the man slammed his rifle stock against my spine, with enough force that I toppled forward, only Schiavo’s form keeping me from falling completely. I recovered and forced myself to focus as I walked.
“That’s more like it, big man,” the vicious captor said to me.
We reached an intersection with another corridor and turned left, coming to a solid, watertight door a few dozen yards down this new passageway. The lead captor stopped us as he thumped the barrier with the edge of his gloved fist.
“We’ve got them!” he shouted.
A few seconds later the sound of some locking mechanism within the door rose and it swung toward us. Two more masked men stood beyond, each wielding vintage MAC-10 submachineguns which they trained on us as we were moved through the doorway, which was sealed again a few seconds after we passed through.
But we weren’t in just some other section of the ship. Something was different here. Had been made different here.
The walls, steel and stout, were not linear like we’d seen throughout the parts of the carrier we’d explored. There was a wide curve to them, with scorch marks every ten feet or so where the large, bent panels had been welded together. It seemed as we progressed further that we were following the outside arc of some circular compartment which had been created deep within the large vessel.
I felt myself slowing again and stumbled, tipping to the right and bouncing off the curved wall. Before another blow was necessary I resumed walking at the pace being set.
“Don’t make me thump you again,” my captor warned me.
I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. Every ounce of strength, and every morsel of mental focus I still possessed, I harnessed to stay right behind Schiavo. She glanced over her right shoulder to check on me.
“Eyes forward!” the second man behind me yelled.
It had to burn Schiavo deep within to give in to the command, but she did, not wanting to draw the wrath of our captors on any of us.
The man in the lead stopped and turned to face us, blue eyes peering out through the holes in the hockey mask.
“Lana wants you to see the chamber,” he said.
Lana...
Was this the woman the naked man with the grenade had referenced? Logic dictated that it was. But so little of what we’d encountered so far was logical that we couldn’t be certain of anything. Except that we were here, at the mercy of armed strangers, on an aircraft carrier whose lower decks were some Frankenstein version of what they’d once been.
“In there,” the lead man said, gesturing to an opening in the curved wall. “Walk in and straight across.”
Hart stepped forward, slowly, near enough to the opening that an odd glow from within began to hue his face a soft white.
“Holy...”
“Move,” the lead captor said as he stayed behind, cutting off any further exclamation from the medic.
Hart stepped into the space, and Schiavo followed. I brought up the rear, and knew immediately why Hart had let the exclamation out.
He had stepped into a jungle.
Or what had been made to mimic a jungle. A path meandered through a wide expanse of earth, whatever fresh smell that might have emanated from it replaced by the scent of stale, lifeless dirt. From it sprouted sickly bushes and drooping palms. Bananas grew on the former, and rotting husks of coconuts lay beneath the latter. Long lines of grape vines hung barren beneath banks of flickering and failing artificial lig
hts high above the manufactured space. More plants, at one time fruit bearing, along with the wilted greens of root vegetables, were spread along once carefully tended rows.
Someone had lovingly, carefully, created this space and tended to it, and had also abandoned it.
“They had blight-proof seeds and plants,” I said.
“Quiet,” the guard directly behind me ordered, no butt stock between the shoulders added for emphasis this time.
The room was more than a hundred feet long, and forty feet high, covering what had been several decks of the carrier. We continued along the path until we reached another door, two more masked guards standing outside, each armed with what looked to be Benelli semi-auto shotguns.
That choice of weapon reminded me of my friend. Neil had favored the Benelli M1, until he’d lost it in our altercation with the crazed motorcycle gang in Cheyenne. These two, though, they held the fine weapon more like a club, equally ready to bash an enemy with it as to shoot them.
“They’re all yours,” the guard immediately behind me said.
He stepped past me, and Schiavo, and seized Hart by his collar, dragging him back along the path. Schiavo turned fast to protest, but the taller guard ahead of us grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face close to his mask.
“You don’t resist, you don’t fight,” he told her.
Behind, I could hear Hart being dragged back through the interior jungle. Then, I could hear him no more.
The guard holding Schiavo released her and shoved her back so she bumped into me.
“Listen carefully,” the shorter of the two before us said. “In there, you’ll give her your full attention. You will only look at her. She is all that matters. Is that clear?”
It wasn’t, particularly the ‘why’ of the directive, but both Schiavo and I nodded.
“Move,” the short guard said.
His partner opened the door and we stepped through.
Nineteen
The space was dim, but not blacked out. There was light. One light, and it shone softly from above on a woman seated on the opposite side of a large table a few feet from us.