Episode 407: Brisbane Ghosts, Part Four
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Arden: It’s haunted.
Joshua: Let’s go check it out
Kiera: I love remote control. This is cool.
If Arden’s right, nobody should come to harm if we check it out. If Kiera’s right, we might still be in danger. Remote control suggests someone is watching from somewhere and pushing buttons … and maybe standing by with a gun.
Joshua goes to the crane to investigate the crane. Nika lets him go and watches the buildings near it, thinking that it might be ruse by snipers to draw us into their sights. Arden goes for our dropship and Rina goes with. We locked the hatch on Lagniappe but there’s no telling if somehow someone might have hacked past the locks. The hatch is as we left it when we check. As far as we know, nobody got in.
Joshua makes it to the crane and eyeballing the crane’s driver’s seat, he sees it’s empty. Joshua jumps aboard and plants himself in the seat and starts going over the controls, teaching himself how to drive this thing. He sees it’s set to auto-pilot and he pushes the shut-off button. With a whine and a grind, the crane lowers its claw and shuts down. Joshua jumps off the crane and Kiera follows.
With nothing visibly hinky with the dropship and no one firing at us, we regroup near the crane. The logs the crane was working on are just a bunch of logs, grouped loosely in four flat stacks and sporting a year’s worth of overgrowth on them. Joshua hooks a thumb back at the crane.
Joshua: That was interesting.
Arden: (Not!) Yeah.
Joshua: Is that a concrete building over there?
He points to a low structure behind one of the dorms.
Joshua: I think I’ll go wander over there and look at it.
Rina: Wanna give him back-up?
Kiera: Yeah.
Rina: Let’s go.
So we trot that way. Arden suggests to Nika that they search the dropship, make sure no one managed to get aboard. Arden goes in while Nika stands watch. No one’s inside and comes back out shaking his head. Nika has her eye on the camp.
Nika: I think we should stay out in the open and keep an eye on things.
Arden: Okay.
They keep an eye on things as the rest of us approach the concrete building. Through the rain Kiera glimpses something in the upper story window of the building adjacent and swings her rifle around. She warns the others with her and points with her rifle.
Kiera: Window.
Rina and Joshua turn and look. Joshua squints and sees something on the second story. It’s a figure of a man, roughly.
Somebody’s in that building. No shot ring out. The window remains intact. The figure doesn’t stir.
Weird.
Joshua goes closer to check it out. It’s a little difficult to be sure past the glint of light off the dirty glass but he thinks it’s a skeleton. There’s only one way to be sure.
Joshua: Is there a door to this building?
And so saying he immediately starts looking for one. Finding it he goes right through it, much to Rina’s twitchy consternation. She follows right behind him into what is obviously the main hall for the camp. It’s a combination cafeteria and meeting hall and covers just about all of the first floor. There’s the cafeteria line over there, a ping-pong table there. Lines of tables for eating. Signs of disuse over everything. The room appears empty. Rina draws Joshua up short.
Rina: (cross) Joshua, are you taking point?
Foolhardy thing to do, considering he’s not armed. And he’s in the lead.
Rina: Explain to me how this is sensible?
Joshua: I really want to check this building out. Somebody else can check out the skeleton.
She makes it upstairs and finds that window with the figure in it and sure enough, it’s a skeleton all right. Kinda shriveled and squishy. She doesn’t linger but goes back down to join the other two. Outside the rain picks up and thunder crashes. Can it be any MORE like a slasher/horror movie? Seriously, can it? Everyone jumps at the noise and Joshua turns to Kiera.
Joshua: Please don’t shoot me. If anything happens, please don’t shoot me. That gun is scary.
Kiera: (pats her rifle) It’s reassurin’, not scary.
We leave the hall for the outdoors and the concrete structure that attracted Joshua. It’s about a 20 x 30 foot structure, about 15 feet high. It’s got a big iron door and looks like it might once have had a security camera mounted to it. Wires where a camera would have been are visible overhead.
Joshua: This is the point where we knock on the door in a secret code, right?
Kiera: Trick or treat. I want my candy.
Rina’s following close behind Joshua on his left, her gun up and ready. Kiera follows farther back with her rifle. Good thing too. Lightning flashes and Kiers sees something out the corner of her eye and brings her rifle around, shooting a round of burst fire at it. The bullets go into the wall the building—missing us completely, thank goodness. There’s no blood. Either whatever Kiera saw was incredibly fast, or the lightning spooked her.
Joshua gains the door and pounds on it once, twice, thrice. No answer. Either no one’s home or they were scared off by Kiera’s rifle fire striking their building or they’re playing possum to jump out the second our backs are turned. Or ….
The creepiness of the place is getting to us.
Looking over the door, there is no visible means to open it, no handle, no buttons or controls or even a peep hole.
Joshua: It won’t open. Man, I’m disappointed.
And he is, rather like a kid cheated of an adventure. Joshua walks all the way around the building, hoping to find another way in. He finds nothing but an odd chimney, about four feet in height with a strange looking filter on the end cap. Possibly something a survival bunker might be outfitted with. Nothing emanates from the chimney, no heat or fumes to give us a clue as to its purpose. It’s also too small to shimmy down. Other than that, the building is featureless iron and concrete. Joshua comes back around to the front of the building/bunker, puzzled.
Joshua: I don’t get it… well, let’s check these other buildings out.
Meaning the bunkhouses. One has a door ajar. Joshua scales the steps of the broad porch sheltering the door. The door sports a Bowie knife nailing bits of paper to the wood, remnants of larger pieces that have since been ripped or torn away. The bunkhouse windows are shuttered. If we want to see inside, we’ll have to enter the building. Which Joshua does. Rina follows right behind him. She didn’t miss evidence of weapons fire on the bunkhouse walls, bullet holes and such, and she’s getting steadily twitchier. And steadily more curious as to Joshua’s sudden assertive attitude in exploring the place.
Kiera elects to stay outside, thinking that maybe her rifle needs a little more room if she’s going to be shooting at shadows.
Outside, Arden sees a forty-foot tower beyond the bunkhouse lower down in the yard, past the dropship. It looks to be a guard tower. The door to the stairs up is open and Nika goes to investigate while Arden covers her from the dropship. The tower is empty.
Back at the bunkhouse, Joshua and Rina discover the door opens into the main room, a giant A-framed space towering above their heads a considerable height with the actual bunk rooms housed in a three story structure attached to one corner of the A-frame. In the main room they see what was once the gathering room/activity room for the bunk house. A second floor gallery with windows to the outside runs along the walls. The windows are shuttered. Picnic tables are arranged in rows from one side to the other in three rows of three. The light is dim, coming mostly from the door and the slats in the shutters. The gloom is heavy here, as is the smell of … death.
Rina sniffs. It’s recent, whatever it is, and rotting quite nicely thank you. Listening past the rush and hiss of the rain, we can hear the buzzing of flies. Looking further into the room, we see that there is a lump on the floor between the second and third row of tables and this is what’s attracting the flies.
Of course, Joshua in his enthusiasm makes a bee line for it. Rina follows him and gauges the size of it with a critical eye. It’s a largish lump, man-sized. Coming closer she recognizes it as a deer.
Rina: What the hell is a deer doing inside here?
Besides decomposing? Don’t know. She looks for tracks and finds none. She looks for something that would lure the animal inside. Ditto.
Rina: How did it get in here? Maybe it was shot and dragged inside …
She checks the porch. Kiera’s out there but there are no signs of dragging. With the rainy conditions and the passage of time, little in the way of traces would have survived. Rina goes back inside to see Joshua approaching the deer and rushes to catch up. Joshua is closer and sees that one of the deer’s legs is at an odd angle. Something is tied to it. Joshua reaches for it.
Joshua: What is that?
Rina: (hinked) What are you doing? What are you doing?!
Joshua: I just want to look at it. (turns to Rina) Why?
Rina: Not with your bare hands. Use my knife.
Joshua: Fine, fine, fine …
She pulls the knife from her boot and hands it to him. Joshua gets closer to the carcass and pokes the leg with the knife.
Joshua: This is the fun part.
There is a click and the leg moves and from the four corners of the lofty ceiling Rina sees something drop—and the air is engulfed in flame.
FLASH!
Outside on the porch, Kiera has no clue what’s just happened, the windows are all shuttered. For about a split second before they’re blown out by the explosion. She jumps off the porch in a hail of splintered wood but escapes injury. She’s no dummy but puts some distance between her and the conflagration right smartly.
BOOM!
Inside, Rina and Joshua jump for cover under the tables and miraculously manage to cheat death by a cat’s whisker. They crawl out singed, smoking, and steaming, but very much alive. The room is afire in four places and looks to take the building with it. Rina and Joshua don’t linger to watch or extinguish it but get the hell out of there. Mercifully, the door is free of flames and they make it outdoors. In a flash they go from being roasted to soaked. The rain never felt so good.
Silhouetted against the fire, another skeletal figure like the first leans in one of the blown-out gallery windows. Down on the dirt, Rina and Joshua pick themselves up and count themselves lucky to be alive.
Joshua: Bully for the survivalist theory! That was awesome!
Nika looks towards Arden and throws him a look: Are you getting this? What is up with Joshua? Kiera’s likewise dubious.
Kiera: Awesome?
Arden: Yeahhhhh.
Rina: You have to admit it was pretty clever.
Meaning the booby trap, not the roasted-alive part. Of course, Rina would be able to see the cleverness in it, having an appreciation for that sort of thing. Joshua is even more effusive.
Joshua: It was fantastic. And we got out alive. I’m barely singed!
Kiera: Only cuz you were soaking wet.
Rina: Joshua. Turn around.
Joshua does and Rina slaps out the last few persistent flames off his jacket. Kiera sighs and rolls her eyes.
Kiera: It’s raining. He’ll be fine.
Arden: I’ve thought of lots of things about Joshua, fine is not one of them.
Kiera: (to Joshua) I’m still trying to figure out why you’re afraid of my gun but being on fire is just the neatest thing ever.
Joshua: It’s just the person holding the gun.
Nika’s had enough of this—God, was being Captain ever like this for Kramer? Seriously?—and she herds her crazy wo de mah crew back into the road and closer to the drop ship. And not a moment too soon, either, because from the woods upslope of us rises a horrific scream of pain and fear, the sort of cry from someone being tortured or mutilated. It’s not the same sound we’d heard on our comms flying in to Brisbane. This one is more panicky, up-close, and personal. The scream lasts a second or two and then it stops. We’re left with nothing but its echoes drifting through the rain.
Arden: We should probably go check that out but I think we should go carefully, not willy-nilly.
Kiera: Why don’t we send the wonder team that thinks fire is just awesome?
At our backs the A-frame is still afire but the rain is keeping it contained. It may not go completely up as feared. Rina asks over the crackle and hiss of the flames:
Rina: So do you wanna go cross-country or do you wanna go aerial?
We do have our dropship, the Lagniappe, for the aerial. Joshua points to the forest all around.
Joshua: We won’t be able to see anything or be able to land.
Kiera: (sighing) I’ll go in front if you wanna run to it.
Rina: I’ll bring up the rear or go abreast of you.
Joshua: I’ll go in front. I’ll make a good target.
Kiera: And if there’s fire you’ll have an even better time.
Joshua: That was because escaping from a burning building was—
Rina: He was talking about the adrenaline rush.
Kiera: Ah. See, if I just shot you, you’d get the same thing.
Nika leaves them arguing the differences and briefly considers the idea of finding the camp’s garage and commandeering a vehicle for the search party. But decides the risk of mines and other traps too great.
Time to clear the extraneous crap off the table.
Nika: Guys? So here’s the question I gotta ask you.
We all turn to our Captain.
Nika: All these things are nice distractions and they’ve all got us standin’ here in the middle doing what?
Arden: Talking about what the heck we’re going to do next.
Nika: And now there’s this scream off that way. (points) Far enough to get us the hell out of here.
Rina: You think it’s a distraction. It’s a trick?
Nika: Uh-huh.
Rina: Sounds plausible.
Kiera: Well, we can keep exploring then.
Nika: Either that or whoever set up all this has realized that, you know, we walked in here and didn’t get chased off and now they’re punishing the person who set all this stuff up.
Arden: Or both.
Kiera: All right. I guess the question is do we just yell a very hearty “I’m sorry. Too bad!” and keep on walkin’?
Nika: Well, here’s the thing. This building’s booby-trapped. That one is locked. Nobody’s gone to those two yet. We got a garage over there …
Nika points to the buildings in turn, stopping at the building with the chained doors and the smokestacks.
Nika: And we still have the one that’s locked that we have to get into.
Because what was our mission? It was to inspect the camp and determine if it’s clear, recoverable, or a loss. That means leave no stone unturned, but also not to go haring off on wild goose chases either. If that locked building is impenetrable, that might mean we’re leaving a stone unturned.
Kiera: Well, let’s walk to the other two and feel real guilty.
Nika: All right, Annie Oakley. Bein’ as you’re almost out of ammo at this point, why don’t you stay here and watch the ship this time and we’ll go that way.
Kiera: I think I’ll do that. I got three shots and two pistols and when all else fails I’ll pull my knives out and menace ’em.
While the women are working out a strategy, Arden goes into the dropship and grabs a pair of binoculars and scans the treeline beyond the camp, looking for anything suspicious. At the moment he doesn’t see anything and says so.
Nika: Okay, guys? We’re gonna speed recon those two. And then head back this way.
Rina: ’Kay. Let’s go.
Kiera: And I’m gonna tuck up against the ship and look protective.
We do it short and sweet. Go to the door, kick it in, clear, go to the next one. Repeat. Both buildings were empty of people and wild animals. Nika orders us to go back to the smokestack building.
Nika: We can check out the skeleton maybe if the fire burns down enough but this is the one that’s locked up.
Kiera: If the skeleton’s old enough and the fire keeps going there won’t much left.
Nika: I’m not too worried about it. Presuming we run into nothing else in the camp as we go, we get back here we shoot the lock off.
Arden: You don’t want me to try to pick it?
Nika: Can it be picked? Well, go for it.
Arden takes a look at the lock and realizes it’s going to take a series of magnets to manipulate the locking mechanism. That requires tools he doesn’t have.
Rina: Pistol.
Nika: Blow the lock off. Blow the chain off anyway.
Joshua: Wait. There’s axes, there’s tools in tool shed, anyway.
Kiera: There’s chainsaws.
Nika: Grab a chainsaw.
We get the doors open.
Inside we see this used to be the place the trees were trimmed before processing. Water saws stand silent, that used to take off the limbs from the trunks. They look like they haven’t been used in quite a while. However on concrete blocks shaped to hold some kind of machinery, we see what is obviously a handmade still. It’s a complex set of pipes and tubes, flasks and other gear. Wood’s obviously going into it but what’s coming out of it is not alcohol. Judging by the stench off the thing, whatever is being produced is horrific.
Arden takes several samples from the still and takes samples of the various solvents he finds nearby. As he does, he’s able to get a better look at the set-up. He thinks that the purpose of the still is to get some sort of resin or sap, although not just that. There’s something else involved. There is also some kind of mold and it seems to be part of the wood being processed in the still. The smell of the still’s output coupled with the mold sends Arden’s medical alarms blaring. Whatever it is, it’s not safe to be around. He gets his samples of the wood, the resin, and the mold, and gets the hell out of there.
Arden: I don’t know what this stuff is but it smells like there’s something wrong with it. I don’t know if the people were trying to do a good thing or a bad thing but it’s definitely bad now.
There’s some singing on the wood that’s recent, but how or why we don’t know. The heat of the still might be the heat signatures from our first sensor run but we really cannot tell. The still itself is not hot at the moment, but it might have been earlier. We have no way of knowing. There don’t seem to be any openings or hatches to a basement, secret or otherwise in this building. We just have the homemade still, moldy wood, an odd resin and that god-awful stench off all of it.
Rina: Abandoned camp, booby trapped, new lock, weird still, no one here.
Arden: What were you saying?
Rina: Just trying to figure out the bigger picture.
Nika does a quick check around to see if everything’s on the up and up, and comes back to the smokestack building in time to hear Joshua ask:
Joshua: How many people were supposed to be in that science team that came up here a while back?
Nika: A couple of scientists and guards?
Arden: I got the impression, like, six. But I don’t think he actually said.
It was six, probably including some trail hands.
Joshua: This has the stink of a one-man operation to it.
Nika: No, really?
Rina: Yeah, it does.
Joshua: No, what I’m saying is a one man operation, you’d think that it would … I mean maybe they were like … six people … and …
Nika: Like he came up and found the place empty and found something that was worth keeping.
Joshua: Right, but my question is how does one guy take out six people. And if he can do that, why doesn’t he come out and take care of …
Arden: Us?
Joshua: Five of us.
Nika: Well, maybe he didn’t take out six people.
Maybe the mold actually does do something to people…
Rina: I’m not getting too close that still.
Nika: I’m going to go back outside and check on Kiera cuz she’s out there on her own.
Joshua: Let’s secure the place. That’s the whole point, wasn’t it?
Nika: With five of us we really can’t secure the place.
Arden: We can check the gate to see that it’s closed and locked.
We get out into the fresher cleaner air, despite the pouring rain, and discuss it. The gate isn’t much of an issue. It’s locked. And we can be sure that the former survivalist’s mines and traps may do a good job of keeping the casual intruders out. Assuming they don’t drop in from above like we did.
Nika: We took samples. The gate certainly looks secure from we’ve seen and there is clearly not anyone here. So whatever’s going on I’m thinkin’ is probably this … (points at the still)
Arden: I think someone’s here.
Nika: … and somebody wants to keep us away from it. Which means it should be easy enough to bring himself back up here and let him look around and—
Arden: I feel that someone is here.
Nika: Well, he’s got people who’re supposed to be coming up here.
None of those scenarios describes the camp getting out of control or being secure. We haven’t been able to gather enough evidence to decide the matter either way. And that means our mission parameters haven’t been met. As for securing the camp ourselves, we’re only five people and it can’t reasonably be done.
Joshua: We don’t know that. We don’t actually know that. The problem is we don’t how many people are here.
Kiera: It’s okay, we still have more time yet.
Joshua: I’m not saying that we’re out of time, I’m saying that because we don’t know how many—
Nika: Do you want to stay? What do you want to do?
Joshua: I think we ought to—Arden, how long do you think it would take you to get some idea of what’s going on with that still?
Arden: Depending on how complex the compounds are? Four to eight hours. Maybe.
If it’s in Arden’s medical library, it won’t take that long once he gets the samples under the microscope. If it’s not, it’ll be longer as he hunts it down on the Cortex. And that will take considerably longer than eight hours. In fact, it’s …
Arden: Problematic.
Joshua: Fair enough. Well, this is clearly a one-man or a two-man operation. If there is something valuable here, they weren’t able to pull it out of the forest and—
And the theories start flying. Too many people talking at once. Nika calls for a halt.
Nika: Hold on! Here’s my question: This is clearly not part of the company’s plan, correct?
Joshua: The still?
Nika: The still is clearly not part of Jarvis’s thing, so why don’t we just destroy the damn thing and be done with it?
Joshua: No-ooo.
Arden: I don’t think destroying property is a good idea.
And there’s no telling what destroying the still will release into the environment.
Joshua: That’s the part I’m worried about. I don’t have a moral problem with destroying it but we don’t know what it will do. What happens if it becomes superflammable and burns all the buildings down?
Nika: So … can’t just remove components of it and separate them and ruin the whole batch?
Rina: We have no idea what would happen to us if the batch touched us.
Nika: Who cares what it does? As long as we separate the components it shouldn’t explode.
Joshua: What my question is, what does that action get us?
Nika: Whoever’s trying to keep everyone away from here, especially the people who own the place, clearly is keeping them away because of this.
The still operation, cranking out who knows what.
Nika: If this is no longer here—
Arden: You’re making some assumptions.
Nika: Why else would they be keeping people out of the camp?
Arden: I have yet to see evidence that people are being kept out of the camp.
Nika: Then they’re scaring people out of the camp.
Joshua: Well, I almost got blown up.
Arden: That’s not scaring somebody out of the camp, that’s killing somebody because they came into the camp.
Joshua: Technical points aside—
Nika: So far that hasn’t happened.
Joshua: Technical points aside, it does seem like they are trying to make some sort of effort to remove people from the camp either out of fear or—
Arden: Or they have better taste than we do.
Say what?
Rina: Oh, man. Now that’s just cold.
Joshua: That’s unfair, sir.
Arden: I’m sorry, was just making a joke.
Rina: Nobody’s laughing.
In any case …
Joshua: Look, I—
Nika: Present your case.
Joshua: I really don’t have a problem with pulling apart per se, I’m not sure what it gains us. If we take it apart to get rid of whoever we’re trying to secure the camp against, if the still is here and it’s important, he has a reason to come back.
Nika: Precisely my point.
Joshua: I’m just afraid that if we take it apart, he’ll just vanish into the ether for a week and a half and I’m not sure we can present that as proof that it’s secure.
Nika: If it’s a one-man operation, and what he’s done is essentially set ghosts in the woods to scare off anybody who might come near which is really what he’s basically done, because most of the people who are gonna come close are superstitious and scared of the situation, taking the still out and destroying it gives him no reason to come back whatsoever.
Rina: And there goes our source of intel. I say we leave it here and see if—
Nika: Intel is not our point. (a beat) Our job was to come up here and secure the place. Period. End of job.
Arden: I think it behooves us to find out what is going on.
Rina: And I don’t want to come down with some nasty horrible disease because we blew up the still and the building with it.
Joshua: My point is if we’re going to do that, we just need to make sure that Jarvis—
Nika: Take the drop ship, take Arden and his samples, and go back to the ship.
Joshua: Okay.
Rina: We’ll stay here?
Overnight? In this place? Just us girls? Really?
Nika: The three of us will stay here. I ain’t scared’a nuthin’ at this point.
And remember Kiera has her big-assed gun.
Nika: Just give us the extra ammunition from the dropship.
Three women alone in a logging camp, armed for bear. What could happen?
Joshua: Okay, we’ll do that. The Captain gave the order. Get your samples together.
We go back to the dropship and fill Kiera in on our plan. We take up the extra rifle ammo and take stock of the special rounds Kiera has left for her gun—four rounds. With a little over thirty shots between us, we should be able to handle anyone who comes knocking in the middle of the night. Certainly long enough until Joshua and Arden come back. Kiera gives Joshua two credits to buy more rounds for her shotgun. Nika orders him to being dry clothes with him when he comes back.
Nika: (deadpan) And a casket, cuz we’ll be dead.
As we make ready to leave, Joshua sees the door to the concrete bunker up the hill is open. Nika rounds on Kiera.
Nika: Weren’t you watching?
Joshua: Ooh.
Before anyone can stop him, Joshua immediately goes up the rise to investigate. Creepy camp in the middle of nowhere. Crappy comms signals in or out. A bomb, booby-traps, and other clear evidence of ill intentions. An open door to a bunker going we know not where. And the one man in our party who refuses to bear arms is going headfirst through that door?
Is this really a good combination?
(To be continued in Episode 408: Resin)
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