A mid-size SUV speeds South on Florida’s Highway 19, just outside the Goethe State Forest.
Teen Louis Nagle sits in the far back of his parents 3-row SUV. He’s grumpy, arms-crossed, as if he doesn't like vacationing with his family.
Louis's mom, Jenny, drives. His dad, Harrison, sits happily in the passenger seat. Louis’ sister, Julia, is in the seat behind Harrison.
They head down highway 19 toward Tampa and are on a somewhat deserted stretch of road.
The headlights of the SUV flash on a sign that says that for the next 12 miles one, had to watch out for bears.
Harrison says he did se a bear in this forest once, back in '97 when I was on a maneuver.
Harrison makes dad jokes. Jenny and the kids have a laugh at Harrison's expense.
Something smashes into the driver's side door of the SUV. Whatever it is, it’s large and flips the SUV over twice before it rests on it's wheels again.
The lights of a large truck illuminate the wreck. Four men get out of the truck and slam the doors.
Louis watches through his bloody eyes as the men comes towards them.
He slowly glances around. He’s the only one still awake. He looks towards his mother. The SUV is smashed inward, she’s clearly dead.
A man appears outside Louis’ window. The man shows no expression.
The door opens. Louis tries to say something, but nothing comes from his mouth.
The man raises a revolver with a silencer to Louis's head and pulls the trigger. Louis dies.
Harrison wakes up and realizes that he’s naked, alone and in the dark.
At first there’s no light anywhere around him, even after he opens his eyes. He reaches out his hands and doesn't get very far before they hit the walls around him. He quickly feels around and he realizes he’s in a coffin. A coffin made of metal. As carefully as he can, he feels out every square inch of the coffin, finding nothing that could help him get out of his new prison.
The small space didn't bother Harrison much, but he knew he'd be in trouble if he didn't get out soon.
His only option is to use his legs. He has enough space to get a pretty good range of motion. He pulls back and kicks with all his strength. The metal makes a loud thunk, but nothing else happens.
He does it again. Still nothing. He gives up after the twelfth time. No matter how hard he kicks or where he kicks, the metal doesn't give. He saves any further energy he has.
That's when he hears a loud sound of metal scraping on metal right above his head. A dim light appears in the corner of his eyes. It hurts him and he closes his eyes. A few seconds later, he opens them again and looks up. The head end of the coffin is now open. Harrison wriggles his arms above his head and grabs the rim of the coffin. He pulls himself forward and then out of the coffin.
His feet pad down on a floor covered with a fine, soft layer of dirt or dust or some such thing. Looking around, he realizes he’s in a cave. The end of the room is lit by a few fiery lamps attached to a few strategic places around the cave. They appear to be fueled by something coming through the walls. About twenty feet away from where he stands the lanterns stop and a few feet beyond that, the cave descends into total darkness. There is no way to see what lies beyond that point.
He whirls around and looks behind him. The coffin is embedded in the cave wall. He hears the scraping sound again and sees the top of the coffin close and lock into place with another thunk.
To either side of the coffin, the walls are slightly recessed into small alcoves. In those areas, he can see movement, and realizes he isn't alone in the cave. Pale, white figures dressed in tattered white pullovers smeared with dirt and blood slowly disengage from the walls and start making their way slowly, with a shamble, in his direction. He prepares for the worst.
Harrison is naked, has no weapons and is outnumbered. His training takes over. A quick glance around and he notices that there are five of them, although one of them has a missing arm. He isn't worried about that one. He isn't afraid of the rest. He knows he could take them with his bare hands, particularly after he gets a look at them.
They move very slowly. He’s able to see that they are human beings. At least they used to be. Their skin is pale enough to suggest that they haven't been outside of this cave in a long, long time. The men are all emaciated and sickly. They look like prisoners from movies about Nazi prison camps. These guys look like Auschwitz residents. Harrison relaxes. A little.
He tells them to identify themselves. Weller tells him not to worry about them. He is the man closest to the coffin. He’s an older man, although probably not as old as his emaciated frame makes him look.
Harrison asks where they are. They don't know.
Harrison asks why they are here. They don't know that, either.
Harrison asks who put them there. They don't know that, either.
He asks what the hell they do know?
Weller knows that about an hour, a slot will open in what we believe is the Southern wall. Through that slot a crisp white pullover will come through. With it will be bread, oatmeal and juice. The slot will close. The pattern will be repeated for a total of three times a day. With little variation. No new clothes will come through after the first. On a good day, meat will come through the slot. On Christmas, cookies will come through the slot. After we eat, the slot will open up and we will deposit the bowls, cups and spoons. The pattern will repeat itself over and over. We know that there is only one way to leave this room. We know it isn't a pleasant way to go.
In his peripheral vision, Harrison notices movement. The one-armed man moves close to him and grabs ahold of his shoulder. Harrison tenses up and tries to back away. The man has no teeth. Pus oozes from open sores in his mouth. This is Hurt.
Hurt tells him to stay away from the darkness. Harrison looks toward the dark end of the room. Then he looks back at the man's stump.
Hurt tells him to listen to Weller. If he wants to live to eat the next crust of bread, that is.
Harrison asks who they are.
Hurt introduces himself, Weller, Andy, Larry, and Hugo. There were others. They're not coming back. They didn't go home.
Harrison asks how long they've been there.
Weller says long enough to no longer know how long. Hugo has been here the shortest time. Except for Natalie. She's in the darkness now. They warn Harrison again to stay away from the darkness. Harrison glances at the stump again.
Hugo says he's been here three Christmases.
Harrison asks why they haven't tried to escape.
Hurt says there is only one way out of here. They chose not to take that route. Others did. They didn't make it. Neither will Harrison. Harrison turns away from the old man and peers into the dark, thinking.
On cue, the slot opens in the wall. Bread, water and oatmeal come through. Six bowls. Six tin cups filled with water. Six spoons. Six half loaves of nondescript but edible wheat bread. Harrison eats greedily.
Harrison asks what's in the dark.
Hurt says they don't know.
Harrison asks what has them so scared.
Hurt says they don't know. They've never seen it. Only the others saw it. They never came back to tell what they saw.
Harrison asks if the others were emaciated when they went into the dark.
Weller says yes. They all waited before making an attempt to escape.
Larry and Andy, who have yet to talk. They barely move. They barely eat. It was as if they are too weak to do much of anything.
Hurt said previous prisoners warned them. Someone always ignores them. Then they hear sounds.
Harrison stands up. He paces around like he’s getting out of here right now.
Hurt says Harrison won't make it. No one does.
Harrison walks away from the pale men without acknowledging the warning. Without slowing down, he walks right into the middle of the darkness.
Within a few steps, the light almost completely loses its ability to illuminate anything in front of him. He can't see anything, but he knows how to keep a straight line going, even without benefit of sight. He opens his ears and hears a faint trickle of running water. He feels a slight breeze hit his face. It came from the same direction as the running water. He heads in that direction.
He realizes he isn't alone. He stops. He hears a low growl or moan. Instantly, he heads back towards the light.
He’s close enough to the light to see everything and everyone in it.
He’s still in peak physical shape and he still had his training and conditioning working for him. He zigzags in an effort to throw it off the trail, whatever it is.
Within milliseconds, Harrison is almost back to the light. He trips over a rock and flips in midair. As he flips, he hears a loud, clear snarl. He lands on his back, with his head just barely in the lit area. He looks into the darkness.
He sees it. This thing is pure evil. He can't see its body. He can't even see its face. But he can see its teeth. Its impossibly large and long teeth. They are so big they obscure the thing's head.
All Harrison can see are the teeth. They’re at least a foot long. Each. And they are covered in some kind of disgusting ooze.
Harrison notices that his head was resting a slight bit too far in the darkness. It’s amazing how the lighting in the room works. It’s almost as if there is a barrier--on one side was the light and on the other was the dark. Harrison’s body lay in the light side and the tip of his head lay in the dark.
He doesn’t dare move. He didn't know if the thing could see him, but he knew it could hear him. He looks up at it, watching for any movement. A drop of ooze slips off of one of the thing's teeth. Unlike the other teeth, this one has a crack in it that goes almost all the way across. From that tooth, the ooze falls, as if in slow motion, and lands directly on his forehead.
Harrison recoils from the ooze, but he does it with the least amount of movement possible.
The thing sees him move. It opens its impossible mouth even farther and lunges at him. Harrison rolls away, but not without one of the monster’s teeth ripping into his right cheek. It opens a wound which already looks infected. Harrison is completely in the light now.
The monster doesn't follow.
Harrison peers into the darkness, but sees nothing. He hears nothing.
Hurt notes Harrison came back.
Harrison reels around at the sound of the voice and reflexively punches the first thing he sees, which is Hurt, who had spoken. The old man falls to the ground, unconscious. Harrison walks to the corner of the cave the farthest away from the darkness, lays down and falls asleep. The wound on his face looks like it’s growing and becoming more infected.
Harrison stands up and moves with purpose. He sees the group of pale white men sitting near the slot in the wall, eating oatmeal.
Harrison walks to Hurt and snatches the bowl and spoon from the older man's hands. Harrison takes the spoon and tosses the bowl against the wall, spilling the contents onto the floor.
Hurt asks what he's doing. Harrison doesn't respond.
He picks up his food and quickly wolfs it down. He takes Hurt's spoon and begin bending it at the end of the stem, back and forth, back and forth until, eventually, the end breaks off and he’s left with a short metal stick. He repeats the process with his own spoon.
The others stand and watch, enraptured by whatever strange activity Harrison was devoting his time to.
Harrison walks to the rock wall farthest from the slot and begins rubbing the tip of the spoon back and forth on a protruding rock. He rubs back and forth, back and forth until his hands grow sore. What remains of the spoon was a very, very sharp object.
He takes off his pullover and cuts it in half, replacing the bottom half. He tears the other half into strips and wraps them around his hands. He sharpens the other spoon.
Weller approaches Harrison to ask him what he’s doing, but a quick glance makes it clear that Harrison should be left alone. The spoons aren't particularly long, and without the ends, they’re even shorter. Harrison grips them in each hand as tightly as he could, using the strips of torn cloth as makeshift gloves. He’s ready. He walks quickly back into the darkness.
This time, he’s gone even less than the first. The other men stare after him. Harrison comes running back only seconds later. They can't see him yet, but they hear his footsteps. And the footsteps of something else.
Harrison doesn't come running--he comes sliding out of the darkness feet first on his back side. He stops short with the line of darkness falling on his naked chest, his head beyond what the men could see.
Weller screams that he didn't make it.
Harrison says he wasn't trying to.
They hear it before they see it. At first, all they see are the teeth, which glow in the dark. The creature runs quickly to the edge of the darkness and slows down as it approaches the light. Despite the fact that it has no eyes, it knows exactly where Harrison is.
It walks forward until it gets as close to the light as possible and stops. Its front legs straddle Harrison's head. It opens its mouth raises it up to make the killing blow. Harrison brings his hands up in a crossing motion--the impromptu knives slash the creature's exposed throat.
Harrison quickly rolls out of the way to avoid the thick splash of blood--on his face, at least, the rest of his body is covered in the dark red substance. Harrison’s aim was perfect, the creature falls to the ground with a thud. The dirt around its head quickly grows darker.
Harrison tells them to help him carry it. They all do.
Harrison and the old men try to lift the creature, but the old men are too weak.
Harrison calls them fools and says they have allowed themselves to grow useless.
Hurt begins to respond, but Harrison waves him off. He never speaks to them again.
Harrison grabs the slime-covered corpse and struggled to drag it to a portion of the cave wall with a significant outcrop. He does his best to place the thing's body against the wall, leaving its head in a loose.
Harrison rubs the wound on his cheek. He looks at the creature’s mouth and notices once again the cracked tooth. Harrison aims the cracked tooth directly at the cave wall, pulls the head back and smashes it down.
It gives, but it doesn't break. The first time. The third time, the tooth breaks off. It’s more than a foot long from the broken end to the tip.
Harrison wipes sweat from his brow. His face glows red with infection.
He straps the tooth to his wrist with the strips of cloth from his hands. He swings it through the air a few times to test it. It’s fine and it will work just fine.
He walks into the darkness as the men in white stare at him. He doesn’t look back.
Once the darkness envelops him, the snarling starts up again. A few seconds after that, the killing starts.
In the end, there were three more of the creatures inhabiting the darkness. Now, there are three more beastly corpses in the darkness. Harrison is covered in scratches and bites and blood, but he’s still mobile and still determined to find his way out of the darkness. If they had attacked him all at once, he wouldn't have made it.
They don't have eyes, it seems, and their other senses, while heightened, weren't enough to coordinate their behavior. That or they’re just plain dumb. Harrison could handle dumb. He was trained for dumb.
He treads carefully to make sure there aren't any more of them. He can't see anything, but he has little trouble moving in the dark. He never did.
Eventually, Harrison finds the far wall. He feels around the wall to find any kind of an exit. He searches along the wall for no more than ten minutes, finding the door in the cave's back right corner. It is a cold, steel door with a cold steel doorknob and a cold steel bolt that he slides in and out of place. The door can be locked from inside the cave. It must not matter, since the creatures had no hands and surely can't open a door.
Harrison pulls the doorknob. It opens into more darkness. He steps through to the next room.
He stoops down and touched the floor. It’s steel, like the door and the walls. H’s no longer in the cave. He shuts the door and pulls the bolt closed from this side.
Harrison moves slowly across the room. If he guessed correctly, the door out of this room would be directly in front of him. He’s right. An identical door with an identical bolt stands before him. He opens it up and recoils from the brightest light he ever saw.
It takes a few minutes for Harrison's eyes to adjust to the florescent lights that fill the stainless steel utilitarian hallway that went away from him in either direction. He looks down at himself and sees he’s covered in blood. Some of it is his. Most of it is not. Most of it is darker than human blood.
He looks around and doesn't see much. The walls were bare and look no different than the floor or the ceiling. The hall in either direction looks the same. No more than a hundred yards in either direction are more steel doors with steel bolts.
Instinctually, he goes to the right, slowly unbolting the door and opening it a crack. He listens carefully. He hears nothing, he opens it a bit more and peers through, ready to slam it shut if need be.
The facility appears to be largely empty. The hallway Harrison moves into is lined with glass windows that look into various rooms. The first is marked "Mess" and is clearly marked accurately. The place is pristine and clean, but it’s clearly designed to feed a large crew. Across the hall is a shuttered room marked "Barracks." He moves on.
After a pair of matching doors that are clearly bathrooms, he comes upon a room marked "Armory." That excites him. The locked door doesn't. And it isn't the same bolt that the other doors were barely held by, this is a serious lock meant to keep out everyone who didn't have authorization. With the proper time and tools, he could probably still get in, but he has neither.
His only tool is a monster's tooth and time is not on his or his family's side.
Across from the armory is a door marked "Admin." The windows to either side of the door are also shuttered.
At the end of the hall is a last door marked "Lab." He considers trying that door, but turns back and approaches the Admin office.
This time, he doesn't think that the slow and subtle approach is going to work. If someone is in the office, he needs to surprise them or he'll never make it. He turns the knob as slowly and quietly as he can. Harrison throws the door open and rushes in.
Lt. Albert Jameson drew the short straw. He had to work over the holiday while everyone else except the regular security guards got the time off. The guards didn't know what the facility held and somebody in the know had to be around. Just in case.
The people in the Central Florida Compound were not military anymore, but the former ranks were maintained.
Jameson was the lowest ranked man who knew about the project. He works on the compound’s mainframe. He’s in the administrative office laying under the desk beneath the bank of video monitors. Harrison comes in. He sees Jameson and is on him before the man even realized the door had opened. Jameson is pulled roughly from under the desk and his head smashes into the edge as he’s pulled out. The blow opens a one-inch gash above Jameson’s right eye. The blood flows into his eye. His field of vision is almost completely blocked by a man whose chest was covered in dark-red blood.
Harrison asks where they are. Jameson doesn't understand.
Jameson feels something sharp stick into the side of his stomach. The bloody man holds him by the collar. The bloody man is stronger than anyone he’s ever wrestled before.
Harrison says he's not going to repeat any questions. The thing poking in Jameson's ribs is one of the teeth from one of your monsters in the cave.
A flash of uncertainty comes to Jameson's eyes. His heart rate elevates.
Harrison says he knows, personally, that the teeth carry some sort of infection. He thinks Jameson probably knows, too. Harrison says the next time Jameson refuses to answer a question or hesitates at all, Jameson will know personally, too.
Harrison asks where they are, for the last time.
Jameson says Central Florida. North of Tampa.
The tooth pushes further into Jameson's stomach. It’s beginning to grow uncomfortable.
Harrison tells him to be more specific.
Jameson says they're in the middle of the Goethe State Forest in a place called The Compound.
Harrison asks Jameson whose place this is.
Jameson says a private corporation Harrison's never heard of.
Harrison tells Jameson to humor him.
Jameson says Burton Hall, Inc.
Harrison asks Jameson if he knows who Harrison is.
Jameson says Harrison is one of the subjects.
Harrison asks what he's the subject of.
Jameson says he doesn't know the details.
Jameson groans slightly as the tooth rips through his shirt and penetrates his stomach. He tries not to let on how much it hurts.
Harrison says Jameson may live or he may die. He doesn't care which. He says the more details Jameson has for him, the more likely he is to live. If Harrison discovers that Jameson is useless to him, Jameson dies. Harrison asks again what he's the subject of?
Jameson says they're testing the swordtooths. That's what they call them around here. They want to know what the monsters can do and how they work. To do that, they need subjects.
Harrison asks if Jameson knows which subject he is. Jameson does.
Harrison asks why him.
Jameson says they needed to step up the tests. The others were weak. They didn't even try after the first few failed. They needed someone who would try. They figured it would take a while before he'd try though. They were expecting he wouldn't be ready until after the new year.
Harrison twists the tooth inside Jameson's stomach, making him cry out in pain.
Harrison asks how many others there are.
Jameson say just the guards outside. Jameson is visibly shaking now.
He says the guards don't have access. They don't know anything.
Harrison asks for the keys to the armory, the lab and the barracks?
Jameson says they're in his pocket.
Harrison says give them to him now or he'll kill Jameson.
Jameson reaches into his pocket and pulls out the keys. He hands them to Harrison.
Harrison asks what happened to his family.
Jameson implies they're all dead. He begins crying.
Harrison disembowels Jameson and leaves him to bleed to death. He stands up and walks out of the administrative office. He goes to the barracks to clean himself up.
He says he's going to the lab to look for antibiotics.
Harrison looks directly into the camera. He says next he's going to the armory to get his hands on some guns. Then he's going to kill the guards. Or maybe he’ll lay down and take a nap first. Harrison sits down on an army cot.
He says he knows some people. It wouldn't take long for him to find out who made up the company known as Burton Hall, Inc. And once he has some names, he's going on a killing spree. Or maybe he’ll go see his friend Johnson, who’s a doctor, first. Then he’ll go on a killing spree. He's going to let the members of Burton Hall, Inc. know the results of their latest test.