by Fore, Jon
He heard Fug lay down again, obviously either bored or tired or both, and heeled Lance around to the left, starting him forward at the same slow pace. Nothing can be that still, that dead, and hold its breath that long. The place had to be abandoned.
Once in Fallujah, Gabriel remembered leaning into his scope for eleven hours straight, hunting a sniper who was hunting him. He knew where the fucker was, right behind the rusted air conditioner on the roof of that building with no way to escape without making a target of himself.
It was a three-hundred eighty-yard staring competition, only his enemy didn't have a shot picture on Gabriel. He knew Gabriel had one on him. Gabriel held his sight window on the air conditioner in his scope. He waited, staring at the edges of the rust, looking for that small piece of cloth, the swath of hair the fucker was crazy enough to show. He waited even when the sun began to set, making the roof harder to see.
The sun was not directly in the scope, but almost. The glare inside the scope, in the optics, was painful but Gabriel was scared to blink. If the enemy sniper decided to make a run for it, Gabriel might miss his chance, the chance he'd been waiting for for seven months. This guy had killed Americans, a lot of Americans, and not just soldiers. There was no way Gabriel was going to let him go. After four hours, Gabriel even pissed himself, up there on that filthy roof, waiting for the guy to make a move.
But unlike this complex, that roof had felt alive. He could feel, even if he could not see, the life that was there stooped behind the AC unit, waiting for the dark. He knew the guy was there, felt it with his whole vengeful body. However, this complex of buildings felt entirely devoid of life, dead and barren. Maybe that was what had his hackles up. The dead part.
Fuggly didn't seem concerned. His tail was high and his nose low, sniffing rapidly at the browned weeds. Lance and Big Guy didn't seem bothered or worried either. It was just him, Gabriel, the Marine.
He shook his head with a rue smile, and continued along the fencing until it turned, and then onward until he came to the gate. This was much like the rest of the fence, a fairly new chain link mesh on casters, slid wide enough to allow a car to pass, although there were no cars he could see. Gabriel guessed the facility had closed before the humans were run out of the area, and so no employees. But if that was the case, who left the gate open, last one out? It stood to reason the gate would have been closed and perhaps even locked. Sure enough, on the side of the sliding gate hung a chain, and from that a large lock with its clasp gaping open, useless.
Gabriel reined Lance to a halt again and listened. If the lock was open, then it was left open. If it was missing or the chain was broken, that would be different, right? This place was left open intentionally. He sat silent on his horse, listening again at Lance's long measured breaths beneath him. Fug began a circuit of the opening in the gate, sniffing at the posts and poles, leaving his little urine moniker here and there. The silence itself was so thick it was almost tangible, almost had a taste to it. It made his ears ring with uselessness.
After a long while, he led Lance through the gate and towards the center of the complex where the three buildings came together. The two single story buildings sat thinly to either side of the large three story structure. No light shown in any window, which was not a surprise. No lights would shine in these windows for a long while, if ever. The long building on the left had in its center a large garage door. A rolling segmented metal thing wide enough to park two tractor trailers side by side and unload. The door was orange, or looked kind of orange. It was hard to tell in so little light. Across the base of the door, on the loading dock itself was a strip of slanted black with yellow stripes, a warning for the trucks backing into place.
The other building had the exact same door, only this door was mostly open, raised better than half way. The door yawned like an ambush predator, waiting patiently for something to wander in and get eaten. Beyond was an utter blackness, darker than the surrounding night. That wasn't all that surprising considering how dark it was, and the lack of windows. The buildings themselves did not reveal their purpose, and Gabriel supposed he would have to go in to find out.
The idea of lifting one of those doors to see inside was not appealing. The sound it would have to make had to be atrocious, and even though the buildings were still death-like in their silence, Gabriel thought it would be a good idea to leave them that way. He felt like a prowler, like an intruder, as though he shouldn't be here. That's how he felt when they forced families out of their homes in Iraq, or worse, held them captive in their own home to set up a hide on the roof. It was never long, the enemy would notice if someone stopped going to work or school for very long. Still, it felt intrusive, impolite to force these people to their will just because they had guns. Hell, it was perfectly immoral, at least to Gabriel.
He walked Lance over to the opened door and stopped him where trucks should have been loading or unloading. Beyond the door, he could just make out the skeletal arms and appendages of manufacturing robots. Really just vague contours of the metal structures and hoses, but he know what they were right off. He should have looked for a sign at the gate. That should have told him what they did here, or at least what they used to do.
Turning Lance with his heel, he climbed off and onto the loading dock. Fug whimpered, squatted, stood, whimpered again, then squatted and leapt up onto the concrete shelf. His back legs caught on the edge sending him sprawling, but he climbed to his feet, his tail wagging, his closeness begging approval. That or concern.
Gabriel rubbed the back of the dog's neck absently as he watched deep into the darkness beneath the open rolling bay door. A familiar smell reached him, distinct and crispy. For Gabriel, the smell was easy to identify as burned flesh, and by the sweet smell, probably human. Maybe pork, but best guess was human. It smelled like someone had burned in there and the idea turned his stomach. It would not be the first person he'd seen burned alive--or burned to death--but that didn't mean he wanted to see another.
He took a step towards the gapping darkness and stopped.
What the hell are you going in there for anyway?
There was no clear answer. That voice always seemed to ask questions in his head he couldn't answer. It was an asshole voice with asshole questions, but Gabriel wasn't stupid enough to ignore it. Why was he going in there? There was no hope of food, he was still stocked for a couple or more days. There were obviously no people in there, which is something he could have used. A good ole' fashioned conversation with someone about any topic would have been good, but there's no one in there.
No one alive.
There was shelter, yeah, but just for him and Fug. He would have to leave the horses out here because there were no ramps he could see to bring them up.
He turned to the horses, and they were standing very close together, almost touching their barrel shaped chests together. Both were seeking out the tiniest fragments of anything plant-like in the gravel road. Gabriel felt bad for them. There was little to eat along the way, and really what he should do is take them to the wide fields around the fencing and let them eat. He could sleep with his head on his saddle again, Fug across his lap, the Colt in his hand. When it came to the animals, it was his to suffer, because, well, they couldn't make that choice for themselves.
Gabriel looked back into the void, at the robotic arms, and then decided that would be best. What he could do was find a nice grassy part inside the fencing. That would put a parameter around him too noisy to climb over. If those things came at him, they would have to come over the fence, and that would at least wake Fug, if not him. It was better than the open woods. Probably. He would just have to find out.
Life was becoming a long series of finding things out by gambling his death.
Scanning the wide field this side of the fence, he picked a spot, southerly, with a large amount of the dried grass windswept and slanted toward the west. He returned his gaze to the open building, feeling that same nudging to leave, smelling that same rotten
potato smell, that fleshy burned human smell, then returned to Lance and mounted.
Gabriel turned the horse to the field he'd chosen and set him off at a walk again, the hooves crunching in the gravel. Fug whimpered once, then jumped down on his own, and jogged over to take his now comfortable place to Gabriel's left.
The field lay to one side of the taller building and so steered between the large building and the one-story manufacturing building to the left. Another pair of rolling doors were near the end, one on either side, mirroring each other. This time, both were closed.
That mental insistence to leave ebbed the further he got from the opened rolling door, and still it made no sense to Gabriel. He knew he could not ignore it, but it was so vague he could easily excuse it as nerves, maybe even a bit of gas. Now he was wondering if he had even felt it in the first place.
You're just becoming a chicken shit, that's all.
But what about the spoiled potatoes? That, he knew, seemed to mean one of those monsters was close, or had been close. The odor of burned flesh was even worse. But that never caused his nerves to go electric before.
The taller building stood off from the manufacturing structures by about thirty feet. A neat cement walking path had been laid from each of the twin buildings in a convenient path. Each end featured a set of cement poured picnic tables, six at the end of each of the one story buildings. It was easy for Gabriel to picture employees collecting at the tables on a warm day, a day where the sun played a prominent role in the sky. Content, social people, all wearing coveralls of blue, laughing and talking and sharing their home baked foods. One table would be dedicated to those who still smoked, but only one table.
He knew this was on the far side of fantastical, but it was a nice scene to bring up in his head. It was a normal scene, one that should still be played out here. Now the picnic area was a dark foreboding place, the laughter dead, the tables barren except for the small tiled edging sunken into the cement.
These bugs, they needed to be wiped out, pushed back to where they came from, and Gabriel wanted to be one of the people to do just that. The idea of killing again warmed him, especially killing those bugs or monsters.
A month ago, Gabriel was a lost member of society and self-imposed hermit. Now, Gabriel could see his time coming, the age of Gabriel, a world were those educated in the art of the kill would be revered and not shunned. It would be him and others like him that would be the salvation of man, and the image of him riding into a town of admiring people, they reaching up to touch him, to touch Lance, to pet Fug.
Then he saw a little girl. A real one.
Only for a moment. In one of the dark windows of the large building, a little girl appeared, her face sickly pale in the failed light, her features almost indiscernible. But it was a girl. In a blink she appeared and eased back to a deeper dark inside the large building.
Gabriel hauled back on the reins, stopping Lance abruptly, and stared, unsure if he saw what he thought he saw. The potato smell was still there, but no stronger than it had been. He asked himself.
Gabriel's hand drifted to his revolver like a dead leaf finding the ground. His eyes ached with the strain of seeing nothing in the darkness beyond the picture window. She had to have been there. He saw her. He knew he saw her, but still. Why would a little girl be hiding here? Why was she here at all? There were no cars, which meant no one did a 'bring your daughter to work' thing. Well, unless they walked.
After many long breaths, Fug laid down in the grass. Even he stared at the window, as if he had seen something. Gabriel wondered if the dog was picking up on his unease, but it was just a black square in a dark grey surface and everything was perfectly silent.
Suddenly, she was there again.
The girl rushed forward and stopped, just in sight through the large tinted window. Dark hair, pale face, dark eyes as wide as saucers. Her mouth hung open in what Gabriel knew as a terrified expression. She wore a pink t-shirt with a small cupcake design and lettering too filthy to read.
After watching her for a few seconds, unsure what to do, Gabriel decided the girl looked mentally deficient, retarded or afflicted with Down's syndrome. She had to be to just stare at him like that. Slack jawed and eyes wide. But for all of that, there was no more question, Gabriel did in fact, stare into the face of another human being, the first he'd seen in weeks. Then the girl drifted back into the deep shadow in a slow ethereal way.
As excited as Gabriel was, as concerned as he felt, there was still something down right creepy about the child. His heart raced, his chest ached with concern, sure, but his mouth ran dry with an unreasonable fear. Well, maybe not a fear, more like a creep-out. Still, that didn't matter. It didn't matter if the girl was mentally challenged either. There was no way he could leave a little girl here, where the monsters hunted. The thought of bringing her with him was not attractive, but he felt his leg clear Lance's rump and find the ground with little thought. He had to get her and bring her, that's all there was to it.
From his jacket pocket he retrieved his tactical flashlight and drew the Colt from the holster on his right. "Fug, you stay here, keep an eye on the horses.” His voice was a whisper, which made him even more apprehensive, but the grip of the big revolver felt good in his hand, felt solid, felt blessedly real and lethal. He gripped the flashlight tightly in the other hand, looking for that same solid reality, but it was, after all, just a damn flashlight.
The window the girl appeared in was to the left of a large set of double doors, both treated with a mirror like surface. Probably to keep the direct sunlight from the lobby of the building. Odd that the blinds were missing from this specific window and not the other, but Gabriel didn't spare that much thought. In his mind was the single focused idea of rescuing the girl.
He gripped the handle of the door on the left and it felt cold. Actually, it was nearly frozen. Not entirely unreasonable considering the temperature, but it was cold enough to make him pause for just a moment before easing the door open a crack.
A sighing huff of air escaped through the opening.
The first thing he noticed was the sound of a child crying, a heart wrenching 'I want my mommy' kind of crying that never failed to get the attention of everyone within earshot. The second thing that struck him was the stench. Again, there was that smell of rotting potatoes.
That told him two things: there was a child in there somewhere, and there was a monster in there with her.
He pulled the door open wide enough to pass through and just let it hiss itself closed, entombing him in utter darkness. The stench here was overpowering, and Gabriel raised his left forearm under his nose to block the smell, or at least replace it with his own unwashed body. He could feel that the entry was a large space, as if the whole first floor was one big room. It felt like an indoor stadium. That hollow echoing emptiness, only entirely lightless. It actually seemed larger inside than out, but Gabriel figured it had to be because he couldn't see the walls. He knew it had to be simply an auditory illusion.
But the stench made everything seem close and stifling.
The crying was coming from his left and back about half way, but the light was so bad he was afraid to move deeper into the building. He also didn't want to turn on the flashlight unless he had to. His eyes would be ruined if he did, and it would make him a target. Then he would have to depend on the light, which would narrow his tactical awareness to a narrow white cone. He decided to just hang here a minute. Maybe his eyes would adjust. Maybe he would hear whatever smelled like sour potatoes. Maybe the girl would walk up to him and ask to be rescued.
He knelt, not wanting to present a silhouette to whatever was deeper. The doors behind him seemed to block all light, all light entirely, but it was a natural instinct learned from screaming drill sergeants.
'Low profile, shit-for-brains! Low profile or you'll get your ass shot off!'
The place was entirely silent except for the muted distant sobbing of the little child. Gabriel could not understan
d how someone would leave their child behind like this, but then remembered the burned smell from the manufacturing floor, the building with the rolled garage doors and sentinel robotic builders. The girl could be a survivor. Maybe she wasn't abandoned after all. That burned corpse, whatever it was, could have been a parent and the girl fled here to hide, had been hiding here since.
Still, the feeling that something was wrong, something was really wrong, was thick in his face and he wanted nothing more than to get the girl and get out. After another minute he couldn't wait anymore and was about to turn the flashlight on when the crying stopped abruptly. This sent his heart racing even faster.
It was as if the girl just swallowed it. This amped his unease and he slid silently to the right of the door, finding the corner of the door jam, and took a knee. Crossing his arms in front of him, he brought the barrels of both the flashlight and the revolver to bear directly ahead of him, and put his thumb on the flashlight's butt-cap power switch.
Movement caught his eye, barely perceptible and to his left. A quick and stilted motion, like a jerking marionette. He twisted slowly to point his flashlight, gun and eyes in that direction, and saw the girl. Her mouth was still slack, her eyes still wide, but she was staring out the window. Her arms swayed forward and back slightly as if she didn't have the brainpower required to manage them and see at the same time. But the oddest thing about her was her feet. The knees were bent, but it looked like she was standing on the toes of her little sneakers, the toes straight into the floor like a ballerina. Her hands stopped their swinging, and pointed at the floor in front of her feet.
'She's dead. 'The thought hit him like a truck, and filled him with a cold dread as it sank into his bones. He knew suddenly that it was true. Completely true. The girl jerked back into the darkness, her feet came forward and her heals dragged across the wood flooring. Gabriel felt his mouth fill with too much saliva as his dinner rose purposefully in his throat. It was the bone chilling terror that kept him from tossing up deer jerky. Before he could think he depressed the flashlight's button, flooding the space with a jarring glare of white light.
