"So, you have no idea what's down here? Either of you?" Blake asked as he continued to lead his brave army of one scared engineer and one grumpy medic into the ice and dirt beneath Antarctica. They'd been climbing down for a few minutes.
"I got nothing," Powell replied.
"Same here. All I know is that Gen Inc. and the military have been working on the place for a while now, so it's gotta either be big or intricate. Given the shit I've come across so far, I'd bet they're doing some kind of research down there on these damned things."
"Yeah, probably," Blake muttered unhappily.
He came to the end of the ladder and was admitted access to an open-faced 'room' with rock walls, carved out of a cave wall. There wasn't much in the room, just a few lockers that yielded nothing worthwhile, so he walked carefully to the edge of it. The cavern beyond was dark, and a rough stairwell had been carved into a descending rocky slope that led down to the rest of the area. He could just make out what might have been the boxy, tall metal structure of a cargo elevator and a small cabin-like wooden structure.
"Come on," he said quietly. "Let's see what we've got here."
Flicking on the flashlight he'd fit into his chest pocket, Blake cast a sharp, pale beam of light into the darkness. It brightened the area just enough to confirm the two things he'd seen: an elevator shaft and a little single-room structure. There didn't seem to be anyone or anything around in the chilly, rock cavern, so Blake first investigated the elevator. It was a simple affair, meant to hold no more than two or three people max. It ascended well above them, into the darkness. The small control panel revealed where it went.
"Fielding Testing," Blake muttered. "That sounds important."
"Sure as shooting," Reed replied.
Blake frowned when he spied an unhappily familiar black slot next to the buttons. He had an inkling what it was and, sure enough, when he pushed the button, the panel flashed red and buzzed angrily at him.
"Fantastic, we need a security card."
"Well, let's see if we can find one around here," Powell said.
They left the elevator and began moving towards the tiny shack. Beyond it, built into the rock wall, were a huge pair of doors that looked liked they, when activated, slid into the walls on racks. They looked damaged, blackened and bulged slightly outwards, as though an explosion had occurred from within. While Powell and Reed began trying to find a way into the cabin, Blake approached the double-doors. They were partially open. He placed his flashlight through the crack and peered inside. Beyond were tons of rock, the result of a cave-in, and about half a dozen smashed trucks. Abruptly, it came to Blake what he was looking at.
The bomb that had gone off earlier, and those tunnels he'd been in: this is where at least one of them had led to. A loud bang exploded through the cavern and, at the same time, one of the men screamed Blake's name.
Blake spun around and saw that not only had they found the door to the tiny shack, but it had a huge, outward dent in it. As he took a step closer it, a second dent appeared. Both men were backing away from it, weapons raised. Blake brought his flamethrower into play. Had to be a Walker. Sure enough, when, a second later, the door burst open, it was a huge, burly, misshapen Walker that stumbled out into the cavern.
The men screamed and opened fire, spraying it down with red hot bullets. The beast shrieked and roared and screamed in fury as bits of came off and its blackened blood was sprayed across the structure behind it. It seemed to be having a hard time deciding who to go after. Which gave Blake enough time to race up and hose it down with some flames. The beast went up like a torch, the shrieking getting higher pitched. It ran towards Blake, who sidestepped, narrowly avoiding it. By the time the beast managed to stop and get turned around, its ticket was up. It collapsed into a smoldering heap on the icy floor.
"Goddamn they smell bad!" Reed complained.
"Yeah," Blake agreed. "Especially when they're cooked like that. Let's see if our new friend was hiding anything worthwhile."
He had an inkling, (that was more of a desperate hope than anything else), that the shack would hold the keycard. But, after five minutes of searching, they didn't find a damned thing. Stymied, the men spent another fifteen minute searching the cavern over, and Blake was nearly prepared to plunge into the ruined tunnel, when Powell finally turned something up. They found a ladder, tucked away in one corner of the cavern, that led to a ventilation shaft.
"Do we really have to?" Reed complained.
"Yeah, I'm afraid so," Blake replied. "It's our only option."
"Goddamn it. I hate this place," Reed muttered with real vehemence.
Blake didn't blame him. He really didn't want to go crawling around through the vents again. But he was a soldier, damn it, and he'd put up with it. So, he led by example, climbing the ladder and hauling himself into the vent duct. It was cramped, but doable. After about ten minutes of crawling through the squalid confines of the metal ducts, he finally began to hear something. It sounded like all manner of machinery. Well, that was probably good news. It at least meant he was heading towards somewhere important.
Finally, he spied a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The end of the vent duct he was presently in had no mesh grating over it, and he could see a network of pipes, running up and down. As he approached it, someone in white ran past it, from right to left. Blake hesitated, bringing his MP-5 to bear. His patience was rewarded. A pair of men in black camo and gasmasks went by. Blake scooted forward as fast as he could and leaned out, first looking back, confirming there was no one coming up 'behind' him, then looking forward.
He was on some kind of catwalk, suspended high above the ground in a tall, underground shaft. He just caught the pair of hostiles moving to the edge of the catwalk, about to turn right onto another catwalk, giving chase to the medic. He opened fire. Both men went down screaming. Once he was sure they were dead, he hauled himself out, then covered Powell and Reed while they came out. Once they were out, he led them cautiously up the ramps towards the medic. He studied the room as he ascended, feeling very small in comparison to his environment. The place was huge. It was essentially a giant, rectangular vertical shaft.
Catwalks wrapped the exterior walls, heading up, up, up towards the top, which was where Blake and the others were. Taking up most of the middle of the room were huge pipes, a complex network of pipes of all different sizes. Occasionally, scalding hot steam would escape some of these pipes, blowing directly into the path of the catwalks. They had to stop twice and wait for the steam to quit blowing before reaching the medic.
"Hold-hold it!" he cried.
The man was unarmed, backed into a corner near a stack of crates, the absolute top of the vertical shaft. The end of the line.
"What's your name?" Blake asked after setting Powell and Reed on guard duty behind him, to make sure no one else snuck up on him.
"C-Cohen," the man said. "Please don't kill me. I'm not one of them," he whispered.
Blake wasn't sure whether or not he meant one of them as in Whitley's gasmask squad or one of them, as in infected.
"You know word or even actions aren't enough to prove that," Blake said.
"Yeah, but...please don't kill me. I don't want to die," he replied quietly. He was trembling in fear.
"I'm not going to kill you. Unfortunately, I don't have any tests on me...what are you doing here? For that matter, where even is here?" Blake replied.
"I was looking for test kits, actually, but I ran into some of those gasmask assholes and they chased me all the way up here. As for here, well, this is...well, as far as I've been able to tell, a kind of joint training and specimen storage facility. They kind of kept me and the others in the dark about what, specifically, they were doing here," Cohen explained.
"So what's the situation?"
"Obviously, everything's gone to hell. The specimens broke out, then Whitley's band of maniacs started killing everything in sight...me and a few others were holed up in the offices downstairs but, we don't really trust each other. No way to tell who's who. That's why we were going for the test kits," Cohen explained.
"We?" Blake replied.
"Yeah, me and another engineer headed out, but he got gunned down when we were caught."
"We've got company!" Powell suddenly shouted. He punctuated this statement with a barrage from his MP-5.
"Shit! Stay here, don't move, don't do anything," Blake said.
"Can do," Cohen replied.
Blake hurried back down the ramp and then skidded to a halt about halfway down, spying a break in the pipes, a window through which he spied a collection of gasmasks. He immediately sighted the bastards and opened fire, spraying their position with everything left in his current magazine. As he reloaded, dropping back out of sight, he waited for return fire, but there was none. Blake slapped the fresh magazine in and peered cautiously back through the window. He could see nothing but a blood-spattered expanse of rock wall now.
"Anything!?" Blake called.
"That was it!" Powell called back.
"Shit, all right. Cohen! You're leading us back down to where the others are at. And if you know where any kits are, point them out. I get the feeling we'll need them," Blake said.
Cohen responded positively and came out from hiding. Blake still wasn't willing to arm the man, not just because he wasn't sure whether or not he was a real human being, but also because of his demeanor. He had all the classic signs of a civilian thrown into a nasty firefight. No training, obvious terror, lots of chances for some kind of screw-up that might result in Blake or someone else getting shot in the back on accident.
They spent close to half an hour working their way down those damned ramps. It seemed that for ever ten meters of progress they made, the quartet ran into some kind of obstacle. First, there were a cluster of Scuttlers roaming around aimlessly that had to be put down. Then, they ran into a huge, beastly Walker that seemed particularly tough. Blake went through the rest of his current fuel canister bringing the big beast down, dropping him down to only one canister of fuel. On top of that, he ended up burning through six more magazines for his MP-5 combating close to a dozen gasmasks, only regaining three magazines salvaged from their corpses.
When they reached the very bottom, Cohen had them stop.
"There," he said, pointing.
There were two doors, only two ways to go. One leading dead ahead, the other to the right. The one Cohen pointed to was the dead ahead door.
"That's where the kits are?" Blake asked.
"Yeah, and some medical supplies," Cohen replied.
Blake nodded. "Stay here. You, too Powell."
"Got it," Powell replied.
He took Reed to the door and opened it up. The room beyond appeared to be a makeshift infirmary. There were a row of foldout tables along the left wall, serving as examination tables, and more crates and foldout tables along the other walls, serving as workspace and storage. There was blood on the walls, pooled on the floor, medical supplies scattered everywhere.
"What a fucking mess," Reed muttered.
They spent close to ten minutes sorting through the catastrophe, but, for once, it paid off. They found five test kits and two full medical kits. Blake even managed to find a backpack among the wreckage. He took it and placed both medkits and all the test kits in the pack, then shrugged into it. He and Reed rejoined the others.
"So, moment of truth?" Powell asked.
Blake shook his head. "No, I want to do this with those others...how many are back in the offices?" he asked, looking at Cohen.
"Just two. Or at least, there should be. Engineers. Ryan and Stolls," Cohen replied.
"Great, let's get going."
The quartet made their way through a pair of burned out, bloodied concrete corridors filled with bodies and boxes. Blake was beginning to feel seriously tired. He didn't know how long he could keep running on adrenaline like this. He wanted to take a break, to sit down and rest for half an hour, get a bite to eat, a freaking hamburger and beer would go a long way towards soothing the fire in his brain. He wanted a god's-honest nights' rest. But he knew it wasn't coming. This was the continent of death and misery, a haunted place of no sleep, no rest, no stop. He couldn't envision a time where he would be allowed to get a real break.
They found Ryan and Stolls.
Each man had a pistol in hand, pointed at the other man's head. They stood inside of a ring of desks in the center of a large room with several doors around its edges. Both men were frozen, like statues, the centerpiece of the room.
"Whoa, hold on, let's not do anything stupid," Blake said immediately.
"Who the fuck are you!?" one of them snapped.
"Captain Blake, US Special Forces. Let's just put the guns down and talk this out. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can solve it without violence."
There was a short pause, and when neither man backed down, Cohen stepped forward. "Guys, I'm back. I found the kits!" he said.
"Cohen!?" one of them glanced over. "Oh thank god," he breathed. "Look, Ryan, I'll lower my gun if you'll lower yours," he said.
The other man, Ryan, stared hard back at him. Finally, he nodded tightly and took a step back, lowering his gun slowly. The first man, Stolls, did the same. Blake breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, I'm the only one with a flamethrower, so I'm calling the shots," he said. "Everyone line up and presents arms!" he called.
With varying degrees of reluctance, the men gathered in a large, open space next to the ring of desks that dominated the center of the room. Blake wanted to get this over with quickly. Who knew how many Thing beasts and gasmasks were roaming around? He selected one of the men at random: Ryan. As he began to pull the test kit out and test the man, however, abruptly, Ryan batted the kit away. It flew across the room and shattered. At the same time, he shoved Blake back so hard that his feet literally left the floor and he flew across the room. He didn't shatter as he hit the wall, then the floor, but it sure felt like it.
When he stumbled painfully to his feet, a scene of pure, screaming chaos awaited him. Both Ryan and Reed were transforming, bursting out into Thing beasts. Ryan had sprouted a tendril arm that ended in a sharp, bony point. Blake watched in horror as he raised it up, reared it back and put it, fast like lightning, through Powell's skull. Cohen and Stolls were screaming and running, the only man among them armed was Stolls, who was too terrified to fire his weapon. Blake shot to his feet and raced forward, flamethrower in hand.
He lit up the trio, knowing that Powell was either dead or as good as. A chorus of voices began shrieking in inhuman rage and agony as the three became one, forged into a twisted sculpture of bone and flesh by the flame's powerful fingers. Blake, Cohen and Stolls kept their distance as the Thing beasts slowly died. When, finally, the flames were reduced to smoldering embers and the bodies had grown still and silent, Stolls finally spoke up.
"I knew Ryan was infected," he muttered.
"Fantastic," Blake said. "Cause it's your turn."
"Fine," Stolls replied. "I'm human, I know it, this'll prove it."
By some miracle, Blake discovered, the test kits in his backpack hadn't been broken when he'd been thrown across the room. He selected one, stuck it in Stolls' exposed arm and pulled the trigger. The blood came out, the chemical mixed, nothing happened. Blake let out a long sigh of relief and began grabbing the next one.
"Told you," Stolls said.
"Yep. My turn," Blake replied.
He tested himself and, as expected, nothing happened. Finally, he and Stolls turned on Cohen, who still looked a bit out of it from all their experiences. When the time came, however, he didn't fight back. He was tested and he was clean.
"Well, that solves that problem," Cohen said, brightening a bit, coming back to reality.
"Yeah. And now we've got three more corpses...shit. I really liked Powell," Blake muttered.
They tried to recover the weapons from the three dead men but, unfortunately, they'd all been rendered useless. So Cohen remained unarmed. Blake supposed they could backtrack, loot some of the bodies they'd produced on the way down...but, all at once, he realized that he needed a break, a real one, so he turned to face the others.
"I need to sit down for a minute," he said, finding a chair in the island of desks and sitting in it. He was surprised by how immediately comfortable he felt around people who had been proven to be human, as though that were all that mattered. In this stark, hostile environment and insane situation...maybe it was.
Blake spent the next ten minutes bringing both men up to speed on his own personal situation, why he was down here, his qualifications, Whitley's betrayal, everything that had happened since waking up in that bloodied research facility.
"So, that's my story," he said. "What about you two? How'd you end up in this situation?"
"Unhappily," Stolls replied. "The place we're in right now...it's a testing facility for those things. They do all kinds of weird research here, but...they've been doing less of it recently. I've overheard whispers that they had just begun moving test subjects and key personnel to a newer, bigger facility somewhere else in the antarctic."
"They're still building?!" Blake cried.
"Yeah. I get the feeling, actually, that this is all small peanuts compared to what they're doing. I've seen a lot of people and materials coming down almost nonstop."
"Great," Blake muttered.
"Yeah. So, anyway, I was an engineer here. I largely made sure that everything was wired right and occasionally they called me in to fix up tractors when they broke down. I started catching wind of some kind of resistance not too long ago and decided to see what the hell we were resisting against. I had a talk with another engineer and a medic who were coordinating and they showed me what was happening: Gen Inc. and the military were planning on bringing these things back to the world! After what I realized that could mean, I decided to join up right away. I helped sabotage this place with Ryan and some others."
"I was that medic," Cohen threw in.
"Yeah. So, when I set some holding pens to open up and the automatic defense systems to fail, we turned on the gasmasks, killed a lot of them, then had to fight the Thing creatures, too. It was all a mess. There were close to twenty of us at first but...well, now I guess it's just me and Cohen, and you now. We tried to secure the facility but the Things quickly outnumbered us and it was all we could do to fall back and lock the doors behind us. We...really don't have a plan anymore," Stolls said, unhappily, staring at the pistol in his hand.
"My story is pretty much the same as his," Cohen said quietly. Blake still thought the man might be shell-shocked, or maybe he was just a quiet individual.
"Well, good news," Blake said, "I'm here to give you a plan and a sense of purpose."
"Oh yeah? What's that? They bombed the damned elevator going up so we're trapped down here," Stolls said.
"There's another lift, through some vents, back in a cave. All I need is some kind of executive card to unlock it."
"Hey! There might be something like that around here," Cohen said.
"Yeah, there's a chance," Stolls said, sounding more upbeat. "And even if it's not here, I bet I could hotwire the damned thing."
"Well...great, let's get searching," Blake said, slowly standing, popping his back, neck and shoulders. It wasn't quite what he had hoped for, but he really wanted out of this place. The less lingering, the better in his book. And, of course, he felt the press of time: for every minute he was down here, dicking around, Whitley was that much closer to completing his plan. He checked out his weapons, making sure they were all ready and in working order, then looked around the room they were: there were lots of doors to chose from.
Despite their best efforts to move quickly, the trio spent the next hour working their way through the area. Most of the rooms they encountered were either bloodied, devastated office complexes or bloody, devastated holding areas that doubled as bio-labs. There were a fair amount of nasty surprises waiting for them in the form of leftover test subjects. Blake ended up emptying all ammo for his MP-5 in the process, and by the time they finished up, he only had one canister of fuel left in his flamethrower with which to defend himself. They'd managed to find a shotgun and some shells for Stolls, who thus relinquished his pistol to Cohen, who slowly came out of his daze over the course of the adventure.
Blake also ended up using all of the grenades he'd managed to collect, both flame and fragmentation, in defeating the half-dozen Walkers they encountered. He began to feel light by the time they'd located the damned security card, tucked away in some forgotten desk drawer in (of course) the very last office they decided to check out. Before they left, now that they had cleared the place out, Blake decided to take a break in the small, relatively untouched lounge they had discovered during their investigation.
"What did you used to do, before all this?" Blake asked as he raided the refrigerator he'd discovered in the break room. Cohen was in the bathroom, relieving himself. Stolls had already found a ready-heat frozen cheeseburger, had put it in the microwave that thankfully still worked and was now looking for mustard and ketchup.
"I worked for Gen Inc," Stolls replied. "They picked me up right outta college about ten years ago. I did three years at corporate HQ in Oregon, shot up the ladder, and they ended up giving me the job of going all over the world to their other company sites and making sure stuff got set up right. They offered me a big bonus to come down here and do it but...I never figured anything like this would be waiting for me."
The microwave dinged. Just in time, too. Blake had discovered a box with four frozen beef and cheese burritos in it. He stuffed it in the microwave just as soon as he was able and then went back to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water and drained it. Then he found a couple of cans of Coke and pulled them out, setting them at the table and waiting on his burritos to cook. Just at that moment, a toilet flushed and, a few seconds later, Cohen emerged. Stolls stood up, half his hamburger already gone, and went into the bathroom.
"My turn," he said before disappearing behind the closed door.
"What about you?" Blake asked as Cohen began searching for his own meal.
"What about me what?" he replied.
"What did you do before all this?"
"Oh. I was a doctor. Med school and all that jazz, two years in a hospital before Gen Inc. snapped me up. Two years with them before they offered me this job. I was recently divorced, no kids, nothing really worth staying for. But, if I had known all this shit was going to go down once I got here...I definitely would've stayed behind."
"You and me both," Blake muttered.
His burritos were done. Soon, all three men were eating in silence, all of them with one eye on the door. They finished off their food and sat in relative contentment for about five minutes before, finally, begrudgingly, Blake rose to his feet, took a quick leak, then came back.
"Well, let's get back to it," he said.
Both men made grumbling noises, but stood and readied their weapons. Blake didn't want to get back to it, but he knew he needed to, or he'd just keep sitting there and probably fall asleep. But food was sleep, wasn't it? Where had he heard that? They made their way out of the office complex, back through the concrete corridors and up the huge, spiraling catwalk that wrapped around the miles of piping deep beneath the ice. Blake led them back through the vents and into the darkened cave with the last elevator out of hell.
"Any idea where this goes?" he asked as they stepped aboard.
Both men responded negatively.
With a small sigh, and a whispered prayer, Blake activated the lift.