Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/zhez4u/im_in_military_rescue_unit_theres_a_reason_we/?ref=share&ref_source=link

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/zkfl7t/im_in_a_military_rescue_unit_theres_a_reason_we/?ref=share&ref_source=link

Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/zm5zza/im_in_a_military_rescue_unit_theres_a_reason_we/?ref=share&ref_source=link

Part 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/zn0aea/im_in_a_military_rescue_unit_theres_a_reason_we/?ref=share&ref_source=link

I work with an Aeromedical evac unit for the military. Our job is to treat and evacuate wounded soldiers in dangerous situations. Recently, my unit was assigned to a military facility known as the Tantalus Site where they developed a deadly biological toxin that wrought unimaginable havoc on their test subjects. A leak at the compound was reported before the entire place went dark.

When we arrived, we encountered a mess of people torn apart by something monstrous and the last thing I remember was seeing eyes in the dark.

---

Connors knew the moment I turned back to face him that I was lying. He narrowed his eyes and took a step toward me.

“Bullshit, man. What'd you see?”

I held his gaze for a moment. “Eyes. Human ones.”

He grimaced. “Fuck.”

He was about to say something else but we were interrupted by a scrabbling sound coming from inside the stone opening. It reminded me oddly of my dog’s claws scrambling on our polished wooden floors back home. A dark shape flitted across the opening.

“Fuck,” Connors repeated, his hand going to his sidearm. “Fuck. We gotta go.”

The scrabbling grew louder and a chittering, clicking sound echoed out of the hole. A hand - slender jointed and covered in weeping sores - clutched the edge of the opening.

“Run,” I whispered. Together we took off at a dead sprint. The chittering turned into a feral squeal like a hog bellowing a threat at a predator. We heard the skittering grow louder and then the bone-chilling sound of something weighty slapping the concrete floor in rapid succession.

Neither of us dared to look back. Connors was ten feet ahead of me, his boots kicking up flecks of bone and blood in my face. Whatever the fuck was chasing us didn’t sound like something on two feet. I could hear its limbs hitting the ground in frenzied intervals, like a child running upstairs on all fours. Its chittering cut away for ragged breathing as it loped after us and that awful smell of rotting meat tainted with a chemical afterburn assaulted my sinuses yet again.

We bolted through the tunnel toward the main facility center and were intercepted by Keys and another man named Sheaf a hundred feet from the entrance. Sheaf held an M4A1 rifle to his cheek and had the barrel aimed in our direction.

“In here, both of you!” Keys shouted. She ordered Sheaf to fire the moment we ducked out of the way.

The big man pulled the trigger twice and the shots briefly deafened me in close quarters. I heard a loud squeal further up the hall followed by the sound of retreating footsteps. Hopefully whatever the fuck that thing was got the message.

As Keys hustled us further down the hallway, a ringing subsided in my ears. For a ridiculous moment, I worried about potentially getting tinnitus. Then I shook my head.

Of all the things to worry about, a ringing in my ear was nothing. It was certainly far better than whatever fate had been suffered by the poor bastard sitting a little further down the hallway. His skull had been shorn off at the mouth and, oddly, his tongue and teeth were missing. I carefully stepped over him and followed Keys through a large metal door which Sheaf quickly shut behind him.

I spent a minute regaining control of my heartbeat. Connors did the same. As we slowly recovered, we debriefed Keys on what we’d seen. Connors did most of the talking, though he left out the part where I’d initially lied. After what we just went through, I think he understood on some level why one might feel compelled to deny the existence of that thing.

Once I had my heart rate more or less back to normal, I looked around the room we’d been herded into. It was a lab. An unusually clean room for what we’d seen beyond that metal door. It was lined with white tiling and filled with shiny metal tables which held various canisters, tubes, and electronic equipment. While Sheaf sat on a low chair by the door to check his weapon, Keys went over to another table near the back of the room where the rest of our team stood. They were all crowded around something I couldn’t make out.

As I approached, I briefly nodded to Bronson and Sikes. Bronson was a slim, slightly older man with sandy blonde hair flecked in grey and stubble permanently shadowing his chin. Sikes was a slender woman who came up to my shoulder. Her dark hair was pulled back into a severe bun that accented a young, serious face. The two of them stood beside Larson, the final member of our team. He had a reedy build, fiery red hair, and thick-framed glasses. Long, slender hands that reminded me of the ones reaching through that grate carefully worked their way over something on the table. Something I instantly regretted looking at as soon as I joined them.

They stood over another man dressed in a lab coat who was laid back on the table. I was surprised to see he was alive, albeit unconscious. At least I prayed he was unconscious.

Larson had rolled the man’s right pant leg up to the thigh. The back of his calf from his knee to his Achilles tendon was nothing but gangrenous flesh eaten away to the bone. It looked like something had taken a large oval-shaped bite out of his leg and left the rest to fester into oblivion. I watched as Larson carefully sliced away the infected bits, cleaned the exposed muscle and tissue out with a nausea-inducing medicine, and then wrapped the entire thing up in a clean bandage. Out of all of us, he had the most experience with serious wounds in the field. He wrapped the man’s leg up tight and ordered Bronson and Sikes to make a pair of crutches for the scientist.

As they did that, Connors joined us and Larson explained how they’d found him.

“We were doing a more detailed sweep of the tunnels and we heard something clatter down the hallway. We saw this guy limping toward this lab like a bat out of hell. Made pretty good time for someone with only half his leg.” He shook his head. “I tried telling him we were friendly, but that didn’t do much. He screamed and fought us before we were able to sedate him.” Larson leaned back in his chair right as Bronson and Sikes returned with makeshift crutches made from chair legs and lengths of wire. “I want to amputate it,” Larson continued, “But these operating conditions aren’t exactly ideal.”

Sikes eyed us carefully. “What happened down at the other end of the tunnel? We heard you guys running and something chittering, then Sheaf’s gun going off.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what it is, but it was fast and nasty.”

“What did it look like?” she pressed.

“We didn’t get a good look, but Sheaf shot at it.”

We all looked at the big man. His square jaw and crew cut would’ve made him at home in any combat unit. He simply shrugged. “It was human, naked, real skinny. Lots of wounds and cuts all over its body. Didn’t see much more than that before I fired.”

“How many of them were there?” Bronson asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “We only saw the one but…”

“There’s no way only one of these things could kill an entire fucking base,” Connors finished.

We let that little revelation sink in.

Suddenly, I wanted very badly to get the fuck out of there. But Keys wanted more information out of our friend. What exactly happened here? Whether there might be more survivors deeper in the tunnels. I selfishly hoped there weren’t.

In the meantime, we remained locked behind that door. Apparently, it was sturdy enough to keep our new scientist friend safe.

We waited for a little while for the sedative to wear off. It took maybe twenty minutes.

When the scientist eventually stirred, Larson had Sheaf and Connors hold him down so he couldn’t hurt himself. The scientist opened his eyes slowly, regarded us, and immediately began thrashing.

“NOOOOO!” He howled, arching his back against the table and thrashing so hard Sheaf almost lost his grip. “YOU WON’T TAKE ANYMORE OF ME YOU FUCKING BASTARDS! LET ME GO OR FUCKING KILL ME!”

“HEY! HEY! HEY!” Keys shouted. She grabbed the man by his shoulders and looked him square in the eyes. “You’re not in any danger, okay? We’re part of a medical evac unit. We just found you and fixed your leg up. We’re gonna get you out of here, alright?”

The scientist seemed to calm down a little. He nodded slowly and Sheaf and Connors relaxed their grip. He tried sitting up and cried out when his leg clipped the table. Larson immediately reached around to support his shoulders while Sikes caught his leg and helped him swing it into a sitting position. I instinctively offered him my canteen which he accepted gratefully.

He drained nearly half of it before taking another breath. Wiping his mouth with a stained sleeve, he handed it back to me. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

Keys leaned in again. “Sir, could you tell me your name?”

“Ketterman. Doctor Joseph Ketterman.”

“Doctor,” Keys said slowly. “Would you be willing to tell us what happened here? What happened to those people out there? What did all this?”

Ketterman gazed back at her, his eyes pale as cold slate. For a moment, I swore I saw guilt cross his face, but it was quickly replaced by resignation.

“Give me a moment,” he sighed. “I feel as though I just returned from the dead.”

We nodded and Bronson offered him a cigarette. Ketterman smoked it in two greedy puffs, downed some more water, massaged his thigh muscle, and finally took a deep breath.

“We fucked up,” he said with no preamble. “Monumentally. More specifically, we created something monstrous. A weapon. A biological toxin in a gaseous form designed to degenerate a subject’s body on a cellular level. It would lead to massive organ failure, eat through skin and sinew, and break one’s body down at its most basic levels. The skin reddens with irritation, then blackens, the immune system fails, and the subject would essentially rot from within like a pumpkin. We meant for it to be an instrument of war. Something so ungodly, so horrific, that it would induce obedience into generations of whoever we were fighting at the time.”

He swallowed hard.

“Our… test subjects started small. Rodents, felines, canines, that sort of thing. All of them succumbed to the effects in a matter of minutes. We’d cut their bodies open and they’d be filled with tumors. Their bones broke apart like glass and their veins slithered out of the incisions. We knew the gas was effective because our subjects never stopped squealing from the pain. And we administered painkillers, believe me. They had no effect. Six months of trials showed complete success with our animal subjects, so our commanding officer flew in to review our progress. He was quite proud. When he left he…”

Ketterman paused to gulp some more water.

“He ordered us to begin human trials. We asked where we might get those and he mentioned that we had plenty of prisoners captured in the surrounding areas. We could use them.”

My insides squirmed at the way Ketterman recounted all of this. So matter-of-fact. No emotion in his voice. We all watched him with rapt attention, hanging onto his every word.

“We discovered that using the gas on humans had an unintended side effect. The cellular degeneration eroded their brains and turned them into regressive versions of themselves. They quickly lost the ability to speak, control basic impulses, and recognize one another. But their instincts didn’t devolve completely. They retained a primal intelligence, similar to early hominids. They could understand their pain and what they were being used for. Process their bodies slowly shutting down. The worst thing, though, was what they did to compensate for it.

“We had a pair of prisoners, a mother and son. The son was maybe seventeen years old. I don’t recall where they came from, but we tested the gas on the two of them together. Their bodies began to break down in minutes; the mother first, then the son. They degenerated quickly and struggled to recognize one another as their skin broke out into monstrous hives. The son was clawing at his abdomen. He managed to rip through his skin and pull his entrails out. They were blackened and calcified. We watched him disembowel himself while his mother tried to help him. She kept trying to cover up his wound with her hands, but it did nothing. Then the son turned on his mother. He attacked her and beat her to death. He started tearing at her body, removed her organs, and… tried sliding them back into his own. Eventually, he collapsed at the fifteen-minute mark. I swear we checked his vitals to make sure he was dead before we sent someone in to clean up the bodies. But when our man grabbed the son, he lunged at them and bit him in the neck. Tore his throat clean out. Then he ran for the door, leaped on the guard coming in to help, and killed him too.

“No one was prepared for how ferociously he attacked. He down the tunnel, looking for something. Eventually, he came to one of the rooms where we stored the gas canisters.” Ketterman shook his head. “I hadn’t realized he’d been smart enough to take the guard’s key card before he killed them. He took some of the canisters out and threw them down the tunnel. More guards were there by this point and they started shooting at him. Bullets met canisters and…” Ketterman mimicked an explosion with his hands. “The gas was dispersed through the main tunnel into the central room. Dozens of innocent men and women choked, convulsed, and collapsed where they stood. I only managed to avoid them because I was locked away in here. Gas couldn’t penetrate my lab. But everyone else… attacked one another. Ripped each other apart limb from limb. The son was their ring leader. The scariest part was how smart they were. He stopped them from doing too much damage to the bodies. I believe he was trying to harvest their organs to supplement the effects of the gas.”

Ketterman rubbed his chin.

“The main door was locked down from within. Manual override in case a leak just like this one transpired. I messed my leg up trying to fix it, but one of those bastards caught hold of me before I could get back in. I’ve been waiting for your team to come for weeks. And now here we are.”

I regarded Ketterman in silence. He looked eager to get out of here and I couldn’t blame him.

Keys said, “Are you positive there were no other survivors?”

“Just me,” Ketteman said.

“Good.”

Keys drew her pistol, leveled it at Ketterman’s head, and shot him. Everyone jumped back.

A spray of blood erupted from the back of the scientist's skull as he flopped back on the table.

“JESUS FUCK!” Connors yelled, holding his hands over his ears. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I rubbed my ears. The tinnitus clanged against my eardrums like a train whistle.

Keys calmly slid her pistol back into its holster. “You think I’m gonna let an evil motherfucker like that back into the world?”

“I thought we were meant to be a passive rescue force,” Larson muttered. He eyed his handiwork which now meant nothing.

“There’s nothing passive about this Larson.” Keys laid a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I’m not sure who’s in charge of this place, but judging by what Mengele Junior just told us, it created something worse than we could ever imagine. We’re getting the fuck out of here and bringing this place down behind us. Got it?”

Larson met her gaze for a moment, then nodded. She looked at the rest of us. Bronson, Sikes, Sheaf, Connors, me. We looked from her to the limp body of Ketterman. Then Connors nodded slowly. “Whatever the fuck was in that tunnel wasn’t human. If it’s some emaciated demon spawn or something, it needs to die.” He shouldered his gun. “So let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I found myself nodding again. We could bring back some real firepower. Keep these things trapped here, then bring the mountain down on them. More than anything I wanted to get out.

Sheaf went to open the door but stopped a moment before he unlocked it.

“Do you guys hear that?”

We froze and strained our ears. Beyond the metal door, we heard a skittering sound. Multiple skittering sounds. Chitters and chuffs like wild boars communicating with one another filtered into the lab. We listened as the creatures scooted into the facility center and realized what they were doing a moment before it happened.

My heart pulsed as the grinding of the doors closing rumbled the mountain. The creatures knew how to shut the door. Most likely from observing one of the staff members trying to open it up during the initial outbreak.

And Ketterman had just so very helpfully pointed out the way to open it from within was busted.

We were trapped.