Уильям Мейкл - Operation - Norway

We did not have to wait long for results. The poor bugger’s veins went black, spreading in thick branches from the pinpoint needle mark, the inky darkness roaring like wildfire the length of his arm within minutes. And whatever else it was doing to him, Boyd was in agony as if it was indeed fire that burned through his veins. I ordered Jensen to provide the man with relief but the scientist was loath to prescribe sedatives for fear that they might adversely influence results. But as poor Boyd’s screams echoed around our small camp, I had to pull rank, override the scientist, and give the order, for the frightful wails were apt to spread their own terror to everyone here.

Even after enough sedative to floor a horse, Boyd still writhed and moaned as the blackness took him. Jensen seemed immune to the man’s suffering, taking blood samples every hour on the hour as Boyd slowly succumbed to the thing we’d put inside him. His skin took on a gray sheen and thickened, hardening in rough ridges run through with moist, pink cracks where what was left of his own tissue showed through.

Jensen tried to get me to leave, seeing my distress, but I had made my vow to these men, had befriended them and found good companions, and I was determined to stay with Boyd through his crisis, although his eyes had long since ceased to acknowledge my presence. By the time the roughness and hardening spread to his neck then his face, he had lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

He never woke again. When he finally gave up the ghost two terrible days later, his whole body was a single mass of rough, thickened flesh as hard as stone and as alike to the specimens from the cave that they could not be told apart.

It took eight of us to lift him off the chair and when we buried him, it was like burying a box of rocks.

Jan 5th 1950

After the terrible failure with Boyd, Jensen has been quiet for a time and throws himself into a frenzy of work in the lab, sweating over bubbling retorts and causing the release of all manner of noxious vapors. The rest of us keep our distance and content ourselves with making inroads into the liquor supply. I have made a request to Whitehall to wind up the operation and am waiting for a reply.

But this morning the scientist unexpectedly arrived in my office, a wide grin on his face and led, almost dragged, me back to the laboratory, muttering some gobbledygook about solution strength and natural inhibition factors that I neither understood nor cared to understand.

At first, I was not sure what he was showing me when he led me to a small cage on a trestle. It looked like a lump of rock lying on the straw floor but then he poked it with a ruler and the thing moved fast, scurrying quickly away and throwing its body violently against the cage walls, which bent but held.

I had to bend closer to see that although it did indeed look like stone, the outline was definitely mouse-like and I understood that this was one of the white mice kept for experimental purposes, a mouse now transformed, a mouse that was most definitely still alive and seemingly thriving. It was almost twice the size it should be and continued to throw itself viciously at the walls of its cage as if desperate for an escape, but there was no doubt of the fact that it was most definitely alive.

I still have misgivings but Jensen wishes to push ahead, taking things very slowly with a series of weaker injections that will take a period of months to administer and Private McCallum, although given pause by what happened to poor Boyd, is still willing to do his part. As for me, I have my original orders and while I may not like them, that has never been accepted as an excuse for disobedience.

I have given Jensen permission to begin. May God have mercy on me.

May 12th 1950

Will we ever be free from this place?

Jensen’s experiment continues apace. McCallum survived the early injections despite twice almost succumbing to Boyd’s fate. His skin has taken on the now familiar gray, ridged look, and he is so strong that we have to restrain him during procedures for fear he might lash out in his pain and hurt someone unduly. There has been a noticeable increase in his size both in height and girth and he sleeps in the last hut to the north in an iron-barred cell that we were forced to ship in at no inconsiderable cost to my budget. It is necessary though, for in the nights he is often mightily disturbed, bellowing curses and threats that only become defused after his breakfast. He only takes red meat now and we lace it with heavy sedatives. As of now, they are enough to keep him calm, but Jensen tells me he still has more than half a dozen courses of injections to administer.

What manner of thing will we have brought into being by the time we are done here?

Banks was asking himself the same question as he closed the journal and went to fetch another coffee and light up a fresh smoke. The wind had fallen and there was no patter of snow on the window so he took his coffee outside, pulled the hood of his jacket up against the cold, and stared over at the ruined hut at the end of the row.

What manner of thing, indeed?

In the morning, he had the squad up early for a quick breakfast of coffee and hard biscuits then got everyone kitted up for a tramp into the hills. Over the coffee and a smoke, he told them what he’d found in the journal.

“Specimens? Samples? What are we into this time, Cap?” Wiggins said. “More mad scientist shite? For I can tell you now I had my lifetime share of that crap in Siberia. I thought this was supposed to be a cushy number?”

“So did we all, Wiggo,” Banks replied. “But you know what the colonel’s like. If we didn’t at least investigate yon cave up in the hills, we’d get a bollocking and you might well find yourself back in Siberia on our next shift. So buckle up, lads. We’re going for a walk and the sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll be back and heading for our lift home.”

Davies looked at his rucksack warily.

“How far do we need to lug this lot, Cap?”

“Ten miles by the looks of things. All of it upward.”

To a man the squad groaned, but Banks knew they were more than up to the task; they’d trained on worse terrain than this, in worse weather, and with heavier packs. It wasn’t going to be much fun. But it was going to be manageable.

This time out, he had each man also carry a rifle and spare magazines. He also had Hynd and Wiggins pack several blocks of C4 in their rucksacks while he took some detonators and a remote in his inner jacket pocket. It was extra weight but he’d rather have the weaponry and not need it than meet something unexpected and not have the firepower at hand. Besides, if anything needed ‘sanitizing,’ then C4 was usually the right tool for the job. A final inspection and, satisfied they had all they might need, he had Hynd lead the squad out, heading for the track at the rear of the tumbledown hut at the end of the row.

The wind had dropped to merely a light breeze, the sky an azure blue spotted with wispy strands of cloud and the fresh snow crackled crisply underfoot; it was as good a day for a walk as they were likely to get here at this time of year.

As they passed the ruined hut, Banks saw young Wilkins pause and cast a worried glance at the frozen skeletal remains underfoot.

“Whatever happened here, it was nearly sixty years ago, lad,” he said. “So don’t fash about it. We’re after information today, that’s all. Try to enjoy the walk.”

He followed the rest of them as they strode onto the track behind the hut and immediately began to climb.