Belly of the Beast Publish Version.

The Belly of the Beast

This is the US military group #16, mission FTS (Find The Source). Two days ago, we got a message from a lab on the outpost of Arizona. It was a code black. That's the worst of them all. We haven't got any message since that. Now my men and I are going into the factory. Before I go in I grab my friend aside. I don't know if I will see you again, I say to him. This looks like we aren't dealing with the normal criminal. So I just want to say, thanks for being by my side. Then, I walk inside with my men.  

Ok, we are in front of the Lab. It looks like there was something that happened. The Lab trucks are all over the place. Some on the side, some flipped over. And some on top of people, I try not to look too closely at that. I send out 1/8 of my men with my second in command, and my personal best friend with them, to search the outside. Then I tell 1/6 to guard the outside. The rest of my men come inside the Lab with me.

The inside of the Lab is as bad as the outside, if not worse. We walk out to a suspended walkway over the Lab machines. They look like they were ripped apart by a knife or claws. We walk to the doorway across the walkway. Then, all of a sudden, we hear a scraping sound. Then the steel cables on one side that are holding up the side of the walkway break. The walkway starts to fall. I grab the side. But some of my men fall to the machines under us. The rest of my us mountain climb to the doorway on the other side. I look down to my men that fell. I see that some of them are ok, others aren't so fine, and some won't be coming out with us. I tell the ones that are okay to search down there and then go through to the door on their right and try to find the cafeteria. Then stake out there until we meet up with them. My men with me continue on.

We walk into a room that has a few desks, and then a pool of water in the middle, but the water looks black, with some red. And then there is a desk that has been ripped in two. One of my men picks up a scrap of wood from the desk and throws it into the water. It dissolves like salt. We carefully walk around the pool into the room that is through the window with the desks. There are some people in lab coats lying on the ground. They have deep scratches on their backs. The scratches are the same color as the pool of water. We walk through the door in the back. But as we are walking through, the door slams behind us, with a few of my men left inside. We then hear screaming, and then nothing. We try to open the door, but it won't move. It takes a while....but we finally get it open, and on the ground are my men who were left behind. I see something out of the corner of my eye, like a living shadow with something red. It goes through a hole in the side of the wall. I send 1/7 of my men to the door. and then the rest of us go through the hole, after the creature, after the Beast.

We ran into a huge room with a lot of tables and a serving area in the back. A cafeteria one of my men whispered. We looked around for the Beast. Split up into three groups, I yelled to my men, one group search the left, the other group searches the right half. My group will search the serving area. The serving area was a small room with a kitchen in the back, me and 2/3 of my group will search the kitchen, the rest search this area and keep an eye out, remember, we are against a Beast. The kitchen was almost like any other kitchen you might see, just bigger. With 3 ovens, 5 sinks, 3 stoves, and A room to the back that looked like a walk in refrigerator. Half of my men search this area, the other half will come with me into the refrigerator room. The refrigerator room had shelves in it with drinks, meat, and desserts like cake and ice cream. There wasn't much to search. I was just looking around when I heard a scream from the cafeteria. My men and I ran to the scream along with the rest of my group, and what we saw, or started to see, wasn't good. There was a black shape that was surrounded by a bunch of my men on the floor, then the shape made a giant burst of sound, and all the lights in the cafeteria went out, it was pitch dark. I put on my night vision goggles, and what I saw I couldn't believe, I saw a creature with sharp claws and red eyes, it was in the shape of a man, but what was scary was that it didn't have the skin of a man, it didn't really have skin at all. What I saw was a shadow, yes, a shadow. It wasn't on the floor, or being cast by something. It was the shape of a normal person, but it looked like a shadow, dark, but see through. Then, I understood why we couldn't see it when it cut the steel rope, or in the place with the pool, or in the room with the shelves, and then in here. It was a shadow, so it could hide in the shadows. I only got a short glimpse of it, before it ran out the door. But that was all I needed, and a known, that this wasn't a normal mission. This was going to be the hardest mission I had ever done. This will be a life or death mission. This mission was a battle against a Beast. This mission, was a fight, inside the Lab of the Beast, Inside the belly of the Beast.