Brett Battles - Exit 9

She grimaced, but said nothing else.

Blanton created a cradle with his hands, and gave Corey the boost. Once on top, Corey stayed in a crouch to maintain his balance as he worked his way along the brick, then up and up and up until he reached the roof.

“What do you see?” Jeannie called out.

Corey scanned the roof. “Several air ducts, some machinery…maybe air conditioners or heaters?” He continued to look, then smiled. “Hey, I think there’s an access door up here.”

“Corey, be careful!”

“Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t really an access door as much as it was an access hatch. When he pulled up on it, it moved a few inches, but then stopped. It felt more rusty than latched from the inside, so he tried again. It groaned as it opened an additional half-inch. His third try opened more, then on the fourth, there was a pop . The hatch flew open, and Corey rolled back onto his ass.

“Everything all right?” Jeannie called out, her voice distant.

“Fine!” he yelled back.

He knelt beside the opening. There was a ladder that went down four feet to a metal catwalk, but beyond that, all was dark.

He sat back. Up to this point, he’d technically been involved in only a little exterior trespassing. Okay, and some breaking in. What he hadn’t done was actually enter anything. The moment he put any part of his body through that hole, that would all change.

While his head was saying, “Get the hell out of here,” his gut was telling him, “Just check it out.”

He decided to listen to his gut.

He lowered himself through the hole and climbed down the ladder. Testing the catwalk first, he moved onto it. Now that he was inside, he could see all the way to the nearest wall. There appeared to be another ladder there going down to ground level so that’s where he headed. Less than a minute later, he was standing on the floor.

There was an eerie silence to the place, a sense of desertion reinforced by the stale air. If Corey had to guess, he’d have said no one had been there for at least several days. Devoid of people, yes, but not empty. Even with limited visibility, he could make out several large objects looming in the darkness.

Staying near the wall, he made his way toward the back. When he was about fifty feet from the end of the building, there were no more objects filling the space and the area beside him appeared to be empty. He reached the back wall, then felt his way along the inside of the metal roll door, to the small man-sized entrance at the other end. By touch, he unbolted two deadbolts, and pulled the door open.

Jeannie and Blanton turned in surprise from the other end of the dock near the wall he’d gone up.

“You made it,” Jeannie said, relieved.

Corey gave her a smile, and looked at Blanton. “You wouldn’t have a flashlight in that bag, would you?”

Blanton shook his head. “No, but my laptop screen works pretty well.”

They used the illumination from Blanton’s computer to locate several light switches near the door. One by one they began flipping them on, and soon there was enough light for them to see.

The problem was, Corey had no idea what they were looking at.

“What the hell?” Apparently, neither did Blanton.

As Corey had sensed, the area just inside the big metal door was an open space-for the most part, anyway. There were two metal shipping containers stacked on top of each other against one wall. Their doors were open and both were empty. If Corey had come that way, he would have run right into them.

In the rest of the open area, there were marks painted on the ground that roughly corresponded to the size of the containers, applied in a way that four could sit side by side with space in between.

Beyond the open area was where the weird really began.

Corey couldn’t even guess what the nearest machine did. It was large and had a curling rail system that looked almost like a roller coaster, leading into the massive machine itself. There were several other machines past this that were unrecognizable. In fact, about the only things that were even halfway familiar were two rows of large, enclosed vats. They almost looked like something he’d seen on a brewery tour in St. Louis, but he was sure these weren’t being used for beer.

“Have you noticed?” Blanton asked. “Everything looks so clean. No paper. No personal items. No dusty footprints. Nothing.”

“They’re gone,” Jeannie said.

“Yeah,” Corey agreed.

“What was this place?”

“I don’t know.”

Blanton pulled open a small side hatch on one of the vats and looked in. “Empty.” He shut it again. “These Hidde-Kel people are supposed to be in agriculture, right?”

“Associated with agriculture, yeah.”

“Maybe they’re making some type of fertilizer?”

Jeannie grew instantly wary. “Or pesticide.”

Blanton immediately began wiping his hands on his pants. “You don’t think so, do you?”

“Relax,” Corey said. “As far as I know, they’re not into anything like that.”

“Then what were they doing here?”

“Let’s see if we can figure that out.”

They spent twenty more minutes checking the rest of the manufacturing area and going through the rooms near the front. One thing was clear. This had never been a corporate office. There just wasn’t enough office space, even for a small operation.

As they came back through, Corey opened one of the vats and looked in for himself.

What was he going to do about his paper now? As curious as he was about Hidde-Kel, writing what little he knew about them would not fulfill his assignment. He would have to do what Blanton had suggested at the pub-find another company to write about.

“I guess we should go home,” he said.

Before closing the vat door, his fingers brushed the inside of the container. He was concerned for a second, worried that maybe Jeannie had been right about the pesticides, but there didn’t feel like there was anything on the surface.

Unfortunately, there was.

The link to the online video remained active for exactly nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds before it was located and removed. In that time, of the 622 people who clicked on the link, only 51 clicked on it soon enough to watch the video in its entirety. For the others, the video stopped where their download had ceased, and when they tried to reload it, they were presented with a message about technical difficulties.

Of the 51 who did see it, only 24 actually watched the whole thing, and of these, all but three thought it was a viral marketing ploy for a new disaster movie. The three initially took it seriously, and were willing to believe at least part of it might be true. A killer virus, distributed by man. It sure sounded plausible to them. Unfortunately, when they realized the link had disappeared and they couldn’t share it with like-minded friends, they began to lose interest.

Within five days, the three potential believers would barely remember the video at all.

“Dammit,” Tamara Costello said. “Only nine minutes? They’re getting even faster.”

Bobby Lion frowned at the computer screen. “It lasted only three on Vimeo.”

“Do they have somebody just waiting for us to upload? Is that it?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s probably automated to a point. Someone gets alerted when a suspicious video gets uploaded and they take a look, then do whatever they do to pull it down.”

They’d tried everything-unassuming titles, benign descriptions and keywords. They even created a new account every time they posted. Without exception, their work got pulled down with no more than a handful of people seeing it. It was beyond frustrating.