by Glynn James
The doors bumped open, and the headlights from the trolley lit up the first row of what appeared to be storage racking.
And there is a lot of it. Rows upon rows of palleted supplies. Everything from food to weapons, to power batteries.
Found a new sleeping bag. Grabbed two. Three new rucksacks. Not that I could carry it all but it’s better than just bags. Also replaced my headlamp and found a box of handheld torches – maglights – with the batteries still in them.
Awesome.
Of course, it was inevitable that I was going to spend an hour loading everything I thought I would need into the APV.
Found a replacement rifle! It’s not the same as my old faithful, but I think with some modification I can build something equal to the task. I’m kind a looking forward to that. With that in mind, I grabbed a bunch of gear I could modify the weapon with, new sights, handgrip, and a few other bits.
Damn, I’m turning into a hoarder.
At least there is one thing, though. From what I found in the storage, I’m not going to run out of food or water any time soon. I think I have months of supplies. I also have a whole heap of batteries for weapons and stuff.
It was when I was just unloading my last trip that I felt the ground shake. It was a very minor rumble, but the APV still buzzed with the vibration of the earth tremor and I felt it though my boots.
I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it. Not at all.
:: Record Date 29:06:4787 17:21
I awoke in the middle of the night to what I thought was a noise but as I sat up and rubbed my eyes and listened all that came back was silence.
I climbed into the front of the APV and searched the darkness, finally deciding to switch on the lights outside. I could see the long extended corridor stretching ahead into the darkness, and there was no movement, nothing
I climbed back out of the cab and went to the side door, peering through the small window. I could see the open hallway, leading towards the storage depot, but there was still nothing there. No sounds or movement.
I jabbed at the hatch door and it opened with a hiss. Wind brushed my face, and the smell of stale air wafted into the vehicle. I flicked on my headlamp and panned around, looking into the storeroom where I had left piles of equipment.
It’s me. It’s just me being paranoid. This place is just eerie, too quiet, even though I know that a few miles away there are Vigilants, probably even right now still trying to break into the place.
Completely empty.
I went back into the APV, shut the hatch and tried to get back to sleep, but even though there was no noise, just complete silence, I still couldn't sleep very well. I lay there, wondering if I should leave the APV behind and go on foot. It would mean travelling a lot slower, and I suppose my real goal at the moment is to get as far away from the entrance as I can, in the hope that the Vigilants won't be able to catch up with me.
But I shrugged off that idea as stupid. When they do finally get in, this thing will be my armour. I haven't heard many more noises, but occasionally there is a distant and unexplainable sound, and they don’t always come from behind me. Bangs and hisses, thumps. Faint noises that seem to echo from different tunnels. It must just be the noises at the entrance bouncing around the tunnels.
Has to be.
I needed to check the camera feeds, so headed up the tunnel to what looked like another booth. It was a few hundred yards from the stores, which seems odd, but when I got there I found the same layout as the first booth. A single screen and keyboard tucked away in a recess, except the glass panel protecting the booth was still intact.
I was getting used to using the system, and it didn’t take me long to find the camera feed for the vehicle bay. Still no change there. They’re not in yet.
:: Record Date 29:06:4787 17:48
Another tremor as I was heading off. I’ll check the camera feeds at the next booth.
:: Record Date 29:06:4787 17:52
Okay, so now I know what the tremor was.
Just a half a mile from the storage facility, I found yet another station with computer screens. It was pretty much the same setup as the first office that I found, the one in the vehicle hangar. I switched it on, noting the footprints in the dust and realising that my mother had also stopped off here. I flicked through the camera options and found the one for the vehicle bay. There are hundreds and hundreds of others, and they have intriguing names that like Outer Labs, Gateway Facility, Cryo Research Facility, but whenever I try to display the cameras there, there is either no response or just darkness.
But the camera in the vehicle bay was working, even though I used the lockdown. I presume the power for the cameras must be separate? I don’t know.
This place is very strange.
The camera showed a full panoramic view of the vehicle depot, and appeared to be set in the wall on the opposite side to the office. Strangely, the view showed the huge gate, now closed, and what had been the outer door, in one view. I tried to get my head around how that could be achieved, and gave up, focusing more on the fact that the outer door, the one that had been locked (ConmanLockedIn) was no longer there.
Instead there was a huge, smoking hole with rubble strewn for yards across the ground.
And Vigilant soldiers were everywhere.
Damn it.
I’m running out of time.
They’re into the vehicle bay, and now all that holds them back is one more door, the big door. Thankfully, that seems to be still intact.
They will get in, and even if they have to move on foot, because I’ve taken the keys to the other vehicles, they will soon be in here and I’ll be caught.
This place is huge, but I won’t be able to run forever.
And worse.
They will have access to the bunker.
Maybe that inner door will hold them off? Maybe they won’t get in. Why am I kidding myself? They’re going to get in and they’re going to take over the bunker. Time to stop stewing over that. I can’t do anything about it, not now. The best I can do is move on, find where my mother went, and follow. Get the hell out of here.
Time to get moving and try to find where the trail of the other vehicle, and my mother’s journey through the bunker the last time she was here, ended.
She had to have found a way out, surely.
Unless she is still down here?
No. She couldn’t be. If she were, there would be more signs of trips to the storage area.
Unless there are other stores? That was a possibility. It had never occurred to me that she could still be down here. I’ve presumed that she had been through the bunker more than a decade ago and moved on to wherever it was that she went.
What if that wasn’t true? Have I just brought The Resistance down on her?
:: Record Date 30:06:4787 03:22
After hours of driving along yet more tunnels, I finally stopped to rest, but I didn’t sleep for long. I think the knowledge that they’re inside the vehicle bay has me on edge. I’ve got the jitters, and I just can’t seem to sleep. I know I have some time, even when they do get through. I’ve been down here for three days, travelling for over two of them, so I’m a long way from the entrance. When they finally get in I’ll be a couple of days ahead of them.
I suppose that really depends on how fast they travel, and how easily they pick up my trail. The marks in the dust that the APV leaves behind are pretty obvious, so it won’t be difficult for them to follow me.
How big is this place? It does make me wonder. I must have travelled forty miles through tunnels already. I should have kept track of it.
I do know one thing, though. I’ve been travelling mostly in one direction – well, the vast majority of the time I have – so that means I’m a long way from the facility in the desert.
:: Record Date 30:06:4787 05:31
I awoke to another unfamiliar noise. I thought I’d imagined it at first, and then I wondered if it was the sound of wind through the tunnels. Ther
e isn’t much air movement in here, but occasionally there is a burst of wind that howls along the tunnel. It’s quite creepy, and it makes me wonder where it’s coming from. It seems to happen at regular intervals, though. No idea.
As the howl drifted away, and I started to wake up, my thoughts more coherent. I started thinking about the wind blasts. But then I heard it.
It was like some long, drawn out hiss from an animal, but only very quiet. I felt the air around me drop in temperature. It was warm nearly all of the time down in the bunker, especially in the long corridors and the transit system. When I stood outside the APV, on the path that runs alongside all of the roads, and especially when I was inside the APV, it was almost stiflingly warm.
The temperature seemed to keep dropping, and the next time I let out a breath of air I could see the vapour. This wasn’t in my imagination at all.
I reached over and tapped the top of the light sitting only a few feet away from me and the interior instantly lit up, all except the area near the cab. There all I saw was darkness. I reached for one of the guns as I hauled myself up to my feet, hurrying, almost panicking, wondering what the hell was filling the front cab. Was it gas? Had the Vigilants got in and caught up with me already?
Then the darkness left, rushing out through gaps in the vehicle. It wasn't until I slammed the access panel to the main doors and stepped outside that I realised that some form of liquid or gaseous shadow had invaded the APV while I slept.
I hesitated, lifting the gun up and aiming at the form that was now swirling around the front of the vehicle, and almost as though it sensed my intentions, the gaseous cloud shot away from the front of the vehicle at a speed I hadn’t expected. I didn't pull the trigger, but held my aim at the form as it sped away along the tunnel until it melted into the darkness and was gone.
Was it some form of ghost thing? I can't really give it a better name. If it had just dissipated I would have thought some sort of gas, some strange, unexplainable leak maybe, but this thing moved. I stood there on the path, confused, for what must have been four, maybe five, minutes after it had gone, taking deep breaths, feeling my heart thumping in my chest and wondering what on Earth I’d just seen. I’d had never seen anything like that before, and I’ve seen some strange things – creatures left behind on the other worlds, things abandoned by The Horde that still roam around centuries afterwards, in some cases still causing havoc to the survivors. But nothing like this.
I couldn’t sleep very easily after that, but did eventually – I think – after an hour or so. It was a restless sleep, and I kept waking up, imagining that I could hear another hissing sound or rushing air.
If it came back, there was no way for me to stop whatever it was getting back inside. It must've wafted in through the smallest of gaps in the vehicle. I decided to sleep with the light on, even though it takes power from the APV, and I’ll have to make sure that the battery is fully charged.
Somehow, the Vigilants trying to break their way into the bunker behind me is no longer the scariest part of my situation.
:: Record Date 30:06:4787 09:52
I was still thinking about the ghost thing I'd encountered as I drove along the tunnel, when the space in front of me opened up into a vast chamber.
It took me by surprise, and I skidded the APV to a halt, stuck it in neutral, and then just sat there, staring out of the front window at the huge installation in front of me. Eventually I climbed out of the driving seat, grabbed my guns, jabbed the access door panel, and waited for the door to hiss open. I then stepped outside onto the platform below the APV, realising that I was now parked on a bridge.
I looked down. It wasn't so much a single chamber, but more a massive chasm. On both sides of the road the chasm went downwards into the darkness for hundreds of feet, with no sign of the bottom. Smooth carved rock lined the walls for the first hundred feet or so, but then that ended and was replaced by jagged rocks. There was no indication of how far down it went, it just seemed to go on forever, but for about a hundred feet below and above where I stood, in the middle of the bridge, the walls were smooth.
There was a set of stairs leading down about twenty feet away from me, back near where the bridge began. They led down onto a flat, metal platform jutting out over the rock face, and there were dozens of similar platforms at varying heights, spread along the great wall of the chasm.
I could see whole sections of metal panelled walls, with windows spaced evenly apart on either side of the chasm, and criss-crossing here and there were bridges, some covered, some not.
The place was vast.
I moved towards the top of the stairway, and spotted a metal plaque embedded into the wall with writing etched into it.
Area 17 Laboratories.
This was interesting.
How long did I have to look around? No idea, but I couldn’t ignore it all and just drive on. There was just too much to walk away from.
I headed out to the front of the APV, to look at the road that crossed to the other side. There were track marks in the dust, so I knew my mother had carried on.
But had she stopped here?
I went back to the stairs and looked down on to the smooth floor beyond the bottom step, and spotted the footprints immediately. She had gone this way, but then she had moved on afterwards.
I didn’t know how much time I would have to investigate. I guessed not very long. The Vigilants were into the main vehicle bay and trying to get access to the rest of the bunker, at that very moment, and there was only one door between them and me, unless they were already through.
They could already be on their way.
But what if this was important?
I had to look, but knew that I couldn’t stay for long. Even if I was two or three days ahead of them when they got in, the longer I look to search through areas of the bunker, the less time I would have wherever my mother ended up, and I had no idea what I’d face when I got there.
If I got there.
There were no other vehicles parked at the labs, even though I spotted spaces in the vehicle bay when I turned to look at the other side of the road. I’d missed that completely, which is ridiculous when you take in the size of the space – easily enough to park half a dozen APVs. But the area wasn’t well lit and my eyes had been drawn to the illuminated windows that lined the chasm.
I walked over the road and looked around the parking area, just in case there was something I’d missed, but the ground was barely disturbed and there were no signs of anyone driving a vehicle over it.
Back over at the stairs I found a lot of footprints heading in and out of what appeared to be a foyer, which was about a hundred feet away along a passage carved into the rock. Large double doors stood wide open, the glass smashed and scattered across the floor. Strangely enough, the glass was on the ground outside the foyer, not inside, suggesting it was knocked out rather than in. Odd.
A path had been swept through the glass, the shards piled roughly along the side, and the footprints led through the gap and into the interior. Beyond the doors I could see a reception desk. I took a few steps inside, shining my headlamp around, searching the darker corners in case something was lurking there.
No movement or sound. Nothing.
The whole place was covered in rubble that had fallen from the crumbling ceiling and a thick, smooth coating of dust, like it had been untouched for a long time, so my mother must have come here, gone through to wherever it was she was interested in, but left most of this alone.
The headlamp wasn’t very bright, but it cast enough of a glow to be able to see most of the layout without actually treading on anything. I went and grabbed a maglight from the APV. The headlamp was fine, but the handhelds that I found in the stores were much more powerful. I wasn't sure I was going to need it – the area was mostly lit by working fluorescent lights – but I figured it may be darker further in.
I headed into the complex, stepping cautiously past a second set of large double doors. The rec
eption area was huge, with two large two long corridors heading off it; one goes deep into the rock, and the other that seems to run alongside the chasm. Broken glass windows line the chasm wall.
The view from there was amazing. I could see right down into the chasm and in both directions for hundreds of yards. It's seemingly a better angle than what from where I parked the APV. The vehicle is parked up on the bridge, and from up there I couldn’t see much.
There must be twenty or more covered bridges spanning the chasm, joining different sections of the facility. There was so much to explore, but there’s no way I was going to be able to investigate all of it in the time I had.
After wandering around the reception and the offices off that – most of which were filled with crumbling furniture of no use to me – I headed back out to the passage that runs alongside the chasm. There were multiple trails on the floor, leading along the corridor, the same sort left behind in other places. They could clearly be seen heading along the passage to the bridge, not far away, and more heading back. I decided I’d need to follow them and ignore the other paths, and I headed along the windowed walkway until I reached the bridge.
The bridge was covered and the glass was mostly coated in dust, obscuring the view outside, and the same coating of dust was thick on the ground. That made the footprints my mother made much clearer, and I could see that she must have travelled this way and back several times. I don't know if that means she came here once and made several trips, or if she came here several times over the years.
I picked up the pace, crossing the bridge nervously, thinking the whole time that it may collapse, but it was an unwarranted fear. I think I just had the jitters. There was something eerie about crossing a bridge over a dark chasm that seems to have no end. I would have loved to find out what was at the bottom, but I didn't have the time or the equipment to go down there.
The chasm must be a natural fissure of some sort. I don't see why they would have carved all of this out of the rock.
