“Okay,” Matt and Mitch each replied. Their nervousness was not lost in the darkness, and despite the risks, they forged on. Richard still had his reservations about Matt’s level of commitment, but at this point he felt it was too late for him to turn back.
“What’s that smell?” Ethan whispered to Richard as they crawled up the drain.
“I think it’s a dead animal,” Richard whispered back.
“Wonderful, what’s next, piles of garbage or raw sewage?”
“Neither, I hope,” Richard replied.
A few moments later, Richard felt a tug on his pant leg and he paused to see what Ethan wanted. “I don’t think this is water draining out of this ditch,” he said in a concerned tone.
Richard dipped his finger into the stream of effluent flowing next to them to see if he could tell what it was. The residue felt oily and thick and he slowly lifted his hand to his face to inspect it in the moonlight. For a moment he was perplexed as the dark viscous liquid slowly crept down his finger, then he suddenly realized what it was.
“Damn it! It’s decomposing blood! Don’t touch it!” he said with a shudder.
“Gross,” Ethan replied as he scooted over as far as he could from the rancid flow. Richard looked back over his shoulder and then motioned for Matt and Mitch to avoid putrefied ooze. Then he continued on, hoping to find a discrete way up and out of the nasty ditch. The smell however, only continued to intensify, but there was nothing he could do. The drain appeared to be the only way in.
The four of them continued along until the drain backed to a large open depression adjacent to a tall multi-story warehouse. The warehouse was perched at the edge of the depression and Richard was certain the derelict building was right across from the main production facility.
“How do we get inside?’ Ethan asked, as the pre-dawn sky was slowly beginning to light up their position.
“We’ll have to climb up that pile of debris next to those trucks to gain access into the warehouse,” Richard replied.
“Is that the only way up to it?” Ethan asked, seemingly reluctant to climb the heap of unidentified garbage.
“Unfortunately I don’t see any other way up,” Richard replied. “The hole we’re in is fenced on both sides and where the trucks came down into the depression is blocked by a gate,” he added.
“Alright, lead the way,” Ethan replied. Richard headed over to the pile and then started to climb up it. With each step his feet sank into the spongy mass, releasing a foul bouquet of putrid odors. He immediately covered his nose and mouth in an effort to block out the overwhelming stench as he continued higher. When he reached the halfway point, a motion sensing light suddenly came on and Richard froze in his tracks. Not because of the light, but rather because of what it illuminated. The pile he had mistakenly thought was rubbish was actually a mass of decomposing corpses identical to the ones he had seen on the trucks crossing Marias Pass. Richard immediately vomited up a mixture of water and partially rehydrated elk jerky as he looked down at his feet. The bodies were small, disfigured, and many of them had multiple heads. It was an unsettling sight, compounded by the realization that they were genetically modified children. Richard cursed under his breath as he waited for the motion light to turn off.
Once it did, he waited several minutes to see if any Augs had noticed the light. When it was evident that the mishap had gone unnoticed, Richard slowly backed down off the pile of death until he was out of the light’s range.
“What was that?” Mitch asked as he and Matt came over to see what happened.
“I set off the motion light and discovered that the pile of what I thought was rubbish, is actually corpses,” Richard said with disgust.
“Human or Aug?” Matt asked.
“Human… mutated victims of the good doctor, I suspect,” he replied as an image of a Nazi era concentration camp flashed though his head.
“What are we going to do?” Ethan asked as he held his nostrils closed.
“I’m sorry, the only way in is through the back warehouse,” Richard explained.
“We’re not climbing over that pile of dead bodies are we?” Ethan said in an unsettled tone.
“I’ll help guide you so you can keep you eyes closed and cover your nose,” Richard offered.
Ethan nodded, but if it were not for the poorly light sky, the tears on his face would have given the truth away.
“Now, who has an accurate throwing arm?” Richard asked.
“Mine is pretty good,” Matt volunteered.
“Okay, I want you to get as close to the pile as possible, and then try to hit the motion sensor with a ball of mud. Once the sensor is covered over, we should be able to get into the warehouse without being seen,” Richard said optimistically.
Matt nodded and then headed over towards the pile. As he drew nearer, the smell intensified to the point where he couldn’t take it any longer. He stopped for a moment and reached into his pocket. Then he pulled out a small piece of paper, tore it in two smaller pieces, and rolled each one into a small ball. After stuffing them into his nostrils, he slowly approached the pile and knelt down to scoop up a handful of blood soaked mud. Careful not to trip the light, he slowly inched his way up the pile until he was confident he was in range, and then threw the mud ball at the light. A split second later, the fragile bulb shattered into a thousand pieces. It wasn’t what he was aiming for, but the desired outcome was the same.
“Nice shot,” Richard commented as he led Ethan towards the pile. Each of them tried to ignore the disgusting squishy feeling under their feet as they proceeded, but with each step the bloated bodies expelled trapped gasses and discharged rancid fluids. Their stomachs turned as they quickly moved towards the rear of the warehouse. Richard was the first to make it to the top pulling Ethan up with him. They both never felt more relieved to be standing on solid ground than at that very moment. Mitch was right behind them, followed by Matt, who had stopped several times to empty his stomach along the way.
The smell inside the warehouse was only marginally better than outside, but they were thankful to be away from the corpses. Richard pulled out his flashlight and held his hand over the end so that only a tiny beam of light got through. Then he began looking around the warehouse for a place to bed down while the others regained their composure. What became immediately obvious to him was that despite the outward appearance of distant abandonment, the inside of the warehouse had been renovated into a state-of-the-art cloning facility. At one end of the building there were embryos in holding tanks filled with some kind of amniotic fluid, and at the other end, there were nearly completely formed children with multiple heads. Richard felt the hatred and rage welling up inside him as he examined one of the tanks more closely. From what he could tell by the level of decomposition, the Augs had only recently abandoned the site.
When he returned to check on the others, Ethan seemed almost shell-shocked by the place and stood motionless staring at a two-headed body crumpled up on the floor not far from where they had entered.
“What have they been doing here?” he said, covering his mouth as though he might become ill at any moment.
“Turn your disgust into rage and your rage into action. This is why we must stop them at all cost, ” Richard remarked as he pushed the disfigured body out of the back of the warehouse, and then closed the door.
“They have no right to do this to us, it’s barbaric,” Ethan added.
“I know, and that’s why we’re going to make them pay,” Richard promised.
“Hey guys, the lower level looks a lot more habitable,” Mitch remarked after returning from the floor below them.