The dark cell part 1 of 5.

This is the first of 5 chapters of "The dark cell", my story with tanks and monsters, and maybe kitties in power armor.

The dark cell.

 01-05

The dead city was covered by the first snow of that winter. Only he kept track of the date: November, 8^th, year 2309, 07:30:45:009.

Many would look at him and call him an “it”, a monster, a mere machine, but he choose to address himself as a male individual, with a name, Dark Cell 208809.78#NXZ. When some humans were still around, they called him DK, Dee Kay.

He missed the humans, the ones who worked with him, not the ones who were classified as hostiles or civilians, those were just annoying, running around and hiding in places his big body couldn’t fit.

He was big, three times the size of an old Abrahams tank, with energy-reactive crystal armor, capable of withstanding a direct hit  of one hundred thirty five kilotons, barely indestructible, I mean, to conventional weapons.

His memory accessed file 0900029030029-1A, the moment he was hit by a rail gun ultra-thin crystal kinetic projectile with a depleted uranium core, and he remembered the pain of the wound, processed and quantified in more than  fifty thousand errors and damages reports (gladly none critical). He felt something similar to relieve while accessing the subsequent file, with his counter attack, a volley of his main weapon, the MK989-350mm energy gun. The image of the anti tank vehicle bursting into superheated metallic vapors brought a feeling of relieve, safety, not vengeance. He wasn’t a vengeful war-machine.

The rays of sun started to piece the dark clouds and rained over the city, a beautiful view, pondered DK. But he had work to do.

OPERATION THOR: directive 9819299190000012#L12, search and destroy all hostiles, time elapsed, 13.140 days, three hours, twenty minutes, four seconds.

He checked his mission data, and thousands of maps, videos, voice recordings and numbers flooded his cyber mind. Bottom line, he confirmed the destruction of 177.092.445 hostiles.

He loaded the encrypted information and transmitted it to the support-satellite. In the old days, while humans were still around, they would give him feedback on his progress, sometimes cold reports asking for more incisive actions, other times a cheerful complement (and he missed those last ones). Now he got nothing but raw information on possible targets. Sometimes he tried to talk to other machines, but most of them didn’t had the intelligence to talk back like humans, and the others never developed a personality, like he did, so they were cold and distant.

Sad and lonely, he accessed the memory file 01076433302-F: His favorite human, Hudson, Michele, mechanic. The red haired girl with short hair and freckles was in her early twenties, who had beautiful green eyes. She was up-grading his optical sensors on his main sensor tower. Sweat and grease  covered her joyful face.

-Easy… almost done Deek. Ok, how is it?

-No software related issues detected, new hardware working perfectly on its specifications. I confirm an increase of 39 to 43% in my long range fine targeting capability and a boost of 60% in my wide specter scanning capabilities.

The girl smiled even more, and with motherly pride, pated DK on the top of his sensor tower. His nano pressure sensors registred every micron of her skin touching him, and he felt strangely warm, even with his temperature systems working perfectly accordingly within specifications. He was happy to see that she was happy.

-That’s my boy! Now get ready to run some field tests, some military will follow it from distance, and it will include real targets and live ammo. Make mommy proud!

-I will Michele.

She frowned. And looking sad, asked:

-Michele?

Worried with her feelings, he decided, again, to suppress the official name designation code and mended:

-Sorry, I will make you proud mom!

She laughed and gave him a little kiss, smiling happily:

- You already do Dee! You are such a good boy!

He felt so happy, so proud of himself, so motivated. His sensors saved the print of her lips against his armor. That was his more precious memory file, more even than his access and control codes.

Soon he was heading to his field test: first he boarded the unmanned air transport, its cargo area refited to accommodate him with few centimeters to spare.

-Dark Cell, we have confirmation on a hostile force moving outside the urban area of Narita. Five possessed tanks, all level 7, two hundred infested soldiers, all above level 9. The auto-defense systems can’t hold their advance for much longer. Narita is one of our main center of weapon industries, and have a large settlement of refugees. Protect our industrial capabilities is your first mission objective, all collateral damages, structural and human must be minimal. You will be fast-dropped north-west of lake Inba-numa, then you must procced south. The enemy is holding both ends of it’s bridge. Heavy suppressive fire is expected, but causing damage  to  the bridge is unaceptable. For this you will test your new long range fine targeting, and snipe any enemy forces there. At least two tanks are there all the time, and 90 soldiers.

-Once you accomplish destroying enemy forces at the bridge, proceed east. Regular troops will follow from east and secure the bridge. Be aware of their location prior and after the attack so we don’t have any friendly fire incident.

-Understood.

- At east, a dense residential area. Civilians have been evacuated, the enemy control it completely. A heavy carpet bombing with incendiary charges would clean the area, but we are already on the limit of our capacity to sustain refugees. We cant afford to loose the housing and hospitals in this zone, so you will proceed to a cleaning operation, seeking minimal damage to the structures. Its very important that you move carefully and quickly, once a important industrial area are nearby. Is under our control by now. The Highway marked in your map is the line that separate friendly and enemy zones, so when you reach the center of the residential area you will have friendly forces at west and east. Once you clean this area, move south, across the remains of the Azuma Elementary school, were the major enemy forces are engaging our auto defense forces. Expect heavy resistance.

-Understood.

-Once you destroy the hostile units you will patrol the area until new orders are designed to you.

-Understood.

Far away, on an underground military complex, executives and generals watch the operation unfold.

-So this is the latest model. You think it can turn things in our favor?

-If it can’t, nothing else can, general.

-… Is better work.

-It will.

The transporter flew low and fast, as the rear door opened. But before DK could be ejected, a beam of red energy hit the plane, that bursts in a scarlet ball of fire, crashing at the edge of the lake.

-Dammit… If you think the army is going to pay for that lost bot…

-No “lost bot”. watch.

Melted metal touch the waters as clouds of smoke and vapor covers the crashing point. Suddenly, a roaring sound resonate over the chaos and destruction. Powerful metal threads crush debris like paper, as the metallic behemoth crawl out of the fire, undamaged.

His body is covered with armor and weapons. With his sensors, keen far beyond human, he scans the area and find two possessed tanks and twenty six infected soldiers. He weights his options and priorities. He could literally level the city, but take it back with minimal damage demanded finesse. He actives his 20mm rail gun, and loaded two high explosion soft point shells.

-What?!? Soft shells against possessed tanks?!?- A old general shout, pointing the deformed enemy at the screen, something dark and slime that growth around and inside a old leopard 9F tank. Dark appendices who sometimes looked like branches, sometimes like spider legs covered its structure in a nightmarish way, with the barrel of his main weapon, a 200mm ballistic cannon mutated into a supernatural energy cannon, still glowing red hot from its previous fire.

-Those soft shells are anti personnel ammo, your silly tank is going to waste its shells and burn the bridge down in the …

But before the general could end ranting, two fast shots, followed by explosions were heard.

The possessed tanks were reduced to burning flesh and metal.

-How…

Now was the sound of  Michelle sounding on the speakers.

-He shot both shells directly inside the barrels of the paranormal energy cannons. A respectable test, considering it was over 300 meters away and its targets were moving…He isn’t stupid general… Not at all.

Now his attention was on the infected soldiers, creatures who in the past were regular soldiers in advanced protection armors, turned into monsters; The infected tissue grown like a tumor, deforming its host beyond recognition. The only thing that gave them a human-like shape was the armor, now their skin. A tube, like a proboscis of a insect dangled from side to side, waving it’s small snake tongue from left to right. Dark eyes grew from its forehead like mushrooms on a rotten carcass. They still had the good AK-909 rifles, but the infected skin covered it, turning the gun into a living extension of their arms.

DK carefully marked the small unarmored section on their faces and selected thirty two incendiary rounds in his six barrel electric 8.75mm machine gun. Two rounds to each hostile. He fire a quick, almost continuous burst, correcting the angle of the gun so fast and so precisely that all enemies were hit in no more than two seconds. They fell dead on the floor, their heads in flames, bursting gulps of disgusting dark and viscous blood.

The horrid spectacle made the room silent. A man in a expensive Italian suit smiled with satisfaction as the military started to drop jaws in awe at the demonstration.

-See gentlemen, we invested much time and effort to develop our “Dark Cell” unit, and our goal was to craft a war-machine with unprecedented fire power and precision, after all, this war will not be won though mere numbers or raw brute force. The hostiles infect dead and alive, turning soldiers and citizens in new infected troopers, each one capable to turn others alike. They also take control of our machinery: Any vehicle can be possessed and turn in a biomechanical entity that defies our scientific knowledge. All that without mentioning the weapons they use.

In the wide screen, DK advanced directly through the waters. His powerful engines displacing tons of water like it was nothing. The wave he created hit the bridge, washing several corpses away. Now DK moved carefully around the bridge.

-See how smart and prudent our product is: Professor Michele Hudson, the creator of this machine, please can you explain to our guests what DK is doing?

-Gladly. DK is the most advanced AI ever designed using a original mind technique. Other AI’s cores are based in organic brains, from humans to mice. Those AI’s are actually softwares developed to emulate a previously existing organic structure, therefore they are limited, slow to learn, waste too much time and effort to replicate a structure that is prone to disaster and flaw. Not our DK. He use a neural-network that evolved from a original design. It’s core is unique, far more intelligent, emotional responsive, with great capability to supposition, imagination and learning. He is to other Artificial Intelligences what  a ordinary AI is to a abacus.

The men stand there, marvelous at it, watching how naturally he searched the bridge and destroyed several IED’s well hidden in the structure.

-The hardware is also revolutionary. Let’s start from outside, where a revolutionary crystalline mesh alloy is blended with state of art ceramics and tungsten reinforced steel, completely developed by a Double Zero process: All materials are crafted in zero-g environment in our orbital factories, then slowly refrigerated to absolute zero. The result is the most perfect structure ever manufactured. But its not all. Look at the screen.

Dk stopped, a small barrel of  steel aimed itself at the ground. Suddenly a shockwave irradiated from it, visible only due to the water and dust it agitated.

-Sonar cannon. As an offensive weapon can resonate in specific frequencies that can turn bones into splinters, or all buildings in a 300 meter radius in dust. As an sensor, its allow our unit to have 3D imagery of any solid structure. The perfect, functional X-ray vision, you could say, but with sound. And its not all. Every inch of his armor, threads included, is covered by a network of pressure and temperature sensors, that give him over thousand times the tact sensibility of the human skin. It also works as passive sonar, using environmental sounds to generate images. His own threads and engines against the ground allow him to pinpoint a single individual in a ten thousand crowd, just by the shape of his feet, obtained through sound waves resonating on the ground, in a radius of six kilometers. The water and the ground become his ears and eyes.

And a new screen opened. A perfect 3D map generated only by the sound of Dee Kay’s engines, showing vehicles, structures and even people. They were stunned to see the image of their own troop’s trough his sensors, like a live long range ultrasound.

-It’s…very impressive… It could solve our problems in identifying cover agents between refugees…

-It could and it will general. We are already in the late stages of a long range, man-portable ground sonar just like it…

A artificial voice sounded:

-First objective accomplished, proceeding with operation.

His voice had the same tone from before, but now the impact of his speech was greater, now the men in the meeting room watched silently and with satisfaction.

Away from there, Professor Michelle, AKA “mom”, rolled her eyes at the men in uniform. Idiots, she think, so damn limited and narrow minded. Wasted hundreds of millions lives and bankrupted economies with the “conventional warfare”, with the “nuclear intervention”, and with “strategic withdraws”.

He look at the screen monitoring the operation and smiled: Dark Cell was the only option now. Better later than never.

-Come on boy! Give them hell! - he shouts at me -Let’s paint the world rrrrred!!HAHAHA!

I try to cover my ears and dodge the disgusted looks on the subway, and I almost run when I get to my stop.

-Wrong direction boy! They are all back THERE not over HERRREE…

He never stops laughing, day and night, his face white, bald, a black white striped suit, those yellow eyes and that mouth full of razor sharp teeth.

-We could have fun, but no, here are you, straight back to home, to take those stupid pills. RrrrRRight…My poor boy is an ssscaredy cat.

-Shutupshutupshutupshutup. You are just a voice in my head and all voices in my head are my voices so when I say to shut up you shut up, now shutupshutup…!

I dash in my filthy, claustrophobic, apartment. I hate it.

-Ohh! I am a VOICE in your head and I belong to you?! Oh well, look at the bright side, it means we belong together, and that we will stay like that forever and everrr! Delicious! Simply de-li-ci-ous! Hmm so tasty! See, we both know you will brake at any moment, then we will have FUN.

I bash my hand on the wall. It bleeds and the buzz in my head deafens his everlasting laughs. The smell of blood is too much to me to take… Shacking I drag my feet to the kitchen and swallow more pills than I was supposed to, like I do most times. Soon it hit me good, and I can barely reach my old, smelly bed before falling sleep in the pharmaceutical haze that don’t send him away, but still, make him behave nicely for the night.

I wake up. The radio clock mark 4:00 am with its glowing red numbers, my head burst in pay and laugher.

-Darrrling! Get up and see, in the strrreet, something nice to you…

I feel compelled to obey. His hands feel so real, more real than usual. I look down, in the street a single little girl, cant be older than 9. But she is NOT normal:

The pale skin is like white paint, the eyes are two small glowing beads, yellow, deep in the eye sockets. Mouth like a beak, fingers are snakes, colorful and dark. I don’t want to see it anymore, I need more pills!

-Stay put son, that’s little Mary, oh Mary! She agreed in come all way herrrre from… your…mind, to help you to man up a little! Look, you can see across the street, that bum who always scare you shitless, and that call you crrrazy? That MOCK you?

His hand now is solid and cold as steel, pressing my head against the window, I can’t break free. I watch the little monstrous girl waltz to the sleepy bum.

I can see clearly as the thin colorful snakes that are her fingers move into his nostrils. He wake up, scared shitless. I am scared too. He open his mouth, but no scream come out, just a torrent of thin snakes, hundreds, they bite his flesh, ripping off the skin of his bones. Oh my god, there is no ending to it. His abdomen is shredded from inside. And a very tall figure emerges. Its blonde and use nothing but a boxer-short. His hands are two clown heads with huge demented eyes. Now both stare at me, the girl, the boxer, I want it to stop. I try to break free, but them, they are all gone. He too, isn’t there anymore to hold me still. I am bleeding from my nose. I cant stand the blood. I took a handful of pills and I awake only two days later. As usual, no one missed me, no one looked for me.

As I open my eyes and sit on my bed, terror overwhelms me as I see not only him, but so many others. Mary, The boxer with heads of clowns as hands, a man with a dog head in the stomach and a bear trap as mouth, his skin stretched over it; A fat woman with two heads and ape feet. All so white, all so terrible. He come for me, jumps in the bed and holds me down, still:

-Hello my dear kitty!! Look how many new frrrieds I found forrr us, they were all there, in your mind! Oh we have such imagination!

He drag me by my apartment, I can’t escape his grasp, is it real or a delirium? I don’t know, I just want it to stop. As we leave my apartment, I see hundreds more of those demons from my mind, deformed and insane. The streets, covered in blood and gore, corpses lay mutilated, and the smell: Blood, I don’t think I can’t take it anymore!

There are so many, they all look at me, so insane, they offer me gifts, limbs hacked from their victims, guts ripped off and tapestry made of bloody skin. A scepter  from a broom covered with blood and ornamented with finger nails. Flesh still hang from them. A crown made of foreheads and teeth, tied together with barbed wire is fixated to my head. A huge cloak, made of thousands and thousands of human scalps is tied around my shoulders. In the middle of the city, thousands of them, no, millions: Am I so insane?

He sit me on a throne made of old chairs and tongues, then lean over me to speak cordially:

-First yes, you this crazy my boy! That’s fine, we love you for that, so much! Second, we waited forr you, but you took so long… So we started the parrrrrty without you, please don’t be… MAD at us!

A deafening roar of thousands laughters exploded.

-But now my dear general, we cant wait anymore. You see, there are a world out there… and we totally want it! We want to see it burrrrrn. And is like you said, we are voices in your head… Your voices…What means that YOU want it. So no more fooling around, lets get down to business!

He throw me on the ground and drag me to a cage, filled with people, living people. They are crying, naked and horrified at my inner monsters.

He grab a pistol and give it to one of them. He hold it unsure of what to do. I can see his sanity sliping away.

My personal demon look at me and smiles:

-Never forget, I am you, and you are us. So I hope you wake up and starrrrrrt having some FUN!

The man pull the trigger, crying and laughing, until the gun is empty. I feel horror and joy. My demons is dead. But it mean I am dead too, part of me.

I jump over the man, and maul him with my fists. My mouth on his neck, my teeth on his jugular. The blood and the insanity, both flow beyond my control.

-It’s so tasty… Sorry my friend… But relax… I prrrromisse you, from now on it will be parrrty all day, and all night… until this world burns to the bones… KIDS: is PARTY TIME!

The one who felt dead wasn’t my demon, was my weak human side, in eternal denial. I choose it to die. It was so annoying. Scarredycatscarredycat… No more shutyourmouth…

I laugh, the world is mine.

Outside a padded room, a medic watches a man laugh hysterically, his face disfigured in a cruel smile, tied in his strait jacket.

-Well look like pills wont help this kitty anymore… Sorry son, I trried to put you back in line…Hmrrr

A pale man, bald, turn his back on the dement patient and walk away.

Fin.

FIVE DAYS.

 What I will tell here is the written account of an old friend, a man I assure was a skeptic, sane and trustworthy citizen, so I advise you to take those lines seriously.

To preserve the families, all the names from now on will be alias.

Back at the end of the 1999, a great blizzard hit the North America, causing a great deal of material damage and deaths.

One of the most affected areas was Toronto and its outskirts, where my friend Tom and his wife Megan had a comfy house on Georgina Island, one hour drive north from Toronto. With him traveled also an old family friend named Jeff, with his girlfriend Mary and her younger brother, Mark, a quiet and shy figure, recovering from depression.

They arrived for a two weeks vacation, two days before the blizzard. They knew a storm was coming, but they didn’t worry about it. Having a well built house, a stock of wood and anything else they could need, it was, to them, nothing more than a nuisance.

Tom even had his own small generator in case it needed.

Everyone was having a good time, even Mark, who to our surprise, and to Mary pride, was a spectacular photographer of the wild. In two days he managed, no one is sure how, to get a vast collection of pictures of the Island wild life. Tom only worried about him going around alone, but Mark was a cautious and inflexible individual, so he would keep going in his photo hunts, at least until the snow storm begun.

The morning of the third day was dark and gloomy, and it hit Mark the worst, or so Tom assumed at the time. He would stay alone in his room staring at the windows for hours. At the meals he would just nod at any question or comment. At 16:30h, his behavior growth stranger. He stood in the window by the door, looking outside and shivering.

His sister was concerned and asked him:

-Mark, is everything all right? Are you sick?

-Mary… I… I don’t know how to put it without sounding like a crazy person, but since last night I feel that someone is stalking us…

Jeff, who was bothered at Mark’s behavior, which he at the time called as “party pooping in his pants for nothing” simple told him to “stop imagining things, no one would be outside in such weather”.

-Jeff! How can you be so sure, did you at least look outside?

Was an empty but very delicate question: Mary raised Mark after her mother abandoned them, and his father, who had to work some time for weeks away, couldn’t be present. She had this mother feeling toward her little brother, and as any mother she would start a fight with anyone who looks wrong at her child. But outside the snowstorm was already a deadly predator: Visibility was near to zero, and the temperature kept dropping.

To ease thing among the couple, Tom’s wife, Megan, suggested that they all could give a look outside, after all, the island was a tourist resort, and it could be a lost camper. Jeff, who know better than pick a fight over something as sensible as Mary little brother seeing shadows in the snow, agreed.

They kept looking for few minutes, and even Mary accepted that it was the storm playing tricks with her brother. Hurt and still afraid of something, Mark went back to his room, on first floor and spent the rest of the day with his FD-91 digital camera

At night, before dinner, the blizzard was almost at its peak. Mark went down to dinner and eated in silence.

At the morning of the fourth day, the electricity had been cut, and their cars, kept in an old barn converted to a garage, were already impossible to reach, and even if they could get to them, they would be useless under so much snow.

Tom started the generator and just before the breakfast, Mark dashed down from his room to the kitchen, grabbed his sister, and took her to his room. Jeff was already pissed off with Mark, and Tom and Megan where speechless.

-Mark! Mark! What’s wrong?!

-I will show you! He tried to get inside my room! I took pictures of him! He thought I was sleeping or something!

In his room, he took the cam and showed the pictures to Mary. Jeff annoyed looked at them too, but with disdain.

-There’s nothing but snow on those photos Mark! Can you grow up a little and let us enjoy this trip?

Mark, angry, got his camera, selected a picture and pointed something on it to his sister:

-Look here, See it?

Everyone looked at it. Was a picture he took from the window, aimed to something beside it, out the house. Was barely impossible to identify if it was snow or… Something else.

Was like a face made of snow, a disfigured snow man, blurred. Two small black eyes …Simply disturbing

Mark claimed it was some kind of monster, Jess ignored him. Mary kept the camera with her and would stare at it for hours. Tom and his wife didn’t took sides, but when no one was looking, they double checked the locks on every window and door, “just to be sure”, Tom would say.

The dinner was a silent one, the kind of silence that is part awkward, part cautious. They didn’t knew what to say, at the same time they were alert to any strange sound, a futile effort on that point of the storm.

Close to midnight, a loud crash followed by a scream woke everyone. It was from Mark’s room. Mary was the first to arrive, and she would had entered if Jeff didn’t held her.

Tom opened the door, with a baseball bat in one hand and tried to turn the lights on.

-Mark!? Mark! It’s me, Tom! Are you all right?

A fierce growl exploded and a strange white and gray creature jumped over tom.

Good old Tom.

Almost became a pro baseball player, but he injured his knee five years before. But he swung that aluminum bat so fast it looked like a silver blur, straight on that thing’s face. They heard a loud snapping sound, the creature neck breaking as the bat bended and Tom wrists almost broke from the strength of his own attack. When small, Tom had the dream of someday play for the Mets; the Mets may never know what great player they lost.

Mary and Megan screamed in panic, Jeff too, exploded in a name-calling storm:

-FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCKING SHIT FUCK! OH GOD!

Mary, afraid for her little brother safety, jumped over the carcass of the unbelievable creature and disappeared in the darkness.

Soon she started to shout and ask for help.

They entered and found Mark severely wounded, unconscious and laying on a pool of his own blood. 

Everyone gathered and helped to carry him to the living room; Megan picked the first aid kit, some blankets and clean sheets and started to tend to his wounds.

Megan had only a basic training as a nurse, from several years before, and Mike situation looked very serious. Tom dialed 9-1-1 on the wire, but it wasn’t working. Everyone tried the cell phones, but they weren’t any good either. Mary was desperate, and Jeff had to literally hold her, or she would collapse right there, in front of her dying brother.

Later Tom would describe Mark as “a man mauled by a savage animal, like a puma or a tiger. The creature appeared to bite his throat in order to hold him tight, and then swung him around the room to break as many bones it could, and finally attacked him with razor sharp claws.”

They had forgotten about the half human, half beast creature, until a loud “thump” sounded in the floor above. Still holding his bent aluminum bat Tom were the first to talk:

-I think…we should go see if that thing is really dead…

-No Tom! It’s dangerous!

-I know Megan! But stay with …with…with that thing crawling around is more dangerous!

In the end they decided that Jeff and Tom would go upstairs and check the fiendish creature.

Tom exchanged his baseball bat for a sharp axe he used to chop wood, and Jeff took a shovel and a flash light. Carefully both men climbed to the first floor; Tom was the first to realize that the creature was gone, and without taking his eyes from the corridor whispered to Jeff:

-Jeff, it’s gone!

-What is gone?

-What?! The goddamn thing is gone!

-How!? I thought you broke its neck!

-Well yeah, I and my bat thought that too, but I’m afraid that a broken neck wasn’t enough, shit!

-What we do?

-What can we do? On the ground floor there are only two doors to close, one to the generator cabin, the other to the basement, and both places must be far below zero by now…We can’t leave either, the snow is already above knee-high and the blizzard is still strong as fuck! We won’t make to the city, shit; we would probably die before even getting to the cars…

-So what Tom? We hunt that thing?

-It’s not like I’m happy about it, but damn, what else can we do? Mark is in bad shape, we can’t drag him to a subzero basement like that.

-Well, its probably wounded, isn’t? The thing, I mean. We can beat it right? There are two of us against one of…it.

The sound of something crashing inside Mark’s room made both men freeze. Tom whispered:

-Jeff, I’m going ahead, for everything holy in this fucking world, don’t you take your eyes of this corridor. I don’t want to have that creature jumping in our backs by surprise…

Tom silently moved to the door, still wide open. The cold air and snow were like razorblades cutting them. The room was totally dark; the only source of light was the light coming from the corridor, and as Tom got closer to the door, his own shadow would turn the room darker and darker. Tom entered. He saw something vague, moving strangely. Afraid and with the adrenaline pumping, he jumped over the vague figure and stroked it with his axe, hitting it in the first attempt. But he found no resistance: his axe went right through it and Hit the wooden floor, where it got stuck.

-Shit! Shit!

Afraid, Jeff entered, and tripping found the lights. What they saw was nothing more than bed sheets blown away by the strong wind.

Jeff laughed:

-Well, I think it was a nice practice…

-Jeff, would you please watch the door?!

Took lest than a minute to free the axe, and Tom had just turned to the door, when it jumped directly over Jeff.

Jeff couldn’t scream, but his thorn throat exploded in a blood eruption with a deep inhuman chirp. Jeff’s body barely shacked. Tom would later say to me he thought he died instantly, or at least he hoped so.

The beast was mauling Jeff, his back turned to Tom, who saw that his neck had swollen, like it was still injured, but healing. Tom did not hesitate.

This time he cut off the monster’s head, which felt forward, still attached to the body by a thin string of skin and flesh. The blood, very dark, gushed three times high enough to hit the ceiling and the wall. It eventually felt over Jeff’s dead body.

Tom told me that he felt no joy on killing that monster. Jeff was his best friend, and now he was dead. Crying he cursed the monster and proceed to axe its body into shreds, splitting head, arms and torso in dozen of pieces. He took a blanket in Mark’s room, and carefully wrapped Jeff in it. As he cried, he took Jeff downstairs. He told me that later he would notice some kind of smoke or mist coming from the creature, and at some time he actually saw small parts of the creature turning into smoke as he took care of the corpse of his best friend.

Downstairs, Megan was shacking so hard she barely could stand up. Mary had already collapsed. Both girls didn’t saw the attack, but they clearly heard everything.

-Jeff…?

-He…is dead Megan.

-Oh, Tom!

Megan burst in tears but hold herself up, and gathering some strength, she informed something equally sad:

-Tom…Mark… didn’t make. His wounds were too deep…

Now was Tom who burst in tears. Placing his best friend on the floor he, bend on his knees and cried.

-Goddamn!! God damn…Why…what’s going on!?! Jeff, mark…it was supposed to be our holyday vacations!!! Why this shit had to happen to us? To Jeff…Mary…!

Megan nodded.

-She already know. I think it was for the best, if she had heard what I heard… I think she would collapse…

Megan put her arms around a blood stained Tom, and comforted him; it was 01:20h of the fifth day.

Megan and Tom tended to Mary, and put her in a sofa close to the fire place, no one feel safe enough to go back upstairs and sleep. After, they wrapped Mark’s body and took it and Jeff’s to the basement, which was cold and dark. Tom described the scene like something that would be marked with fire in his mind and would never let go of him until the day he die: He there, under the flickering light, in front of him, in a large wooden table, the bodies of two good men, good friends, people he cared about. He couldn’t understand anything.

Here I would like to say that Tom was a good man, and one of the bravest guys I ever met. When his parents died in a car crash, he just had finished college and had two younger sisters still studying. His dad had a couple mortgages to pay and Tom was in his first job as engineer. He become the man of the family, worked in three different jobs at the same time, from designing to delivering pizza, and kept his sisters studying and out of the harms way. He only allowed himself to cry or feel tired in his younger sister graduation. He was one of those types of man.

As he climbed the stairs back to the kitchen and locked the door behind him, he decided to go up and double check everything. Megan wasn’t happy about the idea of having her husband wandering around a place that could be full of monsters, but they had no choice. The first thing he saw when he got to the first floor was puddles of black ooze with a hideous stench where the carcass of the monster was before. It simply melted, like it was truly made of snow.

He double checked every single inch of the first floor, and locked all doors. Then he went back to the ground floor and barricaded the doors. He had decided to nail some wooden boards at the windows. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to his wife.

-I will go down and grab a hammer and some nails, I will be right back.

He opened the door and turn the lights on, but he saw that his friends weren’t there anymore.

He  froze.

 The shattered sheets on the floor, a strange and unpleasant smell in the air… Another creature?

He step back, and saw two figures in a corner. It was hideous caricature of his deceased friends.

The arms and legs longer, the body thinner, slender… The faces inhuman but still recognizable. Claws bursting through shoes and hands, the skin, rugged, white and still dead.

The eyes, now small dark beads aimed at Tom, who closed the thick door just before they reach it. The door was resisting, but only god knew for how long.

-Megan! Go upstairs; lock yourself and Mary in our room! Barricade yourselves in anyway you can!

Tom dragged the table and a small closet full of pans in front of the basement door, while the monsters who once were his friends growled on the other side.

Megan did what Tom asked her to do: with tears rolling her face, she dragged Mary upstairs.

At the same time one monstrous hand crushed through the door and almost hit Tom.

With the adrenalin rushing, he reached for the axe and without even thinking, cut of the arm, which fell dead at his feet. On the other side a monster’s cry, like a banshee, deafened Tom.

After that, the creatures become even more violent and dashed against the door time and time again. Tom didn’t had much time, his mind racing wild as he stood there, waiting for the shattered door to finally give in.

Tom told me he was aware that he wouldn’t make it alive. The only thing that made him stood there was his wife, upstairs. He decided to gamble with his own life.

When the creatures finally broke in, he ran into the door that leads to the generator shack. The generator itself was out of the house, in a small shack, but the previous owner built a corridor, so he could go in and out without exposing himself to the weather. He remembered that Megan always begged him to put that ugly corridor down, but he never did it.

-Sorry Meg, I guess it’s best later than never.

He kicked the door and faced the generator. He smashed the light and axed two of four gallons of gasoline who were there. In the dark, he felt the lighter in his pocket. He always kept it there, even not smoking. It was his father’s lighter after all.

The monsters growled again and he could hear them running through the narrow corridor. He could hear them breaking it as they dashed in.

They entered the generator room. And Tom hit the first one with the axe right in its forehead, sending brain matter over the following monster. He lit the old lighter and he discovered that the last monster, the one without an arm, was dressed like Jeff. He should have blown the shack with them inside, but the shock paralyzed him for a second.

The monster swung his cold arm hitting Tom, who flew through the small shack, hitting the wall, while his lighter fell close to the gasoline, still lit.

Tom told me later that what happened before was, somehow clouded in his mind.

He told me that he saw him and Jeff again, as kids, playing baseball: Jeff was the pitcher, Tom the batter:

-hey Tom! Heads up! I won’t take easy on you pal! You better hit this one with all you got!

He swore to me he could hear grown up Jeff voice too, clearly asking him for a last favor.

-Old pal, don’t miss that one, please. Hit it for both of us.

And he swung the axe faster than ever in his life.

The blade entered the shoulder, cut its way through its neck, and split the monster head in half.

Tom just sat there, as he watched both bodies melt.

He said only one thing:

-Thank you Jeff. Thank you.

But he had no time; he finally realized that the lighter was still lit. Tom turned only to see the gasoline about to touch the flames. He ran as fast as he could:

-Come on Tom! Do it like you used to do in the old times!

Was just enough time before the explosion burst a flame over his head.

The entire face of the house turned to the shack was scorched, but the blizzard prevented any fire or more serious consequences.

Later they were rescued, but no one could explain what truly happened. Everyone, including Mary told the authorities that Mark and Jeff had died in an accident on the generator shack. To Tom’s surprise, bones were found, human bones, incomplete, but without any sign of violence.

Just enough evidence to let them out of the hook.

Mary never discovered that his brother turned in a monster; they all thought it would be too much suffering to her.

Tom and Meg moved to Boston as soon as the investigations were closed. Before selling the land they had the house torn down. But they never set foot there again.

They had a couple of daughters, baseball fanatics, even without any influence of his dad, or so said Tom. Now they all go see at least one Game of the Mets, is their version of annual picnic. In April of 2010 Tom was driving home when a truck hit his car. He is still in coma. His body was in bad shape, but even now he is fighting. We only pray he wake up soon.

Mary was deeply affected: She started to study occultism and other strange things, and I say its nothing light as wicca: She was after some heavy stuff. Everyone lost contact with her in 2003, in June I think.

Tom told me the entire story because he didn’t liked the idea of lying to everyone about Jeff and Mark. To him was important to tell at least to one person all the truth.

Now I tell this story to you, because I had decided to look it with my own eyes. I’m going back to that Island, and from there I will look for Mary. So if I don’t come back, or if Tom doesn’t wake up, the story will remain alive.

10 METERS

10 Meters.

I was a member of a research crew, working on 3d mapping of the bottom of the ocean, right over the well know Bermuda triangle. Our job was to drag specialized sonars over a area from the size of Manhattan, and very deep. We worked night and day, and I unfortunately had to do night shifts like everyone else.

The job was simple as boring, once it collected raw data and not the images most people see on TV, once it was a new model, capable to use ultra-high sound waves to scan the bottom and underneath it. I was reading a comic book, and only looking at the screens every two or three minutes. At 3:00 AM, I read the sensors, depth: 1250 meters, all normal.

But at 4:30 AM the entire boat shook, and I, like many others, were thrown in the floor like dolls. In Bermuda triangle is supposed to exist sudden giant waves out from no where, who could sink any ship in seconds. As I get up confused, the sailors took control of the ship.

No one cared about me and the sonar readings, once we all were afraid of being sunk there, in the most mysterious waters of Earth. With my wrist hurting like hell I slowly climbed my console and saw the  crew running and screaming orders. But then, they suddenly stop. An absolute silence, broke only by the inhuman alarms set foot on the bridge. They were all frozen, looking in my direction, mouths open in disbelief, and faces pale in fear. I started to shiver, what I could possible done to cause such reaction?

But one pointed to someplace else, over my shoulder and talked, almost a whisper:

-What in God’s name is that?!?

I suddenly turned around, but I saw nothing but a wave, bursting through the bridge’s windows, flooding the room and dragging many men, to where I don’t know. I felt my shoulder hitting something that I supposed to be a table, and screamed.

I don’t know if I fainted or not, but I tried to get up, very dizzy, only one man was still there, dead, all the others fled. I could listen to screams outside, and I see with terror that was no boat left to me to use. Some sailors and researchers jumped in the brutal ocean, who crushed men and life boats alike.

I simple didn’t knew what was going on. Think clearly was too hard, I used my good hand to wipe something of my face, when I noticed my head was bleeding. I saw the radio, and crawled to it. The boat shook again and again, in a endless torture, hurting my almost broken body more and more. Finally I reach the radio and called for help.

I got up on my feet, trembling, to look at our GPS coordinates, when I saw something impossible: Two mountains, equal in shape, each one shaped like a needle and completely black slowly raised from the depths in front of us. I thought I was seen things.

I couldn’t be!

I look around and see other four mountains, or towers, two at our side, and two behind our ship. We were in the middle of some uncanny volcanic or tectonic phenomena of some kind. Something never seen before.

I sprinted to get my cam, it was destroyed. My mind raced, I had to document this colossal event some how! Then I remember, I was already doing it, the sonars were online.

The water proof system was gathering an absurd quantity of data from such event. I couldn’t think in those who had died, not in that moment. I cursed the fact I couldn’t see the images from it. But I still had the normal sensors of the boat. Once again I crawled to the ship’s sonar and I could read something even more dazzling.

The bottom of the ocean had emerged. It simple had emerged, from more than 4.000 feet, to 32. Ten mere meters, all that separated us from the bottom.

The terrain was rugged and I couldn’t see the end of it.

I was in shock, and I don’t know for how long I was there, frozen over the sonar, but one thing brought me back to the unforgiving reality: An island of pure black stone started to rise in front of  our ship, something like polish stone, or a dome of pure black velvet raised , challenging those first rays of sun light. It was Huge, no word to describe how big that was. I wondered if I had found the lost Atlantis, or worst if Atlantis had found me.

Suddenly a deep roaring sound, to loud, like a thunder that never stop resonating came from all directions.

I decided to put my life jacket, and jump out of the ship with the data. Maybe I could survive.

But fate had other plans to me: Before I could gather courage to thrown myself in the vicious ocean bellow me, the dome rotated and a structure of an absurd design appeared. I am a man who know the oceans, and it’s animals.

And what I saw was a perfect replica of the head of a sea turtle, in every small detail. The rugged skin, the round eye, the beak, the statue of a colossal turtle head, and its eye, so real, was aiming at me.

And then it blinked. I saw the nictitating membrane, so large it could cover a stadium blinking over eyes taller than a skyscraper, looking at me with no emotion, just dead calm and disinterest. I realized, I was nothing, in the same way people ignore the life of bugs and small plants while walking around, such titan ignored our existence, or should I say, it refused to acknowledge it

The beak opened again, and a roaring sound ten times louder hit me like a truck. I felt again, hands on my ears, trying to remain sane, praying to God to have mercy on my soul and kill me fast.

A wave crashed, and another, and so on, each new one bigger than the last. Soon I was thrown in the sea. I saw nothing. Thank god I saw nothing more.

I remember the sun burning my face, and coast guard taking me to and hospital by helicopter. They said I was in water for two days.

The ship and the men it carried were disappeared.  I told them about the turtle, I did, but they said I was hallucinating because of the sun. My last shot was the sonar data, but they told me I had brought nothing with me.

I probably let it go when I was thrown at the sea.

No need to say I was considered a lunatic, a mad man, and worst, one more strange crazy man talking about crazy things in the tabloids, another man with a Bermuda triangle tale to tell, for a dollar.

Fin.