Bodies

Multiple different scenarios passed through James' head after his realisation, but none of them made sense. If someone had moved them they wouldn't of been left under a random pile of rubble. If they had been thrown into a different room from the explosion, there should still be things from the first room and they'd probably be dead.

James pushed the thoughts out of his head. It wouldn't matter what happened or where they were if they died. He looked over to Henry who was resting his head on the broken stone behind him, the water canteen held in his hand. James reached over and took the water canteen. Henry looked about to complain before he saw James looking at his left leg.

This was the first time James had actually seen the state of his leg and it wasn't pretty. A metal pole about the thickness of two of James' fingers was sticking fifteen centimetres out of his middle thigh. The end of the pole was weirdly smoothly cut, not what James would of expected if it ha broken of something. The other end had pierced through his jeans and into the thigh. James grabbed the edges of the jeans and ripped them open more to give himself a better look at the actual wound.

His leg was covered in equal parts dried blood and dust. It looked as though the blood flow had slowed down though, James vaguely remembering people talking about not pulling out objects as they helped stop bleeding. He brought the water canteen closer to the wound and tentatively poured some of the water on the wound to clean it a bit. He hissed as the water hit the wound, a slight stinging sensation coming from it. He set the water down and started to look for something to wipe the leg down a bit.

The closest he could find was a slightly less dirty part of his shirt, so he ripped that part of and started wiping away the dirt from the wound. Every time he pressed down on the wound, a fresh jab of pain arced through him, but it was easier to deal with than when he had been moving. As he finished up, he heard the sound of more fabric tearing coming from Henry. James looked to see him tearing up his shirt and trying his best to wipe out some of the dust.

Henry looked up and gestured towards the water canteen that was only about half full at that point. "Can I grab some of that?" he asked. James handed the water over with a small nod. Henry doused a few strips of fabric with as little water as possible. When he had four or five strips relatively clean, he shuffled over to James' leg. He started tying the straps around the wound. James gritted his teeth every time Henry he pulled the fabric tight, but he didn't tell him to stop.

After he was done, the rea around the wound was nearly full of fabric. It wasn't perfect, small gaps showing in the sides near the pole, but it was better than nothing. Henry looked at the remaining water in the canteen before handing it back to James.

"Have the rest," he said. "We should get moving soon." He looked up at the precariously stacked stone that was the ceiling. "I don't trust this room to stay in one piece for much longer." James took the canteen and took a long swig of it, leaving a bit at the bottom.

"All right." James took a deep breath in as he readied himself. "I'm ready." With a few quick exhales of breath and a loud, "Fuuuuuck." Henry pulled James onto his feet.

"How is it?" Henry asked, holding James as he tested how much weight he could put on his leg.

"Better than before," James responded, able to lay his foot down flat and put a little weight onto it. James leant back onto Henry after he finished testing, and took some steps towards the open corridor. As they stepped pass the pile of rubble partially blocking the doorway, James got a glimpse of a mottled purple arm sticking out from the bottom. The fingers were curled like they were holding onto something. James quickly looked away, a knot settling in his stomach. As he looked back he saw a complicated look on Henry's face, who was glancing back and forth between the arm and the canteen in James' hand.

James managed to steer Henry away from the site, holding him slightly tighter to distract him. Both of them started looking at their surroundings to distract them. The more James looked at the walls, floor and ceiling the more convinced he was that they were somewhere much different to where they had been knocked out. The walls were a different smooth cut stones that blended together, much different from the singularly grey concrete of the Area 51 facility. There were also no coloured lines along the wall like the facility.

As they approached a T-intersection, Henry and James looked at each other, seemingly having a similar thought.

"This was definitely cross-intersection right?" Henry asked.

"Yep," James said simply.

"Have you noticed the walls are different," Henry asked.

James nodded. "Yeah I noticed back in the room."

"Any idea what's going on?" asked Henry.

"Nope and I don't really care. We just have to find someone who does and who can fix my leg." Just as James said this, they made it to the intersection. They looked down the right side corridor, and saw four bodies lying on the ground. They were about twenty meters down the corridor, lying in a pile of blood and metal shrapnel.

At least one of the bodies was a guard, the signature black combat suit torn and stained with blood from a nasty looking slash across their torso. James couldn't make out their face as they were laying away from him. The other three James couldn't place. Although he couldn't see them clearly, they were all wearing some sort of robe, one James had not seen at all in the facility.

James and Henry gave each other a quick look and nodded, before slowly moving closer. As they got closer they could see the details of what the three unknowns were wearing. They all looked to be waring some sort of robe that covered their whole body. It was a crimson red, with bright silver thread woven through the whole thing in multiple different patterns. The silver seemed to have glow slightly even in the dim gloom of the corridor.

As they got up to the bodies, they could see that the robes were torn and damaged, but there was no blood staining there clothes. Henry gingerly left James to stand precariously on his good leg to reach down and shift one of the bodies so they could get a better look.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Henry exclaimed as he stepped back from the body.

The face under the hooded cloak was human, but everything about it was just...off. For one it was caked in blood, so much that James couldn't even see the colour of the skin underneath. What he could see of the skin was mostly ripped to shreds. It was the same for the rest of the body, savage rips and tears coating the cloak in blood and leaving it hanging on by a thread.

The mouth hung open, the lower jaw looking too large for the rest of the head. Two large, purely metal tusks stuck out and forward of the lower jaw, protruding at least thirty centimetres out.

It also didn't have a nose. It hadn't been cut or torn of, it was just gone. There was a smooth patch of skin where it should be, actually being one of the only parts with no injuries on it.

Only one of the eyes was open, but James was glad he only had to see one. It had two vertical slits in it, thin pieces of metal piecing into them. A clear coloured crust had formed at the bottom of the eye, possibly where the eye jelly had conjealed.

Just off centre of the forehead was a circular wound. James had never seen a bullet wound, but this was what he would think it looked like. The skin around the wound was strangely split and cracked, like an impact on glass. Underneath the cracks, James could see what looked like metal plates. Looking more closely at the wound, James could see a metal plate being pierced like bullet holes in cars that James had seen in movies.

Seeing this bullet wound reminded James of the guard, and the large weapons he had seen others holding. He managed to overcome his morbid curiosity over what happened to the corpse before him and looked towards the guard. He could see the rifle laying on their chest, the barrel pointing towards their head and their right hand on the grip.

"Henry." James laid a hand on Henry's shoulder and pointed over his other shoulder towards the guard. "We should grab his gun."

Henry turned towards James, a chalk white face showing exactly how well he was taking the gruesome discoveries. He gave James a short nod before putting an arm under James's armpit and leading him towards the guards body.

They froze when they reached the body, a scream that sounded like a metal sheet being torn in half reverberating down the hallway from behind them. They turned to see one of the robed creatures standing one hundred and fifty metres down the hallway, mouth open in an unending screech and long, jagged claws stretched out to its side, fresh blood still dripping from them.