DEEP, DARK
Jonathan Maberry
-An Exclusive Short Story-
(1)
The Vault
Ultra High Security Biological Research Facility
The Poconos, Pennsylvania
Twenty Minutes Ago
It was the dirty end of a dirty job.
Three of us— Bunny, Top and I— were hunting horrors in the dark, seven thousand feet below Camelback Mountain. Even with night vision, body armor and weapons, we were lost in an infinity of shadows. If we blew this, if we couldn’t wrap this up before the clock ticked down then the whole place would go into hard lockdown. Steel doors would drop and explosive bolts would fire, triggering thermite charges that would seal the doors permanently in place. Federal and international biohazard protocols forbade anyone from digging us up if the fail-safes went active.
The Vault would become our tomb.
The government would disown us, our own people would have to write us off.
But the things we hunted wouldn’t care. When our lights and weapons and food ran out, they’d hunt us.
And, very likely, they would get us…and then get out.
(2)
Camelback Mountain
Pocono Plateau, Elevation 2,133 Feet
Two Hours Ago
We touched down on a State Forestry helipad at the top of Camelback. Morning mist still clung to the off-season ski slopes. The sun was a weak promise behind a ceiling of white clouds that stretched off into the dim forever. A bookish-looking man in a white anorak and thick glasses met us as we ducked out through the rotor wash. He was flanked by a State Cop who looked confused and a security officer from the Vault who looked bug-eyed scared. Nobody shook hands.
We piled into his Expedition. The state cop looked at the equipment bags we carried and it was clear he wanted to ask, but he’d been told that questions were off limits. All he knew was they were “specialists” on the Federal dime who came here to help solve a security problem. Which is another way of telling him to shut the hell up and just drive the car.
The geek with the glasses turned to me and started to speak, but I shook my head.
We drove in silence down the zigzag road that should have been packed with tourists who were here for the water-park and other summer sports. We passed three police roadblocks and turned onto an access road before a fourth. A phalanx of troopers were bellowing at the families and tour buses, waving them into U-turns and turning deaf ears to the abuse heaped on them by people who had driven since before dawn to get here. Top caught my eye and shook his head. I nodded. Inconvenience was a hell of a lot better than dying out here in the cold.
A smaller road split off from the access road and led into a big equipment barn, but the barn was just a cover for the entrance to the Vault. Four nervous-looking guards manned the entrance, and their supervisor came over to us in an electric golf cart. He cut a look at the bookworm.
“These the pros from Dover?” He tried for the joke, but his voice cracked, spoiling it. I gave him a hard grin anyway. It was a nice try.
I turned to our driver as we climbed out. “Thanks, Troop…we’re good from here.”
He gave me a gruff nod, backed up, turned and left, throwing suspicious looks at us through the side-view mirror. The three of us unzipped the light windbreakers we’d worn on the flight and checked our weapons. We all wore Heckler & Koch Mark 23 .45 ACP pistols in nylon shoulder rigs. We each carried six magazines and we had other toys in the equipment bags. Bookworm stared at the guns and flicked his tongue over his lips like a nervous iguana.
“Okay, run it down for us,” I said to him.
“We’ll talk on the way down,” he said and we piled into the golf cart. The security guy drove that into an elevator that began a descent of over a mile.
“I’m Dr. Goldman,” said the guy with glasses. “I’m the deputy director of this facility. This is Lars Halverson, our head of security.”
I shook hands with Halverson. His hand was firm but clammy, and his face and throat glistened with nervous sweat.
“You’re Captain Ledger?” Goldman asked.
I nodded and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “The old man behind me is Top Sims and the kid in diapers is Bunny.” In my peripheral vision I saw Top scratch his cheek with a middle finger.
First Sergeant Bradley Sims was hardly old, but at forty-one he was the oldest field operative in the DMS. He was nearly as tall as I was, a little heavier in the shoulders and though he was a calm man by nature, he could turn mean as a snake when it mattered.
The big kid next to him was Staff Sergeant Harvey Rabbit. Real name, so no surprise that everyone called him Bunny. He was just a smidge smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes, and somehow through everything we’ve been through together while running black ops for the Department of Military Sciences, Bunny still managed to keep his idealism bolted in place. My own was wearing pretty damn thin, and my optimism for rational behavior in people who should know better was taking one hell of a beating.
“What were you told?” asked Goldman.
“Not enough,” I said. “You believe there’s one or more infiltrators operating in your facility. You have one casualty, is that right?”
I caught the quick look that passed between Goldman and Halverson. It was furtive as all get-out and at that moment I wouldn’t have bought water from either of them if my ass was on fire.
“Actually,” Goldman said slowly, “we have four casualties.”
The engine of the elevator car was the only sound for a while. I heard Top clear his throat ever so slightly behind me.
“Who’s dead,” I said sharply.
“Two of my people,” said Halverson. “And another of the research staff.”
“How and when?”
“We found the second guard half an hour ago,” Goldman said. “The others were killed sometime last night. They didn’t report for the breakfast meeting and when the security teams did a search they found them dead in their rooms.”
“How were they killed?”
Goldman chewed his lip. “The same as the first one.”
“That’s not an answer. I asked ‘how.’”
He turned to Halverson, but I snapped my fingers. Loud as a firecracker in the confines of the elevator car. “Hey! Don’t look at him. I asked you a question. Look at me and give me a straight answer.”
He blinked in surprise, obviously unused to being ordered about. Probably thought his rank here at the facility put him above such things. Life’s full of disappointments.
“They were…bitten.”
“Bitten? By what? An animal? An insect?”
Halverson snorted and then hid it with a cough.
Goldman shook his head. “No…they were bitten to death by the…um…terrorists.”
I stared at him, mouth open to snap at him to make a little more sense, but then the elevator reached the bottom with a clang, and Halverson drove us out into the complex. We passed through a massive airlock that would have put a dent in NASA’s budget. None of us said anything because all around us klaxons screamed and red emergency lights pulsed.
Halverson stamped on the brakes.
“Christ!” Goldman yelled.
“OUT!” I growled, but Top and Bunny were already out of the cart, their guns appearing in their hands as if by magic. I was right with them.
The floor, the walls, even the ceiling of the steel tunnel were splashed with bright red blood. Five bodies lay sprawled in ragdoll heaps. Arms and legs twisted into grotesque shapes, eyes wide with profound shock and everlasting terror.
The corridor ran a hundred yards straight forward, angling down deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Behind us the hall ran twenty yards and jagged left into a side hall. Bunny put his laser sight on the far wall near the turn. Top had his pointed ahead. I swept in a full circle.