He raced over and turned on both taps full blast. The water was flowing and sprayed so hard off the porcelain of the sink that it splashed back up and all over Gino’s chest. He smiled around the mouthpiece of the pony bottle. He didn’t care in the least. He dunked his head in the sink and scrubbed at his short hair and his face until he was sure the now warm water had washed most of the muck from him. Then he removed the pony bottle and took a breath of the air in the room. It was stale and he could almost taste the nastiness all over the place, but he continued with his scrubbing, taking large handfuls of the liquid soap from the dispenser that hung slightly askew on the wall. When he felt his head was clean enough, Gino removed his facemask. The large quantities of shit and muck on the rest of his body would have to wait, but at least his head and hands were cleaned off.
Gino had covered the tip of his FN SCAR with a small plastic baggie and had sealed it off with a rubber band before descending into the cistern. Now he waded through the knee-deep muck toward the door out of the bathroom and into the submarine dock, the plastic-covered tip of the weapon leading. He grabbed the metal bathroom stall divider and heaved it away from the door. Then, with effort, he was able to manhandle the bathroom door open against the tide of sludge that weighed against it. The brown liquid surged around the door as soon as he had cracked it and spewed out across the floor on the other side.
Gino Ravenelli, White Four, stepped out into the submarine dock expecting an enemy force. He just wasn’t expecting an enemy force that wasn’t human. After the horror of the sewer, his nerves were already frayed. But as hundreds of creatures raced and slithered toward him, the bullets from his FN Scar having no effect, Gino began to scream. He was still screaming as the salamanders began to eat him.
12.
Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH
Matt Carrack was definitely having a bad day. He hung on a supple, black, 11-mm climbing rope that spooled out of the small satchel around his back as he descended the ventilation shaft with a repelling device. His LED headlamp was illuminating the grease smeared on the wall of the shaft and the blood spatter all around him. He had stopped just above the murderous razor grill that had made short work of White Two.
After no word back from White Two and White Three on their mountaintop mission, Carrack had become concerned. When he couldn’t reach White Four out at the Dock or White Five at labs via his satellite phone, Carrack began to get pissed off. The only thing going well so far is that Keasling really was sending the tank.
Carrack had scaled the mountain himself and gone to check out the vent shafts down which Two and Three had presumably descended. The lids to the vents were lying on the ground near the top of each vertical shaft, but he didn’t see any ropes or anchors. The shafts were narrow enough that the men had probably muscled their way down. His most powerful flashlight did not show any sign of the men, but that was to be expected with the pseudo S bend halfway down each shaft.
Carrack had set an anchor and slowly rappelled his way down into a tight shaft, his rope spooling out from a nylon bag on his back as he had gone. Shortly before he reached the S bend, he noticed the slippery substance on the walls, but thought it was just a fluke. After sliding down the S and into the lower part of the shaft, Carrack could see that the substance on the walls increased and he recognized it for what it was. Lower down, his light illuminated the razor grill and Carrack understood the trap and what had happened to his men. The deathtrap had not been present when he had inspected the shaft from below a few weeks earlier. He could see the section in the shaft wall where the razor grill had been recessed and camouflaged. Now dented badly, it still held some of the remains of one of his men, as well a mangled FN SCAR and a few other bits that hadn’t sluiced through the grill.
Now, he leaned down and used the small blowtorch he had taken with his other gear from his own HDT dirt bike, and began to cut through the blades below him. When the last cut was made, the grill fell down, but did not fall out of the opening where the vent’s true grill hung askew from the impact of his man’s remains. There was a 1-inch diameter hole in the side of one of the blades and Carrack had clipped an aluminum carabiner through the hole and connected the ‘biner to a short length of cord. He wouldn’t risk the noise if the cut grill were to fall the fifty feet to the concrete floor of the hangar below. He had likewise secured the other metallic remains. Carrack’s suspicion that they were under attack had been confirmed by the deathtrap. He needed to play his next moves very quietly. The murder grill would stay attached to his waist by the four-foot length of cord and the biner, and he would lower it softly to the ground as he finished his rappel.
Carrack didn’t know if he would be rappelling into a room full of hostiles, but it was too late for him to flip around and come out the vent head-first. So he did the next best thing. He released his grip on the rappel device, and slid rapidly down and out of the vent. He braked when his head had cleared the ceiling by a few feet, and his FN SCAR was up and leveled, as he scanned the hangar around him.
Mercifully, it was empty.