Link to article: No End in Site.
:scp-wiki:component:license-box
:scp-wiki:component:license-box-end
[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] +++ Small Town Blues I was on top of the water tower because I was 32, going nowhere, and everyone else was dead. Christy and Brad died senior year while taking her cousin's Mustang on a joyride. Brad thought he could beat the train at the crossing by Turner Ranch. Michelle was working at the 76 station when it was robbed by Colby Jackson, the guy who used to buy us cigarettes when we were kids. He shot her for the $24.37 in the till. He'll be up for parole next year. Hunter got cancer and checked out early in his parents' arms. They tried to sue the plant after it came out they'd been dumping waste near their property, but it got dismissed and the judge got a hefty contribution to his re-election campaign. I hadn't heard much from Joe since he took up with a girl from the next town over. She hooked him up with a speed habit. He lost the girl and kept the habit, and two weeks before I climbed the tower, the habit kicked Joe. That was it. Out of the old crew, only I was left. I wasn't even supposed to be around still. I'd made it out. I'd gone to college, got a degree, did all the shit our parents said would get us out. But then mom got sick, and someone needed to watch her. So I crawled back, and begged a job at the plant. It was technically doing chemistry, even if it was just signing the paperwork they needed to look legal. I stumbled numb through the next two weeks, and the night after Joe's funeral, I drove to the old abandoned water tower where we drank in high school, and climbed up with a case of beer. At about three in the morning, I woke up to the sound of a truck pulling off the road by the tower. For a minute, I thought it might be the sheriff, even though I'd hidden my car in the barn by the tower. But it was just a semi with a blowout. I considered offering to help when two vans pulled up alongside it. When a dozen men and women piled out hefting assault rifles and wearing body armor, I felt fear claw through the remaining haze of alcohol. I ducked down as low as I could and still see over the edge of the tower. The driver of the truck tore out of the cab and ran to the... soldiers? Police? Whoever they were, they seemed unconcerned with her as they took positions around the trailer. She hid behind the further of the two vans. I figured I was watching a drug bust, so I quietly pulled out my phone, opened the camera, and carefully lifted it over the lip of the tower roof. Then the banging started. It was loud, like a sledgehammer on the side of the truck. Then I saw the dents on the side. Something was inside. Something big. Something angry. Something that wanted out. One of the gunmen raised a hand, and motioned for the others to move from in front of the door. In the red light of the truck's tail lights, I could see that they had riot helmets and balaclavas over their faces. There were no patches or insignia I could see. The gunmen were tense, but they stayed in their positions, keeping their guns trained. Whatever was inside the trailer found the door. There was a crack as it broke the lock, and for a moment, it hung with only the chain holding it closed. Then the doors burst open, and it was free. My eyes struggled to make sense of the thing. Its shape reminded me of Michelle's old pitbull, but made of wire, chrome, and white smoke, hanging in the air. It filled the opening of the trailer entirely. I flattened down as the flash and crack of gunfire broke the night. The acrid smell of the spent bullets was sharp in my nose. "Center mass!" someone said. A woman. She was yelling, but she didn't seem afraid. Just focused. "It's just another skip. Remember the procedures. We've got this." Then the wind suddenly whipped around me, and I heard the sound of knives scraping against metal. And then there was the screaming. I kept my head down and shut my eyes, as though if I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me. As though bullets would respect my privacy, and the thing I saw didn't exist. I just concentrated on the rusted tin beneath me. After what seemed like hours but was surely only a few minutes, the sounds died down. I heard the people talking, so I guessed they probably won. I took a deep breath, and peeked slowly over the side of the tower. The thing was reduced to a pile of scrap, with wisps of white smoke still flowing around it. The people with guns had in fact fared better. There was one clearly dead, with his head separated from his shoulders, and a few injured, but most were still on their feet. They were moving the remains of the thing to the side of the truck away from the road. A few were posted by the road, putting up cones. I saw two of them removing their body armor to show sheriff's uniforms. I stretched out a little further to see if I recognized them, and I bumped into one of my empties. It clanked against the leg of the tower as it fell. I flattened myself back down. Footsteps approached below, and someone started digging at the grass. I was worried they were about to climb up after me when I heard a voice over a radio. "Kappa 5, Base Camp, what's your situation, over." "Base Camp, Kappa 5. Asset is inert, but otherwise intact. One death on our end, otherwise casualties were within acceptable margins. Prepping for back-up transport. Over." I heard the woman below me straighten up as she spoke. I recognized her as the one who'd been giving orders earlier. "Understood. Truck is inbound with medic close behind. What happened to the transport, over?" "Tires blew out. Looked like debris fell off someone's truck. No sign of enemy or anomalous action. Send a mechanic, over." "Copy. Any witnesses, over?" I held my breath as she paused, but she simply said, "No witnesses. We will be ready to exfil to Site-19 on arrival. Kappa 5, out." I heard her step away from the tower, and began to breathe again. I soon heard another truck arrive, and then more vehicles. By the time the truck limped away, its trailer covered in a tarp, the sun was rising in the sky. Once I felt sure that the truck was gone out of sight, I climbed down from the tower. I was simultaneously tired and keyed up. I wanted to collapse into bed and run a marathon. My hands were shaking and my eyes were blurry. As I stumbled toward the barn, I saw something in the weeds by the side of the road, near where the truck had parked. It was a small, metal pin. It showed a circle with three arrows pointed inward, with a somewhat triangular outline around them. I pocketed it, and then drove home. After a short, internal battle, exhaustion won and I fell into bed. ------ I woke up the next morning feeling sore, dehydrated, and with a massive headache. It took me nearly an hour to work up the energy to actually get out of bed to get some water and aspirin. My thoughts were a jumble. I remembered the previous night, but it didn't feel real. It couldn't be real. But then I looked at my phone. Pulled up the camera app. And there it all was. The truck. The guns. The monster. It had been real. I didn't know what to do about it. So for the next few days, I just fell back into routine. I went to my little office/lab in the factory. My boss, Mr. Ley, pestered me to get the reports in. When I said I still had to wait for some of the tests to finish, he told me we knew the results already, so why not get them in now? I countered by pointing out that we couldn't backdate them, so we might as well wait until the right dates to sign the reports. It was an old argument, and we were just going through the motions. He knew as well as I did that getting caught with the wrong dates on reports would draw attention the factory owners didn't want. He just liked to have an excuse to bust my balls. I visited my mother at the hospital. She was doing better, and we were expecting her to come home soon. Which was good. She'd had good insurance, but the bills were still mounting up. "Sean, you're taking care of yourself, aren't you?" she asked when she saw the bags under my eyes. I told her it was just long days at work, and she chided me to not overdo things. "They'll get their pound of flesh, don't you worry. Make sure you take care of yourself." In the evenings, I started watching the highway. Every time I saw a truck or a van, I wondered if it was on its way to "Site-19." ##white|.## +++ Deer in the Headlights I would have kept circling the drain if it weren't for the lights. It was late at night. I'd been staying the evening with mom. She'd wanted to talk about all the things she'd do once she was out of the hospital. I was driving east down the highway, and I'd just popped a caffeine pill to make sure I made it home. It was a long trip, and I'd just turned off the main freeway, still about fifteen miles to my trailer. There were a couple of oncoming sets of headlights up ahead of me in the opposite lane. Nothing unusual about that. It was late, but it's not like no one has family or friends out here. The first car passed, a little family sedan. I saw a little kid in the backseat look up at me as we passed. But then the second set of lights passed. There was no car behind them. Bright lights, and I could see the beams moving away behind me, but there was no vehicle attached to them. If it hadn't been for my encounter with the truck, I would have just kept driving, just assumed it was maybe a couple motorcycles side-by-side. But my nerves were on edge, and there was no engine sound from the lights. The silence where they should have been felt deafening. I pulled over, wrestling with the desire to be sure, and a fear of being right. After a few minutes, I finally turned around west to follow them, unable to leave it be. Five miles or so down the road, I found the car where it had pulled into a dirt driveway, the lights still on, the passenger door open. There was no sign of the other lights. I pulled up behind it, next to a mailbox that said Stegler on it. I pulled my pen light out of my center console and got out of the car. The beam shook as my hands trembled, and I was confronted with.. nothing. No one inside. There was a small handprint on the passenger window, outlined by the dome light of the car, but nothing that looked too out of place. I started coming up with excuses for knocking on the door of the house, when I noticed the blood. There wasn't much. Just a smear on the edge of the door frame, but it led my eyes down to the drag marks leading further up the driveway, around the house. I stumbled back, dropping the light, then raced to my car. I threw myself into the driver's seat, and got the car back on the road to the trailer park. I ran inside, locked the door, and spent the night thinking about how little protection the thin walls of the trailer offered. ------ A few days later, I was at the grocery store when I saw a sheriff's deputy I didn't recognize talking to Lena Semple. As I passed by to get to the liquor cabinet, I couldn't help but overhear them. "Did any of them make it?" Lena asked. She was the town gossip. She and her husband had set up and helped run the local co-op water company. She was also head of the rotary club auxiliary, the women's reading club, and was event coordinator at the local senior center (there were a surprising number of retirees that came to town). Everyone knew her and her pink sweaters. The deputy nodded. He was a short, stout man, hiding behind mirrored sunglasses and a bushy mustache. "Their youngest was found home alone, but I'm afraid everyone else was in the car when it hit the wall. Tell me, do you know if the Steglers had any friends or family nearby? We're just trying to make sure we talk to anyone who might know something, who might have talked to the Steglers in the last few days." "I think Helen did quilting with Dolores Garcia. She's just a few miles up the road from them, on Widow Springs." Lena had rolled her copy of Good Housekeeping up into a tube, and she was clutching it tightly. "Well, here's my number," he said, handing Lena a card. "Let me know if you know about anyone else who may have heard anything. Or if anyone seems to have some questions, let them have the number. Better they get the story from us than a game of telephone." "Of course," Lena said. "I will. Oh, those poor people." I walked away as casually as I could manage, past the liquor cabinet. I bought a candy bar just to avoid walking out empty handed, and drove home. ##white|.## +++ Down the Road It was possible, of course, that the man really was a deputy, and wasn't in on whatever was going on. But I was absolutely certain that the same people who fought the weird creature had something to do with why it was being called a car accident. The first thing was to do some research. There were a few ghost towns in the direction the truck had gone, and then nothing for hundreds of miles. There was no real reason to think that this Site 19 was in or around those towns. But I reasoned that I could make a reasonable search of the next fifty miles, and if it was any further, I wasn't going to find it anyway. So I might as well assume it was possible. I pulled up Google maps and scrolled the map along the highway, passing through Emory, Wilkins, and... And... There was nothing. I could have sworn there was another that direction. My dad's old stakebed truck sat rusting behind the trailer. He'd bought it for $200 from a neighbor back in the 90s, and swore he'd get it fixed up one day. I don't think he so much as popped the hood from that point onward. But I was interested in something else. I climbed into the passenger side and managed, with some effort, to pull open the glove compartment. I was a little afraid something would have made a nest in there, but it seemed that the mice had been more interested in the seats than anything here. The maps were old and faded, but still legible. I grabbed them and brought them inside. It took me a minute to find the right place. It had been years since I last touched a map. But I finally got my finger on the highway and traced it down past Emory and Wilkins until I reached Siegelville. That was the place. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything more on it. I was able to find some blogs from people who'd gone out to Emory and Wilkins to explore, but nothing on Siegelville. Just breadcrumbs. I had no idea what criteria Google used for putting names on the map. It could be there were no explorers because it had been abandoned too long, so by the time blogging was a thing, no one remembered it. This left me with a choice. Googling and going over maps was one thing. Going there was another. I decided to do a little more research. It was time to head to the library. It was a simple, rectangular building. For a town with less than two thousand people, it was a miracle we had a library at all. The important thing was that it had archives of the county newspapers, going back years. "Good morning, Sean," Mr. Monroe said as I entered. He'd been librarian since I was a little kid, and he'd been old then. Now he was ancient. But still alert, clear-headed. "Anything I can help you with?" "Just looking some stuff up. I'll let you know if I need any help." I moved down the shelves to where the newspapers were kept. I spent most of the afternoon scanning through old newspapers for any mention of Siegelville. There wasn't much, but I learned a few things. Siegelville had been founded as a company town by a mining concern, Siegel Consolidated Processing. There were occasional mentions of accidents on the highway leading there, or sports games between the various towns. In the 70s, there had been some sort of chemical disaster, and the place was abandoned. The company had paid to relocate everyone. It was framed as the benevolent corporation helping those poor folks, when it was, of course, their own doing in the first place. I thought of my own workplace, and nearly spit. I put the papers away, and began looking at some books on the outdoors, as a plan started to form. I could have looked it all up online, of course, but I was already at the library, so why not? "Going camping?" someone behind me asked. Rather than Mr. Monroe, it was the same deputy who'd been talking to Mrs. Semple, though he was in jeans and a button shirt instead of his uniform. He kept the mirrored shades, though. "Just thinking of going up into the hills," I said. "Be careful up there. We've been getting reports of cougars up there. Don't want to end up someone else's rations." He chuckled at his own joke. "Maybe I'd better not," I said, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible. I put the books back, walked past Mr. Monroe's desk, and then went home. //Okay,// I thought to myself. //It's time to ask the question I've been avoiding.// Was I crazy? I didn't like to think of the possibility. But it would explain... well, everything. I'd been drunk and maybe dreamed the whole thing with the monster in the truck. Maybe I just happened to catch the Steglers' car right before they headed back out and had their car accident. Maybe seeing the deputy at the library was a coincidence. It was a small town. I had a coworker years ago who kept thinking a fly was following him to work each day. The same fly, every day. He'd sometimes swat it, kill it, but it would be there the next day. When he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, no one was completely surprised. Treatment had been pretty effective, and he was a lot happier once he'd gotten help. I wondered if maybe I should see a shrink. But the video didn't //seem// like a hallucination. I decided I would make the trip, just take a look at Siegelville. I could decide there if this was real or not. ##white|.## +++ Camping Trip I was going to go camping. But not directly at Siegelville. Instead, I was going to go to Wilkins. It wasn't completely unheard of for someone to go up and look around. And importantly, it was only about ten miles from Siegelville. Just a few hours' hike. I didn't buy the camping equipment locally. I made a trip to the city, and bought everything while I was there. I hid it all under some blankets and tarps in my car. Granted, this paranoia was not helping the "crazy" question. But I was still a little shaken by seeing the deputy at the library. I took a few days off. Mr. Ley was pissed, but I'd hardly taken any vacation since I'd started working there. Mom was right, I did need to take more time for myself. On the day, I got up early, early in the morning, and set out. There were a lot of old backroads that no one used anymore. But they were still passable if you were careful and took your time. The old maps in the truck helped me navigate out to Emory, then Wilkins. Once there, I got set up. If anyone did find me out here, they'd find my campsite all set up like a good camper. I put the tent up in what used to be someone's yard, and dug a nice firepit, lined with stones and broken bricks. I spent the day trying to relax. It was actually kind of nice. The beers in the cooler helped. I also had a rifle in case the deputy had been telling the truth about the cougars. Or if there was anything... else. Was it irresponsible, having a gun when you might be crazy? I decided I didn't want to think too hard about that. The sunset was pretty over the hills. For as much as I hated this shitty place, it can be beautiful sometimes. The shadows gradually deepened until the night had fallen, and I was just watching the obstruction lights on the radio towers blinking red. As I watched, there was something odd. The lights weren't moving. That is, while they were on, they were very clearly staying still. But when they blinked off and then returned, they seemed to change position. Sometimes closer, sometimes further away. I thought back to the lights that had followed the Steglers, and decided it was time to get into my tent. It was a long time before I finally fell asleep. ------ The next day, I readied supplies for my backpack, made sure my tent and other equipment wouldn't be going anywhere in my absence, and began the walk to Siegelville. The terrain was uneven in places, but overall not as bad as I feared. There was an old horse trail that ran most of the way. By mid-morning, I was overlooking what should have been a ghost town. ##white|.## +++ Site Unseen Some of the houses and buildings looked abandoned. But others were clearly being cared for. And the barbed wire fence around the whole town was far too new to have been abandoned in the 70s. I had to see more. I began to pick my way down, trying to stay behind bushes and scrub brush in case anyone was watching. As I dropped down behind a thick bush near the fence, I could see things a bit more closely. There were people in some of the houses. Nothing weird, at least that I noticed. A woman doing dishes through a window. Someone's kids were apparently jumping on a couch. It was so normal, it wouldn't have looked out of place pretty much anywhere that wasn't supposed to be a ghost town. I could see a gate house further down the fence to my left, and there was a man inside. So there was some sort of security. Not only was this place not abandoned, there was someone watching it. It wasn't too late to back out. I could climb up, head back to my campsite, and pretend none of this had ever happened. Was any of this really my concern? But I had to know. I no longer thought I was crazy, but that didn't mean I understood any of what was going on. That bothered me. More than I would have thought, to be honest. To my right, there was some sort of outbuilding. Importantly, it was on the outside of the fence. Also importantly, the door was slightly ajar. I made sure no one was looking my way, and I moved to it as stealthily as I could. I ducked in. The floor was steel. There was a tiny space just between the floor and the wall. The walls had some tools hanging on them. Shovels, rakes, landscaping equipment. Even a wheelbarrow hanging on a large hook by its axel. There was nothing just set on the floor. As I considered this, the floor moved beneath me and I lurched, falling on my ass. I scrambled up and tried to get to the door, but it was already ten feet above my head by the time I got to it. The shed was a goddamned elevator. I watched in panic as the wooden walls of the shed gave way to concrete that rose up above me. Lights turned on and off as they passed, keeping me from being plunged entirely in darkness. By the time the floor stopped moving, I could barely see the walls of the shed above me. There was a door in the wall. I stumbled out, and found myself in some sort of lobby. The elevator closed behind me. I spun around and hit the up button next to the elevator, but it remained shut. It looked like I was moving forward whether I wanted to or not. There was no sign of anyone in the lobby. There was a large desk flanked by potted plants. I couldn't get the drawers open, so I then started on the doors. Three were locked, but one was open. It led to an unmanned security booth, and beyond that was a long hallway lined with doors. I tried the first door, but it was locked. Through the window on the door, I saw a familiar pile of wire and chrome. White smoke flowed around the pieces. Strands rose up in the shape of a dog's head, and I flung myself to the side. I was in the right place. Or at least the place I'd been trying to get to. Now if I could just get back out again. I continued down the hallway. In the next window, I could just make out a man sitting in a chair. The back of his head was shaped wrong, though, and was covered in yellow scales. I hurried away. The next few doors were all the same. One had a plot of grass inside under fluorescent lights. Another had a turtle shell in a glass or plastic case. When I looked through the window at the next door, a huge, orange gelatinous mass slammed into the glass. I fell backwards, landing on my ass. I took a deep breath, and began moving further down the hallway. Then the door behind me opened, and the gelatinous mass exuded itself through the doorway. I choked off a scream and began running down the hallway, trying door after door as it burbled after me. I looked further ahead and saw a door hanging open. I ran in and slammed the door behind me. As I pushed my weight against it, I heard a click as it locked itself. I caught my breath, and turned to see where I'd found myself. And then my eyes bugged. In the middle of the room was a large table with two chairs. Piled on the table was all of my camping gear. The tent, the coleman stove, even the bag of trash I'd had in my car. Next to it were the old roadmaps I'd marked my route out on. Beside those was the pen light I'd dropped at the Steglers'. And next to that was an empty beer can, dented as though it had been dropped from a height. Across the room, another door opened, and a stern, dark-skinned woman stepped through carrying a briefcase, flanked by two guards armed with rifles. "Welcome to Site 19," she said. "I've been expecting you." The guards moved around the table until they were flanking me. One took me by the arm and guided me into the seat. The woman sat across from me. "I'm going to ask you some questions. Your honesty will determine where you go from here. Understand that we know some of the answers already." The threat wasn't subtle. //Don't lie, we'll know//. "I want to see a lawyer," I said. She raised an eyebrow. Suddenly, something cold and metallic touched the back of my head. I tensed. She seemed to think for a moment, and then nodded. There was a click, and a sudden sharp pain. "That was just a stapler, but I think it gets the point across," she said, as I clutched the two bleeding points in the back of my scalp. "What do you want?" I asked. "Answers, Sean. To the questions I'm about to ask. Please pay attention, I already covered that." She pulled a clipboard from her briefcase. "First, how did you first learn about this place?" She led me through the entire series of events, from the first monster to my sneaking in. "How long have you been watching me?" I asked. "Since the watertower," she said. "Now, we know //what// you did. But what I'd like to ask you now is //why//." "What do you mean?" "Why did you keep digging? And why did you take the steps you did?" She leaned forward intently. "Because... because I wanted to know. If it was real." "Why did it matter to you so much? So badly that you went to all this trouble. Following the Headlights, camping in Wilkins, hiking in and infiltrating a secret facility... What drove you?" "It's... things like that //aren't supposed to exist//. That's not how the world works. Or... I thought it didn't." I looked down at the empty beer can. A beer would have gone down really well at that moment. "You're right. They aren't. That's why we're here," she said. "We're here to make sure things like what you saw //aren't// part of the world, as most people experience it. And to find out why these... anomalies... exist." She stood up. "I think we're nearly done." "Done?" I tensed, sensing the two guards behind me. "You've earned some answers, I think." "Answers?" I leaned forward. "Yes. But first, one last question. A little word association. When I say the word future, what's the first thing that comes to mind?" "Bleak," I said. "I see. That's interesting." She wrote something down in her notebook. "Was that okay?" I asked. "There are no wrong answers. I once had someone answer 'moose.' I'm sure it made sense to them at the time." She motioned for me to stand up. "Now, come with me. There's something here that will explain everything." She led me back down the hallway, to a door labeled SCP-055, and I stepped inside. ------ I woke up sitting slumped over at a desk with someone shaking my shoulder. "Dr. Bleak, please wake up." Dr. Bleak? That was... yes, that was my name, wasn't it? "It's time to get to work," she said. "Yes... Yes it is. What are we testing today?" [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]