by Amber Wyatt
The row of steady gun muzzles twitched suddenly, as Behnke startled everyone by stepping forward, directly into their line of fire.
“Something I learned both in business and in the boxing ring,” he announced pompously, whirling to give an intense close-up directly into Rob’s camera. “Is that I don’t like to wait for my enemies.” He paused dramatically, before whispering a in a low growl. “I prefer to meet them head on.” With that, he winked at Gina and Hana and strode determinedly straight towards the doorway.
Hell yeah! Thought Behnke. How’s that for an awesome soundbite? The viewers are going to love that. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the rest of the group staring at him open-mouthed. Idiots. They still think there are zombies in here. Guess that’s why I’m the alpha, and they’re just sheep.
Thomas rushed forward with a muffled curse and managed to get in through the doorway just ahead of his employer, scanning in all directions with his SCAR. Rob followed on just as swiftly, his face as expressionless as a robot, capturing everything on his helmet and body cameras.
“Oh God,” Gina said to Hana. “Did you see how he winked at you? He’s disgusting!”
“Oh yuck! Me? He was winking at you,” Hana laughed back. “You’re his…” Suddenly her eye was caught by movement from a window above the front door, and she whipped her rifle up to aim at it. But by the time she was ready to fire, the window was empty.
“What is it?” Hugh asked from just behind her shoulder. Both he and Gina had mirrored Hana’s movement and all three of them stood with weapons aimed at the window.
“I… nothing I guess.” Did I just see a face looking down at us? Hana wondered. “Must have been a trick of the light.”
“Uh guys?” Wilkins hovered at the door, clearly unsure as to whether to follow Behnke or stay with the three outside. “Shall we… I mean, are we going in?”
“Yes, let’s go.” Hana flipped her safety catch back on and walked to him. Then her eye was caught by something on the door handles and she pointed it out to Hugh and the other two. “Looks like someone has tried to get in here before us.” She pointed out smudged handprints in the dust around the handle and on the frame where the chain had been threaded through the handles.
The three of them inspected the door and ground around it, looking in vain for any other clues. Other than the smudges, there was no other trace and no footprints. The sidewalk outside the entrance had long since been scoured clean by the wind.
“How long ago, do you think?” Wilkins asked Gina.
The petite singer looked thoughtfully at the smudged handprints on the door and then knelt down to carefully inspect the ground. “Four days ago.” Gina announced confidently, standing back up. “There were three men and a woman. One of the men walks with a limp in his left leg.”
“Really?” Wilkins asked in amazement.
“No, I’ve got no idea,” she snapped back. “How the hell would I know? I’m Korean, not a fucking Apache.” Hugh snorted in amusement and Hana laughed out loud. Wilkins blushed but smiled too, despite being the butt of the joke.
“Come on, let’s follow the others,” Hana said, still grinning. And with one last glance up at the window above, she gripped her rifle a little tighter and walked through the doorway into the museum.
The three of them were immediately greeted by the incongruous sight of hundreds of plush toys squashed up against the window of the museum gift shop.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Wilkins said. “Excuse me.” He threaded his way through Hugh and Hana and cautiously peered around the corner into the gift shop, looking for zombies. Upon seeing that it was empty, he walked in and looked around curiously before his eyes brightened and he picked up a bright pink backpack with ‘Welcome To Florida’ across the back in silver crystals. He threw an embarrassed smile back over his shoulder as he realized that Hugh and Gina were staring at him, perplexed by his behavior.
“I just thought, you know, since we are going to find the chest and head home soon, that I should pick up some souvenirs for my wife and kids.”
Gina closed her eyes for a second, bit her tongue on whatever she was going to say, and then walked away to catch up with Hana who was checking the ticket office. Hugh just shook his head, smiling and gestured at Wilkins to hurry up.
Hana was looking at the stand of leaflets and brochures as Gina came up behind her. On the top of the stall was a mock-up cockpit instrument display, which helpfully gave out the museum opening times, as well as its website and the password for the free Wi-Fi inside the museum.
“These will be useful,” she said and handed Gina one of the museum brochures. “Look at the back page, there’s a map of the museum.”
The two of them were looking at the map when Hugh and Wilkins walked up. Wilkins had the pink, glittering backpack on his back, and was wearing a black and white camouflage ‘JW Aviation Museum’ baseball cap. He grinned and pointed at his new cap to Gina, who shook her head resignedly, but unable to stop herself smiling back at him. Hana looked up and waved Hugh over, pointing at her map.
“Administration offices,” she said, pointing upwards. “Just above us. Let’s get inside and find Behnke, and then look for any stairs leading up.” In the back of her mind Hana noted that the offices were where she had thought she had spotted movement at the windows earlier.
The four of them walked past the ticket office and turned the corner into the main hangar. It was an impressive sight with at least a dozen aircraft filling the floorspace, and another four large planes hanging suspended from the roof. There was no lighting however, other than what daylight came in through the windows down one side, and much of the vast, indoor space was shrouded in dull, grey shadows.
“Wow. Now this is cool,” whispered Wilkins. “Look at that, a P-51 Mustang!” He pointed reverently at a highly polished, chrome, World War 2 era, single-seat fighter, which was standing right in front of them on a podium, in pride of place to greet all visitors entering the museum. “That was the first model aircraft I ever built. Even before my Spitfire.”
His further reminiscing was interrupted abruptly as Hana dropped to one knee and whipped her SCAR up into firing position.
“Thomas, behind you!” she shouted. “Watch out!” Hugh’s weapon came up a fraction of a second after hers, his eye glued to the scope, aiming at the same figures Hana was aiming at.
Thomas, Behnke and Rob, who were only just on the other side of the P-51 Mustang, whirled around in alarm, bringing their weapons up to bear as well, looking around wildly for whatever had alerted Hana, but then they stopped and started laughing, lowering their weapons.
“Don’t shoot!” Thomas shouted back. “They’re just dummies!”
“Shit.” Hana swore under her breath. Now that she was looking at them closely, she could see that they were indeed department store mannequins, dressed in a variety of wartime uniforms, posed around another one of the aircraft. She had mistaken their frozen poses for the unnatural stillness of the undead. But she should have realized that they were not reacting at all to Behnke’s little group only a few yards away.
“Don’t worry,” Thomas said, his moustache curling around his smile. “They got us too.”
“The museum offices are back this way,” Hana called out to them, lowering her assault rifle and pointing up and behind her. Above the ticket office and the gift shop at the main entrance was a second level, built on an exposed frame of solid looking, steel girders. Several prefabricated office units had been placed up there, side by side, and Hana could now see that there was a stairway off to the side that led up to the viewing balcony and the offices.
She waited as Behnke made his way back towards the entrance and re-joined them before walking around to the corner of the huge hangar to look for the stairs. The group walked past a beautifully restored Catalina flying boat and an anti-aircraft gun emplacement, manned by several more mannequins, some in uniform and some nude, to the bottom of the stairwell. It was guarded by a life-size cardb
oard cut-out of a 1930s costumed pilot, cheerfully holding a sign saying ‘Employees Only’.
Thomas went first. Despite his considerable bulk, the huge man moved as quickly and silently as a cat. He glided effortlessly up the stairs, the butt of his rifle tucked into his shoulder, and his eyes calmly scanning for targets over the top of his sights.
Behnke waited until Thomas had climbed out of camera shot and then puffed his chest out, posing next to the carboard cut-out at the bottom of the stairs.
“We’ve come a long way but here we are finally, at what I believe to be the source of the Lyssavirus. There have been some sad days along the way, but I know that once we have successfully achieved our goal, the sacrifices we have made will all be worth it.” He raised his pistol, the Piledriver, Hana noticed, and flexed into one last pose. “Follow me,” he said in as deep a voice as he could. And then he moved off up the stairs. We should film me doing that speech again outside the entrance to the hangar, as if it’s before we all enter the museum, Behnke thought. And then see which one looks better for the final edit. I need to think up a suitably epic speech for when we find the chest too.
Hana thought she saw Rob’s jaw stiffen at the words ‘sad days’ but he did not say anything and simply followed Behnke up the stairs, angling his head to keep the billionaire in the center of his camera shot. She was about to follow them when she caught a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision, and spun around to look out at the hangar.
“What is it?” Hugh asked, his eyes scanning the parked aircraft, and the concealing shadows behind them.
“Nothing I guess.” Hana frowned. “I feel as if there is something watching us, but every time I look, it’s already gone.” She smiled wryly and touched his arm. “Don’t worry, if it was a zombie it would have attacked us by now.”
“Okay,” Hugh looked out one last time, his brow furrowed. “But I trust your instincts. Let’s stay alert. It won’t do us any harm anyway.”
By the time they went up the stairs Thomas had already finished clearing the offices and was now standing guard on the balcony. Just as they had done at Darwin’s Farm, they now all waited out of camera shot while Rob filmed Behnke going in and clearing each room by himself, as if for the first time. Mercifully, after only seven minutes of repeated takes, Behnke announced that he was happy with the shots he had filmed.
“Okay, let’s get in there and look for this thing.” He pointed to the last container at the end, behind the offices. “I cleared all of the offices on this level apart from the last prefab there. It’s labelled ‘Cleaning and Maintenance’ and it’s got a thick padlock on the outside of the door. Hugh, you want to go and get those cutters so we can get it open?”
“No need. Ignore it,” said Hana. “We are looking for documentation and shipping receipts, not bleach and mops. Let’s head back to the first office.”
Hugh and Thomas were elected to stand security, and stayed outside on the balcony to keep watch on the hangar, while the others carried out a drawer by drawer search of the first prefabricated office container. Their initial burst of enthusiasm quickly faded as file after file and box after box produced nothing at all of relevance to their search. They found themselves digging through a colossal volume of paperwork, full of notes about museum attendance and staff shifts.
“I think this is the HR office or something,” Wilkins said, flipping through the thick files that lined the shelves. “These ones here are all either weekly profit and loss accounts for previous years or copies of employee contracts.”
“Ahem,” Gina cleared her throat to get their attention. “Guys?” They turned around to look at her, where she was halfway through a large carboard box of miscellaneous expense receipts. She pointed to the sign on the door which clearly said ‘Accounts’. In their preoccupation with looking out for zombies they had all completely ignored the signage. She walked out of the office on to the balcony and disappeared for a few seconds before poking her head back inside. “The next door says ‘Exhibits’ and the last one says ‘Management’. Maybe we should try those first?”
With various noises of relief and disgust, everyone in the room gratefully put down whatever they were holding and started to file out through the doorway. As Hana came out, she was suddenly gripped with fear as she saw that the balcony was completely empty.
“Where’s Hugh and Thomas?” An icy claw clutched at her heart and she looked around wildly. The two men were nowhere to be seen. She grabbed the radio microphone clipped to her shoulder and lifted it to her mouth as she rushed to the rail and looked down into the hangar. “Hugh, do you read me? Where are you?”
“I’m here,” his voice crackled back into her earpiece just as she was about to call again. “Sorry, we didn’t know how long you would be in there, so Thomas and I went for a walk. Stand by. We just found the main fuse box.”
There was a dull thump and then a pinging throughout the hangar as the electric lighting came on. Hana felt a flood of relief. Idiot! How dare he scare me like that. Shit!
“Wow, that’s much better,” Wilkins enthused from beside her. She looked over at him and saw that he was looking out over the hangar, smiling like a child. “I love planes. Just look at them.” His face changed when he saw Gina’s perplexed frown over Hana’s shoulder.
“You didn’t seem to enjoy our last flight that much…” Gina said slowly.
“Well that’s because I thought we were going to jump out of it! But otherwise I love planes. I always have, ever since I was a kid.”
The two women looked back out at the hangar and just for a moment, saw it as he was seeing it, marveling at the undeniably impressive, and immaculately restored, historic aircraft. Then Hana’s eyes narrowed and her face turned grim as she noticed something else. She spoke into the microphone again.
“Hugh, get back here as quickly and as quietly as you can. And watch out. We’re not alone in here.”
“Copy that,” his voice was equally serious. “Moving back to you, now.”
“What are you talking about? There’s nobody here but us.” Behnke was suddenly beside them at the balcony rail. The heavy man was angry for some reason that only he knew. He looked out furiously over the hangar, which was devoid of any movement, and waved his hand at the exhibits. “What are you scared of now? More dummies?”
On her other side Gina looked up at her worried, and then gripped her pistol in its holster as she too scanned the rows of aircraft. There was no sign of anyone else at all. And even the eerie mannequins looked vaguely comical and harmless, now that the hangar was fully lit up.
“I couldn’t see before, in the dark, but now that the lights are on it’s obvious.” Hana held her rifle in one hand and pointed with the other. “You only went as far as that first plane there, right?”
“Yes?” Behnke’s face was still red, but the flush was fading as he struggled to see what Hana was looking at. “So, what’s your point?”
“My point is if you only went that far, then who made all those other footprints?”
The others looked out again, following her pointed finger. There was a thin but still very noticeable layer of dust that completely covered the floor of the hangar. And weaving back and forth between the aircraft, right up to the far end of the hangar, were trails of freshly made footprints.
Hundreds of them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Main Hangar
Once Thomas and Hugh had come back up to the balcony, the others resumed their search with an almost palpable sense of urgency that had not been present before. There was no sign of whoever, or whatever, had made the mysterious tracks throughout the hangar, but each member of the group was acutely aware of the fact that they needed to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
Hana and Gina were in the office unit marked ‘Management’ while Behnke and Wilkins, searched the ‘Exhibits’ office. Behnke had divided them up that way under the impression, probably quite rightly, that records for the chest would be more likely to be
stored in the files for exhibits. Rob was not involved in the search at all. Hana rolled her eyes as she remembered how Behnke had reminded Rob not to get distracted with looking around and that his sole task was to film everything that Behnke did. And then he had dived into the Exhibits office, eyes glittering with naked hunger for the glory of the discovery.
In the management office there were three desks and a whole wall full of filing cabinets. There were also two safes, each tucked away under different desks. One was empty, its door hanging open. The other was sealed shut, whatever secrets it contained still locked away behind its keypad.
“I’m going to dig through this one,” Hana said, sitting down at the chair in front of the biggest desk. “Let’s see if we’re lucky and the guy left the safe number written down somewhere.”
“Good plan,” said Gina, stopping to appreciate the selection of bottles on top of a small bar. As she admired it, she realized that it had been made out of an old jet engine, chrome-plated and covered with a glass top. Pretty cool. Maybe I should get one of these. “I’ll check through the other desks first, then look through the filing cabinets.” She picked up a bottle of whiskey and her eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s expensive whiskey. Somebody had good taste.” But she replaced it and instead picked up a bottle of vodka, which she opened and took a long swig from. She swallowed deeply, sighed in satisfaction and smiled at Hana, who was looking at her in awe, before thumping the bottle down on the desk. “Checking all those cabinets could be thirsty work,” Gina said by way of explanation.
Hana smiled back at her, then resumed her search of the desk drawers. She nearly laughed as she almost immediately found a yellow sticky label with a username and password written on it. Looks like people are the same all over the world. Not the code to the safe, but it does give me hope. Then she was struck by a sudden thought. Now that Hugh turned the power back on. I wonder… This place was only abandoned a few years ago after all. She scooted her wheeled chair to the side, and pushed the power button on the computer sat on the desk. The machine hummed slowly through its bootup sequence and within seconds the screen lit up, ready for her to login. Yes!