The alarm woke Marco at exactly Nine PM. He couldn't remember dreaming, but the tears on his face indicated that he had. He wiped his eyes and shut off the alarm, then swung his legs off the bed and pushed through the fog that clouded his mind to stand.
Those pills are somethin' else.
Marco had gone down to the store early that morning and purchased everything they would need to execute their plan: knives, a tool kit, binoculars, gloves, a pair of hiking boots for himself, and the sleeping pills necessary to make them sleep during the day so they could work at night. Marco had wanted to buy them masks, thinking of how The Kenosha Kid and Samaritan had protected their identities, but only found bandanas.
Clay chose the black one, and Marco chose a red one, they tied them around their faces, like the train robbers of the Old West, and both boys smiled beneath the cloth.
We'd be up a creek if Dallas hadn't carried so much cash on him.
Clayton had explained that Dallas didn't trust banks, as they were all 'run by the coastal elite'. Marco didn't care, he was just happy he could eat. He put on the hiking boots and donned a zip up hoodie that he also got from the store. Clay had slept through the alarm and so Marco shook him awake.
"Ugh, hmph? Go'on, git..." Clay sleepily protested.
So, Marco yanked off the covers and threw them to the ground before turning on the light. "What in the Sam hell...? Damn, time already?"
"Yeah."
"Cain't even get five more minutes?"
"Nope." Marco said.
Clay sighed and rolled over off the bed, then dragged himself to his feet before hopping around on one foot trying to pull his boot on.
"Real quick, we only got one gun. Betsy'll take off a head no problem, but she only got five shots before I gotta load back up and them boys got M-16's with fifty-round mags. How you gon' cover me?" Clay asked, falling on his ass but getting his boot on.
"Well, the idea is not to have to use the gun. We sneak in, no guards see us, we find Dallas, and get the heck outta Dodge."
"And if that don't work?"
"Then maybe I can toss some'uh them exploding ball things like against The Man in Black and we get back to the car and haul ass."
"I ain't never bet my life on no 'maybe'!" Clay scoffed, looking at Marco like he was crazy.
But the older boy just shrugged.
"Only other option is tah hide for the rest of our lives." And that brought a look of defeated compliance to the younger boy's face. He finished buttoning up his flannel and grabbed his bag and shotgun.
"Then let's hit that dusty trail." Clayton grimaced.
Marco thought it best to check out of the hotel before leaving, if they got Dallas or didn't, they wouldn't be able to stay in West Virginia anymore. A woman at the store had given Marco a look of fearful recognition at the store.
Can't stop moving when you're running from the law.
On their way out of the front desk area after checking out, Marco grabbed two cups of complimentary coffee and went back to the car. In the parking lot, Clay was playing with a fearsome-looking, obviously stray, pitbull.
"Easy boy," Clay laughed, as the dog playfully bit at his arm, "settle down now, I gotta go. Here, fetch!" And Clay threw a piece of jerky from his pocket to the other side of the parking lot. The dog quickly chased after it, barking madly in pursuit of meat. "What's this?" Clay asked, taking the cup from Marco.
"Coffee." Marco explained. Clay made a disgusted face, regarding the cup as if it had betrayed him.
"I ain't drinkin' this." Clay said.
"Why the heck not?" Marco asked, shifting the car into gear.
"Coffee tastes like hell."
"Well, if ya don't drink it, ya probably won't be able to keep up when we gotta hike five miles."
"Aww, hell! Ya had to go'n remind me." Clay complained as he ruefully took the paper cup from Marco's hand and promptly downed the whole thing. "Blech! Fuckin' shit! Hotter'n hell!" Clay choked.
"'Course it's hot." Marco couldn't help but laugh as he drove down the dark, empty street towards the hills. Clay even laughed at himself for once.
"I tell you what, amigo, if we don't die tonight, I ain't never gonna say no type of Mexican insults ever again. No 'beaner', 'wetback', ''Spic' nothin'!"
"Or, you could just not say 'em anymore right now." Marco offered.
"...true..." Clay considered.
...better than nothin'...
The day before, he studied maps of the area he got from the front desk, one of which marked where the restricted area of the Starkling Inn began.
The plan was to ditch their car two miles away and hike in, going around the security checkpoint and through the chain link fence with some bolt cutters Clayton stole from the maintenance closet. Marco was going to buy them at the store too, but he had caught Clay first and asked why he was in the closet in the first place, Clay just shrugged and said:
"Ain't stole nothin' in a while."
"Alright, this is it. The intersection of Helms Way and Main Street. We get out here'n walk north two miles to the fence, then three miles past the fence is where the actual buildings and stuff are."
"How the hell you know that? Ain't no map gonna show you where a military base got its buildings."
"Didn't get it from the maps. This place is so famous that some 'investigators' broke in and posted it to YouTube."
"Oh yeah! Victor and Sheila Neigard! Dallas had 'em on the show live via video call from prison tah talk about what they seen! He even donated to their legal fund."
"Yeah, well, let's hope we don't end up like them. You wouldn't do well in prison."
Marco pulled the car off to the side of the road and parked it amongst the trees, both boys grabbed their gear and tied on their bandanas. The trees, along with the dark of night, were what Marco hoped would camouflage the car enough for them to be able to return to it undisturbed. The two boys exited the vehicle and set off through the woods next to them.
Right, so that's Dawson's trail, so that must be Elder Creek. So we go....
Marco consulted his pre-marked map before asking:
"Which way is south?."
"That'a way." Clayton pointed after consulting the compass Mr. Muller had given him. The boys quietly plotted along, and though they were still miles away from trespassing, Marco's heart was already racing.
What if we get caught? Maybe Clay was right, we don't have enough firepower.... Wait, what am I saying? This is my only option! It's do or die! If I don't get to the bottom of all this, I'll never be able to live a normal life again. No friends, no family, no football. I wonder if USC will still honor my scholarship if I'm proven innocent. Don't matter, I'm doing this for Abuelita!
And so the adolescent duo marched on through the woodland of West Virginia. Fueled by cheap coffee and an aching desire for revenge, Marco and Clay pushed through the brush, over hills, around boulders, and across streams. Marco gritted his teeth and told himself that the scrapped skin, bruised feet, and drenched clothing would all be worth it when he found Dallas Preston, looked that moron right in his ham-face, and buried his fist in it before dragging him back through the same hell Marco had gone through to get to him and then lugging him to New York to clear his name.
"Marco, look, is that what I think it is?" Clay whispered, pulling Marco out of his determined focus.
Marco followed the younger boy's pointing finger and saw a bit of a shadow on top of a cliff above them. He squinted at the shadow, and as his eyes adjusted, he could make out light coming from the diamond patterns of a chain link fence.
"Dios mío...we did it?"
"Sure as hell did ol' buddy!" Clay whispered with palpable excitement.
"Then let's get up there." Marco smiled.
The cliff was more like a tiny mountain, or a very large hill. Marco and Clay were on a lower elevation, and to get up to where they saw the fence, they had to ascend a steep incline. Walking up that hill was like trying to walk up an almost vertical wall and Marco's legs began to burn halfway up.
How the heck is he still going? Marco thought to himself as he stopped to rest, Clay was still charging up the hillside, unimpeded by gravity.
"You comin' old man?" Clay whispered down, teasing Marco.
The older boy shushed Clay, but couldn't help but smile at the challenge, and so Marco got to his feet and ran up the hill, sometimes going on all fours to better climb. He quickly caught up to, and then passed, Clayton.
When Marco reached the top, he made a show of touching the fence, before remembering that there were likely armed guards and ducking. Clay reached the top soon after, huffing and puffing with a grin, visible through the bandana, plastered across his face.
"So excited 'bout winnin' ya damn near got yer head took off!" Clay said, stifling a laugh.
"Still won, though." Marco gasped for air.
"Alright then, compadre, they got razor wire up on top of this damn thing, and it's probably twenty feet up. Let's get the bolt cutters" Clay said.
Marco pulled from the bag the large pair of stolen bolt cutters. He used them to snip out a square from the chain link fence, each snip of metal breaking the silence like a shotgun blast and making the fence shake with a sound like thunder. Marco took care to stop and listen for a while after each cut to ensure no footsteps were approaching. Finally, the square of metal fell away with a soft clatter that stopped Marco's heart for a beat, and they were in.
"Hope no one notices the fence before we're outta here." Marco whispered.
"Well, I think the fence'll be the least of our worries if the Deep State catches onto us." Clay said, crawling through the hole.
"Deep State?" Marco asked, following him once he was standing on the other side.
"That's what I said, ain't it?" Clay asked.
"What the heck is that?" Marco asked, dusting himself off as he stood and took up his bag before consulting the map he made from watching the Neigard footage and comparing it to Clay's compass and the landscape that was pock-marked by craters mounds of dug-up earth.
"The Deep State! It's the shadow government that runs the United States!" Clay raised his voice a little too high for Marco's liking so Marco put a finger to his mouth to shush him, Clay nodded before continuing. "See, back in the day, we was a democracy, but then, sometime after World War Two, the Illuminati took over." Clay explained.
Marco couldn't help but roll his eyes, but they had a long walk ahead of them so Marco decided to humor him for entertainment.
"How'd they do that?" The sarcasm in his voice didn't seem to land as Clay went on.
"Well, coastal elites and Hollywood liberals have always wanted to control everything, but then the Nazis came. After World War Two, the USA brought over a bunch of Nazi scientists in Project Paperclip. They was s'posed tah help us make nukes and get us to space, but the satanist liberals and elites used their money and influence to get the Nazis to help with other plans."
Marco felt a mixture of amusement and disgust, he had known some right-wing individuals back in Texas, the vast majority of them being decent and friendly people who just had a different opinion on tax rates and gun control, but then there were those people, the disgusting and unsightly minority who gave him side-eyed looks in the store, the ones with horrible ideas about people with different skin tones, like old man Dawson who ran the diner downtown in Sweetwater. Marco has taken Cathy Greenwood on a date there his sophomore year, and when Cathy left, the old man gave Marco the receipt with 'Wetback' written in red ink across the front. It was people like that, people like Old Man Dawson, like Clay, that made Marco's skin crawl and his stomach turn. The ones who listened to the insane ramblings of people like Dallas Preston and, even worse, believed him instead of laughing off his ideas.
They walked through the nearly flat base, ducking behind peculiar mounds of dug-up earth, and Clay continued about his bizarre beliefs with an almost religious reverence.
"...so then, in the sixties, Kennedy gives a speech in New York and he says that America is run by a secret society in a conspiracy that crosses the whole damn world!" Clay said.
"Oh yeah? How come he didn't stop 'em?"
"You dumb or just skip history class? They shot him!"
"Didn't that communist guy shoot him? Oswald or whatever."
"Tch, yeah, if you believe the 'official' story. Dallas said it was done by the CIA in coordination with Zionist elites and the Majestic Twelve." Clay spoke with such conviction that Marco had to laugh.
"Was this before or after they picked up those alien shipwrecks?" Marco joked.
"After. Roswell was in the Forties, the Nazi scientist used the stuff from the wreck to make rocket ships." Clay said without missing a beat as if he was discussing historical fact.
Well I'll be, this kid is in a cult and he doesn't even know it...
"Lockin' up for the night, Martin?" A man said.
Marco and Clay ducked behind one of the mounds of dug-up earth. Marco looked around the corner and saw two men in military uniforms, one standing by an army supply truck and the other on a motorbike.
"Yeah, just gotta haul the new shipment up to the main building." The man near the truck said.
"What the hell is even in those things? They go through these shipments like nothin'." The man on the motorbike laughed.
"Beats the hell outta me, I ain't gettin' court-martialed to find out." Martin laughed.
"Aww, c'mon. You ain't even a little curious?" The motorbike man asked.
"Sure am. I tell ya what, on my last day before retirement, I'll open one of these suckers up and we'll have a look-see."
"Can't wait. Don't forget to turn the lights out." The man on the motorbike agreed, before starting his engine and driving off.
It was then that Marco saw an opportunity. He waited until the man got into the big truck and started the engine, then he grabbed Clay by the arm and ran out to the back of the truck, keeping his head low. Marco gingerly stepped up into the canvas-covered truck bed and pulled Clay up with him.
"The hell you do that for?!" Clay whispered.
"Free ride. My feet hurt." Marco smirked as the truck drove off.
Their new mode of transportation made quick work of the remaining three miles, before they knew it, the glow of artificial light came into the truck bed from fluorescent lamps above as the truck slowed to a stop. Marco heard two men talking over the idling Diesel engine.
"New shipment?"
"Yeah, gotta keep 'em stocked up. You here all night?" Martin asked.
"Yeah, I've had the rough end of the duty stick for the last month. I'd kill to be up in the tower." Another man said. "I gotta do a mandatory check, turn off the engine so I can fill out this damn form."
Marco's stomach dropped, he looked at Clay and saw the boy's murky green eyes wide and wild with fear. They had moved to the back of the truck and sat between two boxes, but Marco wasn't sure if that would be enough.
The engine was cut out.
Marco heard gravel crunch under their boots as the soldier approached.
He felt the suspension of the truck bounce as the man mounted the truck bed.
Then the yellow beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness and Marco saw the silhouettes play off the canvas. Then he saw the outline of his foot. The shadow was low enough that maybe the soldier wouldn't see. Marco was paralyzed with fear. He thought about moving it but then thought that would arouse even more suspicion.
"Ahh, fuck it." The soldier muttered to himself, and the beam of light cut out.
The gravel crunched away from them.
"That was one quick 'thorough' inspection there Bruce." Martin joked.
"Yessir, as thorough as the army pays me to be. Now get the hell outta here."
The engine started back up, the truck was moving again, and the two boys breathed a sigh of relief.
The rest of the ride happened in silence, Marco occasionally got up and peaked between where the canvas roof and the metal of the car met, and on his third look, he saw a building approaching, the only topographical feature on the whole base aside from the mounds of dug up earth.
It was a squat warehouse with a curved roof and a retractable gate for a door. A siren went off as a green light flashed and the door opened. Marco saw three men come out, but they weren't dressed in the army fatigues of the other men he had seen around the base.
These men wore full body armor from head to toe, with grieves, vambraces, and chest pieces covered in thick smoke-grey matte material. They had helmets too, made of the same matte material as the armor plates, with two bulges on either side of where the mouth would be.
"Exit the vehicle." A static voice came, seemingly out of nowhere. For a second, Marco thought they had been spotted and that the armored man was talking to them, but then he heard the truck door open.
"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. Here's the keys, I'll trade 'em to ya for some of those fancy Vahlt combat suits." Martin laughed.
"Leave the keys and keep moving." The voice that Marco determined must be coming from one of the helmeted men with rather large guns.
"Alright, whatever, you boys ain't got no sense of humor." Marco heard the keys jingle and the alarm went off again with the same green light as before.
"You, move the vehicle onto the platform. You, cover the door."
"Yessir." Said two static voices.
Marco saw one of the men hop into the truck while the other man ran out of sight.
The truck began moving again, but only for a short while before it stopped and the engine clicked off once more. The man driving it hopped out and Marco heard a click.
There was a great mechanical whirring and the truck started to go down.
"What the hell's goin' on?" Clay whispered.
Marco shushed him silently as the vehicle descended and the circular door above them closed, cutting out the warehouse and the light it gave.
Then there was nothing but darkness and the mechanical whirring of the platform going down and down.
"Ya think—"
"Shh!" Marco insisted, still unsure if it was safe.
Then, a light clicked on and he saw Clay holding one of the flashlights.
"Ain't nobody down here but you'n me. And we gotta figure out how're gonna hide better'n this." Clay hissed Marco's face of surprise and anger.
Marco was going to say something back, but he knew Clay was right, someone would come to unload this cargo and they couldn't be here when that happened.
"Fine, let's hurry, we don't know how long we got 'fore this ride ends." Marco grimaced, grabbing both backpacks, and giving one to Clay. Then the two boys began maneuvering through the wooden crates that filled the truck.
Marco tried to open one, but it was nailed shut.
"There goes that idea..." Marco sighed, and that was when he realized Clay wasn't next to him anymore. He got out of the truck and landed on a thick metal platform sliding down a cylindrical shaft, Mr. Muller's flashlight that Marco was scanning the area revealed nothing.
"Well I'll be..." Clay gapped at the ceiling.
Marco looked up and saw nothing. Then he realized he saw nothing because the flashlight wasn't strong enough to reach the top.
"Woah....how far down are we?" Marco asked no one in particular.
"Dunno, but we best hurry cuz I'on think we got much longer." Clay said.
The boys broke the trance of the overhead void and set to work. Marco ran to the edge and found a concrete wall that curved around him on all sides. He determined, with the aid of the other flashlight, that the platform was about thirty feet across and, to his horror, devoid of any means of concealment.
"There ain't shit to hide in!" Clay vocalized their predicament.
"You sure? Nothing on yer side?"
"Ain't nothin' but the truck...wait, that's it!" Clay cried.
"What?"
"Cape Fear!"
"What?" Marco was perplexed.
"You ain't never seen Cape Fear?" Clay said, running up to Marco.
"No, what is it?"
"Robert De Niro!"
"What?"
"It's a movie! He hides under a car by holding on to the bottom of it! We do that, wait for them sumbitches to leave, then roll out!" Clay proclaimed.
Marco thought about it but realized they were out of time as he felt the platform start to slow.
"Let's do it." Marco and Clay ran and ducked beneath the truck. Marco reversed his backpack so that it sat on his chest and instructed Clay to do the same. "Wait until the light comes in, we don't know how long we'll have to hold on." Marco instructed, Clay nodded in agreement, and then the light came in.
Marco reached up and wrapped his arms and legs around whatever piece of metal was directly above him. He clung to it desperately as the lift finally came to a stop.
"How many is it?" Someone asked.
"Ledger says it's around forty crates, nothing crazy. Two trips should do it." Another voice explained.
"Right, I'll bring the cart around." The first voice agreed.
Marco craned his neck and saw two pairs of work boots, the armored kind he saw on the masked men. He then heard the whirring of an electric engine as a small, four-wheeled vehicle came around to the back of the truck. Marco felt his muscles straining to keep him out of sight, sweat forming on his brow. He looked over to Clay, and the oddly thin boy seemed to have no trouble keeping himself upright.
Do we go when they start unloading? Or do we go when they take the first twenty away?
Marco's inner debate was solved for him when he reasoned that he wouldn't be able to wait for them to leave as, though he was in great athletic condition, his body wasn't conditioned to hold his body weight above the ground. As the second man rounded to the back, Marco gestured to Clay towards the exit.
Clay nodded.
Marco began mouthing a countdown that Clay seemed to understand.
Five...
Four...
Three...
Two...
One!
Marco gently eased himself to the ground, drawing creaking sounds from the metal that made his heart stop, but his muscles kept on lowering him until he was on the ground.
He looked down towards the feet of the men unloading the truck, and their words and actions didn't say they heard Marco. He looked over and Clay was down too. Marco shifted his backpack to its normal position and Clay did the same.
The two boys slowly started to crawl across the cold metal floor.
Inch by inch they moved closer to the front of the vehicle, Marco could see a concrete floor beyond the lip of the platform covered in stacks of Army-green crates, different from the ones in the truck. Marco finally pulled his feet past the front tire and moved to a squatting position. Clay did the same and they both looked around the room. The ceiling was concrete, with fluorescent tubes covering it.
The ground was dust concrete and the whole place smelled of mildew. It reminded Marco of his Father's storage unit back in Sweetwater, where boxes of old memorabilia from his boxing days sat.
An underground...warehouse?
Marco motioned for Clay to follow him.
Marco crawled on all fours to the nearest stack of crates. Once behind them, he realized his chest was burning from holding his breath from the moment he let go of the car's undercarriage. He took a breath, then another, filtering the stale air of the subterranean warehouse through his lungs as quietly as he could.
There they sat for an hour, waiting for the two men to load up, take the crates away, and come back to do it again. Even after the men left with the second load, Marco waited another ten minutes before speaking.
"I think we're clear." He whispered.
"Thank god, my ass was startin' ta get sore." Clay spoke at a normal volume which caused Marco to panic and cover the boy's mouth with his hand.
Clay rolled his eyes and moved Marco's hand. Marco looked around and saw three corridors connected to the room he was in.
"Which way do we go?" Clay whispered.
Marco needed to seem confident, so he made a snap judgment and chose the one opposite the elevator they came in. The boys went down the artificially lit hallway, its walls and floor a simple grey. They went slowly as Marco noticed going beyond a certain speed made their footsteps echo down the featureless hallway. At the end of the corridor, there was a sliding door that had an electronic panel on one side.
"You think he's in here?" Clay whispered.
"I don't know. Only one way to find out." Marco pushed a depressed green button on the panel that had a label that read 'open'. The door slid open with a hydraulic hiss that was louder than Marco had hoped.
"Ah, Minerva. Did you get those tissue samples?" A bespectacled man with receding, curly grey hair asked as he turned towards them.
Marco panicked and pushed Clay into the room and stepped in himself, then he pushed the depressed red button on the panel inside the room labeled 'closed'.
"Clay! The shotgun!" Marco hurriedly gasped.
But Clay had already pulled out 'Betsy', his affectionately named sawed-off, pump-action shotgun.
"Howdy, partner. Stick 'em up, and don't go droppin' that there glass in yer hands, I wanna keep 'em busy." Clay said it so easily that Marco was uncomfortable.
I'll ask later why it sounds like he's said that before...
"Who are you....children? You know this is a government facility, don't you!?" The man was indignant and spoke with a voice like a professor from a TV show.
"I sure hope so. Wouldn't wanna go stickin' up the wrong joint, and keep her fuckin' voice down. Where's Dallas?" Clay demanded with all the ferocity a prepubescent voice could muster.
"Texas." The man shifted uncomfortably.
"Nice try, partner, we're lookin' for Dallas Preston, the loco podcast host." Marco corrected.
The man's lips pursued tighter and he began looking more at the ceiling than at the boys.
"I haven't the slightest idea who or what you boys are talking about." The man tried to sound indignant, but Marco could hear the fear.
"I say he's fulla shit, how 'bout you, amigo?" Clay smugly asked.
"I'm right there with ya, compadre." Marco agreed with a sly smile.
I'm going to need to ask myself later why I'm having so much fun torturing this guy, is it the mask...?
"Well go on, take us to Dallas before I start puttin' holes in ya." Clay motioned with his shotgun.
"Very well, follow me." The man in the lab coat and circular glasses sighed and went to a panel on the far side of the room near some beakers and other scientific junk, some of which Marco recognized from chemistry class, but a lot of which was completely foreign to him.
"Don't get funny with me, Doc. I hear an alarm go off'n I show you my degree in head removal surgery." Clay threatened. The old scientist pushed a green button on the panel.
"Biometrics required." A voice synthesizer came from a speaker on the panel.
"May I?" The scientist motioned with his hand that was occupied with a glass beaker. Marco nodded and the man set it down on the table before putting the tips of his fingers onto corresponding glass readers. The door beeped open with the same hydraulic hiss.
"Welcome, Dr. William Hartley." The synthesized voice stammered as it mimicked human tones with electricity.
"After you, big hoss." Clay poked the scientist into the dark room with the barrel of his shotgun after positioning himself behind the doctor.
Marco followed behind them.
The door hissed shut as Marco found the red button on the panel. Then, the doctor flicked on the lights and the world changed for Marco again.
The room was small, maybe only slightly bigger than his bedroom back home, and almost narrow enough to be a hallway. On one end was another hydraulic sliding door that mirrored the one they came in through. However, on either side of the room, there were six large glass vats with metal lids and an electronic control module in front of them, each vat containing an identical copy of one Dallas Preston.
"What the fu..." Clay fainted, falling like a ton of bricks to the ground. The doctor turned and looked at the fallen boy, then to Marco, before diving for the gun. Marco was too quick for him, however, and the star strong safety tackled this man with ease. He then used a simple technique he'd picked up from being on the wrestling team in spring to pin the doctor to the ground before retrieving the shotgun and standing up.
"Ok, ok, ok so, I don't know what's is going on here, so you better explain fast." Marco demanded in a voice that was equal parts adrenaline and fear. The doctor put his hands up and smiled.
"This," he gestured to the vats on either side of the room with the respective hand "is Dallas Preston."
Marco cocked the shotgun.
"I got a D in science, so you're gonna have to do better'n that!"
"It's simple, Dallas Preston, the one you knew, was the second iteration of a clone."
"Clone? Like in Star Wars?" Marco held his ground but knew the scientist had an intellectual advantage over him.
"Yes, a genetically perfect clone. Indistinguishable from the progenitor, Albert Kimble." The Doctor began moving so Marco got closer with the shotgun.
"I'm gonna give you one more chance to make sense! Then, I'm gonna blow yer brains out!" Marco growled, using the voice he used to order around his fellow defensive players on the field.
It worked, the smug confidence born into the doctor's face by the intellectual superiority he felt toward Marco vanished.
"L-look, ok? I don't know much, this project was started by Dr. Starkling Back in the Seventies, I got hired to make a clone of that comedian, Albert Kimble in the nineties, something happened to that clone, so they ordered me to make a new one. Then they tell me that clone became corrupted recently and so I'm working on these. That's all I know, I swear!" The Doctor cowered.
Marco looked at the vats full of naked burly men.
We need him.
"Which one is ready?" Marco demanded
"What?"
Marco slammed the but of the gun into the doctor's face, knocking the older man to the ground.
"Which. One. Is. Ready?!" Marco was scaring even himself at this point.
It's just the mask, it's just the mask...
"N-n-number three. We finished loading the most recent memories into all of them, but he seems to be the most st-stable, his cells don't seem to deteriorate when we remove him from the fluid." The Doctor stuttered.
Marco wanted to ask him what that all meant, but he knew they had to move fast.
So, he picked up the doctor and pushed him towards the vat that he had indicted, and the old man set to work, tapping away at the console next to the vat that looked like something straight out of the Star Trek reruns Marco watched with Abuela on the TV Classics channel.
The fluid started draining from the vat and Marco went to check on Clayton. The boy was still passed out on the ground and didn't respond to Marco shaking him. The older boy picked up the incredibly light young boy and got him into a fireman's carry.
"Please tell me Dallas will be able to walk himself out of here." Marco said as the glass of the vat receded into the ground.
"The clones are in a dormant state until they hear the trigger word. He'll be like a child you can drag around until then." The doctor said as he removed the various tubes and wires connected to Dallas.
"Good, then you get to hold his hand and drag him around." Marco barked the order.
He could see that the doctor wanted to argue, but the shotgun the old man saw when he turned around to protest made him turn right back around. The old man was messing with something behind Dallas' neck, and then Marco heard a metallic disconnect and the big man's eyes popped open, vacant and expressionless.
Marco started in fear.
"Dios mío..." he gaped in awe. "Let's go, you go first. You see a soldier, you tell them you're running a test. You see a scientist, tell 'em tah shut up." Marco gestured for the old man to lead the way back out.
Back in the room, Marco met an unfortunate surprise when he saw a young woman in a lab coat waiting at one of the tables.
"Dr. Hartley? Why do you have the specimen out?! And who are these young boys?" She was confused and afraid, Marco had no time for that, so he pointed the shotgun at the woman.
"Sorry ma'am, no time to explain. You're comin' with us. Follow the doctor out and keep yer trap shut."
Marco was annoyed, but his gun and the reassurance of the Doctor helped hurry things along.
"Doc, any faster way out of here that goes around the guards?"
"Well, uhm, there's the evacuation shoot. It'll get us back up to the surface and—"
"Great, let's do it." And the two confused doctors went to a bookcase covered in scientific paraphernalia and moved it aside to reveal another door, only this one didn't have a panel, just a sideways rectangle with a slot that the doctor put a keycard into. The door slid open to reveal a regular elevator.
Everyone loaded in and the doctor pushed the up arrow.
"Dr. Hartley, what's going on here?" The woman asked as the metal box took them up and up.
"Minerva, please, I've told you a thousand times, just call me Will. And—"
"No talkin', either of you. Or you get...pumped full of lead."
Lord help me, Clay was way better at intimidation and he's just a kid!
Marco looked over at the oddly zombie-like Dallas, completely naked and sopping wet like he just got out of the shower, and quickly looked away.
The elevator opened and a pile of dirt fell into the room. They stepped out and Marco saw that it was built into one of the mounds he saw earlier. He took a deep breath of fresh air.
We came in from the south, so our hole in the gate should be north...
Marco found the compass in Clay's pocket and instructed everyone to follow him.
Everything after that was a blur of adrenaline spurred on by fear. He didn't remember walking to the gate, only finding the hole. He didn't remember walking back to the car, only puking next to it once he got there. That woke him up.
His eyes were bubbling and his arms were stiff, so he tried to slow his breathing. He loaded Clayton in and instructed the doctors to load up with Zombie-Dallas. Marco then turned on the SUV and slammed on the gas towards New York as he heard a siren go off in the distance.