“You’re going need these. You know you will.”
I hesitantly take the weighty bolt cutters from Leo’s outstretched hands, and tie them loosely onto my chest rig. He grabs a few more questionable trinkets from the trunk of the Subaru we’ve based this felony worthy operation out of, and motions for my assistance in lifting the hundred some-odd pounds of metal canister out of the back seat. Upon our relatively smooth retrieval of the oxygen torch and full tank we stole from a DOT lot last week, I began hooking up the blower.
“You better not have forgotten the lighter” I inform Leo while spinning the washer and nut onto the gas purge near the handle of the cutting torch.
“As if I could with your chirping” Leo says digging deep into his left pant pocket and procuring the most comically oversized BIC EZ-REACH grill lighter I have ever laid eyes upon, it’s bendy butane dispensing end drooping dejectedly, as it finds itself free at last of his dusty cargo pocket.
“You’re a genuine comedian, you know that?” I say haughtily as I tip the now fully assembled Oxy Acetylene tank onto its dolly and wheel it behind me as I begin the shuffle towards our target.
The Carol Chemical Research and Refinement Facility has been decommissioned since long before either of us were born, however its doors are soon swinging wide and are open to walk in appointment once the two of us cut through the several locks, hinges, and pins holding on the pair of steel doors implanted within the brick building more akin to a fortress than a place of science. The building is situated in an eerily rural area, a few dozen miles out of any nearby town. The night sky is beautiful as we plunge headlong into the pitch black building. A pair of flashlights click on, and a pair of spotlights materialize to illuminate the windowless eternal night within the building. A vacant receptionist desk made to sit several workers hovers in the gloom before us under our LED beams. Doors to the left and the right of the desk beckon us. I look to Leo, and he looks left. Placing my trust in his memorization of the entry plan I walk beside him to the hefty wooden door with its steel frame and numbered keypad. After mashing these aforementioned keys to ensure their absolute dysfunctionality, our little arson team burns through another porthole. As if it couldn’t get any darker, the unlit hallways seem to eat our flashlight beams with vigor. The hallways branch and turn at crossroads and intersections every few meters. An endless labyrinth of 90 degree corners and painted steel doors. Leo steers us onward. He moves without hesitation; almost without thought. His certainty in navigating this laminate floored and grip taped airway stuffed maze is the only thing keeping me from losing my nerve. Leo’s done this longer than I, He’s a gentrified god of burglarizing state property and stealing retired military hardware. He hasn’t even told me what we’re here to take, but I’m guessing our prize is something small considering the only thing in his hands is a police dispatch scanner tuned to local counties.
Thirty minutes of winding goes by silently except for our footsteps and the anguished squeaking of overloaded dolly wheels before Leo stops proudly in front of a door at the end of a hallway that looks identical to the several hundred we’ve snaked past, and simply points. I move forward to make the strong looking door into a slag covered mess of steel, but Leo grabs my shoulder, and pushes past me to simply twist it open with the handle.
“Alohomora.” is all he squeezes past the grin on his lips in response to my eyebrow climbing up to hide under my hat brim. We saunter cautiously into the hallway revealed by Leo’s magic touch, and the flooring and walls change beneath our headway. Sheer concrete and cool rushing air greets us. A stairway is cut into the end of the hallway. We approach and attempt to illuminate the landing unsuccessfully.
“I’m not carrying this thing down that” I announce into the maw of Tartarus as I stand the torch on its end beside me, and I can sense Leo smirking on my left as he taps the cutters dangling from my vest. “How are we going to cut through a door with just-”
“We won’t have to.” Leo interrupts, and begins descending without another word. I follow.
At last flat ground meets the sole of my boot, and light greets my eyes. Ahead of us lie fences, one after another, nailed into the concrete. We inch closer and I unsling the bolt cutter nervously.
“Leo I’ve never seen something like this,” I say, peering through the barriers before me. There has to be at least a dozen, each about ten feet apart, with a hanging LED bulb dangling between every single one. On the first of our obstacles is a long aluminum sign, black with fading white letters printed on it.
WHAT LIES BEYOND THESE GATES IS NOT SOMETHING OF VALUE, OR NOT SOMETHING HONORABLE, IT IS NEITHER HOLY OR DESIRABLE. WHAT LIES BEYOND THIS GATE IS SOMETHING SEALED PURPOSELY: IT IS TO BE FEARED, AND TO BE DISGUSTED BY; REPULSIVE IN ITS SPLENDID BEAUTY. TURN BACK NOW AND ABANDON WHATEVER ENDEAVOR HAS BROUGHT YOU HERE. CURSE IT; AND RELINQUISH THIS GOAL. TREASURE NOT ONLY YOUR OWN LIFE, BUT THE LIVES OF OTHERS, RETREAT.
Beyond our first fence lies another sign, with what seems to be our message printed again, in another language, and another beyond that, and beyond that.
“Start cutting.” Leo says flatly. I hesitate, and then move forward, at odds with my own judgment. Nervousness freezing into cold dread in my belly and legs as I snip away at the side of the fencing.
A cool breeze seems to flow past as we sever the chainlinks bit by bit, and plunge deeper into the foreboding layers before us. A few minutes of snipping passes and Leo’s eyes have hardened, his smile melting away to a thin grimace as the final fence is torn away by the mighty leveraged blades of the cutters. Upon pulling away the final barrier a large metal door stands imposingly before us. Carved roughly into the stone at our feet reads a quote so poignant it seems only present to incite a feeling of awful doom.
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here”
Leo’s radio chirps now, garbled words coming from it as it rests clipped to his belt. Garbled yelling emanates from it. Louder and louder by the second I realize too late the yelling comes from behind us too. Rustling gates and clattering equipment, footsteps and heavy breathing announces the presence of local and police and county sheriff. It dawns on me we must have triggered some sort of alarm a little too late. The radio has been silent for a few seconds on Leo’s belt and he still stares at it blankly.
“Leo we need to mo-” I say as quickly as I can, turning to him and reaching for his arm – but I’m too slow. Leo’s side is coated in red. My ears are ringing. There’s a terrible unbelievable pain in my shoulder now and we’re both on the floor. My hope of our adversaries simply being Local PD are shattered as the report of .223 rifles greet my ears instead of the de-escalating coos of anyone concerned with the ramification of taking human lives. They’ve shot us through the gates. I can barely process what’s happening but the adrenaline in my body is ramping up and the pain is fading as I rise to my feet trying to pull Leo upwards. I drag him to the free swinging doors as shouts begin to become audible through the tinnitus ringing in my skull. A little antichamber conceals us for a moment as I prop Leo up against the wall as bullets pound against the steel doors.
“I’m getting us out of here buddy it’s gonna be ok, it’ll all be fine” I stutter as Leo convulses reassueredly. I stand, and walk briskly onwards.
Heaving open the far door of the antichamber, I throw myself through it, and draw it shut with a weighty thud behind me just in time to hear the shouts of the men behind me – some dozen of them now it seems. My own blood as well as Leo’s coat my chest rig and gloves. I toss the bolt cutters to the floor of the utterly massive room before me, high vaulted ceiling, catwalks and chambered tunnels leading far into darkness honeycomb the structure; all of it hewn into the bedrock as if formed naturally. The room lights itself eerily, every corner shaded in gloom, though no shadow is cast on any surface which greets my eye. I walk briskly through the room, crossing maybe 20 meters to the opposing wall where an immense sally port door looms far taller than any man ought deem necessary. A single steel bar thrown across meets my finger tips, as I lift the several ringlets securing the rod to the door I hear the entryway creaking as it begins to creep open on unwilling hinges. I flip up the final securing brass piece and grip the frigid metal throw bolt with my bare hand, I peer over my shoulder to see a hand, and then a shoulder, and then a head squeeze through the crack in the entrance. Eyes meet my own as my warmth leaves the fingers I’ve wrapped around the bar.
“Don’t do it!” Such a straightforward plea from those eyes, in all their elegance. A helmet doming above and a buckle tucked firmly below them. I refuse vainly, and yank upwards the bar before me. Upon loosing it from its seat it vanishes, leaving my hand to grip itself. The doors throw themselves open raucously, flattening to the wall. Immaculate darkness all that lies beyond. A slim hand protrudes. White in the black as is a star in the night. It beckons me, profering its tender fingers to warm my own. I accept, tamed in all my nerves and terror by it. Upon meeting that pale grip with the frigid touch of my own I find myself filled with heat, as if I’ve melted. Liquified by the heat flooding my body I find myself poured and cast into a new form; though still insolid. I am cradled, as if a baby, in the arms of something great. As humans we are innately adept at identifying our own, our flesh and blood. I look up on the unspeakable features of neither as the warmth in my body fades, and the tender cradling of my untenable form turns to that of a rigid gripping of my frame. I gaze upon something beyond myself or any man, and it gazes back, sifting through my soul as does a filter feeding crustacean sift ocean silt. I murmur pleas of mercy as what I mistake for a loving god in the slightest peers into my being. It speaks to me now.
“Take thou my strength, wield it in supplement to your own, take though my blade, and wield it as your own” I look to my side and see rising from below this wrathful deity and I a sword; A sword forged from the bones of my idols, lifted from hell upon the palms of dead angels. I kneel before it now, unsure and unperturbed in my lack of knowing how I arrived in this position. I place my hands flat beneath the handle and blade, and lift it free from the grip of its deliverance. Standing with my implement of harm at my side now, I feel the rapidly cooling grip of the God behind me; for that must be what it is. Beneath its hands on my shoulders I feel myself being brought back to reality, spirited away from this accursed place. I feel my feet planting themselves back in that high ceilinged chamber, the cold air brushing past my boots and calf. Fear returns, I begin to panic, and brandish the blade before me, pointing it forward into the darkness where I know soon will be my foes, the monsters of men that hurt Leo, that will hurt me. I point forward, a scream escaping me, though I don’t remember parting my lips.
“Have thou the strength to kill them? To kill them all?” God whispers into my soul. I am in a waking nightmare with no end as I slowly come to my senses, holding the sword with all my might, pouring myself into it. The darkness surrounding me, clouding my vision, dissipates at once. I am lucid once more, at last. The door to the great chamber is torn free completely; steel hinges rent from themselves by an immense impact. Battered and unrecognizable corpses litter the floor, the catwalk, the ornate carvings and patterns cut into the stone coated in viscera. Abject horror is what I feel as I focus my eyes forward, and the bolt cutters which I point forward drip sickeningly. I have released something horrible, unleashed a paragon of misery unto earth. The bolt cutters slip from my hand one last time, and my hands fall to my side, as I lack the strength to hold them at my breast any longer. I am cold. Immaculately empty. I feel as if I am slipping from life itself, into some dark place of rest behind me, beyond those steel sealing doors. I am afraid as I let myself go now. I’m falling as a voice rings in my head, perhaps my soul.
“Perished one – hearest thou my voice still? This place marks the grave of mine and my maker, and his maker before him, though you may rest here too, should you like…”
With this final notion, I tumble downward. The cessation of my light absolute in the dark of what I have wrought.