The Shelter: Inquisition (III)

“The answer is no,” said Councilman Julio. The five members of the council had returned to the after deliberating whether to cancel or postpone the trials due to the developments of the previous night. The courtroom they were in was primarily made of wood, and it was the only room of its kind at Logan Camp. During the war it had been used as a non-denominational prayer room, fitted to host Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist prayer services. The first settlers of Logan Camp had no use for religion, so the room was converted into a courtroom. The podium that stood at the front of the room was appended on both sides with wide desks, and raised benches placed behind them. The front pews also had tables built in front of them to allow for the essential people to sit in front of them. It was at the center left front pew that sub-commander Wilhelm sat.

“Why?” he replied, in a tone of voice that was abrupt and authoritative, yet still pleading. “I think I’ve given sufficient evidence that there’s something not quite right going on in the Shelter.” He picked at the rotting wood beneath the table.

Councilman Goose smirked, but a sharp glance from Councilman Julio set his face straight again.

“The council is in agreement that you have a solid case for your claim, and Commander Palmer may initiate whatever investigation he feels like. However, your evidence does not justify postponing the trials.”

“Councilman, the purpose of the trials is to prepare new recruits for daily life in the Shelter, not to face off against a serial-killing monster,” protested the sub-commander.

“Sub-commander, don’t tell me what the purpose of the trials are,” replied Councilman Julio, sharply. “I was there when the trials were first instated. We had a bigger influx of ‘refugees’ from the surface than we knew what to do with, and most of them were worthless cowardly murdering maniacs that wouldn’t last a minute in a real fight. So we decided to cull them by having them fight each other to the death, and the winners got to stay. Those were the original trials.” He cocked his head back slightly. “After a while, we had bigger problems to worry about than overpopulation. Hermosa Brotherhood Camp decided that they wanted to expand their influence and started sabotaging our power plant. In response, we made new recruits run operations against the camp, and for a while, that was the trials. After Hermosa backed off, the trials become collecting five pounds of eating-fungus, and after that it was scouring the shelter for wiring and electrical components.” He looked at the sub-commander. “If we have a new problem on our hands, then the trials will be used to help solve that problem. Do you understand?”

 “Yes, councilman.”

“Do you still have an objection to our decision, then?” asked Councilman Goose. “Or are you going to continue wasting our time with trivial matters concerning people that aren’t even members of our camp yet?”

The room grew silent for a moment before sub-commander Wilhelm spoke.

 “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

“What is your objection?” replied Councilman Julio before Councilman Goose had a chance to speak.

“If the point of the trials, is, as you say, to aid the camp, then won’t you agree that the existing trial of killing a crazy become outdated now? You just said that you agree that an investigation is warranted, so you agree that we have a new concern. Why not make the recruits do it?”

“And how are we going to qualify ‘investigating’?” replied Councilman Goose.

“Good question, councilman,” said Councilman Julio. “I’m not completely opposed to the idea, but we need some kind of objective measure that will determine whether the recruits passed the trials. What are your thoughts on that sub-commander?”

“Well, we need the criteria to reflect the needs of the camp.”

“Obviously.” Remarked Councilman Goose.

“Well right now, being successful in Logan Camp is more than having raw skill. It’s about teamwork and trust. So my idea? Let’s have the recruits hunt down this crazy, and bring it in. Alive. If it has any measure of intelligence, we’ll get good information from it. And if not, we can just kill it.”

“That still doesn’t tell us how we’re going to qualify the recruits.” Said Councilman Julio.

“Simple. If they succeed in their task, they all pass. If they fail, we make them go through the trials again. If one of them lags behind and doesn’t do work, he/she fails even if the rest pass.”

“We’ll need to deliberate on this, sub-commander.” Said Councilman Julio. “We’ll reconvene in 3 hours. For now, please update Commander Palmer on our proceedings.” He stood up. “We’re adjourned.”

Sub-commander turned around and began walking towards the exit of the courtroom, a smile on his face.

The Shelter: Questions (II)

“Derwin Indigo is dead.”

The words were said casually by Miller, the technician sitting in front of the monitor grid on the north side of the dimly lit, 30 ft by 30 ft command room. He had been staring at his monitor grid intently, tracking the progress of the new recruits to the Logan Camp, but had turned his head to address Commander Palmer, a weathered man with graying hair in his 40's. He was pacing around the room, glancing occasionally at all of the monitors on 4 walls of the room.

The statement’s equivocality was punctuated by the unceasing faint hum of the camp generator two stories below them outside, about a quarter of a mile to the south, audible because the walls of the command center were the thinnest of any in the camp, though those with better hearing than both the Commander and Miller had said that the generator could clearly be heard everywhere if you listened hard enough.

“Based on what?” asked Commander Palmer, stopping behind Miller’s chair.

“Suit biometrics,” replied Miller. “Brain activity spiked for about half a minute, but quickly after that, everything went to zero.”

“Could it be a malfunction?”

Miller hesitated before giving the answer to the question. He was asked it every single time he had to report a death of a recruit in the field, and every single time, the answer was the same. “Very unlikely. Also his GPS signal isn’t moving one bit. His radio looks like it’s still active, though. Do you want me to call him to confirm?”

“Yes." He paused, "and run it into my headset also.”

Miller pressed several keys on keyboard, and began to speak. “Derwin Indigo, this is Logan Camp command. Please respond. If you do not respond within the next two minutes, we’ll be listing you as deceased, and you won’t be receiving any support once you've completed your mission.”

Miller and the commander waited for 2 minutes for a response. There was none. After the long silence, Miller was the first to speak, “Sir I’m going to cal--“

“Helrlo brasterds.” The voice on the end of the line startled both Commander Palmer and Miller, causing them to flinch. The voice didn’t sound human. It was garbled, as if the speaker’s lungs were filled with fluid and the tongue was moving in an uncontrolled fashion that distorted everything that was being said. “Thourght I was deaard did yrou? Wrell I got another one fror you. Is thrat good enough! Arrnd here you rleft me in the cold. Thre’ll be more!” then there was a crashing sound, and the blip on one Miller’s monitor grid indicating the signal strength of the radio went blank.

Miller and Palmer looked at each other for a moment, blank-faced.

“Was that Indigo?” asked the commander, breaking the relative silence.

Miller shook his head. “No. If he’d been turned by the gases, his monitors would have become erratic, but they wouldn’t have gone to zero.”
“Motherfucker,” said the commander under his breath, barely audibly but loud enough that at least Miller heard it.

“How are the other recruits?” He asked, speaking more clearly.

“Jamison looks like he’s headed back. Morgan has been sitting in one place for over half an hour, but his biometrics look fine, and Leiney is moving at a steady pace, it looks like towards Derwin’s last location.”

            “Recall all of them,” said the commander sternly. “Tell them that they’ll be performing their trial a different day.”

            Miller gave the commander a blank stare, having never been given this type of order before. Recruits were never pulled from their trials. That was the whole nature of the process; they came back a full member of the camp, or they didn’t come back at all.

            “Commander, are you sure?” asked Miller.

            The Commander sighed. “Yes. Do it. Have them wait in the staging area once they’re back.” He turned to the technician sitting in front of the monitor grid on the left side of the west wall. “Bush, send a professional, preferably Stoly, along with an apprentice to Indigo’s GPS location. Have them retrieve the body and bring it back to camp.”

            He turned to Miller. “You’re in charge here. Make sure the recruits come back safe. I’m going to speak to Sub-commander Wilhelm. If you have any questions contact me on my Univ-Int.”

            The commander did a quick about-face turn and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

            The technicians all looked at each other uneasily.

            The hallways in the Command Annex of Logan Camp transmitted even the quietest of sounds. The whole annex was made completely out of metal for ease of construction and repair. The only thing not made out of metal was the insulation on the electrical wires, haphazardly running along the lengths of the hallways and kept in place by small metal hooks. Furnishings were minimal, being confined to the offices of the command staff, the command room, and the guard area on the first floor of the building.

The bulky metal doors of the offices didn’t stop this transmission of sound, and it was this way that the sub-commander, formerly asleep, was waiting at attention when Commander Palmer knocked on the door.

“It’s open. Come in.”

The door creaked open, and the commander entered the room. He pushed the door shut lightly, but nevertheless it closed with a slamming sound.

“It happened again,” said Commander Palmer, looking Sub-commander Wilhelm in the eye, “and this time I recalled all the recruits.”

The two men stared at each other, trying to read each other’s thoughts. They’d been friends since they first went through the trials together in Logan Camp, and conversation had become a formality between them. They could each predict each other's actions to a degree that many of the soldiers serving under them found unsettling, and the chief had found to make them effective as leaders.

“Need a drink?” said Sub-commander Wilhelm.

“Not while I’m on duty, Joffrey,” replied Commander Palmer.

The sub-commander shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned to the wall to the left of the door and pulled out a glass bottle filled with a cloudy, yellowish liquid from the small cabinet that was hanging from it.

“The techs in the chem lab distilled this stuff. They said it’s supposed to taste like banana.”

“Does it?” inquired Commander Palmer, non-chalantly crossing his arms.

“Maybe rotten banana,” replied sub-commander Wilhelm, smiling as he took out a small glass from the same cabinet and poured himself some of the liquid

Palmer sat down in the wooden chair situated in front of Wilhelm’s desk. Wilhelm sat in a similar chair behind his desk, taking a sip of his drink. He cringed. “It’s disgusting, but it’s all I’ve got.” He sighed, and then paused, his brain switching gears.
“The governing board isn’t going to be happy with what you did, Flynn.”

“I know. But this time it was different.” He paused. “I have proof that we're right.”

“What kind of proof?”

“When Miller radioed to confirm the death, we got a reply.”

“The recruit replied?”

“No.”

There was a long silence.

“Shit..." replied Wilhelm, his voice trailing off.

“And it wasn’t just any reply. The crazy sounded like he was hunting or something. Like he thought he was a recruit trying to get a kill. It was weird. I sent Stoly to get the body. I bet we’ll see that it’s been decapitated like the others.”

“And the other camps have denied involvement?”

“This just happened, so I haven’t had the chance to ask them about this incident, but I’m sure they will. After what I heard just now, though, I’m inclined to believe them.”

Wilhelm dropped  his head in his palm, before looking up again. “You do understand what that means, right? We’re going to testify before the governing board that, contrary to what they've known to be true since the founding of Logan Camp, some of the crazies are intelligent, and are capable of actively stalking and killing people if they want to.”

“Is it really that insane of a theory, though? Before I came down here, I’d heard of cases where crazies were successfully treated. If they can be treated, it makes sense that it’s a non-permanent condition with varying degrees of severity, right? Plus, this is the fifth fucking time this has happened, and THIS time, we have an audio recording that proves something is up. ”

Wilhelm shook his head. “This won’t be easy to sell, Flynn. They'll be pissed you interrupted the trials."

“Which is why you’re going to talk to them alone, Wilhelm. They will hate me for messing up their ‘young child into the wilderness to become an adult’ ritual, and the whole thing will drag on with nothing getting resolved. You, however, as sub-commander, had nothing to do with interrupting their trials, and they'll be forced to hear you out. You don't need to convince them that what I did was right; you can throw me under the bus for all I care. You just need need to convince them that we need to look into this further. The point of the trials is to get newbies acquainted with how life is down in the shelter by killing a mindless zombie, not to get tracked and slaughtered by a calculating serial killer.”

Wilhelm downed the rest of his drink and cringed for a moment. “It was me that came up with this theory in the first place, right? After the first three incidences?”

“You were pretty drunk, but yes, it was your idea and this is your chance to follow through. Maybe once this is all over you’ll get promoted. Just get the governing board to agree to investigate this further and to hold off on any more trials until we get this resolved.”
"They'll need a reason for you not being in attendance."
"I'll be sleeping. Make sure that's enough."

“Fine. I’ll draft a presentation tonight and call an emergency session in the morning. Looks like sleep will have to wait.”

“Don't stress out about it too much. The facts are on our side. I’m going to get back to the command room and make sure the recruits made it back okay, then I’ll go down to the staging area to debrief them.”

“Good luck Flynn.”

“You too, Joffrey.”

Commander Palmer stood up, dusted off his jacket and walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

The Shelter: Initiation (I)

            Derwin crept along the dilapidated railway running through the residential zone of the bomb shelter beneath the twenty third century metropolis of Chicago. It was pitch black, with a only a piercing white light coming from from his salmon-colored environmental suit's helmet to guide the way. He walked over hillocks of debris, ground down from large piles of building rubble by years of insect and microbial activity. He carried wearily his ancient AK-47 assault rifle, holding it close to his chest, constantly looking left, right, and behind him, peaking around large pieces of rubble, and stopping every fifty feet to listen and feel for movement. The repetitive motions made him tire, but he didn't care. He couldn't afford to be taken by surprise by one of the many different abominations living in the abandoned underground city.

            The creatures were the result of a government city restoration project. After the great war was over and the population had moved back on to the surface, tons of heavier-than-air toxic gas was pumped into the city-sized space to make it completely uninhabitable, and all the entrances were sealed off. Unfortunately, human nature took its course, and secret (and sometimes non-so-secret) entrances were drilled into the ground, and people started resettling the shelter. The people settling the shelter wore environmental suits to get around, and procured, mostly by stealing, air filters that would enable them to live in the gas-filled underground world.
           Unfortunately, technology doesn't always work; air filters failed, and suits malfunctioned. People were routinely exposed to the gas. If it was a short exposure, they'd develop boils and temporary breathing problems. Most often, however, the exposure was not short,and death was the result. A minority of those exposed for a long time were able to live through the physical damage caused by the gases, but mentally they were scarred. They went crazy, turning cannibalistic, sadistic, and many other -istics that no one would ever want to have to think about. The general policy was to shoot when it happened, but hesitation would lead to the "crazies" escaping, taking shelter in one of the many abandoned tenements making up the shelters. The only thing that kept the sane inhabitants safe were various gangs that took control of the various districts within the city-beneath-a-city and brought law and order to the area, often through draconian measures.
            Derwin had recently joined a gang that had, in his opinion, a cruel initiation practice. It was their philosophy that one was only worth what they contribute to the gang, and if a member couldn't contribute the death of one of the lunatics haunting the dungeon and live to tell about it, they might as well be worthless. As far as Derwin was concerned the "philosophy" was bullshit, but he didn't have a choice. Being alone in the old shelters was being a dead man walking. There were of course stories of "badasses" that survived in the shelters on their own, shooting first and asking questions later, and thriving on the money of gangs that wanted people dead or something stolen. However, there were far more stories of people thinking they were badasses, only to have something horrific happen to them when they tried to demonstrate their badassery.
            Derwin was not a badass and he knew it. He was just a guy who'd made some poor choices in life, and he was scared. His AK-47 would do him no good if one of these lunatics charged him and ripped open his suit. He might kill the thing, but one hole is all it would take to get killed (or worse) by the dungeon gases.

He'd been walking for two hours, and the longer he walked the more nervous he became. More than once he'd heard a strange sound, responded with a hail of bullets, only to find that he'd shot some small rodent or giant insect skittering through the debris.

     After another half hour of walking aimlessly and not seeing any hint of his quarry, he decided that he would enter one of the abandoned ten story metal tenements still standing in the residential zone. These tenements used to house the citizens of Chicago, back when the dungeons were used as a massive bomb shelter. If there were going to be crazies hiding anywhere, they would most likely be there, waiting for someone to errantly stumble in. It was dangerous; small spaces were the best way to get killed, but he needed to accomplish his mission soon as he was getting very tired.

      Derwin steeled himself and walked into a building at random, and almost immediately he was ambushed by a crazy jumping out of a room to his left. Derwin fired his weapon on full-auto as the creature's arms and legs prepared for a deathly embrace. The creature fell short of Derwin, and ran off further into the building as Derwin tried to catch his breath. His heart was pounding.

     After collecting his wits, he decided head down the hallway the creature went. The dust was thick in the building, and Derwin's light didn't illuminate more than a few feet in front of him. Much to his relief, it didn't take long for Derwin to find the creature dead in the main hallway only twenty feet from where it first attacked him.

      After congratulating himself on his victory, he went about the business of beheading the unfortunate soul he'd just killed, as he'd need proof he succeeded in his task. It was a tough process, especially considering the fact that Derwin's knife was quite dull. He spent a good five to ten minutes cutting through the cloth of the environmental suit alone. He then threw the helmet to the side. Cutting the head off was much more difficult. The skin of the creature was very leathery and dry. It came apart like silk. Cutting through the trachea and blood vessels proved to be more difficult. The hardest was the spinal column, taking him a solid four minutes to get through it.

     After he was done, he held the head of the crazy in his hand, reflecting on what we he had done. What he had done was killed another human being. It was a crazy human being, sure, but still had the same rights as anyone else. In a more peaceful world, maybe it could have gotten treatment and lived a fulfilling life. But not in the dungeon. Never in the dungeon.

            Derwin's preoccupation with his kill made him oblivious to the sounds of footsteps a mere seventy feet from where he was sitting. They weren't very subtle, either. They echoed through the hallway, but he ignored them, only focusing on his butchering.

            It is quite unfortunate that if he had been paying even the slightest attention to his surroundings, he could have avoided the bullet that pierced the headpiece of his environmental suit.

            The bullet didn't manage to his body, but Derwin gasped in surprise, and inhaled the dungeon air. His body seize up, paralyzing him. He collapsed to the ground, his head resting on a wall, unable to move anything except for his eyes. He had no illusions about what would come next, and his life began to flash before his eyes. From his childhood in the upper levels of the city, to his gambling addiction, to his arrival in the dungeon, he reflected on the choices that led him to lay dying in an abandoned building in a long-forsaken city.
            He heard footsteps approach him, and after a few moments, a ghoulish figure appeared above him. It was wearing an environmental suit with no headpiece on, and its face was marked with burns, rashes, and cuts. It was so deformed that it looked like a cheap polypropylene mask. Its eyes were cold and lifeless, and they moved separately from one another. The monster looked at the severed head in Derwin's hand.

"looks like I got two for one", it said gleefully. It's voice was gurgling, as if it had fluid in its throat.

            The crazy took out a large hunting knife and flipped a switch on it. The knife began to vibrate and buzz. With one swift motion, the lunatic drew the knife across Derwin's environmental suit, slicing through it with ease. It sliced through Derwin's neck even easier, only snagging a little bit upon hitting his vertebrae. The creature then grabbed Derwin's head in one hand, and the head of the Derwin's bounty in the other, and pranced off into the darkness.