The lab

The Military Lab Claims Two More. It's Keeping a Seat for You.

Three went down to floor thirteen. Three came back up. Two didn't make it home.

By the Rebel News night desk. West of Rosewood, Tuesday 9 November 1993. 1 min read.

Seen from behind at night in the rain: a muddy dark-green SUV with its doors open and headlights on stops in the car park of a brick military facility with smashed glass doors and a helicopter on its roof; a curly-haired woman with a goblin-faced backpack and red boots stands at the driver's door, a man in a yellow fire helmet with an angel-winged pack at the passenger door, and a man in a plum beanie leans between the front seats inside; ahead of them a psychedelic MESMER WAGON van and a blue SUV, both with blue-tarp trailers, sit abandoned under autumn leaves. — The first crew parked here too. Rebel News picture desk

WEST OF ROSEWOOD. Three went into the military lab on Tuesday for a look around. Something followed them out.

Go if you have to. Just know the place keeps count.

The car park

You know you've picked a bad spot when the last crew's cars are still in it, buried in leaves. Take the hint. They didn't.

Thirteen

Floor thirteen smells like a butcher's back room left in the sun. Blood up the walls, brass underfoot, and nobody coming to clean up.

The thing

Then it came out of the dark: two heads, three arms and a mouth that opens to its chest. The sane move is to run. Nobody ran. It went down in half a minute, and the man who finished it has 13 on his helmet. You can't make this shit up.

In a concrete corridor stencilled -13, three survivors open fire on a charging two-headed, three-armed bloated monster with a gaping fanged mouth: a bearded man in a yellow fire helmet numbered 13 with a pump shotgun and an angel-winged pack, a woman with curly hair, a goblin-faced backpack and red studded boots firing a pistol, and a kneeling man in a plum beanie and white trainers firing a rifle; brass casings litter the wet floor. — It had been waiting a while. Rebel News picture desk

The thing on floor thirteenTuesday night

17hits to put it down
34seconds, first shot to last
7times the lights went
1made it home

Lights out

Then the lights started going, and every time they came back there were more of the dead. So they ran for the stores and held one aisle until nothing else came round the corner. Good room to hide in. Terrible room to be found in.

A sepia ink anatomy page in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci, headed Of the thing on the thirteenth floor: a bloated two-headed, three-armed monster drawn front-on inside a compass circle and square, its jaw hanging open to its chest and a third arm raised from behind its shoulder; around it, studies of its two faces, its back with a forked spine drawn in, a cross-section of its belly with something curled inside, its jaw hinge drawn as a pulley machine, and a side view beside an ordinary man for scale, with lettered handwritten notes and lines of mirror writing. — Found in the stores. The last page just says RUN. Rebel News picture desk

The ghost

Then, from an aisle they'd just cleared: "Psst." The ghost of Spiffo haunts every burger joint in Knox Country, and it turns out he makes house calls. Four car doors opened at the top. Nobody let him in.

Helpful strangers

On the dirt road before dawn, a pickup full of strangers got them running again and found 100.0 MHz on the dial. ZA-Z FM. Music, after all that.

Dawn on a muddy forest road: a man in a plum beanie leans into a dark-green SUV whose radio glows 100.0 ZA-Z FM; a bearded man in a yellow fire helmet sits on the sill smiling with his eyes closed; a woman in red studded boots leans on the car with her arms folded, an orange raccoon mascot head poking out of her backpack; strangers in silhouette fix the engine and carry a jerry can by a red pickup, and far off in the mist a faint glowing mascot figure waves. — The best thing you'll hear all week is on 100.0 MHz. Rebel News picture desk

Find anything good down there? Fancy shoes, says the red boots. Worth all thirteen floors. She also came home with a mascot's head in her bag. We didn't ask.

Then they drove home with the radio on, and the lab collected anyway. Two of them never made it.

The moustache's last question was whether that thing was even killable. It is. There's just more than one.

Sources: the server logs, a pickup crew, and a mascot who won't stop following us.