by Peter Idone
“Why do you say that, Tommy?”
“The Stryker that drove by? It was sent to investigate an event on the eastern perimeter.”
“What kind of event?” Logan asked. He couldn’t tell if Creech was attempting to scare them only to assert his need, his control.
“Unidentified light source. It could be nothing, or an irregularity of some kind. The Tacticals take no pleasure in investigating things they don’t comprehend.”
“And do you comprehend them?” Logan didn’t mean this to sound like a challenge or a rebuke, but his tone indicated as much.
“No, I don’t. I just don’t react to the same level of unease as they do. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just the way I am or that I don’t carry a gun. With some of the odd things that have occurred here over the past few months, I don’t see having a gun makes much of a difference.”
“Tell me something,” Logan said. “Do you think the Tacticals are trying to keep people out or keep something in?”
“You ask that question now? I would have thought you and Natalie and your boss, whoever he is, would have answered that for yourselves by now. I think the Tacticals will want to forget they ever heard of Pine Haven. But they can’t. It will become a rotating mission for the security personnel, with no immediate end in sight. It’s an ongoing occupation.” Creech suddenly became distracted and looked around. “Let’s keep moving,” he said, then led them to the tree line and another fifty yards or so through it, following a tight, meandering path that every now and again would whip either Natalie or Logan in the face with a tree branch. It wasn’t painful, but it did surprise the hell out of him.
They stood at the edge of a clearing ringed by tall pines. The low clouds reflected more light from an unknown source. It was especially brighter to the north and west. The folds and undulations of the sky were the color of smoky-gray pearl. The tall, dead grass appeared almost silver in this light. Near the center of the open space was the wide trunk of an old, dead tree that had been cut down. Rotting gnarled branches lay nearby, and leafless shoots extended from the decaying stump. Creech told them to watch their step because a narrow stream meandered through the tall grass. Still bringing up the rear, Logan stepped cautiously over a shallow ditch with gurgling water. Mostly it was rain that filled the depression, not some free-flowing tributary; the summer and autumn had been too dry for that.
He was almost halfway across the clearing when he came up suddenly on a wide gully. His timing was off, and he lost his footing, slipping on wet grass. He slid down the side of the stream bank, surprisingly deeper than he had assumed, at least four feet deep and wide. Runoff and rainwater had collected on the bottom. His boots were partially submerged, but what was worse was that the seat of his trousers had gotten wet clear through the long johns to his skin. It felt nothing short of unpleasant. As he was getting to his feet, something squirmed and quivered violently in the shallow pool of water. He scrambled backward, defensively, the adrenaline pumping through his chest cavity. His hand went into his pocket for the Ruger, but he didn’t draw it out. Natalie, standing on the opposite side above him, shined a light down. “Ouroboros,” she said, awed.
A silvery gray mass as large and thick as a truck tire flopped around in a circle as if attempting to wallow deeper into the muddy ooze. There were both scales and a skin pattern reminiscent of a snake. It possessed neither head nor tail and no discernible beginning or end. Repulsed by the mutant creature, Logan wanted to shoot it dead. It was an aberration of the natural order of things. Wherever it came from or however it manifested, the Ouroboros, like the thing that killed Tara, did not belong in the same world that he lived in.
“I really didn’t think these things existed. I thought it was all hearsay, folklore. Now I can say I actually saw one,” Natalie said, not without a certain amount of excitement. As Logan heaved himself out of the wet depression, Natalie took her video camera and filmed the squirming mass of scaled flesh. “This is the sort of thing we came here for, Joe.” She sounded pleased.
Logan didn’t consider how exciting this discovery actually was. He was so revolted by the creature, he could think only of destroying it. Bullets, rocks, an axe—he didn’t care. Instead, all he did was work up a gob of phlegm from the back of his throat and spit on the creature. “Filthy, disgusting thing,” he muttered.
Natalie jumped back. “Hey, that was nasty.” She then put away the camera.
“Are you finished playing in the dirt?” It was Creech, who’d had to backtrack to see what was taking them so long.
“Does this thing have any significance?” Logan asked, pointing down at the Ouroboros. The glow boy, still showing displeasure at Logan’s presence, ignored him. “We’re almost there. Hurry,” he said to Natalie and then set off at an obnoxiously fast pace to the other side of the clearing.
“Real good times hanging out with that little asshole,” Logan muttered in Natalie’s ear.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She sounded angry.
“Forget it. Let’s keep up before he decides to lose us out here.”
18
They had reached a gravel road. Creech had them remain hidden among the rhododendron bushes that lined the shoulders of the road. He asked to see the map, and Natalie gave it to him, cupping the blue lens of the flashlight and holding it close to the paper. The road extended from the side parking lot of the mansion and then forked to the north and south. This was the southern fork that ran toward the eastern perimeter and then looped around to the northern branch of the road. A couple of hundred yards farther up was the pump house, set off the road. The wind had increased and the temperature had dropped even more. Maybe it felt colder because they had been outside for so long. Creech advised them to remain quiet and keep an ear tuned for the sound of vehicles. The road ran almost the entire length of the property and was a standard route for the Tacticals.
They kept to the woods, skirting the side of the road. Before long, the pump house came into view, a dark-on-dark silhouette. The building was of the same architectural style as the estate house, only diminutive in size and with less ornamentation. It had granite-block siding with a slate roof and was eighteen feet wide and thirty-five feet long. The front end had been enclosed by chain-link topped with razor wire. A gate facing the road was looped with a chain and padlock. Next to this opening, on the inside of the fence, was a gray utility panel with meters and gauges mounted on it. A thick, sealed section of conduit ran from the base of the box and terminated in the ground.
Creech opted for the other side of the fence that extended roughly six feet from the corner of the building. He wanted to avoid any telltale signs that the gate had been tampered with. All the windows appeared to be boarded up with sections of plywood. There even were bars on the few lower windows in front. Ivy vines had looped through portions of the fence and grown over the sides of the granite walls; it appeared as though the pump house was being slowly strangled. When Logan took the wire cutters from his backpack, Creech grabbed the tool from his hands and began to snip the links. He made one vertical and two horizontal cuts and then pulled back the severed section, holding it open so Natalie and Logan could ease through. The solid steel core door had a mechanical pushbutton lock set in a weathered metal housing. The keypad numbers were in two vertical rows: one through five and six through zero. Creech started to punch numbers, at least eight separate digits, by Logan’s count. The lever did not turn. He tried again and still no success. “Will you shine a light on this,” Creech said anxiously. Natalie complied, using her body to shield any stray light. He tried again, still with no success. “I haven’t been in here for months. Maybe it’s frozen.”
“To get this far and not get in, what a joke,” Logan said.
“Shut up, Joe. Can we try the windows around back?” Natalie asked.
Creech shook his head. “Bars. And there are old air-conditioning units still attached.” He didn’t give up. Staring at the keypad, Creech methodically entered another series
of numbers. Finally the lever turned downward when he applied pressure. The door opened with a slight tug. Creech entered first and turned on his flashlight. Once they were all inside, Creech closed the door most of the way but did not shut it. “This locks from the inside using the same apparatus, but I don’t have the code. Make sure it doesn’t shut all the way.”
“I think I can remedy that,” Logan said. He removed the wire crimpers from his daypack and laid the tool on the floor next to the jamb. When he closed the door, a space of about two inches remained. Both he and Natalie turned on their flashlights and shined them around the room.
“This wasn’t only a backup station for the project,” Creech explained, “it was a secondary control room for the campus area network for the computers and telephones. Not that it was a big campus.”
“Yeah, we heard,” Logan remarked. They were in one large room with a ten-foot ceiling. The windows on the far wall still contained the air-conditioning units installed to keep all the equipment purring along nicely without the threat of overheating. Toward the rear right corner was a stairwell that led to the upper floor. There were six rows of matte-black metal racks that at one time had contained the servers. The equipment was gone now, except for some trailing fiber-optic wires and spliced USB plugs dangling in the emptiness. A lot of litter and junk had been left behind: sections of rubber matting rolled up and exposing the wood floor; used florescent tubing, some of which had broken and left a fine dust amid the slivers of opaque shards of glass; cracked monitors, old and bulky, lying on the floor; several milk crates and plastic storage boxes filled with an assortment of electronics. Natalie knelt down and rummaged through old telephones, power supplies, d-sub cables, and small circuit boards that seemed to be modules of some kind. “No hard drives, huh?” Logan asked.
“Not yet. Why don’t you check out the upstairs first and I’ll look through these crates. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Sure thing.” He looked over at Creech, who stood at the door, barely sticking his nose out. Logan was about to say something but didn’t. What would be the point? Either Creech would give them a signal if anyone was coming, or he wouldn’t. They could have handled this on their own, without the glow boy, if only Natalie could have extracted the necessary information from him. This was all about control and whatever sort of romantic crush Creech had on her. Logan wondered how far Creech would go if he had Natalie alone on this side of the wire. Unless, of course, his biological upgrade, the bug splicing, had turned him into a eunuch. That must be why Natalie pressed him to go along and the useless Glass didn’t balk. Fuck, I should get paid for this. He went over to the staircase but first shined the light down. The blue masked light barely penetrated the gloom of the basement. He could see a small section of concrete flooring at the bottom. The wood stairs were covered with textured rubber or neoprene foot pads. If there was any prize, it would be down there if nothing was found up here, he thought.
The staircase leading to the upper floor was wood and much worn. He cupped a hand over the lens of the flashlight so no ambient light could be seen from the windows. The second floor consisted of three small, low-ceilinged rooms and a bathroom stripped of most of the fixtures except for a broken sink and a hideously stained toilet bowl. Suddenly, he had the urge and took a leak in the toilet. The other rooms were empty except for carpeting on the floor that smelled of mildew and dust. He went back down. “It’s empty up there. Any luck?”
Natalie shook her head. “I suppose we should venture down below,” she said, her tone sounding not very enthusiastic.
Logan took a few steps down the stairs and unscrewed the wafer-thin blue lens. “You do the same,” he said to Natalie.
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“As long as we’re inside we will need all the light we can get. The darkness seems rather…dense down here.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Either that or the batteries are beginning to wear. I’ll go first.” As he started down the stairs, he heard Natalie call over to Creech, “Hey, Tommy, what’s down here?” Her voice was unusually loud.
“I won’t go down there.”
“Why?” she asked, the one syllable laced with a tincture of dread.
“I…never had any reason to,” was the glow boy’s answer.
Logan had reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Natalie, who remained at the top. He held out his hand. “Are you ready?”
She nodded and took one step at a time with deliberate, halting care. “No messing around, Joe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just don’t joke around.”
Logan was plainly annoyed. “Tell me one time I’ve acted like an asshole since you brought me in on this little expedition of yours.”
“Just forget it, OK? I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Something had changed in Natalie’s demeanor; an anxiety, a palpable fear was noticeable. So far, their actions had not been without danger or consequence, but since entering the pump house, something oppressive was bearing down. Logan had to admit he felt different, sensed things differently. Natalie had felt it first and was making an effort to dampen any of his words or behavior that would cause a poorly calculated move. She had let her remark about joking squeak past. It was forgivable. “It’s all right, Natalie, I won’t joke or try to frighten you. If anything is down here, it will be the computer or…”
“Or what?”
“Or nothing.”
She joined him at the base of the stairs. They were in a narrow utility corridor that extended about thirty feet, almost the length of the building. The surface of the walls was old, cobblestone or Belgian block. Heavy beams encased in old mortar comprised the bulkhead. The height and width was no more than eight feet. Bundles of conduit and BX cable ran along the wall, and every few feet there were small utility light fixtures with glass globes protected by plastic cages. The corridor terminated in a space that was slightly higher and wider, but by no means could be called a room. At the rear wall were a Formica-topped workbench and an office chair with a missing back; only the upright curving spine remained. There was something anthropomorphic and unpleasant about the damaged chair.
A gutted computer and loose components were strewn on the workbench. It was an archaic unit, at least twenty years old. Natalie examined the exposed computer, spilling ribbon cable and wiring. The main circuit board appeared scorched in places, the processors and chips amid the surface-mount resistors and capacitors were blackened, and some deteriorating matter had built up around the pins, probably due to the dampness over the years. The power supply and fan were still attached to the chassis, but there was no ROM or mecha unit or hard drive.
“It seems somebody beat us to it, Joe, by about five years.” Judging by the expression on her face, Logan knew Natalie was discouraged. “I suppose I allowed myself too much optimism. I really believed it could be here, the hard drive I mean.”
“Even Glass knew it was a crapshoot. I really didn’t think the Air Force would leave anything behind after the accident. They got the computer Viv told Glass about and searched for what might have gone wrong with the experiments. If anything, at least you can say you made it into Pine Haven and got a few snapshots. It might not be much, but at least whatever you write will carry some authority.”
“It doesn’t work that way. This whole enterprise has been a bust from the beginning. I suppose whatever happened at Pine Haven will always remain a secret.”
“I think people’s imaginations about the project will prove to be more exciting than what actually went on here…”
Suddenly a light appeared, dim and unfocused, on the wall to their left. There was an electric control panel where the cables that ran along the wall had sprouted from. It was a complex of small gauges and meters, all analog needles or digital numbers resting at zero, housed in a narrow utility box, with columns of circuit breakers that ran from floor to ceiling, mortised into the wall. Swa
ths of cement had been applied around the edges of the dark metal. A luminous, gray-green rectangle, three by five inches, was embedded in the panel above eye level, just below the ceiling. It was a monitor screen or liquid crystal display emitting grainy photons and zigzag lines of static, like an old television set with lousy reception. Within seconds, a black-and-white image congealed of a man wearing dark lens goggles: small, circular, like the type worn by welders. Only the man’s head and part of his shoulders were in view. He wore a white lab coat, or at least that was the impression Logan had. The image was small. “What do you make of this?” he asked with astonishment.
Natalie signaled him to be quiet as the man began to speak. There was audio, but the volume was low and they had to strain to hear what was being said. The man was speaking, but they could also hear voices off-screen, muted and garbled.
“Now isn’t the time to send anything organic through,” they heard. “Not at this point in time. So far, every probe has returned damaged as though turned inside out and I mean that literally…(indistinct voice offscreen)…No, I mean what I said, inside out. Every circuit, every component, the wiring, the outer hull of the probe…we didn’t know what we were looking at. I thought we were receiving an example of their technology, a probe they had sent to monitor or communicate with us, but it wasn’t that at all. It was our probe and we were given an example of just how much power they are capable of expressing. This is not a one-sided opening…yes, I’m concerned. Anomalous events have been taking place, we’ve all seen it. Something is leaking through to our side the longer we maintain power.” Someone asked a question off-screen, but the words could not be understood. “I don’t know what exactly, but I think we can all agree that there have been some very weird occurrences of late…I’m having Johann go through all the data. He and his team are sifting through it as we speak. Every indication so far appears to give the impression that there is a lot of activity on the other side. I won’t venture to say with any degree of certainty who or what, exactly, is there, but I’m inclined to believe that they, whoever they are, know that we’re here at this exact location at this exact point in time and are acutely aware of what we are trying to achieve…After we run all the data I believe we will be in a much better position…”