Somewhat Henderson
Chapter 1: The Lazarus Incident
Published on October 31st, 2034, Tuesday, 12:00. Posted by: Simon Henderson
Worst day of my fucking life. What was supposed to be a simple extraction operation had quickly turned into a fever dream.
My name is Hewt. I am a soldier in the Search and Rescue squad. Our mission was to rescue a biological weapon codenamed Lazarus. Our enemy developed him in a lab up on a snowy mountain in the Himalayas.
We waited for the right moment and sent in everything we had. All of my squadmates fell. They suffered heavy casualties too. But it would have been all worth it if it meant getting our hands on Lazarus. The alarms of the factory blared as I chased after the special unit hoisting Lazarus on his shoulder. Our intel called it a biological weapon, but seeing it in motion was sickening: a grown, naked man, completely devoid of hair or identifying features, bouncing limply against the agent's armor. A manufactured organism. I was not going to let it go, despite being shot in my right flank. It wasn't just the adrenaline that kept me going. If we didn't extract Lazarus, then I may as well be dead anyway.
These corridors were long and littered with corpses of soldiers from both sides. Through the shattered observation windows lining the walls, I could see row after row of massive incubation vats. Inside, a dozen more Lazarus specimens floated in stagnant fluid, or what was left of them. The biolab employees had systematically purged the system before fleeing, reducing the tanks to a graveyard of shattered glass and ruined tissue. They had tried to keep the secret from us, but our underfunded intel department pulled off a miracle. This one asset, bouncing on the agent's shoulder ahead of me, was the only viable lead left. Lazarus gave us a shot at winning this losing war. But the corridors were full of turns and doors. That special agent could navigate them better than I could.
But despite actively bleeding, I clipped him during a struggle. I closed the gap and stabbed him in the femoral artery with my bayonet. I knew he got it worse than I did. He wouldn't last long. I just had to follow the blood trail.
Bang.
That last gunshot echoed through the hollowed out corridors and rattled my brain. It wasn't the volume that got to me. It was what it meant.
When I caught up to the soldier, he was already dead. Bled out from his leg. That last gunshot? It wasn't for him. He saved that bullet for Lazarus. It was a .45 caliber administered to the cranium. In other words, his brain was irreversibly destroyed. I guess if they couldn't have Lazarus, they weren't gonna let us have it either.
I sat down, my back gliding against the wall as the adrenaline crashed. Lucky for me, I'm a medic. I had gauze and morphine, he didn't. But I only had one dose left.
May as well.
I injected my thigh and packed the bullet wound with hemostatic gauze. Then I sealed it with a generous amount of trauma dressing. It was agonizing, but by the time morphine was going to kick in, I would have bled out.
My radio buzzed. "Hewt, come in. What's your status? Did you secure Lazarus?"
"Hewt coming in. I eliminated the threat. But they took Lazarus down with them. Mission failed."
There was a pause. The kind of pause you anticipate when you prepare for the very plausible worst-case scenario, but one that you still hoped wouldn't happen.
"Understood. We're sending the helicopter in. Prepare for extraction."
"Just leave me, commander. It's all over. Let me make my last stand here, on the mountain."
"Hewt, your orders are to prepare for extraction. Heli arriving in 2 minutes. Bring Lazarus with you. An autopsy is better than nothing."
And here I was. Waiting for extraction with my three inanimate companions. Lazarus, though he never woke up. The soldier who took him from it. And peculiarly, a camera.
There was a camera attached to that soldier's forehead. He was lying on his back, but his head was tilted in such a way that the camera was staring directly at me. It looked like a circular disc covering up a void. I don't know who or what was behind that lens. An audience of one, thousands, or no one at all?
I don't know what compelled me at that moment. Maybe I needed an audience, or a friend. But I couldn't take my eyes off the camera. And the words out of my mouth, they just poured out.
"You… whoever is watching." I wiped the sweat off my forehead. "It's quiet now. And peaceful. Almost like the still midnight air of an isolated village. Except not really. The fireflies and the crickets don't even let the dead rest. But you know what doesn't have crickets and fireflies? The Himalayas. The snowy high altitude of the Himalayas are uninhabitable by those loud critters. So ever since I grew up, it was constant noise. The military academy during the day, the crickets during the night. They just wouldn't let me rest. But tonight, this brief little moment of time. After we were deployed on the ridge, and before the first gun was fired. It was pristine. Even the wind decided to be still tonight. At that moment, I swore that I would savor that silence. And yet, here it is, happening again. If it wasn't for the whirring of the machines and the flickering of the fluorescent lights." I chuckled, coughing out a small drop of blood. "This place feels exactly like home. And YOU!"
That's when I pointed accusingly at the camera, staring menacingly into the void, "you're not welcome here." I grabbed Lazarus by the head— or what's left of it — and showed it to the void. "This is what you savages do. You demons. You extinguish hope. Like a wind that stops howling."
I think by that point, the morphine had started to kick in. I threw the head to the side and took a deep breath.
But I had one more thing to say to the void. "But you cannot extinguish hope. Not fully. Not while the crickets still chirp."
I could already hear the helicopter approaching. It was about 45 seconds before it was ready to extract me. I mustered up the strength to get up, hoisting Lazarus onto my left shoulder. I took us outside through the emergency door, indicated by the humming and the red-glowing EXIT sign. Just follow the noise, I mantra'd to myself. Just follow the noise.
The helicopter was descending in front of me. The man in the cabin threw down the rope ladder at me. Problematic, I thought. How was I supposed to bring Lazarus with me?
"Commander, Hewt coming in. They're throwing down a rope ladder. I can't bring Lazarus with me. I am injured and currently very high on opium."
The commander thought for a second. "Forget Lazarus then. Save yourself."
Very well. I dumped Lazarus in the snow and began ascending the ladder. "By the way, commander, that soldier had a camera strapped to his forehead. Do you know anything about that?"
"Yes. Our enemy uses a live feed system. It broadcasts directly to their own commanding officers so they can coordinate their soldiers better. Why, you want this toy too? It's a technical luxury we can't afford, unfortunately. Our budget's really tight this year."
"No, sir. Just curious, that's all." The commander was trying to find some humor in the situation, but behind that jest was pain. Ultimately, Lazarus' death meant that the linchpin of our entire operation was now gone. He was probably feeling it more than I was, honestly.
So that settled it right there and then — I was monologuing to some bureaucrat who probably thought I was delirious.
The sun was finally beginning to rise, and I rose alongside it on the rope ladder. The men in the cabin were yelling something at me, but the propeller was too loud for me to hear anything, and I was way too high for this shit; the morphine was doing its job.
I think they were trying to warn me. Because suddenly, the helicopter was hit by a stealth rocket. It still baffles me that I couldn't see it coming. Could they? Don't know. But it sent the helicopter spinning and crashing down, flinging me off the rope ladder. But instead of landing on the soft snow of the mountain, I was launched off the mountain entirely. I descended rapidly down the ridge. The helicopter went the other way, crashing into the mountain and exploding. Just as that had happened, the parachute in my backpack automatically deployed as it had detected a rapid drop in altitude. The auto chutes were non-negotiable, but night vision goggles and higher quality meds didn't survive the budget cuts. A shame. I could have been tripping on some high-grade fentanyl right now, or ketamine.
I thought I was already dead. Can you imagine surviving all that? I never would have, in a million years. So I let the Himalayan winds carry me gently down the mountain. I didn't interfere, didn't try to change the course of action. If God wanted me dead — he had a thousand chances already.
What I saw as I descended through the cold peak down the foggy valley was quite peculiar. The entire way down was barricaded by metal barbs. They had colonized the mountain with barbed wire. That didn't make any sense to me. But what surprised me more was what I heard when I flew dangerously close to the barbed wire. They emanated a buzz.
The barbed wires on the mountain had an electric current running through them.
So they didn't just claim the mountain. They had enough juice to power the entire thing. And the wires stretched for hundreds of meters. There was no gap I could squeeze through.
That's when it hit me. The biolab was probably a distraction. The valley was hiding something. Potentially even more potent than Lazarus. Why else would there be so much wire everywhere? They didn't want to risk a squadron landing anywhere near it.
So I kept falling, making sure to adjust my trajectory when I was just about to collide. The whole conundrum felt like a dream. Like I was sinking into a soft, comfortable bed of clouds. But I knew better than that. That was just the morphine talking. But the visuals didn't help either. It was serene. And consolingly warm.
Minutes passed. How many exactly, I'm not sure. It's possible I slept through some of them. As I sank lower through this dream, the fog started to clear, and I finally began to see what the fence was trying to protect me from. It looked like some abandoned military factory. There were Cold War-era vehicles stripped of their parts, rotting to the elements.
But it can't be abandoned if there's electricity.
So if it's not abandoned, and it looked like a military base, then surely I would be shot on sight if I had tried anything fishy. But what other option did I have?
I spotted a small crack in the fence that I could slide through. I adjusted my parachute in such a way that I slipped through the crack. My parachute got tangled on the barbs so I just cut it off.
Finally, I was back on the ground. A shame, really — having to carry my own weight again. In front of me was a tall metal fence gate, with the fence spanning a massive perimeter, fading into the fog. I thought about climbing it, but the electric current and the barbed wire on top would have made that problematic. And there was nothing behind me but more barbed wire.
Barbed wire. Barbed wire. Barbed wire everywhere. Bzzzzzzzz, whirring. Who needs this much fucking barbed wire?
Lucky for me, there was a lever on the right side of the fence gate. I pulled it down and the gate slowly opened, doors unraveling themselves away from me.
Before I went deeper, my right hand went to unhoist my rifle — which I lost during the explosion. So I went for my left pectoral, where my sidearm is usually contained. And to my surprise, nothing was there. Just torn fabric and an enormous scratch on it. But not too deep, luckily. It had already stopped bleeding. Shit, I didn't even feel it. My guess is that the shrapnel from the helicopter explosion slid across my chest and severed my holster. So no sidearm for me either. But it's hard not to feel grateful. If it wasn't there in the first place to absorb the blow, I'd have likely bled out and flatlined during the descent.
The only other weapon I had is a knife. Which I had attached to my rifle in an improvised manner. So I guess that's gone too.
So here I was. Completely unarmed, as the gate finished opening. Nowhere to go but forth.
I stepped into the encampment. There was no one around. Just abandoned ancient technology. I took a closer look at the vehicles. Just as I had suspected - Soviet era tanks and personnel-carriers. I'm not an expert in this, but I'd recognize a T-54 anywhere.
But it still didn't add up. These old vehicles seemed completely at odds with whatever infrastructure is powering the electricity here.
There were a few buildings here, squat grey concrete blocks, very Soviet in their utilitarianism. But shorter, and wider. One of them had a lever; same as the one on the outer gate. I approached it and pulled it. If it meant getting captured on the spot — then so be it. At least they'd patch me up.
The gate slid upwards. And to my surprise, nobody was there to greet me. No personnel, no guards, not even a hint of a camera. At this point I was thinking, they either left it unguarded because there's nothing worth protecting here, or they thought that the Lazarus lab on the peak would serve as a big enough distraction. I wasn't sure if I was walking into a big load of nothing, or into a conspiracy greater than Project Lazarus could ever hope to be.
The gate led to a garage. It was empty, except for a couple of shelves, which were also empty. But there was a window above where one of the shelves sat. Light was emanating from it. A fluorescent light, switching on and off occasionally. I climbed on the shelf and slid the window by the handle — open. Seeing no other way in, I climbed through the tiny window.
I landed on my palms first, then my knees. The landing was rough. Blood spurted out of my gunshot wound from earlier. Looking back, I was actually leaving a faint trail of blood this whole time. The gauze wasn't holding as it was completely saturated with blood.
The room I was in looked like a broom closet. It was tight, but tall, and the shelf was packed with lots of cleaning equipment. I scrounged through the shelf looking for anything, and I mean, anything, that could assist with keeping the blood in my body.
I found a sealed pack of cellulose sponges. Bingo. I tore it open with my teeth. It tasted like a Chinese factory and dust. I removed my saturated gauze and packed three of these sponges tightly onto the wound. Now, something to keep them in place. I found some industrial duct tape. It would have to do. I wrapped it tightly around my abdomen. There was also bleach and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, but I didn't bother. The infection was a tomorrow problem, not a "right now; I am actively bleeding out" problem.
However, there was nothing in there I could use as an improvised weapon. Just a pair of red scissors, a box of trash bags, and a broom. I suppose I could suffocate someone with a trash bag, but it works better in movies. That would require both of my hands to be occupied until they passed out, which could take minutes. And what could I possibly do with a broom? Stick it in their ass? So I grabbed the scissors. At least I knew where the vital arteries were so I'd be able to put them to good use.
I slowly approached the door. There was a steady white light on the other side, not flickering like the bulb in this closet. I put my ear to the door, and I heard… not much, honestly. Just more of what seemed like machinery. Some sort of rapid high-pitched tapping and skittering. Shit, imagine if they were 3D printing more Lazaruses? I would have cried tears of joy.
I pushed the door open.