O’Neil sent Tate on point, and they skirted around the edge of the shipping yard. Dark blood pooled over the concrete next to the water where those people had been slaughtered. They navigated between forklifts and crates. Empty plastic bags blew around them, and a few paper cups rolled along the ground, pushed by the salty breeze. Crumpled papers and sodden cardboard spilled out of trashcans that had toppled.
Between the trash, bullet casings gleamed from the red lights hanging over the shipyard. O’Neil was careful not to crunch over the gravel too loudly or smash any of that garbage.
They started toward the warehouse furthest south that had skylights on its slanted roof. Thought about using Tate’s ladder to climb up there, but they would be far too exposed to the soldiers on the wall.
O’Neil patted a pocket on his chest. The waterproof camera was still there. He wanted to make sure he captured every image he could to ensure the people back home knew exactly what they discovered.
The warehouse doors were both slid back. A Renault semi-truck was parked in between those doors. Its empty flatbed trailer lay inside the warehouse. Two soldiers stood at one side of the entrance cradling rifles. But they seemed to be more interested in their conversation than watching the open doors.
These people really had gotten arrogant. Dangerously so.
With Tate still on point, O’Neil directed his team to use the cover of another shipping container and a parked SUV to make it to the side of the warehouse. O’Neil looked back up at the walls around the base. All the guards had their backs turned, facing out into the city.
One-by-one, O’Neil and his team filtered from the side of the warehouse toward the truck. They used the truck to get them inside the warehouse without the guards noticing.
Soon as they entered, O’Neil came face-to-face with stacks of crates and pallets full of goods wrapped in plastic. They advanced between the rows of waiting cargo. They found stacks of bags that were labeled ‘RICE’ and ‘WHEAT’. There were a few pieces of shrink-wrapped machinery and equipment that O’Neil didn’t recognize. But as they cleared all the way to the rear of the warehouse, they found no other soldiers or workers. Just the crates and pallets and bags and equipment.
O’Neil had expected to see weapons or drums of biological agents like they had intercepted in Lithuania. He paused near one of the pallets with sacks of rice.
“All this to feed the people on base?” Tate whispered to O’Neil.
“Could be,” O’Neil said, then looked at the empty truck. He thought back to all the empty shipping containers they had passed to get into the warehouse. “Or maybe this is just the stuff they found in those shipping containers. Needed somewhere to empty them.”
“Then the question is, what are they filling the containers with?” Loeb asked.
“I don’t think we’ll find that answer in here.” O’Neil chinned his radio. “Warehouse A-One clear. Moving to A-Two. Eyes on contacts?”
“Four at the walls just south of Two,” the drone operator said. “None on the ground.”
“Front entrance?”
“Four men with weapons. Warehouse doors appear to be closed.”
“Then we’re going in though the back,” O’Neil said to his team. “Come on.”
They headed toward a door at the rear of the warehouse, far from the eyes of the guards at the front. As the team stacked up at the door, Tate wrapped his hands around the handle, testing it. It twisted easily.
O’Neil shouldered his rifle, then squeezed Tate’s shoulder. The SEAL pulled the door open, and O’Neil moved out, followed by Van and Loeb. They spread out along the warehouse wall.
As soon as Tate came out, he gently closed the door. O’Neil looked up at the wall where he saw the backs of two soldiers. One stood beside a mounted machine gun. The other had binoculars pointed out toward the city.
The growls and snaps of Skulls drifted over the walls. Their odor was stronger than any time since O’Neil had broken the surface of the water at the port. He could almost picture the beasts shuffling and sniffing outside the walls, seeking out their prey.
And yet, they didn’t seem to be slamming against the walls with wild abandon like he would have expected.
He gestured for his team to take the next warehouse. They stacked up again outside a single rear door, then rushed inside.
Before O’Neil even realized what they had stepped into, the odor of a thousand corpses crashed over him. Nausea squeezed at his gut. He felt the acidic bite of bile threatening to crawl up his throat. He choked back the urge to vomit.
Most of his view of the warehouse was blocked by a shipping container. But this time, he didn’t need to open the container to know what was inside. The smell leaked out of every miniscule crack. He could hear the scratch of bone against metal, and the mindless groans of beasts whose bodies had been ravaged by the Oni Agent. Sounded like an entire horde of creatures had been pressed inside the container.
What the hell is going on?
He didn’t dare utter the question aloud lest the creatures hear his voice. With a series of quick hand signals, he sent Loeb and Van down one end of the container. He followed Tate to the other. Peeking past the container, he got a better view of the rest of the warehouse, bathed in darkness.
The front doors to the place were closed. Shipping containers seemed to fill most of the warehouse. All sounding like they were packed with Skulls.
O’Neil saw no soldiers lingering around inside the facility. He pulled out his camera and took a few quick shots. But those images certainly wouldn’t capture the intense odor filling the warehouse nor would they depict the voices of the monsters imprisoned in here, resonating through the facility.
He slowly edged around the shipping container, Tate covering him. As he curled around the container, he saw the center of the warehouse. His stomach flipped, and he froze.
“Everybody hold,” he whispered as quietly as he could.
There were cages in the middle of the room with thick steel bars. Cages that looked to him like something used to transport a tiger. Or maybe, a hundred of the beasts.
He counted a good twelve cages in that room.
All of them completely full of Skulls.
The beasts were in various stage of infection, pressed against each other so tightly they could barely move. Their arms raked lazily at the air outside the cage, their claws cutting at unseen prey.
Some were dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Jackets stuck to the spikes pushing out of their shoulders and spines. Others wore the remnants of military and police uniforms. Those that had entered the most advanced stages of infection were almost entirely naked, their bodies covered in bony plates and spikes and horns, appearing like demons that had wormed their way up from Hell to harvest unwary souls.
He could hardly believe the Russians would bring this many beasts behind their walls and then leave them here in this warehouse. Even if this was about part of an experiment, this many Skulls would never be taken into a safehold like Fort Detrick back in the States.
There were enough beasts packed into the cages that the Russians could just let them loose in a city untouched by the Oni Agent at midnight, and they would probably turn the place into another apocalyptic wasteland by morning.
He tried to slow his breathing, careful not to make any sound that would attract those beasts’ attentions. While those cages might keep the beasts from tearing out his organs, it wouldn’t hold in their screams and howls when they caught a glimpse of prey.
As slowly as he could, he lowered his rifle and took out the camera again. Took dozens of pictures.
With another hand signal, he directed his team back out the door as quietly as they had come in.