HSH: Camp Hero - Chap 20-22
Here we go with the next installment of Camp Hero. Check out all the fun action.
Anyway, enjoy the next part of Camp Hero!
Read the previous chapters.
Chapter 20
Going to Camp
You know how everyone always says how it’s a bad idea to talk on your cell phone and drive? Well, I can personally attest that it’s an even worse idea to talk and fly. It’s so hard to concentrate. And when concentration is key to staying aloft, it becomes a real problem. I almost crashed three times, though I have to admit the rain wasn’t helping either.
Which brings me to my second complaint – wet jeans suck! I very well might have been crazy, but I could swear mine were shrinking on me, making for a very uncomfortable situation. Of course I hadn’t bothered to throw any extra clothes in my bag.
I mean, how was I supposed to know we were about to get hit with a tropical storm? Yes, it’s an exaggeration, but you try flying through the rain with thirty or forty mile-an-hour winds buffeting you from every direction.
Still, I would rather be up here than in that packed car.
“How you doing up there?” Ethan asked from somewhere about a mile below. I was following the Long Island Expressway to the eastern end of Long Island. Brief glimpses of the highway through the clouds didn’t allow much insight as to which car was Sam’s.
“Just dandy.” The sarcasm leaked through my lips like an overflowing tub. “Why don’t you come up and join me for a while?”
“Relax,” I heard Tiffany say – they must have had me on speaker. “The GPS says we only have another sixty miles.”
“Great, another hour flying through the rain.” If the sarcasm was any thicker I could probably spread it on a couple pieces of bread. “Any more good news?”
“It was your choice to stay behind, Loser.”
“Anyone have an extra clothes in the car I could borrow when we get there?”
“Samantha does,” Sam said.
I imagined the look of total loathing she shot him at that second. She would probably rather burn her entire wardrobe than allow even one article of it to touch my body.
“Isn’t that right, Samantha?” Sam asked the cheerleader. I heard the edge in his voice, telling her she’d better agree.
If only I had a video phone. I would love to see Sam sweat under Samantha’s very violent stare-down. “Yes,” she finally spat. “I have just the thing for her.”
I shuddered at the thought of wearing Samantha Diddles’ clothing. It repulsed me so much I would have vomited – if I had eaten anything in the last twelve hours.
“We’re going to get off this highway in a moment,” Sam said. They’d been keeping me apprised so I could follow their movements. “We’ll exit onto Sunrise Highway, about four miles south. We should be able to take that road all the way to Montauk Point.”
“Actually, the GPS says it turns into Montauk Highway about thirty miles out,” Tiffany said, obviously acting as the official GPS keeper.
“Same difference,” Sam said.
“Hey, Chris,” Peter asked. “Did you really give it to her?”
It was only a matter of time before they asked about that. And it would’ve been Peter to ask. “Yeah,” I lied. “Really gave it to her.”
“Awesome,” he said, and then returned to silence again.
“How about some details?” Ethan mentioned. “We’ve got a long ride.”
“Why don’t you turn on the radio, then?”
“Broken,” said Sam.
“Sam, your dad seriously needs to buy a new car.”
What could I possibly tell them anyway? I wasn’t about to blab about Quinn – my mind was still trying to wrap itself around it all. It was going to plague me until I got to the bottom of the mystery.
“I think for the first time since I’ve met her, Abby Davidson’s been truthful,” I simply said. Something in my gut told me it was true.
“Really? What’d she say?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing important,” I lied.
“Come on, what else happened?” Tiffany pressed.
“Look,” I said, “Don’t worry about it. The fact is, Abby Davidson and the MHDA aren’t following us. That’s the important thing.”
We turned south and headed for Sunrise Highway. I flew over an airport and saw several planes take off and land, looking more like little toys than actual vehicles. When we came to the highway, we all headed east again.
It was nearly eleven by this time, but with the cloud cover it could have been early morning. The rain never let up; I was really beginning to hate it. The tightening of my jeans and the cold wind kept chilling me to the point I thought icicles were forming on my underside.
“Hey, Tiff,” I said into the phone. “Can you possibly look up Camp Hero again on your phone? I’d like to know what to expect when we get there.”
“Yeah, sure.” The tapping of keys came in clearly through the earpiece.
“Okay, we know it’s at Montauk Point,” mumbled Tiffany, mostly to herself as she must have been searching through the website. “According to this page, the installation is an old air base, used mostly for radar detection starting in the 1950s. It operated up until the 1980s, and all but one of the radar dishes were taken down or destroyed. The base has been abandoned since then.”
“So, there shouldn’t be anyone there,” I asked.
“I guess not. Hold on, let me look at something else.”
She tapped the keys again and then must have waited for the new page to load. “Okay. I’m on SubversiveElement.com, a conspiracy theory website.”
“Tiff, you’re not going to find anything on–”
She interrupted me. “This goes back to the ‘40s, when this was a research facility. There are so many lists of projects on here: The Montauk Project, Project: Pegasus, Project: Phoenix.”
“Anything about Project: Hercules?” That was the one we knew had actually occurred there.
“Not that I see,” she answered.
The website was crap, just like I thought. There were so many conspiracy websites out there. None ever had any accurate information. I once saw a site that claimed Bigfoot was actually a government cover-up connected to Area 51. However, once you read it, you’d realize the guy that wrote the website was on acid or something.
“There is a Project: Superman though,” Tiffany’s voice echoed through the speaker.
That was pretty close. “Can you take a look at that?” I asked, reluctantly.
Clicking of keys. Then an exasperated sigh. “No, this one’s about using torture and mind control to make better soldiers. No secret formula.”
“Get off the site, Tiff. It’s crap. Don’t waste any more time.”
“Wait,” she said. “The conspiracy stuff might be crap, but there’s a map of the facility. These people have explored the base and marked off quite a bit of stuff.”
That could be useful. “Can you keep that page up so we can look at it later?”
Tiffany kept on the website, looking at the rest of the projects. Apparently the Montauk Project was an attempt to do time travel. The site claimed that if you stood in the traffic circle near the main barracks you could go back in time. We all had a good laugh at that one.
There were also supposed sightings of lizard people at the base and in nearby towns. People were incredibly stupid. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for anyone who’d bought into things like that.
However, as crazy as some of these theories sounded, if someone had told me they were making super-soldiers at the base, I would have told them they were crazy. So as weird as it might have sounded, there might have been an ounce of truth for every pound of crap the website served up.
“Oooh, a duck!” Tiffany shouted at one point, shocking all of us out of our laughter. “Can we stop? I wanna see it.”
At first I thought she had seen an actual duck on the side of the road, but as I looked down through a break in the clouds, I saw it for myself. It must’ve been the size of a building for me to see it.
“On the way back,” I promised, even as I wondered why anyone would want to see a duck-shaped building, let alone build one.
“We’re almost there,” Ethan informed me. “GPS says it’s only a few more miles.”
Thank God. I’d had quite enough flying for one day. It was half-past twelve. We’d only have a few hours before we would need to make the return trip. I gazed down at the highway – now little more than a two-lane road at this point – and didn’t see any cars in either direction. I flew lower.
A few minutes later I was gliding next to Sam’s car. We turned onto Old Montauk Highway, and rolled down what was now a one-lane road for another mile or so.
The highway followed up against the ocean, if I moved ten feet to the right, I would have been flying over the water. There was beach out there, but not much.
I don’t know why, but it was at that moment that I realized I’d never seen the ocean before. We’d never gone to the beach when I was a kid. Living so far from the coast made a day trip an impossibility. A rush of excitement flooded through me as I came to this epiphany. I’ve seen the ocean! It was something I could check off my list of things to do before I died – not that I actually had such a list. Or that I planned to die anytime soon.
I never realized you could actually smell the ocean. It smelled musky and salty at the same time. The sounds of the waves crashing on the shore were everything I’d imagined they would be. If it hadn’t have been for the pouring rain, it would’ve been a perfect sight.
Sam slowed the car to a crawl until he finally stopped in front of a big blue sign that read: Welcome to Camp Hero State Park. It was the same sign I’d seen inside Abby’s head. We were here.
Just beyond the sign, sending the opposite message, was a six-foot-high chain-link fence. Signs posted on it read: No Trespassing. A guard booth that looked like it hadn’t been used in years, stood near the fence. Talk about mixed signals.
I touched the ground for the first time in hours. I was a little unsteady, much like what people describe when stepping off a boat onto firm ground after days at sea. Hanging up my cell, I waited for my friends to step out of the car.
The rain had lightened a bit, and was now nothing more than a light shower. I needed to get into some dry clothes, and fast, before I got hypothermia.
Sam was first out of the car. I made him open the trunk for me immediately. Samantha rushed out to stop me from tearing through her bag and grabbing whatever clothes I wanted.
“Where did everyone else leave their clothes?” I asked my other friends as they began stretching outside the car. The four of them had been crammed in that tiny backseat for hours.
Savanah considered me lucky not having been in the car all that time. I didn’t feel lucky at all.
“They’re back at The Plaza,” explained Tiffany. “We did make a quick exit, after all.”
“Then why does Samantha have hers?” I asked.
It was Sam who answered, coming up from behind me. “She packed three bags and only felt like carrying one up to the room.” His annoyance was astounding, even if he was making a joke of it.
Samantha pulled out a T-shirt and pair of shorts. The shirt itself almost blinded me, as she waved the hot pink fabric in front of my face. “I don’t want these back.” She handed them over.
“I can understand why,” I retorted, looking over the disgustingly bright garments. All I can say is my tastes definitely didn’t mesh with Samantha’s.
Nearby I found an outcropping of rocks I could hide behind about twenty feet away on the beach. I’m glad it was a bit warmer at ground level, because the T-shirt and shorts didn’t do much to insulate my body from the elements. I removed my bra because it was soaking wet and would show through the nearly-fluorescent shirt. I would’ve asked Samantha if she had one to give me, but beyond the simple embarrassment of asking her, I also knew it would never fit– she was a little more endowed. I hoped no one would notice I wasn’t wearing one at all.
Once I slipped on the dry clothes, I walked back to the car, throwing my wet things into the trunk. I must have looked appalling. I needed dark colors covering me; these fluorescent clothes were going to be the death of me. Not to mention that if there was anyone actually protecting this base, which there probably was, I would be spotted in less than a second.
Maybe that was Samantha’s plan. The girl would probably love to see some sniper take me out.
Where should we go next? To answer that question, I turned to Tiffany. “Did the men who made that website actually get into any facilities at this place?”
“No,” Tiffany said. “They claim that everything is locked up pretty tightly.”
I made her show me the map. It was hard to read on such a small screen. There were five bunkers, the closest about a mile from where we were. Old barracks and the radar dish were clearly marked near the center of the park. They also had marked a police barracks that apparently had loud guard dogs. That was the one area of the park they had not gotten to explore, apparently.
We could easily get over the fence. Nobody had bothered to put barbed wire at the top. I might even have been able to push the fence over. If they had truly been trying to secure the base, they did a poor job of it.
Nearby, a slight dip on the side of the road was covered by some bushes and trees. I pointed it out to Sam and told him to hide the car there. No reason to raise an alarm in case someone spotted it while we were gone.
“I say we take a look at this bunker here.” I pointed out the closest to Tiffany and Ethan, who’d come to look over my shoulder. “If that turns up nothing, we should check out these old barracks and the radar dish.”
“Whatever you say,” Ethan said. “Let’s just do this. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“I know what you mean.” I had the same ominous feeling. It felt like we were being watched, but not by anything we could hope to see. If it weren’t for the crashing of the waves, our entire surroundings would have been absolutely silent. Something about this place was… off, somehow.
“Let’s stick together,” I suggested, and everyone heartily agreed.
There was an old, rusty lock on the gate. A good lock picker could’ve opened it in seconds. We didn’t need a lock picker however, because we had Savanah, who simply crushed it in the palm of her hand.
We stepped through the gate, shutting it behind us – in case prying eyes noticed it wide open and decided to investigate. Venturing up the path, away from the sounds of the ocean, my earlier observation of the silence surrounding this place grew more and more apparent. The trees didn’t even rustle in the slight breeze. It was like this place was somehow dead, even though we were surrounded by the full life of nature in all its glory.
The seven of us, too, remained silent. I kept my mind wide open to detect anyone, or anything, lurking about in the shadows of the trees. But I sensed nothing. There simply didn’t seem to be anything out there.
Also, with my mind open, I would be able to sense when we found the right place. Even if I couldn’t find any Agents, I should have at least been able to find the prisoners they had kept here somewhere. After all, they brought Eddie here. There were probably others.
Picturing him sitting in a cell, somewhere beneath our feet, made me shudder. The thought that what we were doing could land us all in similar cells, made me ill.
We walked up a dirt path that looked as if no one had stepped on it in years. For the first time, I actually doubted there was anything here. I mean, there should have been some sign of life, even if we were on a rarely used path.
Suddenly, the silence was broken by the roaring of an engine in the sky – a plane engine. Gazing into the sky, I tried to locate the source of the sound, but couldn’t see it. “Get off the path!” I shouted to everyone.
We scrambled, hiding under the nearby trees, scrunching underneath low-lying branches. The plane didn’t sound all that big. I would compare it to one of those small planes rich people learn to fly in.
“It comes by about every twenty minutes,” Tiffany informed us. “That’s what it said on the website anyway.”
“That would have been nice to know before,” Savanah mentioned.
Samantha agreed with a curt nod of her head and an evil glare in Tiff’s direction.
“I didn’t think it was important. Besides, they said they had no idea what the plane actually was doing.”
“It’s performing aerial surveillance,” I said. “I felt something from it, like they were looking for something.”
“Probably us,” Samantha said. “We should get out of here.”
“If you guys want to go back–”
“Don’t even think it,” Ethan interrupted me. “We’re going with you.”
I caught sight of the plane for a second as it flew off into the distance, the thrum of its engine fading as it continued its surveillance. It was strange, they gave every appearance there was nothing here, even pretending security wasn’t a concern, and then went to great lengths to make sure no one trespassed. Was there something here or not? If so, what were they actually protecting?
“We have twenty minutes,” I said, pulling myself out from cover.
Once again we trekked up the path.
Eventually, we came to a rather strange-looking rock formation, overgrown with vines and trees. The faded gray was such a contrast with the woods that it stood out like rhinoceros in the prairie dog pen at the zoo. I thought it must have been what we were looking for, because the rocks were much too large to be anything naturally formed.
As I led everyone in that direction, I realized it wasn’t a rock formation after all. I’ve never seen a rock that had a broken windowpane on its side, or a hole in the side that looked remarkably like a door. It was a building – a really old and shoddy building.
It had fallen into a state of heavy disrepair. There was even a tree growing through the building, the branches jutting out through the roof. It was really a shame they would let these old houses be destroyed like this. There were probably another couple dozen like this on the base.
I stood before the building, everyone close by. I didn’t dare go inside since my desire for a full happy life would probably be dashed to pieces by entering the ramshackle shack.
I was ready to move on. However, as I started to go, and most everyone followed, Savanah stayed rooted to the spot. Her gaze was fixed to a place just above the empty doorway. I followed her eyes, not noticing what she was looking at. All I could see was the tilted and half broken molding that used to pass for a doorjamb.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Don’t you see it?” Savanah took a step forward and pointed at the spot she was staring at.
“No,” I said.
She stepped forward again, dangerously close to the dilapidated building. This time, when she pointed, her finger was right on top of the thing she’d noticed. I honestly didn’t know how she saw it. It was so faint it would take someone with super-human vision (which she might have actually had) to notice such a thing.
I zipped open my bag and thanked God it was fairly waterproof. I grabbed my grandfather’s journal, and fumbled with it to grab the picture I’d been staring at that morning. I looked between the photograph and the place Savanah was pointing.
Carved above the door were twelve sets of initials. The initials were the same as the ones in the photo – though almost illegible after years and years of weathering.
This was the barracks our grandparents had lived in when they were here. This was the where Project: Hercules was born.
Chapter 21
Looking Back
I’d never been here before, but still, I felt very connected to this place. For me, it was like this was where my story began. And it started more than sixty years before I was born.
I ran my fingers over the letters: F.C. My grandfather had carved them when he stood in this spot. It felt like touching a piece of history. Tingles shot down my arm, but I couldn’t tell if they were real or imagined.
“Ethan, come look,” I barely managed to whisper, still in awe at what I was looking at – what I was feeling under my fingertips.
He stepped forward, looking dubiously at the places Savanah and I were touching. What now? Don’t we have better things to do?
“Just look.” I laughed. He would be so shocked when he realized.
His eyes ran over the doorframe. But he still didn’t seem to comprehend. I grabbed his hand and guided it to the D.E. on the door – his grandfather’s initials.
He ran his own fingers over the carving, studying it like a child would study a picture book the very first time they looked at it. It took several more seconds before the metaphorical lightbulb illuminated his thick skull. He was really slow sometimes.
“Oh my God.” He pulled his hand away, as if he’d been burned by the doorframe. He stumbled backward, tripping over a root and landing flat on his back. No way!
“Believe it,” I told him. “This is their barracks.”
I stepped back, over Ethan’s fallen form, wanting to get a wider view of the place. I placed the picture next to my view of the old barracks. It really did looked exactly the same, but the area around it didn’t. The barracks in the photo wasn’t surrounded by a forest, but appeared wide open on all sides, like one might picture an army base. The lack of care to the area had apparently allowed all the trees and bushes to grow.
It was amazing that we could be standing in this very spot where our grandfathers had stood. I wish we had a camera – a real camera, not one of the crappy ones on our cells – so we could take a picture on this very spot. Wouldn’t that excite my grandfather?
I stepped forward again, and ran my fingers over the initials. As I did, I looked through the door. Inside was as wrecked as the outside. There was no furniture, many floorboards were broken, many pried up so I could see the ground beneath, and a thin, almost twig-like tree reached from the floor and pushed through the ceiling. The inside of the place was so small, it was hard to imagine twelve fully grown men all lived here. It barely looked big enough for six.
Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine what the place had looked like back during the war, when this base was brand new.
Six bunk beds lined the walls – three on each side. The beds were immaculately kept, almost like no one had slept in them – ever. The walls were as bare as they were now, because each soldier’s personal items were taken on arrival. They weren’t supposed to exist, so there was no need to remind themselves of their pasts.
Everything was clean and new, like one might expect a military base to look. And there were still plenty of other buildings around, where other soldiers were housed, and equipment was stored, and a hundred other things.
Yet, I still imagined the seclusion the soldiers in this bunk would have felt. These soldiers were better than all the rest, but different. And no one liked someone who was different.
“All right, grunts!” a gruff, deep voice shouted behind me.
I spun on the spot, expecting to see my friends standing there with some stranger looming over them, demanding to know why they were all here. Instead, I found a bunch of strangers with their backs to me, all standing straight, their legs and backs tight.
And instead of an overgrown forest surrounding me, I found well manicured lawns, with dirt roads criss-crossing them. Jeeps drove along, carrying soldiers this way and that. A tall flagpole, flying the American flag high above everything, stood resolute in the center of the base. I was willing to bet that flag only had forty-eight stars on it.
What in the hell?
My mind wandered to what Tiffany said while we were coming here. One of the theories was that they had done some time travel experiments here. Had I walked through some crack in time and ended up here with my grandfather?
“Hello!” I called out. No one turned around.
Nope. I wasn’t back in time.
“We need a record of you poor excuses of soldiers for our archives.” The man’s head, which I could just barely see over the man’s shoulders, bobbed back and forth as its owner paced before them. “So, we’re going to take a coup’la pictures of you. Each one will pose for an individual photo and then one of this whole pathetic platoon will be taken.”
“Bet this’ll be another two hours,” one soldier muttered to another.
“Bet I can get him right in the forehead without singeing his eyebrows,” the soldier to his right whispered.
The two men chuckled, which elicited the attention of the man pacing before them.
“Everett, Smith!” the man shouted. “Am I amusing you in some fashion?”
“No, General Wilhelm,” one said – I think it was Everett.
“Then keep yer trap shut,” he bellowed.
Am I still imagining all this? But the response came back as a quick, No! If I were imagining things, I would surely know. I just couldn’t put my finger on what was happening. It was like one of my dreams. The scene played itself before me, but I couldn’t interact with it.
General Wilhelm went on with his lecture. He really was a cruel man. He called the soldiers grunts and morons, sissies and pansies. It seemed he didn’t have a nice thing to say about any of them. Then eventually, I watched as each of the twelve soldiers stood before the camera and had his picture taken.
That wasn’t entirely true. I did watch the repeated flashes of the camera bulb, but my eyes never strayed far from my grandfather. He looked so young – just like in the photo he was about to stand for (yeah, I heard how that sounded too). This was too confusing. How could I be thinking and talking about a photograph which, as far as the scene before me was concerned, hadn’t even occurred.
There was no way they could have perfected time travel, because anyone who travelled back in time would have his mind explode trying to figure out when and if things occurred and in what order they happened. Hell, a mind could go numb just trying to figure out whether to talk about this stuff in the past, present or future tense (yes, I do pay attention in English class).
My grandfather stood, chatting with Ethan’s grandfather while the others each had their photo taken. The two of them looked so happy. I could tell they had been friends for a while.
“I’m going to request a pass to see Sandra next weekend, Drescoe,” my grandfather spoke.
Drescoe, Ethan’s grandfather, shook his head and chuckled. “You never give up, do you, Frank? They’re never going to let you out of here. Never.”
“I’ve got to, Dres. I need to see what I’m fighting for. I need to hold her in my arms one more time. Just in case…” His words trailed off, their meaning implied, but he couldn’t bring himself to say them.
“Don’t think about that.” Drescoe slapped my grandfather on the back like a buddy would. “Once our tour is over, you’ll get to see her again.” He kept his hand there, and his tone turned from encouraging to serious. “At least you have someone to come home to. I’ve got no one.”
My grandfather smiled and looked him right in the eyes. “You’ll find someone,” he said softly. “After all, what lady can resist the charms of Drescoe Everett?”
“None that I know of,” he responded and they chuckled.
I’d never seen my grandfather with any of his friends before. It actually gave me a warm feeling knowing that, at one time at least, he’d been just like me – and I don’t mean just learning about his powers. I mean, having friends he could talk to and hang out with and be normal—himself—around.
It took so long for each man to have his picture taken. After every photograph, the photographer had to replace the light bulb and reset the film, and then line everything up again for another shot. If I had to take my school pictures like this, I think I would have shot myself. The waiting alone would have been enough to bore someone to death.
“You still having those dreams?” Drescoe asked my grandfather.
He shook his head, clearly not wanting to talk about it. The mention of dreams, though, had my interest piqued. So, I wasn’t at all disappointed when he said, “Unfortunately, yes.”
“What do you think they mean?”
“I know it has something to do with this mind-reading ability they gave me, but I really can’t tell.” He put a hand to his forehead, as if to stop the image from reappearing in his mind. “I just can’t shake the feeling that it means something terrible. But I don’t know what. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
“Could it have to do with one of us? Maybe our powers go awry,” offered Drescoe. “You said it was a like a giant fireball – maybe Charlie has something to do with it.” I knew he meant the man Smith had been joking with earlier – the man who could shoot fire from his body.
His eyes seemed to sink back into his head and his cheeks sagged, making my grandfather look like he’d aged ten years in a couple minutes. “No. This wasn’t a normal fireball. It was something much more powerful.” He closed his eyes, seeing the unwanted image again. “A black and red cloud, blotting out the sun, yet giving off as much light as the sun, looking like a mushroom, and toppling every building in the city.”
Oh, crap! The pieces fit together. My grandfather had been dreaming about something horrible. If this was 1944, then he dremed about it over a year before it happened – dropping the Atomic Bomb on Japan.
This was the event he could have prevented. This was why, when I asked, he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t done anything about this dream and millions of people had died. I knew how he’d felt when he saw the first images of the bomb going off, because I knew how I would have felt.
He could have stopped it, my mind informed me.
But he didn’t, I responded. And that doesn’t make him a bad person.
The last of the soldiers had taken their picture. So, General Wilhelm lined the men back up to take the group photo. Needing to see this for myself, I finally moved off my perch at the entrance to the barracks to stand by the photographer. Again, I had the feeling that this was where the story started for me and, real or imagined, this was a momentous event.
They lined up, just as they were in the photo I’d seen so many times before, and stood patiently as the photographer set up his camera once again. General Wilhelm stood off to the side. He seemed as eager to get this over with as the rest of the soldiers.
As the photographer was ready, I looked at each one of the men’s faces. Adding to the puzzle of the science teacher, Quinn, was the fact that he was not present among the men. It was at that moment I decided that my teacher and mentor had indeed been lying to me – to us – all this time.
“Christine!” I heard a shout as the bulb in the camera flashed, taking the picture I held in my hand.
I was confused. None of these people could see me. Even if they did, they shouldn’t have known my name. I spun around. No one seemed to be there, but all of a sudden I did hear a strange humming noise. I searched for that as well, but couldn’t find its source.
“Christine!” came the shout a second time.
The images of the soldiers and Camp Hero in its prime melted, and was replaced by the image of the same old barracks I’d been standing at before my little trip into the past. I pulled my fingers away from my grandfather’s initials and took a step backward.
The rational part of my mind knew what had happened, but the rest of my brain was still catching up. And that infernal humming noise was definitely not helping.
“Christine!” A third shout came, but it wasn’t as close as the other.
Spinning, trying to figure out who was calling my name, I stared out onto the seemingly empty path. I saw my friends hiding beneath the trees and the bushes, peeking out at me like scared squirrels waiting for the hawk to fly away.
“Get under cover!” Ethan shouted.
“What?” I stepped toward them. “Why?”
“The plane!” Tiffany shouted. “It’s coming back.”
Then I realized the humming was the engine of the small plane we’d seen earlier. Had it been twenty minutes already? It was close, pretty much on top of us, by the sound of the engine. I couldn’t reach the cover where my friends were, so I dove into the only place I could think of – the old and broken barracks.
Praying the battered building wouldn’t collapse on top of me, I listened for the sound of the engine to fade away as it had last time. The seconds ticked by, and with each one I felt my heart pound three times.
Apparently, wishes don’t always come true. At least, not the way you want them to. The plane’s engines revved hard and the plane banked, turning to go back the way it had come. In the seconds it took for the sound to fade away I knew one thing – they’d spotted me.
Chapter 22
Breaking In
“Sorry, guys.” I climbed back out of the barracks. I’d definitely soiled Samantha’s bright pink shirt, so it was a much duller color. I looked up at the once again-empty sky. “I think they saw me.”
“What in the hell, Chris?” Sam emerged from his own hiding spot with Samantha trailing half a step behind.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “But, I saw something.”
“It must’ve been real interesting,” chimed Samantha. “You were staring at that wall for, like, ten minutes.”
“Really?” I asked. It couldn’t have been that long.
No matter what, I had been seen, and that plane was flying back to report our position, if it hadn’t radioed it in already. Agents could be on top of us in seconds, and I wasn’t about to let my friends get caught up in that.
“Go back to the car,” I said. “This is too dangerous now.”
They looked at each other, communicating without words, like I normally did. I heard what each was thinking, and though I was glad to hear it, I still hated the next words that came out of Ethan’s mouth. “We’re not going anywhere without you.”
I sighed. “Will you guys ever listen to me?”
“When you begin to make sense,” Ethan answered. “Sure, we will. Until then–” He began walking up the path in the direction of the nearest bunker.
“Who made you leader?” I ran to get in front of him—which was incredibly stupid, because no one can outrun the fastest boy alive. Luckily, he let me get in front of him.
Everyone else followed. Samantha was the only one not happy about it. More walking through the woods. What fun, she thought.
I would have slapped her, but if I were in her shoes, I would have agreed. She had no stake in this mission at all, other than to be with her boyfriend. I felt the strain this was putting on her relationship with Sam. It hadn’t reached the breaking point yet, but every time Sam agreed to follow me, it pulled just a little tighter. She still saw me as a threat, like I was going to somehow take Sam away from her – again. She knew I’d made the promise never to mess with his head again, yet she still didn’t trust me.
The funny thing was, I couldn’t care less.
We came to the end of the worn dirt path and found ourselves staring at a hill. Embedded in the side, like a horrible blemish in Nature’s perfection, was a giant metal door that seemed to slide upward like a garage might. It looked big enough for a tank to ride through. There could very well have been a tank waiting on the other side.
“Does it say how to get in?” I asked Tiffany.
She checked the cell again, and then looked up at me and shook her head. “They never got into this one.”
“Which one did they get into?” I asked.
“One on the other side of the base,” she answered immediately, as if she’d been expecting the question.
Whichever bunker that was, we had no need to check it out. If the idiots who created the website had found anything interesting there, I’m sure they would have written something about it. Probably would have called in every news team across the country to cover it, my mind added.
“Savanah,” I called. “Break down the door.”
She stared at it, wide-eyed and shook her head. She didn’t think she could budge it. But she stepped up to the giant door and bent, finding a groove at the bottom and slid her fingers under. Grunting, she pulled up with all her might. The metal groaned under the strain, but didn’t move. Savanah continued pulling, the door not giving any leeway. Soon, the groan of metal was drowned by her own screaming. Eventually, she was forced to give up.
She collapsed, totally spent. I jogged to her, to make sure she was all right. She looked up at me, kneeling over her prone form. She was weak, and I could see she’d used every ounce of strength she’d possessed. “A nuclear bomb couldn’t open that door,” she said.
The image of my young grandfather sprang to mind, telling a young Drescoe Everett about the cloud he’d seen in his dream. The haunted look on his face would bother me the rest of my life. I shook the image from my head, and turned back to Savanah. “It’s okay. We’ll find some other way in.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She winced as I yanked on her already strained shoulder.
Turning to Tiffany, I motioned for her to take another look at her cell phone. “How did they get into that bunker?”
Her eyes searched the tiny screen for the answer. After a few brief moments her eyes met mine once again. Before she said anything, I already knew the answer. Through a broken air shaft.
The hill was easily climbable, even for one without superpowers. “Follow me,” I said to everyone. Then I jumped into the air, looking for another blemish in Nature’s beauty.
They followed at a much slower pace. Ethan hung back with the rest of the group instead of keeping up with me. About forty yards from the entrance I spotted what looked like a round block of cement, sitting atop the lawn. The scent of grass filled my nostrils as I set myself down beside it. There was, in fact a shaft going into the ground, a heavy iron hatch lay imbedded into the cement slab. I tried pulling it, but it was sealed tight.
Savanah could probably open it easily, provided her arms still had enough strength. Then again, there was also the possibility I could pop the top open with my mind.
Before I could try, my friends caught up. All of them surrounded the cement slab, staring as if it were Pandora’s Box. Who knew what evil things might fly out if we got it open?
“Anyone notice anything strange?” Peter asked. He looked at me as he said this. Ethan noticed, and shot him an evil glare.
I did my best to ignore Ethan’s jealous thoughts. I gave a look around our surroundings, not noticing anything amiss. “What’s strange, Peter?”
“Give the air a whiff.”
We all did, taking in a great amount of air through our nostrils as Peter suggested. There was nothing strange about the way anything smelled. “Just grass,” I said. “I smelled it when I flew in.”
“Fresh cut grass. Look around. This lawn’s just been cut.”
I did. None of it was more than an inch high. Now that I thought about it, the scent was overpowering – much stronger than it should have been, like the grass had only been cut within the last few hours. Still, there didn’t seem to be a soul around.
“Who’s cutting the grass?” Tiffany asked.
If I were trying to hide this place, I would make it so it really looked abandoned. I wouldn’t have anyone mowing the lawn.
“That’s what I want to find out.” I glanced at the locked hatch again. “That’s how we’re going to find the answer.”
“I don’t think I can,” Savanah mentioned before I even looked in her direction. She rubbed her shoulder, and I felt the soreness leaping like tiny arcs of lightning in my own shoulder.
Though I wasn’t entirely sure I could pull it off, I had a sense that it wouldn’t be as difficult as I thought. Slapping my hands together, I prepared to blow the top off the tin can. “Everyone stand back,” I said. I had an idea of what I was going to do, and if it worked, there could very well be a big explosion.
Once I was sure they were clear, I concentrated on the area just underneath the old hatch. I pushed up on the hatch, much like I did when I was flying, but much harder. I tried to force as much air up under the hatch as possible, building amazing pressure. It felt like shaking a bottle of soda and waiting for the top to pop off. I pressed harder and harder. After a second, a slight hiss oozed from a small crack at the edge of one side.
The hatch still held, and yet I continued to build still more pressure. It was only a matter of time before it blew.
A trickle of blood ran out my nose, which always happened when I mentally strained myself. It hadn’t happened for a while, though – I guess I had been pushing much harder than I thought.
My head felt like it split open at the same time the hatch made a loud pop and launched into the sky like a rocket. Seeing double, I just barely managed to keep a mental grip on the cover as it plummeted back to Earth. I gave it one last shove, making sure it wouldn’t land on any of my friends.
It crashed in the grass, sending a spray of dirt up as if someone had stepped on a land mine, and embedded itself a good two feet into the lawn.
My knees felt weak and I suddenly found myself falling. As was his way, Ethan didn’t let me land. He shot forward and caught me, cradling me in his arms, instead. His image swam around my vision as I concentrated on him, but it didn’t seem possible. I had to close my eyes before the dizziness made me sick.
“You okay?” His voice echoed through my head.
Weakly, I nodded. “Give me a second.”
The others gathered around. Even with my eyes closed I felt their presences nearby. It felt nice to have them there, concerned about me.
It could have been seconds or minutes. But, as I lay in Ethan’s arms with my eyes closed, a loud ZAP ended the silence. My eyes flew open, and I jumped up, unsteadily. Ethan propped his hand on my back so I wouldn’t fall over.
Blinking to focus, I glanced at where the hatch had been. Peter stood over the hole with both his hands pointed down the long shaft. He fired a second burst of lightning, both Ethan and I clamped our hands over our ears. I was thankful I didn’t fall over.
A second later he turned toward our group. “It looks like it’s about fifty feet to the bottom. I don’t see a ladder.”
“I can lower everyone down slowly,” I said. “I just need a few minutes.”
“You’re not doing anything,” Ethan warned me. “You nearly killed yourself trying to get that hatch open.” He pictured me, lying dead on the ground, after grabbing hold of everyone and placing them gently on the floor of the bunker.
“Stop being so over dramatic,” I told him. I was fine. He acted like this had never happened before. “I’m absolutely fine.” To prove my point, I pushed myself up and marched toward the hole. It would have been more impressive if I hadn’t stumbled like a drunken woman – twice. But I got my point across.
“You are so stubborn,” he said.
“Shut up and get over here. You’re going first.”
He didn’t move at first, but then thought better of not listening to me. Thank God he didn’t argue – I didn’t have the strength to fight with him.
He peered into the deep, dark hole. There really didn’t appear to be any light at all at the bottom of the shaft. It didn’t matter, because we were going anyway. I grabbed hold of him and lifted him off the ground. Then, I slowly lowered him until his feet hit the ground.
“Oof!” echoed up to us. “A little easier next time, please.”
“Peter,” I called and the boy obediently came to stand beside me. “When you get there, light your fists so we can see.”
”Okay.”
I lowered him. When he reached the bottom, he lit up, and I could easily see the floor. He was right, it was about fifty feet.
Savanah went next, then I did the same for the other three, one at a time until they all were waiting below.
By this time, I’d regained a good deal of my strength, and had no trouble lowering myself to the bottom. I landed gently on the cement floor. The dimly lit corridor was large enough to drive a car through. Dust hung in the air, looking like tiny fireflies sparkling in the light from Peter’s hands. The air itself smelled old and stagnant, like it hadn’t been moved or even breathed in half a century – and who knew, it might not have been.
The tunnel disappeared in both directions, lost in the darkness. But I still knew which direction to travel. “That big door is this way.” I pointed down the corridor in one direction. “So we should go that way.” I pointed in the opposite direction.
No one argued. Apparently seeing my logic, they followed.
“This place is creepy,” Tiffany’s voice reverberated off the walls giving it a ghostly quality.
The darkness surrounded us like a sinister shadow, only kept back by the light emanating from Peter’s hands. I felt as though something was watching us, just beyond the edge of the shadow, waiting for the light to be extinguished so it could attack.
Ahead, another small corridor—only 6 or 7 feet wide—led off the main hallway we were in. We had to check it out even at the risk of getting lost. I took us into the entrance, at once noticing this passage was different from the other. In the walls were doors. What was behind those doors, I didn’t know. But we would find out.
A low whistle sounded behind us. I didn’t even look back, half afraid of what I might see, but knowing that in the darkness I probably wouldn’t see it anyway. Again, the sense of being watched filled my senses, but when I reached out to sense what it was, I felt nothing.
The first door – locked.
This door wasn’t terribly strong – definitely no problem for a girl with super strength. Without being asked, Savanah stepped forward and gave the door a nice hard shove. A loud crack echoed down the corridor. The door swung open.
Inside was a simple office, like what my dad had in his building, a desk with a chair behind it and a filing cabinet. There was no decoration in the room, just simple cement walls. It didn’t look like anyone had used the place in years. Dust had settled over everything, leaving a thin film of gray, making the room look haunted.
“Check out the desk,” I told Savanah.
She did so, while I checked out the filing cabinet. It wasn’t locked, and I slid open the top drawer with ease. Nothing inside but more dust. Not discouraged yet, I pulled open the remaining three drawers, one at a time: nothing in any of them.
“Anything?” I called to Savanah.
She groped through cabinet in the faint light from Peter’s hands. “Just an old roll of Life-Savers.” She looked down in the drawer she had open again, a look of disgust on her face. “A really old roll.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
There was nothing to be gained from this room. I didn’t want to waste time, and with this feeling of being watched, it was only a matter of time before something got us.
The next room was much the same as the first – though with more cobwebs hanging in the corners. The desk and the filing cabinet turned up nothing. It was the same with the third and the fourth rooms we broke into.
At this point it was painfully apparent that no one had been here since this base had been in its prime. Who knew, this could have just been an emergency bunker, and we were actually the first people to set foot inside since it was completed.
I led the group a little further, not turning down any other corridors. It was a labyrinth of tunnels, each one looking the same as the last, and I didn’t want to get us lost. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t wrong and someone was down there. But we couldn’t waste time lingering.
After another useless hundred yards, I decided to turn back. The feeling of being watched was stronger than ever. There was some unseen person or creature lurking in the shadows and I suddenly felt like a rabbit that’d wandered down a snake hole.
The image of lizard-men popped into my head as I thought about another of the strange theories Tiffany had researched. But I quickly shook those out, as the thought of lizard-men roaming around here was about as absurd as the Loch Ness Monster.
There was definitely something, though, even if I couldn’t sense its mind. I didn’t mention anything to the others. There was no reason to worry them, or have them think I was paranoid.
The biggest problem was, I couldn’t tell if this presence was behind us, or in front. For all I knew, we were walking right at it.
Peter, for his part, did an excellent job of casting light, but it only illuminated ten feet in any direction. Odd shadows formed when the light fell across a crack, or bump, or some other imperfection in the wall or floor that made me jump internally. But each time, it was nothing.
We all felt uneasy. I was beginning to sense the foreboding thoughts coming from the others. With every step we took, the more each of us wanted out of there. When we reached the main corridor, where we first came in, a great wave of relief washed over us.
Bright sunlight shone down on the floor in a perfect circle about a hundred yards ahead. We picked up our pace.
But then, it happened. Just the faintest of clicks, but it said the presence had caught up with us. The snake had caught the unwitting rabbits.
“Don’t move.” My voice was barely loud enough for me to hear.
They all stopped in their tracks.
“We’re not alone,” I said. I had to think quickly.
Besides Ethan, it would take more than ten seconds at a sprint, to get to the air shaft. And the shaft wasn’t big enough for more than one of us to go up at a time. There was no way we’d be able to get out of here without facing whatever it was in the shadows.
Another click and this time everyone heard it. The tension they all radiated felt as if they were hurling bricks at me.
Savanah, Ethan, Peter, I mentally sent to my friends, surround the others.
They followed my orders, corralling Tiffany, Sam and Samantha in the middle of us.
Can you glow any brighter? I asked Peter. I knew he could because of what he’d done in the hotel room last night. But, he’d used up a lot of power already.
I felt his unease at the question, but was pleased when he answered, Yeah, probably.
Do it.
He was right next to me, and as he brightened, tiny prickles of electric current ran up my arm. I smelled the ozone he created with the charge. The radius of light grew more and more, until it filled the whole tunnel from wall to wall. The silhouetted figures of several men suddenly appeared in front of us. I pointed, and began to shout that I saw them, but a hail of darts shot in our direction. I hadn’t been expecting it, and I didn’t have the time to throw up a mental shield to stop them.
They rained down on us like mosquitoes coming in for a meal. The dart’s points felt a lot bigger than they looked and my flesh burned where they’d hit.
In a second, my legs went numb and I fell to the floor. My friends were suffering the same fate as we ended up sprawled on the floor in a tangled pile of limbs. One of the dark boots stepped toward me. I tried but couldn’t look up at the owner of the footwear.
Then, Peter’s light went out, and with it went my consciousness.
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