by Justin Bell
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The Ducati slid to a stop in the loose dirt and leaves next to the small natural pool buried within the woods of Norwood, Vermont. William Strickland had indeed made his way back there, which he considered a victory, as his mind now screamed and the red mist that had been clouding his vision returned with a vengeance. He dropped the motorcycle and buried it with leaves, but barely got it covered when he fell to both knees, and felt the warm burn of unspent adrenaline rolling through his body. Sweat pooled over his forehead, and the veins on his arms pulsed rapidly. He tossed the backpack into a soft pile of orange leaves, and unzipped it, pulling out the stack of documents that he had retrieved from the safety deposit box. It was the strangest feeling he'd ever felt, as his muscles tensed and twisted, and all of the aches and pains he'd been feeling over the past twenty-four hours intensifying. He heard everything throughout the forest? the tiniest insect, baby birds, the soft plodding of wild deer as they trudged through the thick brush. His nostrils flared as smells assaulted him with every intake of breath, and he desperately tried to shut them out.
What the hell was this?
He had felt this similar rush during the motorcycle chase, but that was done now? it was as if the buildup of energy in his body needed to be released, and he had to figure out how to do it. He struggled to fight back his impulses, and pulled the reports out of the folder he had retrieved from the bank. Operation: Harvest was the first one he pulled out and slowly the entire world opened up to him. Slowly, steadily, as he held down this feeling inside him, he understood just what might be happening.
He was an experiment? Some kind of genetic misfit?
Not written to be entertaining, that much was obvious, Strickland soaked in every bit of detail as he read, while also trying to keep his heart rate down. Making it through this document was suddenly of critical importance. Throughout the thirty-page report, formulas, genetic maps, and information explained why they might be partaking in this experiment. While much of the technical jargon in the document was nearly undecipherable to him, certain key phrases jumped out. Genetic modification. Clinical trials. Black Operations. Animal/Human Mutations.
This was a fucking freak show. And he was the main attraction.
With Doctor Reginald Worthy, a representative of the National Security Agency writing the report, the ultimate purpose of these experiments was frighteningly clear. Enhanced combat soldiers. Covert operations specialists. Even assassins?
Did they do this to me?
He rotated both arms, glaring down at the strained flesh as he clenched and unclenched his fists. Suddenly he could almost feel the invasive DNA gurgling in the blood just below the muscle and sinew of his limbs. The report also mentioned experimental "accelerants" that could be used to force a physical change in the subject and make them into the creature, establishing an even more controlled environment. Currently delivered by injection, they were even working on a special RF model that could send a signal through radio waves to institute the same transformation.
Strickland had to place the document down, as his brain continued to swim and surge inside his skull. Somehow, he knew he was a part of this experiment, but he also knew he couldn't be the only one. Throughout the report, they mentioned subjects in a plural sense, giving the impression that they had numerous trials going. Apparently, genetic markers made certain people more susceptible to the process, so it couldn't just work on anyone. The young bald man closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing, closing and opening his fists in slow repetition. Strickland felt his heart slowing to normal speeds, even as his frequent nightmares echoed on the fringe of conscious thought.
Throughout his reading, it had occurred to him that the woman in his dream may have been a victim of one of these creatures? but was it a dream, or was it memory? If it was a memory, did that mean? his wife? was dead? What about his daughters? He had daughters, right? He half-heartedly tossed the project report aside and scrambled through the rest of the paperwork. Looking for some information, he found it at the bottom of the pile.
Below all of the printed pages hastily crammed into that safety deposit box, there was a single family photograph. It showed him sitting on a rock out in someone's backyard, his wife and two little girls were there with him. The youngest little girl playfully stuck her tongue out, causing the rest of the family to smile; all except him. He managed to maintain a stern look of almost annoyance even among the most intimate of events. Suddenly all of these cursory thoughts had a face and a body? they were real. He ran two fingers down the photograph and smiled at the young faces of the two children, both looking happy and carefree. Then his eyes locked on the adult female, and he immediately recognized her as the woman from his dream. The woman who had been? had she been murdered? The dream always ended before he could really see what happened. And shit, he didn't even know if it was a memory or just the same bad dream over and over again. Those were the only answers he cared about now. Setting the photograph gently aside, he flipped through a few more pages, making mental notes of some Google Maps printouts showing an office building, construction site, and parking garage in the middle of the next town over. Flipping through the rest of the stack of papers, he was back where he started, with the Operation: Harvest report and decided to finish reading it.
Indeed, the rest of the report was just as dry as the first half, with more talk of chemical imbalance, genetic markers, and biological formulas for combining DNA strands.
Then he read the final page.
And that final page spoke to him.
Mixed among the scientific jargon was a simple artist's representation of the end result of these experiments. A simple line drawing, really, of what the National Security Agency suspected a successful candidate for Operation: Harvest might look like.
The drawing showed a large, hunched over humanoid standing on two feet. However, those feet almost bent backwards like the lower legs of a dog, and the elongated arms rested down far below the creature's hips. Its torso was twisted, but well defined, and the head was not quite a wolf, but not quite human either. It had a slightly extended snout, with a gaping jaw underneath, and rows of dull, yellowed teeth. A mixture of fur and skin covered the creature, a gross blend of brown and gray, and suddenly as Strickland's eyes focused on the head of this strange concept drawing, it occurred to him.
This thing.
It was this thing in his dream.
This thing? had it? had it killed his wife?
He squinted his eyes as he felt the blood red fog consume him. Muscles tensed, twitched, and clenched, then released as he felt like he was being pulled down into a twisting whirlpool of nothingness. In his dream, he saw the cabin, the same one that sat in his backyard, well behind the home where he had lived with his family. A cabin that had somehow become a den of death.
But had it?
He couldn't separate the truth from fiction. Suddenly he knew the only way he could uncover the truth was to go to that cabin in the woods. One more time he had to go, if only to answer this question once and for all. He could see the woman's pleading eyes in his head as he closed his own.
I will save you!
You can't. But it's okay.
Then came the rage.