I reached the end of the hallway, where a second hallway ran perpendicular. A sign informed me that the dormitories were some way to my left, the mess hall and recreation centre to my right. I decided to look around the living quarters first.
The walls on this level were painted light purple and were completely unadorned. About thirty feet from the spot where the hallways intersected, I saw the first of a series of doors with numbers painted on them. I tested the knob on the first one, but the door was locked. I moved to the second one, which was unlocked.
I opened the door and stepped into a long, fairly narrow room. Twelve single neatly made beds stood in two parallel rows. Each one had a corresponding locker. Except for the thin layer of dust on everything, the dorm looked immaculate. I walked to the nearest locker and opened it. Inside were several changes of clothing, shoes, and toiletries. After checking several other lockers, I decided that there wasn’t much to see.
As I was about to leave, I spotted a piece of paper on one of the beds near the rear of the room. It turned out to be an unopened letter, addressed to Bryce Ellsworth. The return address was the Ellsworths off Ames, Iowa. I checked the postmark and saw that the letter had been posted on November 11th, 1996. Turning the letter over in my hand, I debated whether or not to open it. I seriously doubted that anyone was going to claim it. Besides, the statute of limitations had to have expired.
I tore open the yellowed envelope and pulled out several lined pages, a photograph, and a few newspaper clippings. The content of the letter was typical newsy, mushy, howdy-from-home stuff. I tossed it onto the bed. The photograph showed an older couple posing alongside a young couple with a baby. Fifty years had passed since this picture was taken. The older folks were undoubtedly deceased, their places taken by the young man and his wife. What had happened to the man these people had sent the letter to? Did he die here in the complex? Or did he escape and make it back to his family?
I turned my attention to the newspaper clippings, which were very well-preserved. The headline on the first trumpeted: Desert Standoff Enters Fourth Month. The story detailed how United States forces were massing on the Iraqi border. The second article’s headline read: President Dole: We’re Prepared for War. The third clipping was taken from a publication of ill-repute and blared: Military Ready to Unleash Alien Weapon! In retrospect, this article seemed to be surprisingly accurate. It referred to the Roswell crash and the recovery of a mysterious object, which the military had cleverly incorporated into a Domesday Device.
After I finished reading Corporal Ellsworth’s mail, I decided that the dormitory had nothing more to offer. I turned to the hallway and walked to a door at the end. It was labelled Restricted Access, unlike those leading to the dormitories. I tried to open it, then look for a slot where I could use one of the cards in my pocket, but no such luck. Turning back, I went on to the mess hall.
Like the dormitories, the eating area was neat, austere, and of absolutely no interest. I found the door to the kitchen and took a look around. Cupboards, cabinets, and shelves contained tons of canned goods, herds of bagged, powdered milk, an ocean of bottled mineral water, and acres of cracked wheat in barrels. At least I wouldn’t have to go hungry. Out of curiosity, I checked several freezers and a refrigerator, finding nothing more intriguing than some potentially award-winning science projects.
My next stop, the recreation area, was a gigantic hybrid, half gymnasium, half airport lounge. The amenities included three full-size pool tables, dart boards, a boxing ring, free weights, a half-court basketball floor, a handful of conversation pits, a dozen couches, and two large-screen televisions. It looked like a decent place to kill time, but I wasn’t in the market for leisure. After a short scan, I continued to search elsewhere. The hallway outside the mess hall and recreation area led to a door identical to the one I’d seen by the dormitories. Apparently, I was sealed off from the rest of Level One, at least on this side.
I walked back to the elevator, then continued on. The part of Level One I had access to was shaped like an H, with the left side containing the locations I’d searched. The right side contained a series of storage areas, with everything from gas masks to basic tools. I didn’t find anything that would help me locate the power cell.
I went back to the elevator and press the button for Level Two. Seconds later, the elevator doors opened. The facing wall was identical to the one on the upper level, except a number two was stencilled on it. I stepped out into the hall and looked around. Something different was immediately noticeable. Part of it was the thicker quality of the air and the blast holes pockmarking several spots in the floor and walls. My eyes were immediately drawn to the corpses.
Seven bodies were strewn on the floor of the hallway, the nearest one only several paces away. As I got closer, I saw the horrible, staring face of what had probably been a young man, his eyes fixed and unseeing. I bent down and took a closer look. His eyeballs were shrunken and seemed to have the texture of old rubber. His skin was chalky and wrinkled. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought his body had been mummified. The mouth was open, as if he was screaming at the moment he died.
The other corpses were all in the same condition. Two of the dead men were wearing lab coats; the others were wearing old Air Force uniforms. The sensation of being in a morgue was overwhelming. I’d never been particularly comfortable around death, but this place was far worse than a run-of-the-mill mortuary. A sense of foreboding began to seep into my bones like a humid chill.
I stepped over and around the bodies on my way down the hall. At the end, I encounter another sign. The Biology Laboratory was somewhere to the right, the Metallurgy Laboratory to my left. I looked in either direction, and then something grabbed my attention. At the end of the hallway to my left, the Restricted Access door was ajar.
There were no corpses in this section of the hall. The dead men had probably been trying to reach the elevator when they met their maker. I reach the Restricted Access door and pushed it open. The colour of the walls in this section were tan, obviously a superior shade to the light purple of the less important areas. I was in a long tunnel, with three doors on the left side and four on the right. About seventy or eighty feet away, I saw another Restricted Access door.
The first three doors on the right had nameplates affixed to the wall with the descriptions Security, Communications, and Records. The last door on that side had no nameplate. On the left were the Administration Office and the data storage room. The last door seemed to be entrance for a large room, which sported the obvious moniker of War Room. Halfway up and to the right of each door was a scanning device. It seemed like I’d need an identification badge of some sort to get into these rooms. After checking all the doors in the area and verifying that none of them would be easy to get into, I returned to the light purple area.
I had a hunch that the room I needed to get into was the Records Room. It seemed a likely place to find some kind of cataloguing system, which might give me the specific location of the power cell. I was also intrigued by the War Room, but being in the complex was starting to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. All I wanted to do was find the power cell and get the hell out of Dodge.
I needed to find an identification badge that would get me into the Records room. My first thought was to see if any of the dead men were wearing badges. None of them were. There probably weren’t many people who worked in the complex and had high-level security clearances, but there had to be one somewhere. I spent the next hour searching every nook of Level Two.