by L. T. Ryan
“Extra caution,” Turk said. “Careful if you have to shoot. Make damn sure it’s not one of us you got your sights on.”
One man chuckled, but the rest remained quiet. The atmosphere was somber, and with good reason.
A series of howls and shrieks and yells erupted throughout the building. They came at the group from both directions, echoing and bouncing off the walls and the floors and the ceiling. Sean lifted his hands to his ears and twisted at the waist, expecting to see an army of the creatures coming at them from the front and from behind. But there was nothing. Then the calls that roared through the corridor faded to silence. Perhaps the noise was their reaction to the lights going out. Or maybe it was something else.
Celebration?
Maybe the last survivor, the man wielding the gun, had succumbed to the beings.
“Let’s go,” Turk said from the front of the group.
They continued down the hall, passing office after office. All had been ransacked, not a one of them spared. Sean noticed another body sprawled across a desk, and soon this became the norm, rather than the exception. They weren’t the soldiers the men were looking for, though. If Sean had to place them, he’d figure them to be people who had worked in the facility.
The red emergency lights cut off, and after a second or two, the fluorescent hall lights turned back on, although Sean thought they seemed dimmer than before. With the hall illuminated again, he noticed that the corridor came to an end about a hundred feet ahead. It appeared that another lit hallway connected to it. The group slowed down as they approached the end. Turk signaled to Bellows and Steele, and the two men moved ahead of the group. They pressed against the interior wall and made their way to the corner.
Steele led the way. When he reached the corner, he dropped to a knee and Bellows pushed up tight to him. They both peered around the corner together, allowing the barrels of their HK MP7 submachine guns to precede them.
Steele signaled to the group, and Turk began moving. The rest of the men followed without hesitation.
Sean rounded the corner and saw that the walls that lined the hallway were solid. No windows or doors as far as he could see. He figured the outer wall, to his left, butted up to solid rock, or at least packed earth. There appeared to be a recessed section on the interior wall a couple hundred feet ahead on the right. Another hallway, he figured, one that might cut through the center of the facility.
Ten bodies were scattered throughout the hall. They lay on the floor, motionless and with obvious catastrophic injuries.
What was worse was that they were all clothed in ACUs, Army Combat Uniforms.
Sean swallowed hard in an attempt to force the lump in his throat down. He knew that the bodies they saw were those of the Rangers who’d been sent in to provide security and backup for Delta.
“Check each one,” Turk said. “But don’t linger. From where I’m standing, they don’t look alive.”
Sean noted the grotesque wounds on their bodies. Some had been killed, leaving the men to look like they were sleeping, except for the mortal wounds to their heads, necks or chests. Others had been mutilated in such a way that he felt like it ruled out a human being responsible for the death. There was no way one man could do that to another.
He and Jules assessed each man as two teams of three SEALs watched over them. The process was quick, and it didn’t require more than a glance to pronounce each man dead. All of them, even the ones that weren’t mutilated, showed signs of decomposition, leading Sean to believe the deaths occurred more than forty-eight hours ago.
Sean looked up after pronouncing the last body and saw that Turk and the other SEALs had moved ahead and were walking along the exterior wall. They stopped at a spot where he assumed Turk had a view of the open area Sean had noticed when they first started their trek down this section of the facility.
Turk looked back at Sean and the others and signaled for them to approach. The group moved together along the interior wall and came to a stop fifteen feet from Turk.
Turk crossed the hall and said, “I think we’ve found our command room.”
Sean moved closer and saw a twenty-foot expanse of window still intact. It appeared as though it had been impacted, perhaps by bullets, but the glass had not shattered. Bloody handprints were scattered along the glass, but they had not made a dent in it. They wouldn’t, Sean figured, just like bullets wouldn’t. The glass was impenetrable.
Behind the windows were banks of computers and monitors, some on and others off. There was a single door leading in, and another one against the far wall, but the second door was solid steel, so there was no way to tell what was behind it. It could’ve been a closet or a door to another office.
Collins and Brady were the first to approach the room. They found the door to be locked. However, with the aid of a specialized set of tools, they managed to open it and take control of their new command room.
Seven
The SEAL team investigated every nook and cranny of the room. Karl and Metz moved from computer to computer performing a quick check to determine whether or not the machines held information that would have been deemed critical.
Sean and Jules hung back against the rear wall, watching the men work. Judging by the looks on the men’s faces, Sean figured they’d all be happy to wait it out in the bulletproof room until additional forces arrived. He knew none of them would admit it, though. Still, he couldn’t blame them if they felt that way. It was the way he felt after seeing the condition of the bodies they’d passed in the hall, not to mention the things they had experienced outside.
“I’m never coming back to Nigeria, Jules,” Sean said.
Jules nodded and said, “Man, me neither, and this is probably where my ancestors come from.”
A quick laugh escaped Sean’s mouth, drawing a curious look or two from the SEALs.
“Guess we shouldn’t do that again,” Sean said.
“What’s this we stuff?” Jules said. “You’re the one losing control in here.”
Sean felt like laughing again. It wasn’t that he found anything particularly amusing. He figured it was his mind’s way of coping with the situation. How many men, U.S. soldiers and highly trained ones at that, had entered this facility? Fifty? More? How many had exited?
None. A big fat friggin’ zero.
In Sean’s mind, that meant his chances of ever stepping foot on solid earth again, as well as the chances of Jules and the entire SEAL team doing the same, were slim to none.
Sean noticed that the SEALs were standing around, all except for Karl and Metz who still had four computers to check. Turk stood directly across from Sean, the SEAL team leader’s eyes locked on his. Turk held his MK 14 EBR in both hands, across his abdomen, aimed at nothing. An HK MP7 was strapped across Turk’s chest, and Sean knew from working with the man that Turk could change weapons faster than most men could unzip their pants.
For two minutes, the men stared at each other. Neither looked away. Neither man blinked. The look in Turk’s eyes and on his face was one that Sean was familiar with. It was the look of a brave man who knew that death was certain. He’d seen it in every man he’d been unable to save. That point when a mission went from rescue to recovery. They stared at death and refused to let the reaper believe he had any power over them. The only question Sean had was whether or not that was the look on his own face.
The room was quiet except for the faint hum of the lights, the weak whirr of a fan—something that Sean had not noticed in the building until now—and the sounds of Karl and Metz banging on keyboards. Metz stopped and stood and moved toward the final computer. All eyes focused on the man. He took a seat and grabbed a mouse and placed his hands over the keyboard. A minute later, Karl dragged a seat across the aisle. Squeaky wheels in desperate need of oiling broke the silence. Karl picked up the chair and carried it the final three feet, then placed it on the ground and sat next to Metz.
The two men spoke to one another in hushed tones, too low for Sean t
o figure out what they were saying. Geek speak, Sean figured. He wouldn’t have understood it anyway.
The lights dimmed and flickered. Metz cursed out loud, perhaps worried that he was going to lose power to the computer. And if he was worried about that, it probably meant that he had found something.
Sean pushed off the wall and took a few steps forward. Apparently, Turk had the same thought, because he started moving toward Metz at the same time.
“Turk,” Metz said. “I got something we can use.”
“What is it?” Turk said as he picked his way through the men. He came to a stop three feet from the team’s resident IT specialists and narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the screen. “That what I think it is?”
“Blueprints,” Metz said. “The entire facility. Look,” he pointed toward the screen, “we’re on the first floor. That locked door in the back of the room leads below, but whatever’s down there doesn’t connect to anything else on the floor below us.”
“So this corridor wraps around on all four sides,” Turk said, “but stops halfway in the front and doesn’t connect with the hall we came in through.”
“That’s right,” Metz said.
“Stairs at the end of the dark hallway we passed,” Turk said. “The one we heard gunfire from.” He glanced around the room. The rest of the team nodded in agreement with his statement.
“Yeah,” Metz said. “And the hall parallel, the one this connects to, has an adjoining half hallway that leads to another set of stairs down. It cuts through the middle of the facility, like the dark hall where we heard the gunshots coming from. They don’t meet though.”
Sean moved closer to where Turk stood and began making a mental diagram in case he found himself separated from Turk and had to find his way through the building.
“Where’s the diagrams for the next floor?” Turk asked.
Metz adjusted the mouse and scrolled. “There.”
“All right,” Turk said. “It looks like the floor we’re on is halls and offices or whatever, but packed earth in the middle. But the floor below this one, there’s no gaps. Look, four big rooms in the corners with a wide hall, maybe, between them. Then it looks like the center of the floor is walled, but there’s open space and some smaller rooms.”
“And there’s a third floor,” Karl said. “Mirrors the second.”
Turk leaned forward and took control of the mouse. “Yeah, except the rooms in the corners are bigger. There’s no smaller rooms on that floor. Halls and walls, and those big-ass rooms.”
“What do you think they’re for?” Sean asked.
Turk looked over his shoulder and stared at Sean for a moment before responding. “I hope that’s where the men who came in here before us are being held.”
“What if…” Sean stopped mid-sentence. He wanted to ask what if those things were being contained down there, but thought better of it.
“Yeah,” Turk said. “No what ifs on this mission. We need to verify everything.”
Sean glanced around the room and took note of the large blank screens hanging on the wall. “What about those?”
“I’d guess those screens were used for monitoring what’s going on below,” Karl said.
“Why aren’t they on?” Turk asked.
“They’re either run by one of these computers that’s down,” Karl replied, “or by another system that’s down. This place seems to be working on little power. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Fair enough,” Turk said. “You think you can get them running?”
Karl shrugged. “I guess it’s possible.”
Turk moved to the middle of the room where he could face everyone. “Okay, then. Karl, you stay here with the PJs. The rest of us are—”
“Wait a minute,” Sean said. “I’m not staying down here. I’m going with you.”
“You’re staying here,” Turk said.
“What if someone out there needs medical assistance?”
“Then I’ll make the determination how severe it is and if we think the guy has a chance, we’ll bring him back here and you can provide the necessary medical assistance in here.”
“This is bullshit,” Sean said.
“What’s bullshit is my guys having to watch your ass instead of their own.”
Sean felt his face burn. Calling him, or any PJ for that matter, a liability was an insult. “We can handle ourselves, and for damn sure, you know that.”
“Oh yeah?” Turk said. “You sure about that?” He pointed past Sean.
Sean turned his head and saw Jules leaning back against the wall, eyes closed, forehead covered in sweat.
“Counterpoint?” Turk said.
Sean shook his head. “Whatever. You win. We’ll stay here.”
Turk moved closer to Sean and placed his hand on Sean’s shoulder. He leaned in close, spoke in a hushed tone. “It ain’t about me winning and you losing. We’re a team. This is now our command room and it’s the safest place in the building. If something happens and only one of my guys survives, I need you safe and sound to make sure he gets out alive. This isn’t a slight against you or PJs in general. Got it?”
Sean nodded and pulled away from Turk’s grasp. “Yeah, I got it.”
Turk lifted both hands in the air, but stopped short of placing his hands on Sean’s shoulders again. “You and me are cool, Sean. You know that.”
Sean said nothing. He looked past Turk and stared out the windows at the empty hallway. His eyes fixed on a dark stain that appeared to have been made when a bloodied head hit the wall and slid down it.
Turk backed up and made his way to the door that led to the corridor. “Let’s go.”
The SEAL team filed out of the room. Turk was the last to leave. He looked back at Sean and gave him a slight nod, as if to say hold down the fort until I get back. The door shut with a thump and a click, and Sean watched Turk walk beyond the bulletproof glass and then disappear from view.
The room was quiet again, except for the sounds of Karl tapping away at a keyboard.
Sean turned to Jules and slapped him across the face. His partner’s skin felt cool and was covered in sweat.
Jules opened his eyes and furrowed his brow. “What?”
“I should be asking you that,” Sean said. “What’s wrong with you?”
Jules slouched back against the wall. “I don’t know, man. Feel like I got the flu.”
“Well, get your shit together. I got a feeling we’re gonna be pretty busy soon.” He hoped so, at least. His gut told him that the only thing they'd find in the building was dead bodies.
Jules nodded and said nothing.
Sean inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. He studied his friend for a moment, then said, “Go sit down and get some rest. I’ll get you up when we need you.”
He didn’t want to send Jules to take a nap, leaving himself as the only one who was watching the door, but he had to weigh the benefits of having Jules up now versus later. If the SEALs did succeed in rescuing survivors, it’d take both of them to assess their injuries and treat those most in need. Guys like Turk and Spencer could help. They had enough years in and had been through plenty of medical training. But Sean knew that there was no guarantee they’d be coming back.
“Uh, Sean,” Jules said.
“Yeah?” Sean said.
“Look.”
Sean lifted his eyes and looked at his friend. The man stood still, straight for the first time in twenty minutes. His eyes were wide and his mouth open an inch. Sean followed his gaze toward the front of the room. He retrieved his M9 and aimed it beyond the glass at the thing that shuffled down the hall.
“It’s one of them,” Jules said.
“I know,” Sean said as he lowered his weapon, keeping both hands on it, and began moving toward the window. He’d already passed by Karl, but knew that the man was looking at the thing beyond the glass, because his fingers had stopped hammering away at the keyboard for the first time since Turk and the other SEALs had left the r
oom.
“It’s gonna get in here,” Jules said.
“Shut up, Jules,” Sean said. “Calm down.”
“What in the world is that?” Karl said, now a step behind Sean.
Sean holstered his pistol as he stopped two feet from the window. He watched the woman on the other side of the window, at least it looked to be a woman, approach from his left. She wore a heavy coat, with a fur-lined hood. The hood sat atop her head and hung over her brow, shading her face. Three things gave her away to Sean as being not quite human. Her pale-white legs poked out from a tattered and dirty gown. Upon further inspection, Sean noted that the skin of her legs was lined with cuts, bruises, and streaks of dried blood. When she walked, she shuffled, managing to lift only her right foot a few inches off the ground. Her blue eyes seemed to glow in the shadows created by her hood.
He felt Karl pressed up against his right shoulder, and he turned to tell him to step back.
The man met his stare and said, “Do you see what I’m s—”
There was a loud bang on the glass and the muffled sound of a high-pitched scream followed. Sean stepped back and swung his head around. The woman, who’d been maybe ten feet away when he turned to look at Karl, now stood right in front of him. Her hood had fallen behind her head, and he saw that half her scalp had been pulled back. It hung down in a bloody sheet next to her neck, the weight of her blond hair pinning it down. Her arms were spread wide and she pounded on the glass repeatedly with the palms of her hands, leaving dirt and blood smudged on the window.
Karl pushed Sean to the side and pulled out his Sig Sauer P226 pistol. He fired two shots into the glass before Sean managed to knock the weapon out of the SEAL’s hands.
“What’re you gonna do with that, Karl?” Sean yelled.
“I… not sure…”
Sean shook his head and went to the window to inspect the damage. The bullet had hardly made a dent. He had been afraid that Karl’s shots would weaken the integrity of the glass and any repeated banging by the woman would eventually cause the window to shatter. The glass held, though, and his fears subsided, for a moment at least.
