“If it was something really terrible, I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t want to know,” I replied. Especially if there wasn’t a single thing that I could do about it.”
“Well, I would want to know about it,” Wilson replied. “That is why I’ve gotten into all these alien conspiracies. If I only have six months left to live, there are a lot of things I would like to do with what time I have left.”
“Supposed alien sightings have been going on for over eighty years, I think if something was going to happen, it would have happened by now,” Joe said as he took another bite out of the big cheeseburger he was holding, his second burger at lunch. “That is why I don’t believe in UFO sightings and little green men. I believe people see what they want to see, the crazier the people, the crazier the things they think they see. In other words, my friend, I think you’re nuts.”
We all cracked up, even Wilson.
“For all our sakes, I would like to agree with you,” Wilson laughed as he put down his phone and grabbed a big handful of fries. “But I believe the government is hiding something and what they are hiding is something really big that we need to know about.”
“Well, I hope you find your answer before they lock you up somewhere in a loony bin,” Joe smiled. “But on the other hand, you would probably find a lot of others there that would be happy to answer all your questions.”
“Hey, you guys want to go back to the barracks and play some cards before we try to get some shuteye?” I asked, trying to change the subject back to a something more realistic and something that we all enjoyed.
“Sounds good to me,” Joe said as he grabbed two more burgers and shoved them into his pockets. He looked at us and smiled, “What? Playing cards makes me hungry.”
We went back to the barracks, as we walked I studied the base, the base appeared as it had yesterday. Dull buildings, deserted landscape, blowing sand, all giving the appearance of an old west ghost town. According to Mitchell, the sight I saw was what the military had intended to portray to the area residents. Walker Air Force Base, as far as the area population was concerned, was an abandoned base that maybe the Air Force used at times to store supplies. It was almost enough to make me believe that Wilson was on to something. Almost, but not quite.
We played cards for a few hours to pass the time, then we all crawled into our bunks to get some rest, 2200 hours would be here before we knew it and it had been harder to stay awake last night than I had expected.
I saw Wilson set the alarm on his phone, then he turned in. I was sure that he had set the time to wake him long before 2100 hours to go on one of his crazy alien scavenger hunts.
I just hoped that he didn’t get himself in any trouble, but that was his problem. If he wanted to chase after UFOs and conspiracy theories about the government hiding evidence of UFOs from everyone, there wasn’t anything I could do about it but tie him up so he couldn’t leave the barracks or report him to Mitchell. I didn’t have any plans to do either of those things to my buddy Wilson. But if he became much more obsessed with this crap, I would consider reporting him to sickbay for his own good.
Joe got us all up at 2100 hours again.
As I sat up on my bunk, I looked over at Wilson’s bunk. His bunk was empty, and the blue armband sat on his pillow.
“Wilson is out exploring again,” Joe said when he saw me looking at the empty bunk.
“I thought he was going out again when I saw him messing around with his cell phone before he turned in, I figured he was setting some kind of alarm to get him up.” I said. “I just hope no one spots him sneaking around.”
“Do you think there is anything to what he has been saying?” Joe asked.
“UFOs and such, I don’t know, I really don’t think so,” I replied. “But as far as the government hiding something, that I can believe, they are always up to something. I’d imagine people would be jumping off roof tops if they knew even half the stuff the government is up to. If he stumbles onto something like that, I’m afraid he could find himself in a whole lot of trouble.”
“Well, then I guess we should hope that he finds some little green men instead,” Joe smiled. “At least that way he won’t get himself into any trouble.”
“I don’t think we would be able to live with him if he discovered little green men,” I laughed. “Let’s get ready to go to work.”
“You want a burger?” Joe asked as he reached in his pocket and pulled out smashed cheeseburger wrapped in a napkin.
“It’s going to be a long night, but I must warn you, these things are addicting.”
“I’m starting to think that I am the only sane person around here,” I laughed as I got up and walked across the room to the showers.
2200 hours came around quickly, but Wilson still wasn’t back.
Before going out front to wait for the truck, I grabbed Wilson’s armband and slipped it in my pocket.
Joe saw what I did and looked at me.
“You think that’s a good idea?” Joe asked. “What if he is sitting over in the brig being questioned as we speak? If they have him and see that his armband says he is out at the bunker, we could end up in the brig with him.”
“In that case I guess I’ll play dumb and claim that he must have slipped his armband in my jacket before he left,” I replied. “Because if they don’t have him and the tracker says he is still here in the barracks when he is supposed to be on duty, his ass will be definitely in hot water.”
If Mitchell shows up at the outpost?” Joe asked.
“Wilson went out to stretch his legs and get some fresh air to help him stay awake,” I replied.
“You’re playing with fire, Mike,” Joe said. “Besides, I thought you said you weren’t going to lie for him?”
“I know,” I sighed. “But I can’t just let him get put in the brig if I can help it. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just a little crazy.”
We made it out in front of the barracks as the truck arrived. We all walked in a group, hoping that the driver wouldn’t be able to tell that we were a man short tonight.
We piled into the back of the truck and the truck pulled out a few seconds later. Either the driver wasn’t able to tell that there was only four of us tonight, or he didn’t bother to count. He probably didn’t care how many of us were there, that wasn’t his job and all he cared about was just doing his job and covering his own ass. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the normal mindset in the army.
When we reached the outpost, Joe manned the bunker with me, Al, Ted, and Wilson’s armband went in the trench.
Tonight wasn’t much different than last night. Around midnight, the so-called air pockets began to rise up out of the desert. We didn’t call in to the command center tonight to report the sightings, but we watched their movement closely. We watched as the shapes rose up above the desert floor and blotted out the stars. We watched as they drifted across the desert and finally disappeared. I wasn’t ready to say the air pockets were anything other than air pockets, but I was prepared to say that Wilson had been right about one thing, the air pockets all seemed to travel to the same spot before they disappeared.
I did feel that was strange.
Chapter 5
The next morning when we arrived back at the barracks, we found Wilson passed out on his bunk on top of the blankets. He was dirty and had a dried layer of sand caked to his arms and forehead. His skin was still covered in a thin layer of perspiration as he seemed to toss and turn in his sleep. I wasn’t sure, but he appeared to be having a bad dream.
“He looks like he is having a nightmare,” Joe said.
“After hanging us out to dry last night, he should be having nightmares,” I growled. “He’s lucky he isn’t having his nightmares in the brig.”
I reached out and shook Wilson’s shoulder.
Wilson jolted up into a sitting position and slid his back against the wall. His eyes were wide open, and a wild look shot across his face. His breathing was heavy as he panted and looked around th
e room frantically. Finally, his eyes settled on me and he began to calm down.
“Thank God it’s you,” Wilson gasped.
“Where the hell were you last night?” I shouted as I reached into my pocket and tossed the blue armband at him. “You put all of us in one hell of a spot last night and I put my ass on the line to take your damn armband with me so you wouldn’t get into trouble.”
“Sorry,” Wilson replied as he tried to compose himself.
“Well?” I asked. “Where the hell were you?”
“Not here,” Wilson whispered.
“I know you weren’t here,” I said.
Wilson stood up and dropped his armband on his bunk, then looked at us and motioned for us to do the same. Then he walked over to the door and signaled for us to follow him outside.
I took off my armband, tossed it on my bunk then looked at the others.
“Humor him,” I said. “It could be his final request.”
Joe grinned as he took off his armband, dropped it on his bunk and walked towards the door.
When we went out of the barracks and were about twenty feet away from the building, Wilson stopped and turned back to face us.
“Now what is this all about?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to take the chance that we would be overheard,” Wilson replied. “In case the barracks is bugged, I didn’t want to get us all in trouble.”
“If the building was bugged, we would all be in trouble already,” I said. “Now why weren’t you back here in time to go on duty last night?”
“If anyone else around here knew what I saw last night,” Wilson replied, stopped and swallowed, “I would probably disappear before the day was over.”
“Calm down,” I sighed, “stop acting crazy and just tell us what the hell happened last night.”
“Last night I was able to make it all the way into the command center and to the stairwell, so I went down to check out the second and third levels below the main command center,” Wilson said.
“How did you get inside the command center?” I asked. “If this place is some kind of secret missile base, security would be too tight for you to just walk in and go where ever you felt like going.”
“Security is heavy near the entrance to the hangar, but once you get inside, there is very little security,” Wilson replied. “You just have to be careful once you get inside to make sure you look like you belong there.”
“How did you get by the guards to get into the building?” Joe asked.
“The first night I sat and watched how the security worked,” Wilson replied. “They seemed to screen everyone really carefully before they let them get into the hangar, except for one group.” Wilson smiled. “Once people are admitted to the hangar, they spend all night inside and don’t come out until early the next morning before dawn.”
I motioned for Wilson to continue.
“Everyone going inside was given the third degree except for the guys coming over from the mess hall to deliver food,” Wilson said. “It seems that the people working in the command center and laboratories have their meals delivered instead of going over to the mess hall to eat. Anyone going into the hangar carrying trays of food are just waived through, especially if they have a small tray of donuts or burgers that they kind of drop off for the guards.”
Joe laughed, “I can see that happening. If a little green man showed up at the lookout post with a tray of burgers, I’d let him in.”
I shot Joe a look.
“I’d make him leave his ray gun at the guard booth,” Joe smiled. “What harm could he do without his ray gun?”
“Go on Wilson,” I growled.
“So after watching this go on for over an hour, I went over to the mess hall and filled a couple of trays with burgers and pizza,” Wilson said. “I then walked back to the entrance and handed one tray to the first guard that approached me and said I was told that they might be hungry. When the guard said he hadn’t seen me around here before, I just said I was new and was trying to learn the ropes. I then asked him how I would get to the lab. He just laughed as he took the tray and said the elevator is to the left and for me to go down to the second level. When I went inside carrying the tray, no one seemed to pay any attention to me.”
“Very impressive,” Joe said.
“So, getting by the guards has you all stressed out,” I said. “They would put you in the brig for doing something like that, but I doubt you would mysteriously disappear.”
“No, that part didn’t bother me, I figured if I got caught, I could play dumb and say someone at the mess hall had told me to take the tray over to the command center,” Wilson replied. “At the worst, I’d get a week in the brig for trying to sneak inside the hangar.”
“Look Wilson, I’m tired as hell and I want to get some sleep,” I said. “Get to the point.”
“Well, since it worked the night before and I was able to get inside to look around some, I decided to push my luck a little further tonight. I seemed to be invisible while I was carrying that tray of food, so I decided to go down and take a look at what was on the lower levels,” Wilson continued. “I went down to the second level. The second level was made up of a dozen different labs with men in white coats. They seemed to be really busy, occupied with doing strange looking experiments and they didn’t pay any attention to me. They were pouring colored liquids into test tubes, then heating the test tubes. I’m really not sure what they were doing, that kind of stuff is way over my head.”
“So what else did you see?” I asked.
“Then I decided to go down to the third level to see what was down there. I took the stairway instead of the elevator so I wouldn’t run into anyone. The second level labs must have been used to seeing food being delivered all the time, but I wasn’t sure if food was allowed to be delivered to the lower floors, so I decided to be cautious.”
“So what did you find on the third level?” Joe asked.
“The third floor was the doorway to Hell,” Wilson swallowed a few times before he whispered his answer.
Wilson stood with a blank stare on his face for a few seconds, apparently remembering what he had seen last night. When his eyes grew large, I urged him to continue.
“When I came out of the stairwell, what I saw was that the entire third level was wide open, it resembled a hospital ward of some kind. Rows of hospital beds that extended from one side of the floor to the other side. There must have been more than a hundred hospital beds there on that level,” Wilson said. “I scanned the third level and when I didn’t see anyone walking around, I decided to go look and see who was in the hospital beds.”
“I know who was in those beds, they were full of little green men,” Joe smiled.
“Be quiet, Joe,” I said. “Let Wilson tell us what he saw.”
“No, what I saw in those beds was human, or at least they were at one time,” Wilson said.
“What do you mean they were human at one time?” I asked.
“The people in the beds closest to the stairwell looked like regular people, sick as hell, but still they looked fairly normal,” Wilson continued. “But the further across the floor as I walked, what I saw started to scare the hell out of me. As I walked towards the far side of the floor, the bodies in the beds started to look worse and worse.
The really horrible sights were clear in the back. The bodies looked dead, like they had been buried years ago and had just been dug up, but they weren’t dead, they were still moving. Dark boney arms and legs, not much more than dried leathery skin stretched over a skeleton, moving around, straining against the ties that held them down. Half of them didn’t have any eyes, just empty eye sockets, but I swear they could still see me. Their heads turned as I walked by, those empty eye sockets followed me everywhere I went. It was creepy as hell.”
“Holy Shit, Wilson,” Joe said. “Have you been smoking some bad weed or something?”
“Are you sure this wasn’t just a bad dream or something you were having befo
re we got back?” I asked. “What you just described sounds like a bad horror flick. Were you reading one of those space-alien books again before going to sleep?”
“I wish that was what is was,” Wilson said as he reached in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “I took some pictures of what was down there. Here, take a look at these.”
Wilson opened the gallery on his phone and started to slowly flip through the pictures, one after another. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Wilson had just returned for touring Ripley’s Believe or Not. The images became more disgusting and horrifying as he slid his fingers across the screen.
When he was done, I said, “Wilson, are these real?”
“They’re real OK,” Wilson replied.
“How can you be sure?” I asked. “Maybe you stumbled into some kind of wax museum where they are preparing exhibits for horror displays?”
“On an Air Force base?” Joe said. “I don’t mean to side with Wilson on this, but holy shit, Mike. Why would this be on a military base?”
“Have you ever been in a museum that smelled like a slaughterhouse?” Wilson asked, almost gagging as he talked. “The smell on that floor was something I’ll never forget. Imagine that you are walking in the desert and you come upon a dead horse that has been baking in the sun for three days.”
“That bad?” Joe asked.
“Then imagine that you weren’t watching where you were walking and tripped, falling into the rotting body of the horse, face first,” Wilson added. “If you can imagine that, then you are getting close to the smell on the third level.”
I just looked at Wilson.
“But that’s not all,” Wilson said as he started to tap on his cell phone again.
Wilson held up his phone again.
“Look at these pictures again,” he said. “Look at the plaques on each bed in these pictures.”
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 5
