Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 71

Rick brought up the rear as they followed the concrete hall into the side of the mountain. Hayden was leading, as he had the best eyes in the dark. Not that it was that dark, since emergency lights lit up the hall every twenty paces or so.

Splashes of blood were everywhere, but they were long dried and flaking.

They followed the hall to a series of doors, where deep scratches showed that the werewolves had failed to open them. Rick looked through the door window, but couldn’t see anything inside. The emergency lights did not seem to be inside the rooms, or if they were, they had been broken.

“We should explore each room to make sure there isn’t anything to sneak up behind us,” said Hayden as they debated entering the room.

“That’s a good idea,” nodded Rick.

Willow looked at the door knob and pulled out a thin metal card. Sliding it between the door and the door jam, she was able to pop the door open.

“Wow, that was a neat trick. Where did you learn that?” asked Rick.

“A girl doesn’t give out her secrets.”

“That means she was trying to sneak food from the kitchens,” said Hayden, grinning at her.

She sniffed, but didn’t deny the allegations.

Pushing the door open, Hayden had his bow ready. There were tables scattered around the room, with various medical and scientific equipment. A few overturned chairs were the only signs that anyone had been in here.

Picking up some of the papers off of one of the tables, Willow started reading through the notes as Rick and Hayden spread out to explore the room.

“These are too complicated. Everything is in code.” Willow threw the papers down in disgust.

“There’s not much here, we should check out the next rooms.” Rick led them to the next door.

Willow repeated her trick with the metal card and they entered cautiously.

The first thing that caught their attention, was the musty smell. It was almost overpowering after the lack of any real smell in the hall. A series of cages along the back wall housed the remains of different animals. When Willow checked out the papers here, she found much more detailed notes.

“It says here, that they were trying to make some kind of virus that didn’t affect animals, but everything that affected the mutations also affected the animals. They were wanting to test on people, but didn’t have any test subjects.

“These people were messed up in the head. It gets really detailed on what changes happen when they react to certain virus’ and what medicines work or cause worse reactions.”

“That’s weird, all of these animals are small, like mice and rats. Does that mean, we need to worry about an infestation in the compound?” Rick stared into the cages with a disturbed look on his face.

“Look over here,” called Hayden from the other side of the room.

Willow and Rick glanced at each other, before heading over. Hayden was standing over a crumpled cage in the corner. A huge rats nest filled the cage, with bits of paper that had obviously been chewed from a filing cabinet that had fallen on its side.

Willow leaned down and picked up some of the larger pieces.

“I guess we’ll never know who ran this place, these documents listed names, but the rats ate most of them.”

“Maybe we’ll find more stuff in other rooms.”

They left this one and headed to the next. It had beds, like the barracks, lined up along the walls. The ċhėst at the foot of each bed was filled with people’s clothing and belongings.

“See, we just have to look through each of these to see who all was here. Though, I’m of the opinion that the dead should be allowed a bit of privacy.” Rick shut the ċhėst he looked into and moved back towards the door. After a few more moments, Hayden and Willow followed.

“We can always come back here if we really need to know who these people were.”

The next room was a storage room with a lot of shelves and random equipment. The room after that was the one they were looking for. It had the remains of the people who had lived here. There were also large cages where the werewolves must have been held captive. The strange thing was that the cages weren’t broken, they looked like they had been opened.

“Why would they let out the werewolves?” wondered Willow, looking through yet more papers she had found scattered on the ground.

“Maybe the werewolves changed back into people? Hadn’t Xun mentioned something about that?” Rick said thoughtfully, leaning down to see the bodies closer.

“They were definitely killed by the wolves.” Hayden moved over, to explore the cages.

“Yes, the werewolves changed back to men, but they also died immediately. We saw it happen before.” Willow moved to pick up another group of papers near the cages and gasped.

“The virus they were trying to use caused an unstable transformation. If they could get the werewolves to calm down, they would turn back into men. But the other werewolves would then attack them, causing them to change back out of self-defense.”

“Maybe they were trying to separate the ones that were men from the ones that were wolves?” guessed Rick. He picked up a clipboard from one of the fallen people.

“No, this door is broke. They broke out.” Hayden swung the door to show them where the locking mechanism had snapped.

“This says they were getting ready to kill off this batch, and get a new batch,” said Willow, flipping through several pages.

“This is bad,” said Rick, getting their attention.

“What could be worse than all these dead people?” asked Willow.

“This mentions the compound. Apparently, that’s where they were getting their test subjects.”

“Good thing they’re dead.” Hayden spat at the dead scientists.

“Do you think there could be a way into the compound from here?” Rick looked up at them, worried.

“Maybe. We’ll have to check.”

They readied their weapons, as Willow grabbed the handle.