I looked down at my arm, at the bright blue band that I was wearing, then hesitantly slide it off and dropped it on my bunk. I could feel my heart begin to pound as I looked down at it laying on the blanket. I knew if I got caught without my armband that any future plans I had about staying in the military until I would earn a full retirement would quickly vanish. At the very least, Mitchell would make my life a living hell for whatever time I remained here at this base. I’m sure part of that time would be spent in the brig for disobeying orders.
Then the worst-case scenario flashed across my mind as I looked at Wilson smiling excitedly at me, what if Wilson had accidently stumbled upon a secret government research project? What if it was a project so sensitive that no one could ever find out about the project without the government feeling that person needed to disappear?
My body was beginning to feel like ants were crawling all over me as this thought ran through my mind.
Wilson was excited, believing he had discovered an alien cover up, I was more of a realist, I believed that he had found something far more dangerous.
Chapter 7
Wilson and I left the barracks a few minutes later. Our actions were mostly hidden by the rapidly darkening skies.
I nervously scanned the area, something I hadn’t done until now. When we left to go on duty each night, we were always in too much of a rush to pay much attention to what the area around our barracks looked like at night.
The driver arrived at 2200 hours to the second each night, and he pulled the truck away from our barracks at exactly 2201 hours. If we weren’t in the truck within that short span of time, we would be left behind to face Sergeant Mitchell’s wrath.
I took a few seconds to look around the base as we walked, it looked oddly quiet and still. I could hear truck engines running off in the distance towards the main hangar, but there weren’t any lights to be able to see for sure who they were or where they were going. After the trucks drove off, the base was deadly quiet and dark, if I didn’t know any better I would have thought that we were out in the middle of the desert with the nearest signs of life being miles away.
Wilson started giving me instructions as we got near the mess hall, refocusing my thoughts on what we were doing, and on the fact that I must have been crazy to have come up with the idea to go with Wilson tonight.
“Now when we go inside the mess hall, just act normal and act like we just decided to grab a few trays of grub to take back to the barracks,” Wilson said.
“Have you run into anyone else in the mess hall the last couple of nights?” I asked.
“No, no one,” Wilson replied, “but if we do, we’re just getting a snack before we go on duty.”
Before going into the mess hall, Wilson stopped and pulled something out of his pocket.
“Here, put this on,” Wilson said and handed me a ball cap.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s your disguise,” Wilson replied as he put on his hat.
“This isn’t much of a disguise,” I said.
“I wanted to wear a fake mustache, but I couldn’t find anything to use to make one,” Wilson replied. “It’s the best I could do. It has worked so far.”
I pulled the hat down over my head, feeling a little foolish as the hat slid down over my eyes.
“You could have at least picked a hat that fit,” I growled. “I feel like a little kid wearing his dad’s hat.”
When we entered the mess hall, the place was empty and the lights were low, just like it had been all the other times I’d been here.
The metal blinds to the kitchen area were also closed, so it was impossible to tell who, if anyone, was back in the kitchen. In all the other mess halls I’d been in, you could always see the guys moving around from one stove or oven to the next as they busily prepared the day’s meals. Here, there wasn’t a sound.
At each of the windows, the metal barriers were pulled all the way down, but unlike all the other mess halls I’d seen, the barriers were pulled down and rested on top of metal bins that sat on the counter. The bins appeared to have a door on both the front and the back of the bins. We opened the front bin door to see what food was inside. The cooks would slide trays of food into the bins using the back door. It almost reminded me of a large vending machine, except we didn’t need to put in any money for the bin doors to be opened.
The first bin door we opened was filled with trays of hot pizza.
“Take a tray of Pizza,” Wilson whispered. “The guards really get excited when they see pizza. Make sure there is pepperoni on the tray you take. When they see pepperoni, they won’t bother asking any questions.”
I grabbed a tray of pepperoni pizza, then closed the bin door. I listened for a minute before closing the bin to see if I could hear anyone talking in the back, but there wasn’t a sound.
Wilson walked down two bins, as if he had memorized what was in each of the ten bins that lined the counter. He opened the bin and slid out a tray of burgers.
He looked at me and nodded for me to also take a tray from the bin.
When we each were holding a tray in each hand, he said, “OK, follow me.”
I followed Wilson out of the side door then we began to walk towards the large hangar that was about two hundred yards away. As we walked, I heard and could now see the dark shapes of three vehicles that had pulled up to the hangar, they sat there for a few minutes and then pulled away.
As we got closer, Wilson started to give me more instructions.
“When we get to the hangar, we will be met by two guards. It will at first seem like they just came out of nowhere, but they are standing guard in the dark shadows in front of the entrance door and you just can’t see them until they are right in front of you,” Wilson said. “Just let me do all the talking, they know my voice.”
“OK,” I replied, as I began to reconsider the sanity of my decision to go along with Wilson tonight. I felt like that any minute now I would open my eyes and find myself in the brig.
“When we get past the guards, we’ll go through a door into a dark room. The room is just a chamber we pass through so the light from inside the hangar won’t shine directly to the outside. We close the door then walk to the other end of the chamber and open the door that will get us inside the hangar,” Wilson continued. “Once inside the hangar, we’ll go to the left, that is where the elevator and the stairs are that we’ll take to go down to the next level. Just follow me and act like you have been here a dozen times before and no one will pay any attention to us.”
“I see it’s pizza time again,” a deep voice said in the darkness, scaring the shit out of me as two large dark figures suddenly appeared in front of us.
“I hope you’re hungry,” Wilson said.
“I’m always hungry for pizza,” another voice added.
“That’s what I figured,” Wilson laughed. “They were having a special on pizza today, so we brought you two trays tonight, just don’t tell anyone about the second tray.”
“You got it,” the first voice laughed. “I see Doctor Chen is on a burger binge again tonight.”
“How the hell can those guys see what is on these trays?” I thought. “I’m holding the trays right in front of me and I can’t see shit.”
“I don’t judge, my job is to just bring what they give me,” Wilson laughed. “I also made sure to bring you pepperoni pizza tonight. They set out a regular pizza, but I took one of the pepperoni trays instead and took off before they could see what I did.”
“We owe you one Pete,” the second voice laughed.
“Come on Charlie,” Wilson said to me, “Let’s get these burgers to the lab. I just hope the doc isn’t in a talkative mood again tonight and we can just get in and back out. The doc practically talked my ears off last night. He seems like a nice guy, but honestly, I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying, whatever he is working on is way over my head. Besides, I have a card game I don’t want to miss later tonight.”
The guards laughed then disappeared into the darkness, but I could hear them tearing open the pizza boxes, then the oohs and awes they made as they bit into the pizza.
When Wilson opened the door to the entrance chamber and pulled me inside letting the door click shut behind us, I said, “Pete and Charlie?”
“I’m not dumb enough to give them our real names,” Wilson laughed. “If anyone starts asking questions, they will be out looking for Pete and Charlie and not us.”
I was going to tell Wilson that since there seemed to only be a handful of people on this base, regardless of what we called ourselves, it wouldn’t take long to identify our voices, but decided to keep it to myself until we made it back to our barracks.
We next entered the main area of the hangar. I didn’t expect what we saw next. By the way Wilson had talked, I expected to see the hangar crammed full of monitors being closely watched by technicians. However, what we saw next was underwhelming to say the least. The hangar was mostly empty with a few lights hanging from the ceiling that barely provided enough light to see by. In the far corner were two desks with four monitors mounted to the wall above the desks. The view on the monitors changed every few minutes, at this distance I couldn’t see much, but I could see enough to know what they were looking at were pictures of somewhere in deep space. I wasn’t a missile specialist, but it seemed odd that the cameras were scanning somewhere in deep space instead of analyzing continents around the globe to detect a missile launch.
“I expected to see a lot more than this,” I whispered.
“Don’t talk now,” Wilson replied. “Just keep walking.”
I followed Wilson to the elevators. There were three elevators at the left side of the hangar, two normal sized doors which I assumed where for transporting people to the lower levels and one massive elevator platform. The massive platform was large enough to hold a fighter jet or maybe missile launchers. I assumed this was the elevator that they used to take the extra missiles below for storage until they were needed.
When we reached the elevators, Wilson lead me off to the side where the door to the stairwell was hidden in the shadows.
“Down the stairs,” Wilson whispered. “We should be able to use the stairs to get down below without running into anyone.”
When we started down the stairs, I said, “I expected to see a lot more activity in the main hangar,” I said.
“Don’t worry, what you will see below will more than make up for that,” Wilson replied. “You won’t believe what is going on down on the second and third levels.”
“What is on the first level?” I asked. “You didn’t say what you saw on the first or fourth level last night.”
“I didn’t get a chance to check out those levels last night. Since the guards were expecting me to deliver food to the second level, I went there first in case they called down to verify that I actually delivered food to the lab. I didn’t want them to come looking for me,” Wilson replied.
“Good idea,” I said.
“Since they seem to trust me now,” Wilson continued, “I thought we could check out the other two levels tonight.”
“I’m surprised that you have put so much thought into this,” I said. “I didn’t take you for an uncover type of guy.”
“If you remember we all had to take a course on what to do if we were captured. How to make your captors trust you and how to escape,” Wilson replied. “Unlike the rest of you guys, I didn’t sleep through the class and I actually learned a few things.”
“You never cease to amaze me Wilson,” I said.
“Well, then be prepared to be amazed beyond your wildest dreams tonight, Mike,” Wilson smiled. “Because you haven’t seen anything yet.”
When we reached the door to the first sub level, Wilson signaled me to be quiet, then he put his ear to the door and listened.
“It seems quiet here,” Wilson said. “When I open the door, just hold the trays out in front of you and act normal. If anyone stops us, just say we made a mistake. We weren’t paying attention and were delivering food to the lab. We just got off on the wrong floor.”
I nodded, then Wilson opened the door and we stepped out of the stairwell.
We blinked our eyes a few times until we adjusted to the bright light on the first level. In the center of the large cavernous second level was a large enclosure made of glass, or some transparent material. Spotlights shined down into the center of the enclosure from the ceiling, brightly illuminating what was inside. Inside the enclosure was some large, for lack of a better term, object. The object was fifty feet long, forty feet wide, thirty feet thick and floated three feet off the floor. If I was a UFO fanatic like Wilson, I would say I was looking at an alien spaceship, but I’m not Wilson. But I couldn’t think of a better description at the moment. Wilson just stood, staring in amazement at the object.
“I knew it,” Wilson muttered with his mouth hanging open.
“What is it?” I asked out loud without thinking.
“It’s an alien space craft,” Wilson replied.
“It could just be a meteor or something,” I said. “It doesn’t look like any spacecraft that I’ve ever seen before.”
“That’s because it’s an alien spacecraft,” Wilson replied. “It’s beautiful.”
“It looks like a big rock,” I said. “It could be a meteor that crashed out in the desert and they brought it here to study it and find out what it is made of.”
“But it’s just floating there in midair,” Wilson replied. “I bet it is an alien space craft that crashed in the desert. They brought it here before the aliens could repair whatever the problem was and then fly away. They must be waiting to see if the aliens are going to come out and try to communicate. That’s why they have it encased in some kind of invisible forcefield so it can’t fly away.”
Wilson pulled out his phone and began to take pictures of the object.
I looked around the large bay and noticed the equipment that seemed to be monitoring the object, but fortunately I didn’t see anyone else on this level.
As we stared at the object, the object appeared to drift towards us, it moved closer to us until it bumped into the glass enclosure, a few feet away from us.
“Let’s get out of here before someone comes down here, I’m sure that thing has just set off some kind of alarm and someone will be here in a few minutes to see why that thing just ran into the enclosure,” I said.
“I bet it came towards us because it saw us and wants to check us out,” Wilson replied excitedly. “I bet the aliens are as curious about us as we are of them.”
“Well, I don’t know what this damn thing is,” I said. “but I don’t want anyone to find us here if they come down to see why it hit the glass. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“OK,” Wilson replied as he took a few more pictures. “We can come back down here tomorrow night and see if it was able to break out or if the aliens decided to come out and look around. This is so exciting.”
I didn’t expect for the object to try to break out of the enclosure or for any little green men to come out of the object to go for a stroll, I was sure there was something else going on here. However, I didn’t feel it was advisable to hang around much longer to find out what it was. This level was too wide open and brightly lit with few places to hide if someone did come down to find out why the object had run into the barrier. Besides, I was more interested in determining what Wilson had see on the lower floors. The pictures Wilson had shown us were troubling and I wanted to see for myself what was down there. A floating rock was interesting, but to me, not all that exciting.
Wilson finally stopped taking pictures, slipped his phone back into his pocket, then picked up his tray of burgers.
“Follow me,” Wilson smiled.
As we went into the stairwell, I head the elevator door swish open and the sound of voices and feet running into the area where we had just left. I wasn’t sure what we had just observed, but I was sure of one thing, that
was a little too close for comfort.
We carefully walked down the dimly lit stairwell, listening to be sure that there wasn’t anyone coming up the stairs or following us as we went down.
When we reached the door for the second level, Wilson grabbed the door handle and looked at me to be sure I was ready move out of the stairwell.
I looked at Wilson, shook my head no and motioned for him to continue down to the third level.
“Don’t you want to see the lab?” Wilson whispered.
“Maybe later,” I whispered back. “I want to see those people in the pictures you showed us. If we have time, we can stop here on the way back.”
Wilson nodded, “OK, I think we can set these trays down here. I don’t think we will need them below, and we can move around easier without them.”
We put the trays down quietly then started down to the third level.
When we reached the door for the third level, Wilson motioned for me to be quiet, then he slowly opened the door and took a quick look into the third level.
He pulled his head back into the stairwell and looked at me.
“There are two guys on the floor doing something with one of the patients in the back corner,” Wilson whispered. “I don’t think we will be able to go in until they leave.”
I thought for a second and decided that I should at least get a fast look at what was in there.
“Let me take a look,” I said as I moved next to Wilson.
“The doctors are in the back to the far left,” Wilson said. “Just don’t make any fast moves. They are focusing on the patient they are working on so they shouldn’t be looking this way unless something attracts their attention.”
I nodded.
I slowly opened the door and began to press my face against the opening between the door and the door frame.
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 7
