Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2)

by Samantha Durante

  He kept low and scurried across the roof, light on his feet as he crept toward the unsuspecting shooter. Finally he reached the last obstruction obscuring his view, and Isaac prepared to strike. He withdrew his knife and clutched it in his fist, sinking low to the ground as he inched toward the corner.

  But when he swung around to make his move, Isaac was taken aback – there was just a solitary machine gun mounted on a stand. Where was the shooter? Had Isaac somehow given himself away? He cursed – his enemy could be stalking him even now. He turned quickly, scrutinizing the roof deck for any sight of the shooter.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang.

  Isaac jumped as the gun behind him fired once more. He spun, ready to take on the shooter, but again there was no one there. Puzzled, he watched the gun for a moment. As soon as Alessa poked her head out, it fired again. It was automated!

  Relieved, Isaac put his knife away and dislodged the gun’s ammunition feed. The firing stopped. He laughed and called to Alessa across the field. “All set! It’s just a security system, Less. No people out here, at least!”

  Alessa crept tentatively out from behind the sculpture, the spotlights still following her as she made her way across the lawn to retrieve their gear. Isaac went back to the fire ladder and dropped the lower half, then climbed down to meet Alessa at the glass doors marking the lobby.

  Handing him his pack and a share of the other gear, she asked incredulously, “What kind of office building has guns built in to their security system?”

  Isaac laughed. “Maybe one that’s got something to protect?”

  Alessa seemed hopeful. “Do you think there are people in there?”

  “Could be…” Isaac surveyed the door – it was almost certainly locked, and he wasn’t optimistic about their chances of breaking it down by hand. But something else printed across the door caught his eye: Raptor Defense Systems. “Look – it says this company was a defense contractor. They probably have all kinds of weapons research for the government inside… no wonder the building is so secure.”

  “Isaac.” Alessa grabbed his hand. “Do you think this could be it? Do you think this could be our base?”

  Isaac’s eyes lit up. That was a definite possibility. “Let’s get in there and find out.”

  23. EXPLORATION

  Alessa couldn’t deny it – the building seemed promising.

  She and Isaac had spent several hours wandering through its labyrinth of echoing corridors, exploring level after level of offices and research labs and barracks and storage.

  The complex was much larger than even its formidable outer appearance had indicated. From ground level, it could have been any corporate headquarters, filled with offices and conference rooms and break areas, stiff couches and cluttered desks all showered under harsh fluorescent light. But underneath that façade, this place was much, much more indeed.

  It’d taken some time to find a keycard with the right clearances stashed away in the back of a drawer, but eventually Alessa and Isaac had gained access to the lower levels. Layer upon layer was dug deep underground, hiding untold secrets behind locked doors and restricted areas all hidden from the casual visitor’s view.

  They hadn’t even spent a day in the compound, and already they’d found caches of weapons, sleeping quarters, medical supplies and stores of food, which they’d gratefully helped themselves to before continuing their search. Better yet, the building was – miraculously – almost fully operational, powered off an internal generator with a functioning intranet and ultra-high tech security system, retractable automated guns and all. And so far, Isaac and Alessa had not stumbled across a single soul – the place was all theirs for the taking.

  Isaac and Alessa had been exploring each open room, making note of what they found and compiling a list of inaccessible areas to return to later. Alessa still couldn’t quite believe that it was true, that they’d somehow stumbled across exactly what they needed at just the time when she’d almost given up hope. She guessed sometimes the world was good that way. The fates had certainly taken enough away from her in recent years – maybe now they were finally making up for it.

  Working their way down a long hallway on B3, they rounded a corner and Alessa’s eyes were drawn to a doorway at the far end of the hall where the overhead lights flickered on and off, casting irregular shadows out into the hall. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she realized that everywhere else the lights had been steady and clear.

  “Isaac, do you see that?” She motioned down the hall.

  He nodded. “Let’s check it out.”

  They crept closer, the electric buzz humming in time with the quivering illumination. The hint of a fetid odor stung Alessa’s nostrils, growing stronger with every step. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and breathed quietly through her mouth instead.

  As they approached the door, Alessa noticed that a thick tinted window looked into the room, and as the lights flickered on, she spotted something splattered against the glass.

  A dark instinct told her that something terrible had happened in this room.

  She looked warily at Isaac, but didn’t need to say a word. Isaac was already withdrawing the knife from his waist – he had seen it, too.

  They paused outside the door, their breathing suspended as they listened for a break in the silence. Besides the steady buzzing of the broken lights, nothing came.

  Isaac wrapped his fingers around Alessa’s wrist and she looked up into his eyes. “Ready?” they seemed to say. She nodded.

  They swung around the doorway together into the room – and Alessa almost retched.

  A heaving sound to her left told her Isaac actually did.

  Gagging, Alessa backed quickly out of the room, gasping for air. Her lungs filled with the scent of rot and she choked back the bile pressing at her throat.

  Isaac came out wiping his mouth. “Oh my God,” he coughed. “Oh my God.”

  Alessa leaned against the wall, still struggling to maintain composure. “We should have known – from the smell.”

  Isaac shook his head in disgust. “I never saw a dead body before.”

  That wasn’t strictly true – they’d seen tens of dozens of dead bodies since they’d left Paragon, but they’d all been skeletons, victims of the virus who’d died years ago, leaving plenty of time for nature to pick their bones dry. This was different. This body was fresh.

  Well, had been fresh. Now it was… putrefying.

  “We need to go back in there,” Alessa counseled.

  “No way,” Isaac protested. His face turned green just at the thought of it.

  Alessa was revolted, too, but she shook the image of the bloated, blistering body from her mind. This was the closest they’d come to a living person since Paragon. She needed to know what had happened to him – and if there might be others still alive somewhere.

  “Isaac,” she prompted.

  Isaac moaned, his eyes pleading. But in the end, he came around – he was just as curious as she was, Alessa knew.

  “Okay, fine,” he acquiesced. “Let’s take some precautions this time, though.”

  That was a good point – it was possible the body could be infected. They certainly didn’t need another close call, especially now that they were so close to fulfilling their mission.

  Luckily, the supply room they’d found on B2 had all the sanitary equipment they could dream of – hazmat suits, gloves, even gas masks. Alessa couldn’t help but laugh watching Isaac pile on his gear. He looked like a kid bundling up to play in the snow, though a very, very toxic snow. Of course, part of it was to protect against the virus. But Alessa also got the sense that Isaac was a little more squeamish than she’d known. It was cute, in a way.

  Alessa found that her heart didn’t pound quite as vigorously when they returned to examine the room. Better yet, with her mask blocking out the corrosive smell from the body, she was able to observe her surroundings without her gag reflex getting in the way.

  Almost immediately
after walking in the door, she noticed something she hadn’t before – a curious mix of hopelessness and resignation settling over her. When she observed the body more closely, she thought she understood why. There was a handgun next to the decomposing hand, and the splattering on the window glass looked an awful lot like blood.

  The head was misshapen and the face grotesquely unrecognizable, but Alessa had a suspicion that only part of that was due to the body’s decay…

  Isaac was pointedly looking away from the body, observing the desk. Sure enough, a suicide note was tucked under the corner of the thin keyboard.

  “Less,” he called, holding up the notebook. “It’s dated three weeks ago.”

  Alessa’s heart sunk – three weeks? If only they’d gotten here sooner. She cursed. “What does it say?”

  “It’s been one year to the day since Johnson and Davis left to search for other survivors,” he read. “As I’ve had no word from either of them, I can only assume that they fell victim to the virus. It’s been eight years, five months, and six days since the outbreak reached this area, and for eight years, five months, and six days, I have watched the cameras for any sign of life outside this building. Am I really the only one left? I can’t know for sure, but I do know this: if I leave this building, I will die. If I stay here, eventually I will die. And so I am making the choice to die today, in hopes that something other than loneliness will follow. Goodbye. Jamal K. Harris, Security Officer, Raptor Defense Systems.”

  “Three weeks,” Alessa sighed. “Three more weeks, and we would have found him.”

  “Pretty bleak,” Isaac agreed, flipping through the previous pages of the notebook. He looked up. “I think this is a journal.”

  “Good – maybe we can learn something about this place,” Alessa replied, eyeing the security monitors lining the wide desk.

  One screen appeared to show system status:

  AIR FILTRATION: CLOSED/INTERNAL

  ALARM SECTOR 1: FULLY OPERATIONAL

  ALARM SECTOR 2: FULLY OPERATIONAL

  CLIMATE CONTROL: 68 DEGREES

  ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS: 80% OPERATIONAL

  INDOOR LIGHTS – LOWER: CONTINUOUS ON

  INDOOR LIGHTS – UPPER: USER CONTROLLED

  OUTDOOR LIGHTS: MOTION ACTIVATED

  SENTRY GUNS: ACTIVATED, SERVICE NEEDED

  WATER FILTRATION: CLOSED/INTERNAL

  Other screens cycled through live feeds of indoor and outdoor security cameras, while another showed a floor-by-floor map of the compound marking any rooms with movement detected – only the one they were standing in was highlighted.

  “Wow, look at this, Less.” Isaac was studying the map. “All these buildings are connected by tunnels. And I think there’s even sewer access…”

  Alessa studied the screen for a moment – it did seem like a pretty ideal setup to give the rebels covert access into and out of the facility. “We’d need to make sure everything is secure.”

  “Of course,” Isaac concurred. “Starting with the roof hatch we came in through.”

  “Yeah, I’m surprised they left that open.”

  “Especially with those creatures on the loose.” Isaac shook off a shiver.

  “Can I see that journal?” Alessa asked. Isaac handed her the notebook, and she flipped to the first page. “The first entry is dated a little less than a year ago. You think there’s more?”

  “Could be,” Isaac replied. “Doesn’t seem like there was much else for him to do here…” Isaac looked around once more. “So, we’ve got what we need?” He seemed eager to be done.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Alessa agreed.

  Isaac and Alessa exited the security office, Alessa flicking off the light and closing the door behind her.

  She pulled off her mask, still gagging slightly at the rancid odor lingering in the hallway. “Well, I don’t think he was infected. Guess we don’t need these after all.”

  Isaac took off his own mask, but he still looked queasy. “Ugh, speak for yourself.” He quickly ran his fingers back through his hair, brushing it out of his face. “Think we can leave this for Regina to deal with?” he asked, gesturing at the door and the gruesome mess beyond it.

  Alessa nodded. “Our mission was just to find the base, right? No one ever said to clean it up.”

  Isaac sighed a long breath of relief. “Great. Let’s get out of here, then.”

  They went back up to the barracks on B2 to search for the security officers’ living quarters in hopes of finding more record books. The dormitories stacked with bunks all appeared unused, but eventually they found a rec room that someone had dragged three beds into. The entertainment center seemed well used, with playlists of music and old TV shows loaded onto the hard drive, a half-finished game of billiards on the pool table, and empty cans and snacks bags scattered across the floor and couch.

  “I’m going to venture a guess that Harris, Johnson and Davis were bachelors…” Alessa laughed. “This place reminds me of the common room of an ESU frat.”

  She sat down on one of the unmade beds, the heel of her foot knocking into something underneath. She peered down to find a neat stack of notebooks. “I think I found the journals,” she called to Isaac.

  Isaac sat next to her on the bed, cracking open a bag of chips as they pored through the journals together.

  “Looks like these three were on weekend duty when the company gave the orders to go into lockdown,” Alessa reported. “Most of the security personnel balked and went home to their families, but these three didn’t have anyone close by, so they decided to stay, figuring it’d be safer here than out there with the widespread reports of sickness.”

  Isaac continued, summarizing the volume he was reading. “For the first year, it says they monitored the radio and internet every day, sending out messages looking for other survivors. But after a while there were no responses, no new broadcasts, not even anything from the company. They were just… abandoned here.”

  “Does it mention anything about the beasts? You’d think they’d have seen something with all those security cameras.”

  “Nothing,” Isaac replied.

  Alessa flipped to the next book. “I don’t see anything here, either…” She trailed off, flicking through the pages. “This book is from year three after the outbreak, and it looks like they were all getting restless. They considered leaving, but Jamal convinced the other two that they were better off staying.” She read further. “Hmm, apparently the company had contracts with the government to use the campus as a backup emergency survival unit for high level officials – it’s equipped to house hundreds of people with everything they need to live comfortably for 10 years or more, and it’s all entirely self-contained and self-sufficient. But no one ever showed up.”

  “Well that explains the living quarters, and the food,” Isaac commented, crunching on a handful of potato chips.

  “It sounds like there was some serious weapons research going on in some of the restricted areas, too. It was all top-secret, which is why they have all the guns and stuff – they needed to be able to protect the information in case an enemy ever invaded.”

  Isaac nodded. “I did think it was odd that an office building would be armed with motion-sensing automatic weapons…” He brushed the crumbs off his hands and paged through another notebook. “These guys seemed pretty bored – only so many reruns a man can watch before he goes insane, I guess.”

  Alessa grabbed the second-to-last notebook, the one before the sad conclusion they’d found in the security office. “Yeah, after a while Davis and Johnson just couldn’t take it anymore. Jamal’s notes say they went out to scout for survivors in the city, planning to return to the campus that night. But the day came and went, and they didn’t show up. Jamal would sit on the rooftop every day, watching for them. But they never came back. And when he realized they weren’t going to, he couldn’t deal with the prospect of living alone for the rest of his life.”

  “Poor guy,” Isaac muttered.

 
Alessa stacked the books neatly in order while they each reflected in silence on what had happened here. Alessa was flooded with gratitude that she hadn’t found herself alone even once throughout this ordeal. She’d always had Janie, or Joe, or Isaac to help her through the tough times, to keep her going when she was ready to give up. She couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like to be truly and utterly alone. She wondered if she would have made the same choice as Officer Harris.

  “One thing’s still bugging me, though,” Isaac commented. “How come they never mention those monsters we keep running into? I kind of assumed they had something to do with the virus, but considering how widespread the epidemic was, I don’t really understand how everywhere isn’t overrun with them…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like Jamal here even knew about their existence.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Alessa agreed. “I can see these guys getting careless with the roof hatch if all they were worried about was the virus – after all, how could it spread here if they hadn’t seen another living person in years? But if those beasts were around, it would be pretty reckless to leave any entrances open.”

  “Yeah, I certainly shut that hatch tight when we came in,” he shrugged. “But who knows, maybe the creatures just never realized there was someone in here, so they never came around.”

  Alessa was puzzled. She still couldn’t figure out what those creatures were, or where they had come from. But she didn’t have long to think on it before her concentration was broken by a churning growl from Isaac’s stomach. “I guess those chips aren’t going to cut it,” he laughed. “Should we make dinner?”

  Alessa smiled. “Dinner sounds fantastic.”

  The kitchen was better stocked than Alessa could ever have dreamed. Granted, she wasn’t exactly a master chef – the only cooking she’d really done was during meal duty in Paragon’s cafeterias and over the fire pit in recent weeks. But she knew enough from those experiences to appreciate the wealth of ingredients that lined the vast stainless steel shelves and counters of Raptor Defense’s immense kitchen space.