Slither - Edward Lee [106]
"Don't turn it," Loren directed. "There's no cylinder like a regular lock. Just push it in as far as it'll go."
Nora did so, and-
Tick.
The door popped open an inch.
Both of them stiffened.
"I guess this is what we wanted," Loren said with no enthusiasm at all.
Nora was suddenly scared herself. This is a new lock on a very old door. That key she'd found on the trail the other day could only mean that military people were using this island, in secret. Not even Trent knew about it ...
"Cool air," she whispered to herself. Another question mark. With no sound of an air conditioner running?
"Yeah, feels like seventy degrees in there," Loren said. "You tell me."
"There must be fans on or something," Nora replied. "But I'd say we've got bigger questions to answer."
"How's this for a question: Who's going to be the first to go in?"
Nora peered ahead into the murk. "How about you?"
"Why? Because I'm the man?" Loren frowned into the doorway. He didn't hear anything but he did see some dim lights on. A clean-floored hallway led straight down the middle of the building, with doors on either side.
"This was my idea," Nora owned up.
"Yeah. Plus, you get paid more than me."
Nora almost laughed. She stepped inside, and Loren followed.
"Shhh," she reminded him.
She took long, slow steps. The coolness inside sucked around her, which felt good after being in such dank, humid heat. When they'd first stepped in, the building seemed dead silent, yet after a few steps Nora heard something humming. Odd white lightbulbs that were small and circular dotted the wall up near the ceiling. They both stopped at the first door. There was no dead bolt on it like the outside door. A sign read PROCESSING UNrr, but it was peeling at the corners, obviously very old.
"Are we really going to do this?" Loren whispered. "What if there's somebody on the other side?"
Nora didn't want to think about it. They'd come here for information, and chickening out now seemed worse than pointless. "We'll run," she said and turned the knob.
Old hinges creaked as she pushed open the door.
"Wow," Loren said.
No one stood waiting for them, but they immediately saw old desks and tables pushed together to form a platform for some very fancy-looking security monitors.
'These are the highest-tech LCD flat screens I've ever seen," Nora said of the dozen one-foot-square panels. Each panel framed a different area of the island.
"We were right," Nora said. "All those little cameras are operational."
"They're monitoring the entire island." Loren leaned toward the glowing screens. "Look, there's the shower, our campsite, and-shit!" He pointed to a frame. "I was just there! That's where the girl killed herself, on that boat."
Nora saw the canopied Boston Whaler anchored in a small lagoon. "We never even knew that lagoon was here."
"Here's another lagoon," Loren said and pointed. "And another boat ..."
This panel showed another lagoon hemmed in by trees and mangrove roots. Tied off to one of the roots was a small, unoccupied skiff.
"Jesus, there really have been a lot of people on this island," Nora guessed.
"Yeah, and they're probably all dead now, infected. The girl who shot herself said they were being used for a scientific test, and that these military people in the gas masks were monitoring them."
"Which means they've been monitoring us too," Nora reminded him.
They both chewed on the thought for a while. The silence began to unnerve Nora.
"Why monitor the north beach and not the others?" she said next, looking at the one frame that showed the shore.
"Well, for one, that's where the bristleworm nest " was.
"Yeah, and it's also where the trench is, where these guys parked their submersible." She'd almost forgotten about that. "They came here in it, in secret, to set up. But I'm sure there's a lot more than this," she said of the room itself. Security equipment was suspicious. But Nora needed more proof.
Proof of genetic experiments.
'Let's look in some more rooms."