Family Ties Ch.2
The darkness swallowed up Mark the way it usually did as he entered the tunnels deep below the dusty old bunker that he had lived his entire life in.
The dank smell of teppid water and dust filled his nose as his boots scuffed the old, metal-plated ground in the consuming darkness that enveloped every last bit of him. If he hadn't lived his whole life down in the tunnels, he would have been afraid but the cramped, almost claustrophobic spaces had become his refuge.
Here and only here, he could be alone and have his thoughts to himself instead of being among the prying, nosy neighbors that lived above in the less dark but still foreboding barracks.
By now the cold had seeped into Mark's bones and he decided to begin making his way back, no matter how much he disliked being amongst the other occupants, the cold from being far underground had a profound effect on him that he did not like one bit.
In his deep thinking, he had not noticed that he had wondered far beyond the exit hatch. He was now in a section of the tunnels he had never seen before.
Trying not to panic, Mark crept down the tunnel in the opposite way he had come, trying to back-track to the entrance but this only confused him more as odd machines covered in many layers of dust surrounded him.
Somthing felt deeply wrong in these tunnels. The oxygen was thinner and the odd machines with glowing lights darkened against the dust was just so out of place in the bunker, it was like nothing he'd ever seen before.
Suddenly an odd sound made him prick his ears, it was faint and somewhat far away but he felt almost drawn to it. Such a strange sound, it was almost above his hearing and sounded shrill and machine-like.
As he got closer the sound changed into a high-pitched sound he could barely bare as he progressed closer and closer to whatever was making such a mind-numbing noise. It almost hurt to hear it but he was still drawn to it by somthing more than curiousity.
Somthing inside him wanted to find the noise, no matter how much it hurt his delicate ears and scorched his brain, sending highly alarming electrical pulses throughout it.
Finally, he reached a strange hallway, lined with rusting, airtight doors that hadn't been touched for, by the look of them, more years than he'd lived. Each was marked with a serial number and had dark, glass windows, through which he could see nothing at all.
Somthing about the hallway was very, very wrong, Mark could feel an odd, unknown sense of dread creeping out from behind the doors and over the odd machines.
He couldn't put his finger on it but it seemed like somthing bad had happened here or maybe it was about to happen.
Then he noticed somthing else; it wasn't cold in this tunnel.
Paranoia got the best of him for a moment and he wondered if he should turn back when somthing odd at the end of the corridor caught his eye.
Interest renewed, he made his way toward what looked like a pre-war terminal set into the wall. Its screen had a dark green glow to it and the sound that plagued his brain appeared to be coming from it.
Mark quickened his dawdling pace and raced over to the terminal, now wanting desperately for the noise to stop. It had reached a level of hearing that made his brain scream in protest.
The terminal's screen was populated by continuing lines of gibberish code that made no sense to him at all. He had been taught to read and write but this was completely beyond him. It almost seemed like a child had scratched a line of crudely written letters over and over again in no general order.
Mark, stared almost in a trance as the letters repeated themselves over and over again, then something clicked.
The machine was mapping out calculations, the letters were simply many, many percentages in a row. He noticed something else now; they were all freakishly-high or extremely low.
He wondered briefly what it was all for but the noise got to him, instead he began to search the terminal for the source of the noise. It had almost seemed to have gotten louder in the past few minutes. Now it was all extremely painful, his ears went down and he whimpered as things he'd never even felt before filled his mind, emotions that weren't his.
Mainly, a sense of extreme panic.
In a panic-infused frenzy of dread, he tried desperately to find the source of the noise but it seemed to be emanating from the terminal itself. With a final sigh, Mark gave up and gave the terminal an annoyed kick, which, of course, still made it have no response.
Suddenly the terminal flickered and the code became more rapid. The whining sound turned into an extremely loud alarm klaxon.
A trickle of fear made its way down his paralyzed spine as the terminal turned off and a strange intercom flared to life. Nothing but static filled the air for several, long seconds but then a low voice began to speak.
"Years of..... Fear.... Door.. Number.... 600 460 001 001 890 009 600..... Darkest hour... behind the doors... Lies... Eternal secrets...Death... Punishable by federal law..... God save.... May America... Long live the United States of America."
As the tape ended the code finally stopped and a message was displayed on the terminal's screen.
"Failure imminent."
Mark froze in fear as a loud "CRACK" filled his ears and hissing erupted from a huge blast-door he hadn't noticed before in the hallway. It had split down the middle and was opening with an ancient, metallic-groan, filling the room with a light brighter than he'd ever seen in his life.
Blurry shapes filled his vision in the hours after Mark's body had been taken from where he had lain in his half-conscious state for over an hour. After the door had opened something powerful had invaded his senses and caused him to collapse on the cold, metal floor, only slightly aware that he was dying
Mark woke up coughing and gagging, gasping desperately for air in his poison-choked lungs.
"Take it easy boy.... We won't let you die today." a voice Mark had never heard before said quietly.
"Who's there?" His vision had slurred to a dark tunnel and he could barely make out his surroundings now.
"He's flat-lining, get that damn stuff out of him now!"
"How the hell did he even get exposed to the gas?!"
"Why was a child even in the tunnels?"
"He's not a child."
"He has saved us all."
"Get it out of him now!!"
"He's going into cardiac arrest!"
"This boy is the only reason we know they're coming."
Mark shot up in his bed and threw up, spewing bile all over his hospital bed. Spitting out the toxins made him feel sicker and sicker as bile scorched his throat and scratched his insides.
The virus inside his innards screamed and boiled as it left him a writhing mass of parasites and acid.
It felt like he was spitting out his stomach as he retched and coughed loudly on his bed having small spaztic fits as the viruses left him.
"Can you hear me boy?"
Mark started in surprise at the voice of the unknown fur in the room. His vision had turned strange and tunnel-like so he could barely make out his surroundings.
Blackness closed in at strange angles and his body felt heavy as the man repeated himself.
"What the hell's happening to me!?" Mark yelled as the dark turned from white to grey and the world swam in front of his tear-soaked eyes. The poison was deeply rooted inside him and spreading quickly.
"It'll be alright son, we are better prepared because of your actions."
"What the hell are you talking about!?!" Mark almost screamed as his stomach burned and hissed.
"For God's sake get that stuff out of him doctor!!!"
"We are trying but he's ingested quite a bit of potent fumes."
"Just do it!"
Mark suddenly felt a needle break his skin and he thrashed wildly as liquid bit into his deep internal wounds and then suddenly the horrible feelings left his system. A calm came over him he had never before experienced and his vision cleared.
What he saw scared the shit out of him.
Two men in strange masks stared at him, one a fur and the other a human. Both were dressed in doctor's scrubs but were breathing through raspy respirators and pre-war gasmasks of sorts.
"Son, thanks to your efforts we are prepared for a war that will spread quickly. We are in your debt." Said the fur.
After a few days of rest Mark was faced with a challenge he never would have expected before; his dreams were about to come true but just how horrifying they were had escaped him before.
Everyone, even the children had been put into a part-time training program for somthing we would never be prepared for, a battle that would warp any person's sane mind.
After that Mark and all the others left the bunker for the first time ever. The sun was somthing he had never seen before in his life.
It was beautiful even as it burned his retinas through the glass ports of his gasmask he gazed in wonder at it. So simplistic yet strangely tempting. His reach, of course, would never hold such a thing but it was still the most amazing thing he'd ever seen, beyond any mechanical wonder the bunker held.
However even this wonder was soon nothing compared to the sadness he felt when they reached the meeting place. A deserted capital city of pre-war descent, now a crumbling ruin in all its honor.
This was not what saddened him though, the thing that broke his heart was the sight of thousands of people all crowding into the small city, armed with weapons of old and wearing ancient gasmasks, giving the place a dark, gloomy setting as the sound of hundreds of respirators filled the air.
It made him sick.
Further sights made him question his dreams, children in helmets and trenchcoats way too big for them carrying heavy rotten sandbags to strategic points all over. These were the new workhorse of this dreadful, forgotten land and the men and women of the future who would power the entire world.
He regretted ever having such horrible dreams. A tear rand down his cheek inside his mask as the shouts of hundreds of men and women continued there long struggle to gain semblance and order.
The world had gone to hell..... Complete, fucking hell.....
A coughing fit caused number 66381 to stop his grisly work halfway.
He felt himself smiling as blood dripped from his old respirator helmet and dug his black fingernails into the skin of a new body, digging them in till he felt the warm stickiness of blood taint his already dirty hands.
He smiled more as he felt the innards of the dead soldier, long and sickingly slippery in his grasp, and pulled them out through the festering wound, one at a time.
He felt a laugh in the back of his throat as they tore away from the body with sickening squelches. It felt good to disembowel an enemy, even if he was dead already. 66381 extremely relished his task as he carefully pulled out more and more of the rotting organs from the man's stomach.
He stared loathingly at them through the eye-ports in his mask as maggots and blood dripped from his hands. He had no interest in the dead, only the enemy.
"Soon..." He rasped and coughed. "America will know our full potential and cower in fear as we look at them from behind the barrels of our nations war-machines."
He had another raspy coughing fit and felt his stomach lurch.
The dead were full of disease and were truly the perfect weapon against any of their many foes. 66381 again stuck his hand deep in the man's wound and left somthing in the place of the bleeding organs.
A high-powered mine grenade had been stuck in their place.
"Soon..... You will all die... And we shall take your place... We are the perfect human... We are the many... We are the powerful...." He coughed more but this time the laugh rose in his throat and carried out across the grey plains.
"We are unstoppable!!!!!" His laugh turned into a high-pitch scream that echoed louder.
Hell was on its way...................