Chapter Text
Wednesday, April 10th 2019, 11:25 Hours; Perfection, Nevada. Population: 2.
Burt had just walked out of the front entrance of Chang’s Market when he saw Travis toss the last of his bags into the back of his truck with a furious huff. Great. Kid’s having another one of his hissy fits. He never knows what’ll set that boy off one day to the next.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
His son whirled around and jabbed a finger in his direction.
“Screw you, Burt! I’ve had enough of this! You’re paranoid, you’re tyrannical, and you always treat me like a damn kid—”
“Then you better stop acting like one!”
“I saved your life last year!” Travis shouted. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, it means that this is still my turf, my place, and my rules.”
Travis just glared at him for a moment, then took a slow breath while running a hand through his hair, and sighed.
“You know what? Fine. I’m leaving; I found a gig down in Mexico that sounds pretty good.” He started walking to the driver’s side door and paused. “Either this ghost town or your monster hunting is going to get you killed one day, and I’m not going to be around to watch your back… take care of yourself, old man.”
Travis stepped up and into the front seat of his truck, but before he started to drive away, he turned back to Burt and yelled—
“Take a vacation! You might enjoy it, and maybe even relax for once in your damn life!” Then he took off like a graboid with dynamite on its ass.
Burt stared at the cloud of dirt as the truck got smaller and smaller. He sneered.
“Pah! A vacation? Relax?! That kid doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about! Don’t he know I got work to do?” He stalked back into the market, grumbling the whole way.
No one else entered Perfection Valley for the rest of the day.
Thursday, April 11th 2019, 15:05 Hours; Perfection, Nevada. Population: 1.
“Relax…” Burt muttered. “I am relaxed, damned kid.”
He grabbed the rakes from their place on the shelves and dropped them harshly into the clearance bin.
“Vacation! Ha! I don’t need no stinking vacation.”
He went back to cleaning his guns.
Someone came by looking for directions to Bixby, then left soon after. No one else entered Perfection Valley.
Friday, April 12th 2019, 12:15 Hours; Perfection, Nevada. Population: 1.
The floors have been swept.
The items have been rearranged and organized.
The guns have been cleaned. Twice.
Well, he could count his ammo again, maybe the third time around he’ll find a mistake and—
Aw hell, he does need a vacation, doesn’t he?
“Damnit!” Burt cursed as he pushed himself away from the register where he had been sitting. He got up and put his hands on his hips and sighed. “Yeah, fine, okay. Let’s go see where this vacation should go…”
He closed up the shop and locked it before making his way back to his bunker. It’s never been the same after he blew it up as some cruel joke fate played on him, but it has the essentials: A fully stocked gun and ammo storage, complete with his uh, less than legal acquisitions, an indoor shooting range, a brand-new room for his stock of food and water (he finally just got back up to five years’ worth of supplies), a sterilized room for treating injuries, and of course, his combined kitchen-slash-bedroom with an adjoining bathroom.
He walked into his living area, pulled out his world map from a box in the corner, and pinned it up on the wall. It had several places circled in pen with tiny holes scattered about where there used to be pins marking other areas. It was a chart of different vacation spots he and… Heather wanted to go. He hadn’t looked at this map in near on thirty years.
There was one place in particular that was marked more than the others.
Area 51.
He and… Heather were planning on going, before—before everything happened. Burt worked his jaw for a moment, then huffed.
“You know what? Screw Heather, I’m going to Area 51 by myself! And I’m going to have a great time!”
He started working on a brand-new list of supplies he would need for this trip. They had completed a list before, but that was nearly thirty years ago! That was before the graboids, and all that shit that when down – what, sixteen years ago?—with Mixmaster and those damned government-funded monsters. Hell, with how those DARPA stooges were acting in Canada, they very well might have even worse things in Area 51 than they did three decades ago.
More like definitely.
He needed guns. He needed ammo. Dynamite. Wait, triple the ammo; he did not want a repeat of Mexico. Once was bad enough, but he had a feeling he may just not survive a second time…
Now if only he could remember where he put his flame-thrower.
Saturday, April 13th 2019, 1:30 Hours; 60 Klicks out from Area 51, Nevada.
It hadn’t taken long to gather everything he needed. Then he went to bed early in order to wake up at midnight at full capacity. He didn’t want to put this trip off until he had an excuse not to do it, he was a man of his word!
So here he was, driving down an abandoned road at ass-crack-o’clock in the morning in the middle of the Nevada desert. Burt breathed in the cold desert air. Yes, this is where he’s supposed to be.
Suddenly, he hit the brakes. He didn’t know what caught his attention, but something was wrong.
He pulled out his seismic indicator. No graboids nearby. He put on his night-vision goggles and scanned the skies and over the horizon. No AB’s or shriekers. He took off the goggles and squinted. Slowly, he looked across the desert until he saw – There! East if his route.
Smoke.
Nearly impossible to see at this time of night, but it was there. Burt estimated the distance to be no more than three klicks away. Probably closer to two. There was nothing on any of his maps that indicated that there would be anyone or anything in that area, but he should check it out just in case. He turned the wheel and went off the road, out into the open desert.
After a minute or so of speeding, Burt had eyes on what the smoke was coming from, now just a small trail instead of the plume he had seen. It was a bunker of some kind. There was a small, concrete building with solar panels on top, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. No signage. No roads leading to or from this building. Very nondescript.
Very suspicious.
Burt knew enough about underground bunkers to know that this was the entrance to a larger building. Exactly how large was impossible to tell, but he knew it was most likely around the same size as his own bunker, maybe larger. He looked at the doors where the last of the smoke was trailing out. They seem to be electric, stuck open about a foot wide. He could squeeze in there, if he turned to his side. He took a quick look-around once more. The fence hadn’t fallen or had been damaged in any area, the outside looked clean, and the doors didn’t have any dents or markings. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t an outside force as far as Burt could tell. But he didn’t survive this long by being underprepared, so he loaded up on guns and brought a small bag that could fit through the doors and packed his ammo, dynamite, and C-4. He quickly covered himself in his heat-reflective poncho, tied a bandana around his face to cover his nose and mouth, and secured the night-vision goggles. He might die tonight, but he wasn’t going to make it easy.
He carefully stepped through the threshold, and into the unknown bunker.
The lights flickered on with his movement and he had to quickly take off the goggles unless he wanted to blind himself. He blinked and examined the room. Aside from the occasional sputtering of the lights and a fluorescent humming that shouldn’t be that loud, here was no damage to this upper floor, which was a good sign, meaning that whatever happened here was contained to the lower levels. The walls, ceiling, and floor were a pristine white. Everything was white, down to the desks and chairs of what looked like a lobby of some kind.
The only thing that wasn’t white was a mural on the wall behind the desk. A stylized graboid depicted in a loop, it’s mouth open in an attempt to devour its own tail, surrounded by a large, government-blue circle. In the center, bulky white letters: GIW.
“I feel that I’ve been denied some vital, need-to-know information,” Burt had no idea what the acronym meant, but if they had anything to do with graboids, it couldn’t be very good.
Looking past the mural, he noticed two sets of doors: one was obviously for an elevator, yeah right, like he was going to trust an elevator in a place that shouldn’t exist; and other plainly labeled Stairs. Both were locked with some sort of badge-reader, a little red light indicating that it was still functioning. For now. Burt searched what he assumed was the receptionist’s desk for anything that could get him past the lock. After a minute or two of opening drawers and stuffing whatever paperwork he could find into his bag for a later look, he found an employee badge. Agent S – Delta E. The photo showed a woman with dark hair tied back in a severe bun, a fully white suit complete with shoulder pads, and black sunglasses. Burt frowned. People aren’t usually allowed to wear sunglasses in their government IDs… He put it out of his mind as he got back to the task at hand. He swiped the badge over the reader, and after a frustrating too-long-second and a thought that he might have to pry open the door, the light turned green.
He pulled open the doors, and started his descent.
He didn’t have to walk very far before he reached the bottom, probably the equivalent of only two stories deep when he saw another set of doors that he needed the badge to open, with two small windows at eye-level. At least he wasn’t going in blind this time.
He wasn’t expecting the corpses, he really wasn’t. He should have been able to smell something before this point, unless this place had a top-of-the-line ventilation system… and based on the graboid in their logo, and the multitude of shrieker bodies beyond the door, they were working with graboid-kin on a daily basis. That’s not exactly a smell one goes nose-blind to, Burt can attest to that much.
Beyond the door was a massacre; both human and shrieker bodies littered the area, red and orange blood staining the white walls and floor. From his little window he could only see a large hallway, maybe spanning about nine to ten feet wide and probably a couple of hundred feet long, with some doors along the sides. But even then, some of the bodies looked like they had tripped over each other in their rush to get out, a few doors were propped open because of it. Burt stared at the scene in a tense silence, waiting for any movement, any sign of life, be it human or shrieker. When none came after a few minutes, he ran the badge over the lock. Gun at the ready, he slowly opened the doors.
Two bulky bodies he hadn’t seen slumped backwards onto his feet. He aimed his gun at the now open space… still no movement. Good. He took his eyes off the corridor to examine the bodies. They were both men, shaved bald; like Agent S, they wore dark sunglasses and white suits, although theirs were now stained red and orange. They held identical weapons that Burt could only describe as blasters from those science fiction shows that Travis would watch. But the really strange thing about these bodies, was that they were mostly intact. Sure, he could see the wounds they likely died from, but they hadn’t been eaten. He’d never seen a shrieker leave anything uneaten if they could help it, it was how they bred after all. Burt frowned. Could it be…? He looked down the hall. The farther it was, the more carnage he could see, but here, closer to the door, there was relatively little. Could it be that they all killed each other? Hopefully nothing escaped, and none of the previous doors looked broken by force, so Burt doubted any shriekers survived. He’d have to search the place to be sure. If anything did survive and escaped after he left, those deaths would be on him.
He started carefully moving down the corridor, cautiously stepping over the bodies as he went, and making a point to make sure every shrieker body he came across was really dead.
After about thirty or so feet, he came up to the first two doors, one on either side of him. The one to the right was propped open by the body of a man in a white lab coat, looking like he had started to run back inside the lab, his bloodied legs were still in the mouth of a dead shrieker. Burt decided to check that room out first. Being mindful of the body, and as always keeping his gun up and ready, he entered the lab.
He could never make heads or tails of all this science-y shit, but even Burt could tell that this place had been experimenting on graboids. Bits and pieces of them were held in jars all over the tables and shelves, along with all the equipment these chemistry-types could ever want. Dread pooled in his gut.
This was bad.
This was really bad.
The government was experimenting on graboids. But for what purpose? To make them into living weapons? Or maybe even something more sinister. But graboids could not be controlled, or heaven forbid, domesticated! It seemed like this place found that out the hard way. He put the thought of El Blanko out of his mind as he continued searching the room.
No survivors here. All he found was more graboid parts in an adjoining area that seemed like a storage room for excess samples, cleaning supplies, and files. Cleaning supplies, huh? They had all the right components to make a highly flammable gas, and with some strategic placement of the C-4 he brought along… he could blow this place sky-high, along with all their experiments and files. He assembled the supplies he needed, but didn’t mix them yet, he still needed to search the rest of the building for anyone still alive. He did put some C-4 putty in the room before he left though.
The door across the way was still closed. Burt ran the badge over the lock, and after a moment the light turned… red. Burt frowned and ran the card again. Red. Cursing, he turned around to search a nearby body for a different badge. Agent B – Beta G. He didn’t know what the different letters meant but usually Beta was better than Delta in these types of organizations. He ran the badge.
Red. Again.
Cursing a bit louder, he threw down the badge and – paused. He turned back to the body with the lab coat. They should be able to get into their own labs, right? Burt ran his hand down the inside of the lab coat until he found the lanyard and the accompanying badge. Agent T – Alpha S. Perfect! He should be able to use this one for sure. He ran the badge.
Green. Finally.
“If anyone’s still alive in there, don’t shoot me, I’m a friendly!” he called out before opening the door.
The room was spotless. The layout and equipment looked identical to the first lab, but without any of the gore. So just like with the first lab, Burt got together some of the cleaning equipment and put some C-4 putty in key locations.
Another thirty feet down the long hallway was another set of doors on either side. Like the first sets, one was open – propped open by a shrieker this time instead of a man – and one was closed. Again, he entered the open lab first.
It didn’t look like even a single person made it out of this room before the shriekers got to it. But unlike the few other scientists he’d seen, these ones apparently died fighting; blasters still in hand. Hmm… They won’t really be needing those anymore, will they? He’ll only take one. Burt very carefully removed a blaster from a scientist, being mindful to avoid anything that looked like a trigger or button. He’ll test what everything does back at his own shooting range. Then he quickly repeated what was becoming a routine with the cleaning solutions and the C-4, leaving the lab.
When he got to the next door, he yelled out a warning like he did with the last one, and tried to open the door, but this one didn’t open as easily as the others. With one good shove, he found out why. A man had been sitting in front of the door, missing his right arm – probably torn off, based on the ragged way the wound looked and the dangling skin and muscle filaments – with a large pool of blood around him. He probably came in here to escape the shriekers, and locked the door behind him, the bastard, while there were still others outside being killed, Burt thought in disgust. He repeated his routine with a sour taste in his mouth that wasn’t from the shriekers.
The next fifty or so feet had a lot more shrieker corpses than human ones. Body parts thrown about, an arm here, a leg there, about half a torso over there; but no full bodies. This was much more like the other scenes he’d seen after a graboid, or graboid-kin, attack. There were only four doors left: two on the right, one on the left, and one at the end of the hallway less than a hundred feet away. The farthest door on the right looked busted open, dented and hanging off the hinges. That was where the attack originated from. He started walking closer.
The three labs on the sides had windows.
Burt wished they didn’t.
From his angle, he could see the bodies of scientists gathered around the door, like they had died trying to get out, but none of them looked injured in any way. He looked through the window of the closer lab to his right. At the back, he saw dead ass-blasters chained up in cages, all hooked up to wires and tubes leading to screens that only displayed static. To his left was a similar scene, except this lab was far larger and contained dead graboids along with the scientists.
Burt had a bad feeling about this. He swallowed. He didn’t quite like what it implied.
The shriekers escaped their lab, so these two got put on lock-down with everyone inside? And then what? They were suffocated? Gassed? Surely there must have been better security measures in place to prevent further escape. They didn’t have to murder their own people.
He didn’t quite want to open the other labs just yet. He moved on to the broken one. Even before he got to the door he saw that the inside was just as bad as outside in the hallway. Through the window he could even see the part of the cage where the shriekers had burst through. Burt hesitated at the threshold. It’s possible that whatever the other labs were gassed with, if they were gassed, was also triggered here… but then again, he could barely smell the shriekers unless he was kneeling with this ventilation system. If it was poison, it wouldn’t be concentrated in this room anymore, not with the door busted open the way it was. Burt stepped inside. He didn’t bother looking for survivors, he knew there wouldn’t be any here. Instead, he just got the cleaning supplies and set them out.
Before he left, he knelt down to one of the scientists, and carefully smelled their coat.
He dropped the coat and stood back up, grimacing. Cyanide, one of the fastest-acting poisons there are. He was going to put a lot more C-4 and some sticks of dynamite near the other labs so they would also be destroyed without his having to go inside either one. He didn’t feel like breathing in cyanide gas today.
He went back out into the hallway and examined the last stretch before the final door. Hopefully it would be a lab like the rest and not an entrance to a larger portion of the bunker. There was a small pile of shrieker bodies a few feet away from the door, and the remains of what must have been two guards based on the number of limbs he could see and the two mangled blasters. Burt stepped over the bodies and paused at the lock. It was different than the others.
A handprint scanner as well as a badge reader.
Shit.
He looked over the floor for a hand, graboid-kin usually spit up the hands for reasons beyond him, and found only a single one with all the fingers attached. Thankfully, it was the right hand to go on the scanner. Now he had one detached hand, and two employee badges: Agent M – Alpha A, and Agent N – Alpha A.
Well, only two options and no where else to be; he placed the hand on the scanner and chose a badge at random.
The light turned green, and the door wooshed open.
Burt was right. It was a lab. A huge lab. A very, very huge lab. The square footage of this place had to be at least twice that of Chang’s Market, maybe even triple. And while he couldn’t understand a lick of what was happening in the other labs, this one looked downright alien. Ten-foot-tall tubes with bubbling liquid lined the walls; everything was connected through smaller tubes or wires, some going into other tubes and some running through television screens, all either off or static. One thing stood out to him tough. A little to the right, he saw what can only be described as a pod. A human-sized, egg-shaped metallic pod with a blinking light near a tiny lit-up screen. He moved closer to see text running on a loop.
PROJECT PHANTOM: 20% COMPLETE… UPLOAD INTERRUPTED… CONTINUE UPLOAD? YES / NO
Whatever project these freaks were doing couldn’t be good. He pressed “NO”.
Burt scrambled backwards and aimed his gun at the thing as it started hissing and opening with a thick mist coming from the inside. When nothing happened after a few moments, he slowly approached the open pod.
“Holy shit!” Burt lunged forward when he finally saw what it was holding.
A boy was inside the pod, wires with little suction cups were attached to his temples, and little medical tubes were connected to one of his hands and arms. He had pale skin, shaggy black hair, and was wearing a white HAZMAT suit. If Burt was a guessing man, he’d say that he kid looked to be around twelve, but kids these days always looked younger and younger to him, and he was no guessing man. He pulled off the wires from the kid’s head, and very carefully removed the medical tubes from his hand and arms. When everything was safely detached, he lifted the kid out of the pod.
“Damnnit this kid weighs less than an unloaded Pepperbox!”
He ran the kid back to where the stairs were, set him down, and as quickly as he could, Burt mixed all the cleaning supplies he had set out, placed the rest of his C-4 and dynamite in appropriate spots, along with a remote detonator, ran back to the kid and got him up the stairs and out of the building faster than anything he’d done in recent months. He got the kid buckled up in his car and stepped on the gas. When they were a good distance away, he hit the detonator and watched the resulting explosion in his rear-view mirror with a vengeful sort of satisfaction.
The rest of the ride was a blur. The next thing he knew he was setting the kid down in his bunker’s medical room.
Burt didn’t quite know what to do from here… he just blew up what was definitely a secret government facility, rescued-slash-kidnapped a kid from the same, and now has said kid in his home. The boy didn’t have any visible injuries, so there was nothing for him to patch up. He hadn’t felt this useless since he was on bedrest in Canada, and even then he at least had something he could shoot.
He smiled when a thought crossed his mind. The kid just came out of a cold science-pod-thing, He could probably use some warmth! Burt went to go fetch some blankets from a different room. Within a few minutes, he had three blankets in-hand, and went back to the med-room to put them—
He opened the door to find the barrel of a gun, one of his guns, right in his face.
Burt looked past the gun to see the kid he just rescued on the other side of it, his blue eyes glaring at him distrustfully.
“You with the government?” the boy demanded.
Burt just blinked a few times.
“What?”
To Be Continued…