Despite all the mayhem they had seen as operators, nothing could have prepared them for what they found. It was beyond horrific; beyond grotesque.
Human skeletons protruded from the rock walls surrounding the platform. It was as if they had been fused with the cavern itself. The mouths were wide open in silent screams.
“What did those bastards do?” asked Rhodes.
Casey was having trouble speaking. Her heart rate had spiked and it was all she could do to keep things under control. She was plenty tough, but this went beyond rational explanation. Her mind was screaming for her to get out of there. She was scared, but she was also in charge. She had to control her fear and not let it control her.
“Jules, are you okay?” she asked, reaching out and putting her hand reassuringly on Ericsson’s arm.
Julie nodded, slowly.
“What the hell did those bastards do?” Rhodes repeated.
“I have no idea,” replied Casey.
“People just don’t grow out of walls.”
“I know.”
“So what happened? What the hell happened?”
“Megan, you’ve got to calm down,” said Casey.
“What do you mean, calm down? Look at these skeletons. Look at their mouths all open. It’s like they were alive when this happened. This is beyond horrifying.”
She was right. The word shocking didn’t even come close to describing what they were looking at. There were skeletons of adults as well as children. What the hell had Hutton sent them into?
“I’m going to video all of this and then we’re going to get the hell out of here,” said Casey, asserting her command. “You two can go back upstairs if you want. You don’t have to stay down here.”
“No,” replied Ericsson, pulling herself together. “We don’t split up.”
“She’s right,” said Rhodes. “We stay together.”
“Good,” answered Casey.
After filming all of the bones protruding from the walls, she focused on the platform itself. There were two discolored patterns in the cement where some large object or objects had once sat. Looking more closely, she could see that those objects had been bolted down.
Casey shot several close-ups of the marks and then said, “Okay, that’s it. We’re getting out of here.”
They were pretty far below ground, but she tried to raise Alex Cooper over the radio anyway. As the quartz was so well known for amplifying radio signals, she thought it was worth a try. Cooper didn’t answer. Casey decided to leave it until they got back up into the tunnel and beyond the airlock.
Everyone was shaken by what they had seen. It was a shock to all of them. Despite Rhodes’s love of being on point, Gretchen ordered her to fall back. Casey would lead her team out.
They were cautious, but they mounted the steps a lot faster than they had coming down. Though they had witnessed something beyond their worst collective nightmare, all of them had a very bad feeling that the true evil of the facility had not entirely been revealed to them.
“By the way,” said Rhodes as they got to the observation platform, “there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in that hotel tonight.”
“I agree,” added Ericsson. “I say we get in the car, drive, and don’t stop driving until the sun comes up.”
Casey was with them. “I’m all for that,” she said, as she pressed on.
They moved through the observation station, out the door, and down the short flight of stairs into the shower room. From the shower room, they moved past the cages, and though Casey didn’t want to, she allowed her eyes to be drawn to the little girl’s doll again.
They left the cages behind and stepped through the double doors into the long research corridor. As they passed the various labs, Casey forced herself to slow down. Was there anything she was missing? Were there any clues to who had been here? Any clues to who had opened this place up and cleaned it out? That was their job. That was why they had been sent here.
She shone her flashlight into each of the rooms they passed. She didn’t expect to suddenly spot something they hadn’t seen the first time around, but she felt that she should at least try to bring back something useful regardless of how disturbing the scene in the cavern had been.
They kept moving, and with each room they passed, Casey allowed herself to become more convinced that there wasn’t anything of value left here.
Soon, they arrived at the office corridor. At the end of it was the hatch, and on the other side of that were the stairs up to the airlock. Then it was the tunnel and finally they’d be away from this place.
They stepped through the hatch and climbed the stairs up toward the airlock. When they reached the landing, all of them were breathing more heavily than normal. They were all in incredible shape, but considering the stress they were under, the distance, and the number of stairs they had climbed, as well as the speed they had been moving, it wasn’t surprising that they were all a little short of breath.
The women moved through the doorway and into the airlock. After passing through the blast door, they quickened their pace up the tunnel. None of them looked up at the ghastly murals. They had seen enough to last them a lifetime.
Passing the guardhouse, Casey said, “Everybody okay? We’re al-most out.”
“Ask me how I’m feeling once we get out of here,” said Rhodes.
Gretchen looked back at Ericsson, “You all right?”
Julie nodded. “I’m okay,”
“Good,” replied Casey as she reached for her radio and hailed Cooper. The reception was terrible. There was a lot of static and she couldn’t understand what Alex was saying. So much for the quartz improving radio reception, she thought.
Soon enough, they began to smell the forest and knew that they were almost out. Had it been daytime, they would have been able to use the sunlight spilling in to gauge how much farther they had to go.
As it was, all they had to go on was their memory of how long the tunnel was and the radio signal, which was starting to become clearer.
They knew they were just about there when they picked up an audible snippet of Cooper’s voice.
“Say again,” replied Casey over her radio.
When no response came, Gretchen said, “We’re going to be on top of you any second now. Be ready to move.”
There were a couple of radio clicks, but that was it.
“On our way out,” said Casey. “Do you copy? Over.”
They were twenty yards from the tunnel entrance when they heard Cooper’s voice again, but this time it didn’t come over the radio. This time it came in the form of a scream.
“Run!”