"You were right about Blass." Conner Grierson waved Maxwell into the elevator. The glass and chrome cube hovered at the edge of an abyss. They were already twenty stories beneath the mountain. The elevator would descend further, all the way to the BR-Labs.
Maxwell waited until he stepped past Grierson to grit his teeth. The contraption, with all of its gleaming metal and glass, looked futuristic in a 1960's sci-fi fashion. It looked new except for the brass handrail dulled with a patina and the thick, black plastic, retro call buttons. There were only two of them. An amber light haloed the top one.
Compared to the freight elevator next to them, it was the height of technology.
The massive platform appeared to be suspended in air. The dozens of floodlights suspended from the cavern's ceiling lit it up, but the darkness of the pit swallowed the light from all around it. It had been there since the base was built in the fifties. It was formed out of thick iron girders and concrete slabs and looked like it could have been down there for a hundred years.
"How did you know he'd come around," Grierson asked, stepping inside and pressing the bottom button. At the same time as the amber light switched positions, the doors slid shut on their pneumatics. Then the glass box began to slide down into the depths of the Earth.
With each passing foot, Maxwell Wiley sensed the mass of rock and stone above him growing heavier.
"I saw it in his eyes while he watched the video." When he had stared into the tablet, everything from his unwavering focus on the screen to the faint perspiration on his upper lip told Maxwell he was hooked. Blass might have thought he was refusing the offer, but Maxwell knew the man was only lying to himself. He no longer had to work to convince him; he didn't need to make R.J like him; he didn't need to sell the job. His acceptance was inevitable.
The others had been just as easy. Each had their weakness. Most of them had more than one.
"If you don't mind me saying so, Blass doesn't look like much of a catch. None of these people do. You could have found much better candidates." Maxwell searched hard for tactful words. He couldn't very well ask his new boss if he had picked this bunch of losers because of the onset of senility, even if that was what he suspected.
Grierson made a clucking as if to say, oh you kids today. "These people were cherry-picked precisely because they aren't the best."
"I don't follow."
"If we had recruited the best people in the field, they would have been independent, made demands, been hard to control." Grierson looked down through the glass. He seemed to relish the depths they were sinking toward.
"The people I asked you to get are grateful for the opportunity we're giving them. We won't have to worry about their loyalty. None of them will go to the press or blow the whistle on us."
"And if one of them does?"
"They're a bunch of screw-ups. They all have their pressure points. If they step out of line, it won't be hard to discredit and destroy any of them."
Maxwell had to hand it to the old man, it was a clever strategy – much shrewder than he had expected from the Sector Chief. But Maxwell couldn't help wonder, what did it say about him that he'd been asked to lead these screw-ups.
Grierson had been so pleased with the announcement.
"Good news," the bastard had said. He had gone on to explain to Maxwell that he had pulled strings and got him permanently reassigned to Project LARS as its Project Leader.
"You're a man that can get things done. I need you on the team to shepherd this for me," the fossilized bureaucrat told him.
"I can't tell you how important this is. It is our job to protect our country from things nobody wants to think about. You've done great work for the DTAA in the field, but the true work is in keeping these things locked up and buried, so no one will ever find out about them."
Buried he said. Not only was the assignment behind a desk, it was under the ground. The full magnitude of his new role came down on him like an avalanche. He would be working every day in an underground bunker. Buried alive.
What if he refused? What if he quit? Would they let him out after everything he'd seen? Or would he still find himself buried, but face down with a bullet in the back of his head?
Maxwell smiled a dopy, enthusiastic grin, and shook Grierson's hand, accepting the job. In his head, he went through the twelve ways he could kill the son-of-a-bitch right there and then.
"Now that you're part of this project." Grierson broke off the handshake and patted Maxwell's shoulder. "I think it's time you saw LARS in person." He sauntered out of the office, leading the way to the elevator and the BR-Labs, like a proud father.
Maxwell casually glanced up through the elevator's glass. The cave's ceiling was a distant sky. The giant floodlights, nothing but specks of stars. It felt like they were slowing down. He was certain that the feeling was only wishful thinking when they glided into a white hallway and stopped on the floor of the Biogenic Research Labs.
The first thing Maxwell saw when he stepped out was a triangular, yellow sign with a warning icon similar to one for biohazards, but he'd never seen this symbol before. He didn't take it as a good omen.
The next thing he noticed was the hundreds of vents and sprinkler-like apparatuses on the walls and ceiling. They must be there to flood the area with something to cleanse whatever hazard the sign warned about. Or perhaps they had a simpler purpose. To spread gases, jet flame, spew acid until all life within the corridor was extinguished. Maxwell had heard stories about what they kept down here, and not just the ones conspiracy nuts had been spreading since the fifties. He'd heard a darker, more blood-chilling story from another DTAA operative after a few too many drinks in DC bar. Nothing held down here was ever supposed to leave, dead or alive.
Grierson marched off to the end of the hall and unlocked a security door using a swipe card, an eye scan, and a key code.
The door groaned open. It looked like it belonged on a bank vault. It was twelve-inch thick steel and a series of dense, metal bolts ran the entire height of it. Behind it was another hallway.
This one had windows and doors placed at regular intervals along the right-hand side. The first window revealed an empty cell. The entire interior was molded metal. The furnishings were all just warps in the steel. Not that there were many: a bed, a table, and a toilet. Nothing else. There wasn't a sign of a single join or rivet. Maxwell had seen a fair number of prisons, but he'd never seen one so effective at reducing the potential tools of escape. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon or to commit suicide. There were no resources. The door was blank metal, held in place by electromagnetic locks. There didn't appear to be any mechanism to unlock them. There must be a central location somewhere else with the controls.
They passed three more cells, all empty.
"The jail in the film didn't look like this." The beast had been held in a much more regular looking prison – gray concrete, cream-colored bars.
"When they first got their hands on it, it was tranquilized. They brought it to the brig at Fort Bliss. They completely underestimated its strength. When it came to, it ripped right through the cell's door. Tore the cameraman and the guards to shreds. Horrible mess. It was a miracle they were able to contain it at all."
Grierson glanced back, a look of distaste sagged his jowls. "After lunch, remind me to show you the rest of that video." Grierson turned forward again. "You won't want to see it before you eat."
The Sector Chief quickened his steps, and there was undisguised excitement to his movements. His march turned into a jog, then he spun around, his feet sliding on the floor like it was a dance step.
He waited in front of one of the windows for Maxwell to catch up, a broad smile on his face. The dark thoughts of what was on the video were clearly forgotten.
"This is LARS," he said.
Maxwell wasn't sure what to expect. He knew that the thing in the cage wasn't in its lycanthropic form, but he hadn't been briefed on what was on the other side of the glass. He glanced into a cell identical to the others, except this one had bedding on the flat pallet. On it, the prisoner looked tiny. The figure was mostly covered with a gray blanket. From the curve of its shape, it appeared to be in the fetal position. Only the head poked out of the cocoon. Blonde hair cascaded over the pillow.
"Oh, my God." The words slipped from Maxwell's lips without conscious thought. Something was horribly wrong with this picture.
Grierson said with a ringmaster's showmanship, "Allow me to present Amy Westgate."
***
Author's Note:
So there you have it – Chapter One is complete and The Things We Bury has truly begun. In the next chapter, "The Music Box," you will get to meet my favorite character in this book. Every time I write a scene with her, she does something to take me by surprise. You will also be taken into the secret facility being built outside of Phoenix.
So what do you think of this so far? I'd love to know. Also, if you're enjoying this please don't forget to vote.
A note on the music: Almost as soon as I began writing this story a soundtrack began to take shape – music that inspired me and which I really wanted connected to the prose. I envision a song for each chapter appearing at the end, in True Blood closing credit fashion. This chapter's song is Escondido's Evil Girls. It could easily be the theme to the entire book, however. Although this live version is very good, I wish I could have found the studio version on YouTube for better sound quality.