A cruel moon peers out from behind a black cloud, like the cold eye of a scowling soldier god. Black shapes scamper across a dead field, brown autumn grass crackling softly beneath the soles of thick leather boots. A flash, a glint of the moon on black metal; a thick, gloved hand waves them on. Shckk, scckk, shkk, dive to the ground, thud. Watch the house for movement, feet and trigger finger twitching. Then pounce forward, run forward, run to the trees.
Wind groans through bare branches, cold even through kevlar. A dead leaf crustles into a breeze-reddened cheek, a hand jerks up to swat it. The house is still. The circle closes.
On a signal, two men dash across the yard to the farmhouse, shadows moving across an untended lawn, fast, black, liquid. They press themselves silently against the wall, beneath the window to the right of the porch. After a moment the taller of the pair ventures a look inside, night- vision goggles against the window glass. Withdrawing, the tall man shakes his head. The short man looks back toward the trees, raising an arm. A jerk of the wrist sends the signal: "All clear"! The trees explode with motion, a dozen black figures springing across the dark lawn. The sergeant bounds heavily up the steps and hurls himself at the door. Wood wrenches, splinters, the door crashes to the ground, the echo of the crash drowned out by a yell: "Police! Don't move!" The Swat team pours into the opening like black wasps into a nest, weapons ready.
Men scramble from room to room, huddling to the side of every doorway, then springing forward, shielded by outstretched handguns, leveled rifles. The sound of feet reverberates throughout the house. A voice roars out: "First floor secure!" A scrap and scrabble of stomp and stammer as stamping boots tramp out a mad rhythm up the stairs. "Second floor secure!" The sergeant nods, waves arm, two fingers outstretched, indicating a heavy door leading out from a kitchen alcove. A burly swatman moves out with a nod, charging toward the door with pitbull determination. A half dozen men fall in behind him, backs pressed to the wall, guns leveled at the doorway. The burly bull reaches down with a thick hand and grabs the knob. No give. He heaves a shoulder against the wood, only to be rebuffed solidly. He nods to a man behind him, then steps away. The second man quickly aims and fires three rounds into the wood by the knob. Splinters fly up, wood splits into a cloud of shards that spit out into the alcove. The sergeants boot smacks against the door with a heavy leather slap, and it swings open easily, revealing a dark passage leading down, down into the cold, dank earth.
"Light!" calls the sergeant, and a man runs up from behind him carrying a portable lantern. The beam thrusts down into the shadows, revealing its shape through the slow soft motion of thousands of floating specks of dust. The sergeant and the lantern man exchange a glance and pour down the stairs like otters would, if otters carried M-16s. The light reveals a dismal country cellar, stone walls, cement floors, rampant cobwebs. Something small skitters off into the shadows. Rodent? Insect? Too fast to tell. There is a water stain on the left wall. And across the cellar, strangely, ominously, a clean, new door. A steel door.
The swatmen shuffle across the floor as quickly as their heavy gear will allow them, taking up positions at either side of the door. The bullman reaches down, tries the knob. It turns. Bullman looks up at the sergeant. "What d'ya think? Could be booby-trapped."
The sergeant thinks for a long second. "We go in."
The bull man shrugs, looks at the men behind him, then turns the knob and flings the door open wide.
Light pours out of the doorway, cold, harsh, overbright. The swat men are momentarily dazzled. From within drifts soft muzak, a zillion strings churning out some Andy Williams horror. Blinking, their eyes clear, revealing, finally, horribly, the nightmare.
One by one they file into the room, dazed and sickened. Rows of fluorescent lights shine soullessly down on them, reflecting off spotlessly white walls. Everything is white and clean, the walls, the ceiling, the lab coats hanging on pegs near the door, the charts tacked up on clipboards, hanging off of nails outside of the cages. White and clean, everything, even the bodies of the men in those cages, bleached by the absence of sun for so long. A few heads lift slowly to watch them enter, though there is no recognition in the eyes. Beneath the muzak, a soft whimpering from one of the far cages... there are about a dozen. Then a voice, hesitant, from an adjoining room (how big is this damn basement, the sergeant thinks? How could they have built this without anyone knowing?) "Hello?", it asks, in a voice weak from disuse, but nonetheless full of life. "I'm in here! Are you police? In here!"
The sergeant nods to two of the men, Ryan and Sanchez. Without hesitation they lurch into the new room. There is silence for a moment, silence and "Moon River", then a scream, a deep-souled retching up of horror. Sanchez.
"Ryan! Report!" barks the sergeant, as the rest of the swatmen move to cover.
"We're alright," Ryan responds, a choke in his throat. "It's just so... horrible..."
"Are you police? Thank god you've come!! Can you let me up?" It is the same voice as before.
"Sending out a survivor! Hold fire!" Shouting the warning gives Ryan back his self-confidence.
"Survivor coming out! Hold fire!" The sergeant echoes Ryan's alert.
The men lift their guns, wary but aware of the danger of accidentally shooting an innocent. There is a moment's pause, then a hand stretches around the doorframe, fingers reaching, grasping unsteadily for solidity. Then it finds the wood, and grabs on, tight, the strain showing as its owner pulls his way into the doorframe. His trembling silhouette enters into the light, black at first, features undistinguishable, then taking an unstable step forward and illuminating himself. Small drops of blood on the floor indicate his passage.
"Thank heaven you're here. Thank heaven."
He stretches his hand out in front of him, fingers splayed, reaching for purchase, feeling for obstacles. He has released his grip on the doorframe, and with that now-free hand reaches up to brush away a trickle of blood from his cheek. The attempt fails, instead smearing the liquid, painting a rougelike streak across his face. The men are silent.
"Are you there? Where are you?"
But all voices are still, silenced by the casual reality of the horror before them, the unspeakable thing, the thin man whose eyes are gone, eaten away, burned from their sockets with chemical patches did their work slowly, over months and months, leaving nothing but ragged crags of rotted flesh, pocked with valleys and craters of scar tissue, blood welling where there should be tear ducts.