The Facility

Entry #4

Wednesday June 14^th 2006

Gurnard Hunting Elite Meeting

Location:  Donny’s Bar & Grill & Gurnard Testing Facility

I arrived at the Bar & Grill at about 1645 at the same time as Chuck and Harrison. First thing was first; we needed to figure out how to get to this place on the back of the note. But before that....

“Harrison! Why are you wearing a suit?” I asked.

In comparison to the T-shirt and shorts that Chuck, Donny and I were sporting I felt that he was definitely over dressed.

“What do you mean, why am I wearing one? Why aren’t you guys dressed a bit smarter? I thought this was a Job Interview?”

A moments silence graced us as Donny, Chuck and I exchanged eye contact without moving our heads.

“Shit man! He’s got a point!” Donny belted, breaking the silence. “If this guy is serious enough to give us that much money up front we better look a bit more respectable.”

“But we don’t have enough time to get our suits, it takes me 45 minutes to get to mine and back and the back of the note says it will take 30 minutes to get to the facility!” Chuck interjected.

“No worries!” said Donny “I might just have something for us, be right back.”

So while Donny ran to the upstairs of his house the other three of us folded out the back of the note to work out exactly where we needed to go. It was a rough map drawn out in red pencil, it highlighted the Bar & Grill with a circle round it with a dotted line that went down the road, through Gurnard Pines Holiday Park, through some woods depicted by drawings of trees, up a hill ending up at an “X” with a circle round it. “Allow 30 minutes” was written on the bottom left.

“Huh. That’s funny, I’ve always wondered what was beyond that woods at the bottom of Gurnard Pines” said Chuck.

“Well why don’t we Google map it just to be sure of where we’re going?” I asked.

“It’s no use, I’ve tried, there’s nothing there, and it’s all blacked out on Google Earth.”

Just then Donny showed up again holding three suit bags.

“Take your pick, although I have dibs on this one.”

Me and Chuck both picked a bag, unzipped them to both reveal tuxedos complete with bow ties.

A stern look was all I felt was needed, there were no words to be said when Donny unzipped his bag to show us an everyday business suit.

We Left headquarters at 1725, five minutes early in case of any complications along the way. Following exactly what it said on the back of the note we walked down the road and into Gurnard Pines Holiday Park. This felt a little bit odd, firstly because we walking through a busy holiday park wearing suits and tuxedos, I guess we could have easily been mistaken for waiters from the restaurant on our breaks or something similar. Secondly because who the hell puts a top secret research facility so close to where the general public hang out in masses during the summer?

After making it through the grounds of the camp jealously walking past holiday makers cooling in the swimming pool while we’re all sweating our bollocks off in suits, we got to the woods. At this point we all thought the security access would start for the facility. Although there was a large mesh fence separating the grounds of the camp and the woods, there were no signs of it being electrified and it didn’t even have barbed wire at the top. I thought I’d lead by example and be the first one to clamber over the fence only to end up embarrassed as the other guys just simply jumped over a small stile about 5 metres down. We made our way through the disappointingly normal woods and started up the hill. It was a plain grassy field of a hill and it was steep, extremely steep. Just as I was about to express my disappointment for the lack of security obstructing the path for the facility to the general public, a huge white wall emerged from behind the hill. We stopped and stood in awe just for a few seconds. “This must be it” said Phil. The further we ascended the hill the wider the wall got and as we approached we noticed a small rusting iron door with flaky red paint falling off it. When we got right up to the door each end of the wall was out of sight. We were all baffled about how big this place was and how it was supposed to be a secret. Next to the door was a small panel with a single button below a speaker. The obvious thing to do was to push the button but we were all just standing there looking at it. “Well?” I said. Chuck pushed it. The speaker let out a loud buzz, after about 5 seconds came a voice. “Yes?” It was the same voice that was on the phone. “It’s errmm... Gurnard Hunting Elite” said Chuck. This was followed by a large clunking sound and the voice came again “lift the handle on the right.” We were in.

Upon entering the red door we walked into a long thin corridor with handrails both sides and lit by large spotlights on the ceiling. It took about 3 minutes to get to the other end where we faced another door, this time large and made of steel with a wheel for a handle like a submarine door. The wheel started turning and the door opened towards us and on the other side was a man, about 5 foot, 7 inches, greying, short quiffed up hair, jam-jar glasses and a white lab coat. “Welcome” he said “please follow me.”

We followed the scientist into a room that was large and full of computers, at one end of the room was a large projector screen.

“Thank you for joining me gentlemen, although I wasn’t expecting for you all to be dressed so smart.” Three squinty eyed glares were directed at Harrison.

Mike: “No problemo, It’s our pleasure.”

Scientist: “Please take a seat. Firstly let me introduce myself, my name is Dr. William Ashford, next I’m guessing you’d like to know what I’ve called you here for and why.”

Donny: “Sure would.”

Mike: “Yeah! I’m guessing this person you want us to track down is really worth all this money you’ve thrown at us!”

Dr. Ashford: “Or rather ‘persons’”

M: “More than one?”

D.A: “Oh there will be a lot more than just one.”

Harrison: “So who are these people? And why are you after them?”

D.A: “Let’s just say they have no rights to be free among the public.”

H: “So what are you saying? They’re escaped convicts or something?”

Chuck: “I’m not sure we’re up to handling people as dangerous as that! They might have weapons!”

D.A: “Please gentlemen, I assure you the people you will be dealing with will have no use for weapons.”

H: “Wait, what?”

D.A: “If you would all avert your attention to the big screen over there, all will be explained.”

We all twisted in our swivel chairs as the lights were dimmed and Dr. Ashford turned on a movie projector. The paused image that was projected was an almost overhead view of a medical room with a single bed on the left and the body of a man on top. To the right was a large viewing window and a large metal door like the one the doctor had opened earlier with the wheel. Dr. Ashford started narrating.

“This, gentlemen, is subject 42. He was once one of our many scientists working at the Gurnard Testing & Research Facility. Unfortunately during one of his research tests he fell ill and passed away. Every scientist who comes to work here has to sign a disclaimer to say that if deceased their body will be used for further research within the facility. Unfortunately that week subject 42 was the first of many that passed away due to his experiment. The deadly gas that was created by him leaked into the rest of the labs and took the lives of everyone, apart from two. Myself and one other, Dr. Sarah Muston. We managed to seal ourselves in an airtight room that had not yet been filled with the gas. Whilst in this room we had a race against time to localise the gas and find a way of eradicating it before our air supply ran out. As you can see we were successful, or I would not be here talking to you now. Once we had escaped the room we had spent 48 hours in we had to move all the bodies to the freezer, we then started testing on subject 42 here.”

“So what happened to your partner Dr. Muston?” Donny asked.

“Unfortunately you’re about to find out. Whilst we were preparing our tests to find out how the gas had affected the body our cameras caught this.”

The professor pressed play and the body of subject 42 stated twitching. After about a minute of twitching the body sat bolt upright.

“Dr. Muston saw the image on our monitor first and before I realised what was going on there was nothing I could do to stop her.”

On the screen we saw a woman with long brown wavy hair and a lab coat enter the room with the body. “Grant” she screamed “are you alive?” The body’s head turned quickly to face her and reached its arms out. The woman wrapped her arms around it only for the body to sink its teeth directly into her neck. It ripped a huge chunk of flesh out from her neck while she screamed and screamed and when the screams died down it dropped the woman’s body to the ground in a pool of her own blood and then stood up. The video was stopped.

The professor started again “I kept that door sealed from then on. Subject 42 has been banging on the window and door ever since and three days after Dr. Muston’s death she awoke again just like him.” Dr. Ashford then flicked another switch and to our left a light turned on to reveal a window to the room where the two bodies were. They were both there. A woman and a man, looking so pale they were almost green. Blood splattered all over their once white lab coats, the woman with a huge rotting chunk taken from her neck and the man with blood smothered all around his blue lipped mouth, pounding the bottoms of their fists against the seemingly sound proof glass.

“Wait just one God damn, gosh darn minute!” said Chuck. “Zombies? Is this some kind of joke?”

“Don’t call them that!” growled Dr. Ashford. “They’re my friends!”

“But seriously? Zombies? What the hell has this got to do with us? We are bounty hunters, we hunt humans!” I said.

“They are humans! Can’t you see that? And don’t you want the money?”

The professor had us on that one.

“Look” he said. “As you have seen, although I managed to eradicate the gas it seems this disease has become viral. If it were to get loose and these guys started biting the public we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

H: “So what is it you want us to do?”

D.A: “All I need from you is to gather a team of people together to perimeter the borders of this facility during the times I am running tests to find a cure for this infection.”

Donny: “But why us?”

D.A: “I saw your ad” he held up a Gurnard Hunting Elite handmade poster.

M: “Okay, but don’t you think this is a bit out of our league?”

D.A: “Never mind that, you bring me ten people every time and I’ll give everybody the vital weapons training.”

All of our eyes lit up, there was no need for discussion. A unanimous decision had been made via two simple words.

“So what about pay?” Chuck asked.

D.A: “How about the same amount as the initial briefcase for every session?”

 M: “Sounds good!”

D.A. “Great, can ten of you be here this time next week to begin training?”

D: “It’s gonna be tough finding another six people to believe us!”

D.A: “I’m sure this will sway them.” He slid another briefcase across a table towards Donny.

D.A: “Consider that an up-front payment for your training. Please, let me escort you to the door. Oh, and next time guys, lose the goofy suits, maybe wear something a little more practical, we all know you’re no 007’s.”

More dirty looks wondered in Harrison’s direction.

The journey home was a frantic discussion about weapons, money, zombies and who we were going to ask to join the elite. For the first time we felt we could actually call ourselves that. “The Elite”.