BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bobbie could only stare wide-eyed as Charlie fired off the four shots, western-style with his palm running over the hammer after each shot. A few seconds later the floor was littered with four more Grays and Bobbie knew that Clint Eastwood didn’t have shit on Chargin’ Charlie!
“Shewww!” John whistled, coming into the room next, Emil and then Jake from Bobbie’s CAT-2 following close on his heels. He smiled and was about to crack a joke — even with Bobbie still on the ground and favoring his shoulder — when something on one of the numerous TV monitors in the room caught his attention.
“Holy shit!”
Bobbie turned his attention and quickly went up to the monitor John was looking at, just as Tommy and Sammy came into the small security facility next. There, in cages and spread all out on what looked to be a massive open floor area, were human females, most crying piteously for help by the look of it, though there was no sound coming from the monitors.
“So many…” Tommy said, walking up to the monitors, his eyes wide. “There were never supposed to be so many…”
“What is he talking about?” Bobbie asked, coming up to the two. Charlie turned about quickly and gave him a strange look.
“How’s that shoulder?”
Bobbie gave him a hard look, then slammed his shoulder into a pair of low-level cabinets hanging from the ceiling.
POP!
“Aaahhh!”
“Shit!”
Charlie continued shaking his head after the curse, once again surprised by the sheer strength, and outright stupidity, of Bobbie and the rest of the super soldiers. For his part, Bobbie just laughed and shrugged, though it was clear he was in pain.
“Fixed now,” was all he said as some tobacco juice drooled from one corner of his mouth, then pointed at the monitors. “So what gives?”
“What gives is that—”
“We were had,” Walter said, and the men turned to see their commander coming into the room. It was clear he’d been in some fire fights, as one side of his face was covered in the greenish-goo that was either the Gray’s blood or the liquid they bathed in… maybe both. He took one look at the monitors then shook his head. “This isn’t just a search and destroy mission anymore, gentlemen — it’s a rescue mission.”
“A rescue…” Charlie scoffed, then just trailed off, shaking his head.
Walter nodded. “A rescue mission.” He nodded at the monitors, as if that should make it all obvious.
“What… what is it… Walter?” he asked after he’d threw up his arms, for there were two different scenes, depending on which monitors you looked at, which side of the room you could handle. One held the women, the other….
“Hell,” Emil said, “Hell — that’s all I can think.”
“Not Hell, but close,” Tommy said, “The Hall of Horrors.”
On the monitors ahead of them it was clear that there were two main areas. The one on the right side of the room, stretching for as far as they eye could see by the look of it, held row upon row of large, glass vats. They looked like huge, monstrous fish tanks, though instead of clear water, each was filled with some kind of greenish… goo, was all anyone could really describe it as. But it was what was floating in those vats that really set the men’s nerves on edge.
There were humans, rows and rows of them, most not moving, most looking dead. Several of the vats had Grays in them, some moving about, treading water if you will, others looking about as dead as the things that were floating with them. And those things were often human arms, legs, internal organs, cow parts, and even other animal parts and appendages. Walter took it all in and then thought he’d have to turn about and empty his dinner onto the concrete floor of the level ramp.
“Easy,’ Emil said, coming up to him, “you’ve been here before, remember?”
“Yeah, and I sure the hell don’t remember this.”
“This wasn’t here back in ’75?” Jake asked.
“Hell no it wasn’t!” Walter said. “I mean, we knew they were doing genetic testing, we knew about the stuff the Dutchman and Gus and all the rest told us about… but this,” he shook his head and scoffed, “this is just…”
“It’s Hell,” Emil said again, his pipe moving about nervously, “now let’s destroy it.”
“And what about the other side?” Bobbie said, his teeth gritted but his pain looking under control.
“That’s Nightmare Hall,” Walter said with barely a pause, “that’s where the testing’s always traditionally gone on, where the abductees wound up.”
“Abductees?” Charlie said. “What the hell?”
“It was supposed to be less than a hundred at first, then it became hundreds.” Walter shook his head. “That was in ’75… who knows how many are there now.”
“Over 30,000 captives on that one level alone,” John said, and everyone spun around to see the helmeted major looking down at some kind of clipboard… though one that looked to have a small TV screen in it.
“What’s that?” Tommy said coming up, but John just swatted him away.
“Some kind of hand-held computer, what’s it look like?”
“Hand-held computer?” Bobbie laughed, but both Walter and Charlie were already moving past the other men to get a look at it, and the data it held.
“God, it’s in English and it’s talking about places like the ‘testing facilities’ and ‘pleasure centers’ and—”
“Where are they?” Walter said, and from his tone it was clear he was ready to rip some heads off, hopefully Grays’.
John shook his head, the overlarge helmet swaying back and forth. “Says they’re in over sixty different locations… and there’s more than 4,500 of ‘em.”
“Pleasure centers?” Emil said with disgust, his tongue sticking out, something that almost caused his pipe to fall on the floor… almost.
The room grew quiet, and everyone looked to Walter, for there were only two commanders among them, and he was the only to have seen this area before. He frowned, then gestured down to the satellite phone strapped to Jake’s leg.
“We’re calling this in to headquarters,” he said, “the mission has changed.”
Part IV
31 — A Change of Orders
General Harry Anderholt sat behind his large mahogany desk and couldn’t stop tapping his fingers. He was nervous, out of sorts, and on edge. Right now the four CAT teams were in Dulce — Ellis’s son hitting the ground level, two teams fighting up to the top, and one team holding the base against enemy intrusion. Besides that there was the Fast Action Team of astronauts and engineers, plus the cleanup team held in reserve. It should be enough, he kept telling himself, but then why were those damn fingers of his tapping incessantly? Anderholt frowned at the thought and stopped tapping them, and just then the phone rang. He picked it up, unknowingly tapping his fingers all the while.
“Anderholt,” he said in a gruff voice.
“Sir, we’ve had developments,” the Dutchman’s voice came to him over the line.
“Shoot,” Anderholt said. If there was one word to portray multiple feelings and answers and states of mind, General Harry Anderholt was going to use it.
“CAT-2 just reached Level 7… Nightmare Hall.” There was a slight pause and an audible sigh and Anderholt pictured Ellis shaking his head and rubbing at his brow back at Blue Lake. “Sir, there are thousands of them, thousands of abductees… the vast majority of them women.” He paused. “The men found a report saying there were 30,000 females alone.”