ADAM

 

Tuesday January 7 - 0828 MST

 

 

The halls were still the same sterile white as I remembered. Three airmen in woodland camouflage BDUs were running floor buffers across the hall ahead of us. The general must have gotten rid of the civilian clothes policy that Sterling had implemented because I didn't see a single person out of uniform. The floors shared a similar mirror like shine as the hood of the Cadillac that had passed us in the garage.

Another new thing they added since my last visit was a bank of golf carts, complete with charging stations, at the entrance to the underground parking garage. The whole facility covered a wide area, a few square miles if I remembered correctly. Since it was mostly underground and connected by tunnels you couldn't use a car to get around. The electric golf carts were really the only way to go if you didn't plan on hiking it. But the colonel being the colonel liked to do things the old fashioned way and strode right by them. Though I did notice a couple of the little carts were already out, probably taken by the mystery general that had arrived just before us.

"So what was it like?" Doctor Arden asked from just beside me. In the intervening seven months since he'd last seen me he still hadn't figured out what personal space meant. He was close enough that I could smell the faint scent of formaldehyde coming from him.

"What was what like?" I replied. Rick Arden was usually off in his own world and easily forgot that no one else was there with him. "Do you mean the inside of the pink bubble?"

"Oh no, Adam. I heard all about that from the debriefing. The Old West is fun and all but I've been there and done that as they say. Let me tell you, you haven't seen The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 'til you've seen it on a good acid trip."

Arden was still a strange little man.

"No, no, no. That's not what I was asking about, Adam. I'm curious about being in the bowels of Taob. Wow! What I wouldn't have given to have been there."

That was a particular memory I wouldn't mind forgetting. Being inside a living being is creepy enough. This one haunted my nightmares then followed up by doing it again while I was awake.

"It was made of tentacles. Not like an octopus. There wasn't a central body, at least not that I could tell. All I saw were tentacles. Some were the size of snakes, others were as big as a subway train. And they all acted like they were one body."

"Adam, I'm so jealous now. That's amazing. Simply amazing. I wish I could have been there with you."

Saying he was insane would have been stating the obvious. "No you don't, doctor. They all came alive at once and tried to strangle me. It was like something out of a nightmare. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, they were all wiggling and coming after me."

He just grinned at me like he knew exactly what I was talking about. Knowing him he'd probably seen what I just described while he'd been high on something. I wanted to go on but was stopped cold by what I saw ahead.

Looking through the glass doors I couldn't quite wrap my brain around what was on the other side. It wasn't so much that I had never seen anything like it, but that I never expected to see it down in spooky central.

The glass doors parted before me on silent electric motors. And we were all bathed in the pounding bass of Top-40 pop music.