Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

gun. With my free hand I grasp the edge of the rug between thumb and forefinger, and lift it up.

Concrete.

“The hell?” I whisper, peering farther under the rug. As I lift the carpet higher, I realize this is big. Much too big for a random pad of concrete in the woods.

Throwing caution to the wind I heave the carpet aside.

In front of me, on the ground in the middle of this nondescript forest on a mountain in the Cascades, is a ten-foot-by-ten-foot concrete slab with a hatch in the center. A round, steel hatch, painted dull blue. It has two handles on one side and a large hinge connecting it to the concrete on the other.

Across the center, faded stenciled letters read:

U. S. AIR FORCE

A few seconds pass wherein I simply stare in completely stunned silence. “What the actual fuck?”

Metal groans as I twist the two handles to the left. They’re ancient and haven’t seen oil in years, certainly. But to my surprise the hatch itself swings upward quite smoothly.

Flashlight between my teeth, I shove the big metal door all the way open. Beneath it is exactly what I expected to find: a hole, leading down into darkness, with a metal ladder embedded into one side.

“Clara?” I call out. “It’s Mary Whittaker. You down there?”

The words echo back up through the concrete tube. It’s the only response I get.

“This is Silvertown Police,” I shout, louder. “We’re coming down.”

The “we’re” bit is a nice touch, I think. Holstering my gun, I begin to climb. It’s hard to see with the flashlight held in my mouth, but the ladder seems to descend about twenty feet, and in no time my foot finds another concrete floor. I step off the ladder and go back to the classic tactical stance: gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, wrists crossed for support and stability.

The space around me is not a room, but a tunnel. It has a flat floor and a curved ceiling that forms a half-circle about ten feet high. Pipes and bundles of wire run along the length, secured every fifteen feet or so by thick metal braces.

“Hello?” I call, fruitlessly. The place is clearly deserted, and has been for decades. Probably since the end of the Cold War. A memory comes to me, then. A passing comment made by Greg during my first day on the job, when he’d rattled off all the places in the area that contributed to the “conspiracy theory charm” Silvertown enjoys. It had been a long list. The Masonic campground, the closed pharmaceutical factories, the old army base, and “even a few mothballed Minuteman silos.” He’d said they were locked up tight. I wonder if he knows about the fallen fence, the rusted signage, and most of all the entrance I just used. Maybe this last has only recently been discovered and subsequently cracked open.

From somewhere farther down this passage someone suddenly laughs. A bright, friendly, mirthful laugh. Distant but distinct.

That’s Clara’s laugh.

I open my mouth to call to her, then decide against it, because I can hear music now, and other voices. Slowly, quietly, I make my way along the corridor, gun and flashlight pointed at the ground ahead of me. On a whim I click the light off and wait a bit for my eyes to adjust. The place is absolutely pitch-dark, or seems that way at first. But after about thirty seconds I realize there’s a thin line of light coming from under a door at the far end, maybe forty feet ahead.

I continue on and find my assessment to be exactly right. There’s a metal door. In its center is a faded square where some signage used to be, long since removed. Hopefully not a warning of radiation risk. Above the door is a light bulb behind a wire-mesh bracket, turned off. In my mind’s eye I can picture it strobing red, warning of imminent attack or launch, or the need to evacuate.

These thoughts I banish with a shake of my head, because Clara’s laugh has just reached my ears again, much more clearly now. Just on the other side of this door, in fact.

I grasp the handle and yank it open, releasing warmth and light and music. A smell hits me hard. The fog of weed being smoked, of sweat, of sex, and other things I’m loath to discover the source of.

Music blares from a small speaker. A band I don’t know, something heavy and bleak, which mingles ominously with the voices of the six or seven people in the room.

None of them notice me. They’re all seated on ratty old mattresses, arranged in a square facing in on one another. In the center of that square is a patch of dusty concrete floor littered with the proverbial “drug paraphernalia.” Vials of liquid, bags of powder, strange chemical smells. Light comes from a few candles placed around the room, plus a camping lantern in one corner that blinks erratically as its battery clings to life.

The walls of the room are covered in scrawled messages. Some carved with knives, some in spray paint, and the rest in permanent marker. Faded messages, and fresh ones, too. There are dates, with some of them going back years. Decades. One says “Vader was here—7/1/77,” with a badly drawn caricature of the famous movie villain.

Focus, I tell myself, and adjust my grip on the flashlight. It’s only then that I notice the words written on my hand. You need help. Yes I do, goddammit. And once again it’s like the very concept has been wiped from my brain. Is that even possible? I make a mental note to google it. No, moron, you need help, remember from five fucking seconds ago? I take a deep breath. Asking Doc might be better than an Internet search. He is a shrink, after all, and from what we discussed when we found the hiker’s body, he knows