Kilo-61 (Damned of the 2/19th Book 19)- Ongoing

There's Noplace Like Home

Event Locker Access
Site Lima-One-Nine-Echo-Three
Bighorn National Forest
Central Wyoming
United States of America
6 April, 2002
2300 Hours

The air felt still, not hushed, almost like it was absent. You could breathe, but there was this weird feeling that there was no air. Not the thin feeling that Alfenwehr had, which made your body react, but it reminded me of the time that carbon monoxide had filled a shelter and every breath we took was doing no good to us. I checked the detector at my side. It was a heavy duty atmospheric tester, that gave the levels of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, humidity, radon, and argon. The levels of radon and argon were low, barely registering, which was one thing that made me nervous. Radon was produced through the decay or thorium and uranium as they decayed into lead, and since we were embedded in granite, which would probably be throwing potassium-40.

We stood in front of the massive door. Staring at it.

The door was a flat black, anodized and colored steel. The angles were off on the end of the hallway, making it slightly disturbing. There was a globe on it, the continents brown, Antarctica exposed, and the ice caps missing. In big white letters was stenciled: "EVENT LOCKER" that was it.

The door shuddered for a moment, then slowly began to raise. Well, raise was the wrong word, there were four panels that pulled back, all of them a foot thick, pulling back from both sides, the top, and the bottom.

The space beyond was dark, and had the feeling of being a massive space.

"What's the big..." One of the SEALs started.

The lights began to clack on, from the center, and heading outwards.

"Hoooleeee," One of the SEALs said.

Buildings. Construction equipment. Stacks of material from steel beams to bags of concrete to stacks of wood that were treated God knew how to let the wood last for literal decades or even centuries.

"This is primary rebuilding storage," I told them, heading in. Kincaid snapped the ingitor repeatedly, and I knew that part of his mind was reliving the last time he and I were in a room like this. "We want to head along the right wall, to the military section."

"The military section? What the hell is in the military section?" Revlin asked as we started to walk in. He was looking a little wild eyes as we passed several large heavy construction vehicles.

"Notice all of this stuff is 1950's era equipment," Vollman mused, staring at it. "You can rebuild literally any part of this machinery with a high school machine shop. Hell, you can use cardboard for the head gaskets and other seals."

"You're right, Agent," I answered.

"Look at the murals," Kingston said.

I knew what was there, I hadn't been paying that close attention to it.

"They're directions," Revlin said.

"You cannot be assured that the people who come down here can follow written instructions," Heather said. "Every single Event locker contains murals and other methods of ensuring a Rosetta Stone which will teach everything from English to upper levels mathematics and architecture."

We were silent as we kept walking until we reached a red door that said "MILITARY EVENT SECTION" in clear letters. Anodized bronze that had been treated to resist decay made up the letters. Paint would fade, but that metal would not.

No code, just the bar. I threw it and waited.

The door raised silently, a foot clearance when the lights on the other side came on. When the door was all the way up we walked in silently.