Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12

by Lecter, Adrienne

  Nate shrugged. “They likely overhauled it during the Cold War. They must have expected that atomic bombs would be more of an issue.”

  It turned out, the next door we encountered was a plain old wooden one, no explosives required. With no idea whatsoever how the facility was structured—and how many levels there were—Nate started dispatching us one fireteam at a time, slowly leap-frogging away from the entrance. What I presumed was the lowest level was mostly storage, we quickly found out, and abandoned from the looks of it. The lights didn’t work, and there was no hum of a ventilation system. If not for that third door, I would have presumed it was abandoned, but that one had had electricity. We also encountered some kind of guard room and a few offices, but all paper files that must have once been stored there were gone.

  After the hell aboveground Dallas had been, it was weird to be all alone in here—and not in a good way. My paranoia got worse with every turn we took, and still we found nothing. Whoever had been watching the feed of that camera above the door must have alerted their security forces, but we hadn’t heard a single footstep that wasn’t caused by one of us.

  We managed to clear the entire level in a little over thirty minutes. The most exciting thing anyone had come across was a candy wrapper, but since it had a production date from 1999 printed on it, that wasn’t necessarily a lead. Blake’s group had cased the elevators and set a guard at the staircase, but reported back that the sticker from the last maintenance overhaul was also from the last century. Frustration was spreading among us, except maybe for Fletcher, who looked like he was nearing the barf-your-soul-out stage. Nate took in the reports and then did the only sensible thing: told us to check the upper levels.

  The second level—still below-ground, judging from the lack of windows—wasn’t very promising, showing equal neglect. While I was still part of the search party for that level, Nate sent Scott’s team further up the stairs to see if they could find anything at a glance. They joined us once more when we were done down here, the slump in their shoulders already telling me what I didn’t want to know—nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly; the building seemed to be the right one, with the other floors turning out to be apartments, and not quite empty from what they’d heard. I felt my heart sink. Somehow, finding nothing was an option I hadn’t thought would be on the menu. This was, after all, the very same address that the boxes full of lab equipment had been addressed to. Had it all been just a front?

  Worse, had someone set that up, expecting us to get eaten in the attempt to get here? That would be really depressing.

  I was trying to come up with a suggestion—witty or not, right now, any idea sounded good to me—as Nate and Hamilton started discussing whether it was worth risking going back to the tunnels and trying for the city hall next. That building had also been part of the underground railway system, and might hold blueprints.

  Blueprints. Why did that set off something in my mind?

  Turning in a quick circle, I tried to both orient myself and see whether anything caught my attention. That corridor over there was right above the one through which we’d come in. And that over there led to what were the offices downstairs. That’s where Blake and his people had searched, and that over there our quadrant. Only that…

  “Who here has the best spatial awareness?” I asked. The murmurs around me dropped off as hopeful attention turned to me.

  It wasn’t without misgivings that I glanced at Hamilton, but he shook his head with equal disdain. “I’m great at memorizing maps, but that’s it.”

  No one else spoke up, until one of Blake’s marines cleared his throat. “What exactly are you looking for? I’m pretty good with those three-dimensional puzzles where you compare turned-over silhouettes to each other and select the one that makes sense.” That explanation didn’t, but it sounded like a useful skill—and exactly what I was looking for.

  “Check the layout of the rooms on all levels. Does anything outside of what you’d expect jump out to you?” When Nate was still frowning at that, I clucked my tongue at him. “What if the real lab is in one of the other buildings, like an annex? Maybe even underground, too. You said it yourself—they’ve been using this whole building here for almost a century, and eventually they gave it up and turned it into condos. Why leave the lower two levels as is? They could have converted them to parking spaces, or a gym. They also didn’t wall them off. What’s the thinking there?”

  People turned around and started staring at the walls—except for Hamilton, who was now squinting at me. Yet rather than call my idea the most stupid thing he’d ever heard, he offered up a low grunt. “It will be in the lower level.” When he saw my questioning look—and likely also the surprise that he hadn’t called me or my idea fucked in the head—he barked a brief laugh. “It makes sense, since they did list this as one of our black sites. One level off the street is too easy. But see that staircase? It’s wide enough for some unlucky bastards to drag all kinds of shit down to the lower level. That’s exactly how they must have gotten new stocks in. If everyone knows your secret hideout is a secret hideout, that’s a great recipe for getting bombed into the Stone Age.”

  It took our marine a while to familiarize himself with the floor plans, but then it was just a matter of fifteen minutes and some pacing, until he stopped in one of the offices. “That wall’s three feet further into the room than the one above,” he reported. The fact that Nate and Hamilton had both spent the last five minutes also investigating that very room made that guess sound legit. I doubted I would have noticed the difference, and even now it looked like a plain old wall, without any drag marks on the floor or possible hidden shelves that could swing to the side.

  Nate started tapping on the wall, looking for hollow spots, but then gave up, instead asking Hill for his sledgehammer. The lot of us stood back, watching him take a swing, then another, plaster raining down onto the unremarkable linoleum floor—until he hit something more solid. One more powerful swing, and an entire panel—previously hidden well under the plaster—came off the wall, revealing a recessed door. It had an electronic lock but didn’t seem too sturdy—whoever had designed it must have expected that the panel’s concealment was the better defense—and one more swing was enough to smash the entire locking mechanism. A kick, and the door flew inward—

  A salvo of assault-rifle fire raked the room we were all standing in, lined up like the imbeciles we were.

  Bullets whizzed by my face but somehow managed to miss me. I dropped into a crouch and threw myself forward, hoping that a lower profile would do the trick of minimizing myself as a target. Landing on my side, my shotgun was already up, and I blindly fired back through the door, sure that I wouldn’t hit anything but suppressing their fire was more important right now. Someone was screaming—and someone else shouting orders—but disorientation from surprise and the terrible noise of weapons discharging turned the situation into the worst kind of a mess.

  That was, until Nate hurled himself through the door, sledgehammer a-swing, and somehow managed not to get shot in the back by all of us.

  I scrambled to my feet and pushed myself forward, immediately taking up a defensive stance as I cleared the door. Two men lay on the ground, both bleeding profusely and very obviously dead. At least I guessed the second had also been a guy, judging from his body size. His head was a smashed ruin, what was missing from it currently dripping from Nate’s sledgehammer. Hamilton, Scott, and Marleen came in after us, taking up forward positions, which let me check on Nate. Straightening, his face was locked in a grimace of pain, but he shook his head when I tried to reach for where blood was leaking from bullet holes in his side and left thigh. There was no spurting blood, so that was something, I figured, but really didn’t like the feeling of dread settling into my stomach.

  No other assailants were hiding in the room or the adjacent corridor which was a great place for us to set up quick defensive positions. No one was stupid enough to linger in the possible direct line of fire from anyone
moving toward us from that direction. Everything was clean and white, and while only every third panel that looked like recessed illumination was turned on, it was a lot brighter than our flashlights had managed in the other part of the building. This looked way more “high-tech laboratory” than the sixties nightmare before.

  A quick roll call revealed that the damage done was limited. Nate and Hamilton, standing directly in front of the door, had both been hit, but mostly by strafing fire. Sonia quickly confirmed that only the bullet lodged in Nate’s side had caused a real wound, but he insisted it wouldn’t hold him back for now. One of the marines had gotten hit in the upper arm, taking him out effectively for assault, but we’d need someone to guard the entrance, anyway. The only real casualty turned out to be Fletcher. The fever had left him too slow to react, resulting in three full-on torso hits. He was dead—bloody spittle and wide, staring eyes included—before we’d secured the room beyond the door. I turned away when I saw Blake bend over him, a knife aimed at his neck to sever the spinal cord. It was debatable that the infection had had enough time to spread in his body to achieve reanimation, but the last thing we needed was a zombie chomping into our backs now.

  Steps sounding ahead made everyone stop what they were doing and snap to full alertness. At Nate’s nod, Blake sent his fireteam forward, Richards and the three of us right on their heels. I barely managed to leave the corridor last and press myself against the opposite wall before bullets hailed down on us, stopping seconds later when Blake’s people mowed down the opposition. Cole and Hill went after them with Richards and me providing cover. Again two men in good gear, but not military grade. Blake took point, then us again, making it through five rooms and a short corridor until we got to a T-shaped intersection. As soon as Cole checked around the corner, bullets whizzed through the air, narrowly missing him although he had been cautious. Hill reached for a grenade but Richards signaled him to wait. Calling back to the others to take cover in the last room before the corridor, Richards had Cole check a few more times, with the same result every time.

  “Did you see how many?” Richards wanted to know.

  Cole shook his head. “I’m not even sure it’s a manned station. Could be some automated machine gun or similar. That, or they are paying way more attention than is healthy for us.”

  Richards turned back to Hill. “Have at it.”

  Flashing a brief grin, Hill switched places with Cole, and after two checks in the hallway to get a sense of the situation and the timing right, he hurled the grenade down the corridor. Five seconds later, the corridor around us shook with the detonation. When Hill checked again, the gun remained silent.

  Cole and Hill did a silent round of “me or you first” that ended with Cole stepping into the corridor. Nothing. As soon as he sprinted down the hallway, one of Blake’s marines did the same in the other direction, both men halting at the respective bends in their corridors. It turned out, Cole had been right. Hill’s grenade had reduced the machine gun set up behind a low barricade to so much scrap metal, and no body was in sight. I didn’t like the idea that they had motion-sensor-activated weapons here, but it couldn’t be that many, considering we’d already encountered four human defenders. Pushing forward in a slow, methodical manner was definitely the way to go.

  Another intersection—this one with three corridors leading away, but two of them ending in empty storage rooms—and another, longer corridor later that had my skin crawling with the utter lack of cover for over fifty feet, and our corridor opened up into a much larger room, several hallways, doors, and two staircases leading away from it. Richards had us wait for backup. My legs might have appreciated the brief respite but my nerves absolutely didn’t, the adrenaline in my veins making me want to keep moving. A few minutes in, Nate’s voice—clear and strong, much to my relief—came over the com, ordering everyone in our direction. The other corridor apparently ended in a small suite of rooms but was a dead end and a bust. As soon as the last team—Eden and Amos—caught up to us and Nate got a chance to check on the room, he sent us forward. He, backed up by Burns and Sonia, would secure the large room and staircases while the rest of us scurried into the corridors, continuing our search.

  It was obvious that this level was meant for storage, mostly, as besides the odd windowless office, all we found were storerooms. A few had boxes stacked in them, but it was all just random equipment, like latex gloves and plastic vials—exactly like those I’d seen at the camp. I couldn’t help but feel that whoever was guarding this complex wasn’t very good at it; all they’d needed to do to throw us off would have been to make the staircases look defunct and not hurl any guards at us to shoot, and we might have given up. Well, probably not that easily, but the complex looked large enough that a hundred people could have hidden easily, particularly as they’d already had a good two hours of warning since we’d breached the first door. Had they really expected that we wouldn’t find them here?

  I wasn’t the only one voicing the suspicion that we were walking into a more elaborate trap that hadn’t been sprung yet, but there wasn’t exactly anything we could do to avoid that, if it was true.

  Using one of the rooms adjacent to the hall with the staircases, Nate ordered us to take a short break to refuel. I would have loved to leave my pack there since it felt weighted down with stones by now, but I knew well enough that this was a stupid move. Chances were, we wouldn’t be coming back this way, and might even exit onto the street. While everyone except the guards got busy stuffing their faces, Sonia did a more thorough check on Nate’s wounds, forcing him to peel himself out of his outer layers so she could assess the entire damage. Glued shut, his thigh didn’t look too bad, but the bullet in his side hadn’t left an exit wound, so it was still lodged in there. Sonia wanted to dig it out so she could properly clean and close the wound. Nate shut her down and insisted that she just seal the wound up.

  I’d have expected the staircases to lead onto a shared landing, but as it turned out, each was the access point to a different wing. The one to the left, viewed from our entrance corridor, seemed to lead to shared common areas at a first glance—including a cafeteria, as Scott reported five minutes in. The right wing was labs and server rooms, so that’s where I went, obviously. We encountered another two of those automated machine-gun setups—that Cole forbid me to call “gun turrets” however much I begged—but no other opposition. From the other wing, we heard a lot more gunfire and grenade explosions as they met with heavier opposition. As much as I liked not getting shot at, I was frustrated as hell when every new door we burst through revealed yet another lab… that hadn’t been used for pretty much anything since I’d taken basic chemistry in high school. The air processing system had kept them mostly dust-free, but sticky labels were peeling off everywhere, their adhesive long expired. I randomly checked containers, and while it would have all been a gold mine if we could take the reagents with us, it was all inorganic chemistry shit, set up for analysis but not production of anything useful—except maybe meth, but we didn’t find anything hinting at drug production. We didn’t find even a single room that was set up for anything beyond biosafety level one, which meant nobody had worked on anything more dangerous than the odd E. Coli batch in here. Anything to do with the serum project—and potentially highly-infectious viruses—would have been BSL-3, even if they didn’t give a shit about safety. Getting any results would warrant keeping the workspace and samples clean, and you’d need the environment for that.

  We also didn’t find another exit, or an elevator or stairs to a separate level. Richards went as far as sending Cole up into the vents in the ceiling to check on the ventilation system. From what he could tell, it was contained to this level only. After we radioed our findings in, Nate told us to come join the others in the cafeteria.

  We were back in the larger hall and aiming for the stairs to the other wing when the lights went out, the sound of the ventilation system shutting off moments later.

  Chapter 14

&n
bsp; It took minimal fumbling to get the flashlights out, but Richards had us wait another five minutes before we went up the stairs, mostly to listen for someone trying to sneak up on us. Blake’s team—who had been with us in the lab wing—went to join the others right away. Soon after we followed, we could hear the voices of the other teams, finding half of our people in the cafeteria. It was the first room I encountered that had seen use in this century, also evidenced by the three dead bodies stashed in a corner, close to where their blood had spray-painted part of a wall. I didn’t pass up the chance to refill my water bottles and grab some provisions, but made sure to keep them separate from what was left of those that I’d brought in; just because ten other people had already eaten them and hadn’t ended up dead didn’t mean I fully trusted them. No further casualties on our side, but three more wounded and down for the count—and one of them was Sonia. A bullet had strafed her high up on her thigh. While I took the fact that Burns was joking about “her juicy ass saving her life” as a good sign, she was limping heavily and in no condition for the duck-and-run routine required to keep pushing forward. Amos had a sprained ankle and damaged knee from getting into a physical tousle with one of the guards and regaining the upper hand too late, and the remaining marine from Scott’s team that wasn’t Scott himself had gotten chewed up by another of the auto cannons but was still well enough to drag his sorry ass from one corner of the cafeteria to the other. His face was white as a sheet, and while Sonia had done her best to patch him up, I could tell that his life was definitely hanging in the balance. If it had been up to me, I would have ordered Nate to stay with them, but nobody asked me.

  The tally on the other side was more grim. Twenty dead, and not a single one surviving so we could beat some intel out of him. Nate and Hamilton checked up on all of them, and from their grim looks I could tell that they recognized a few—former guards from the camp. At least that meant we really were in the right place.