It's Dark and Smells of Mushrooms Part 1

Sorry for not posting up sooner but Louise and I have been kept busy by Inspector Galesh giving statements, now there is a guy that likes to dot every 'i' and cross and every 't'. Okay so the world hasn't gone poof at least not yet. Let me start at the beginning.

Tuesday morning we were up early and since my car is still bust, we took Louise's car. After a five and a half hour trip we were both exhausted. The M1 is just a lorry park really, thankfully we missed most of the chaos caused by the scrapyard fire that closed the bottom part of the motorway, from the news reports sounds like it was arson. We had left at four in the morning and arrived in Harrogate about nine thirty by which time we just collapsed in the Travel Inn Louise had booked for us the day before.

We slept most of the day and since the supposed location of the back door was just under a half an hour's journey we decided to make our unofficial visit just before dusk which was about seven o'clock. There is a side road close to the map coordinates that Max Drum supplied, we parked up the car and walked in from there. The road ended and opened up into a wide flat space of white concrete with one small low building at the far end, seen from Google maps the area looks like a shorten cricket bat.

The building appeared have no entrance at all it definitely was not looking good until Louise tripped over a slightly raised crack in the concrete she steadied herself against one of the walls only to discover that there was a slight give in the wall. After a lot of pushing I discovered a two foot panel that was pivoted in the middle. In the process of opening it I nearly took Louise's head off fortunately however she has lightening fast reflexes. The panel was a simple nine digit keypad with green and blue buttons on the right hand side. I typed in '2430' as per the instructions we received from Reesylou and on a hunch pressed the blue button instead of the green one. Nothing happened.

Louise said "Let me try." She typed in the number again and this time pressed both buttons first green and then blue and then she banged on the side with her hand. The ground where we were standing trembled slightly and then in a five foot square around us the ground cracked and the bottom suddenly fell out of my stomach as the ground descended bloody fast. We hung on to each other and Louise cried out "Banzai!" When we stopped we decelerated slowly in the last ten feet otherwise it would have been a very painful ending, I looked back up the shaft and guessed we had gone down at least hundred feet.

There was a ship like door/hatch directly in front of us with four sliding locks, they were a bit stiff but between us we managed to turn them. The door itself seemed quite rusted but Louise had insisted on bringing a nut spinner from the spare wheel kit in her car (she said it was for protection) and a can of WD40 (she says it works quite well as a mace alternative). She had managed stuff it all in her mini backpack along with crisps, several chocolate bars and two bottles of waters. Louise likes to be prepared whereas I had only a bag of jelly-babies and a torch but I digress, Louise applied the WD40 to the rusted hinges and then I pulled on the handle while Louise rammed the nut spinner into the small crack. Nothing appeared to be happening when there was the sound of metal on metal and I found myself lying on the floor as the door opened in a rush.

We entered very small room with a ladder leading further down, I went down first. It was a short ladder about ten feet, this room was far larger and had five exits. All the exits led onto what looked like catwalks above dark machinery. Louise piped up and said, “This reminds me of when I used to play Paranoia, you know stuck in a maze of twisty passages.” I said “And exactly how did you get out then?” “Oh! Easy, just opened fire with a big gun and knocked the walls down.” This however did not seem to be option at least not with just a nut spinner. I chose the middle exit and we walked along as quietly as we could. It was completely dark, we had walked about twenty yards when we came to a crossroads there against the left catwalk barrier was a black panel with the following buttons and small LEDs above them: Inspection, Waste, Security and something completely unreadable. Before I had a chance to look more closely Louise pressed the Inspection button, “We are meant to be sneaking...” I didn't get a chance to finish because the lights came on and a loud klaxon went off.

We ran straight ahead and hoped we wouldn't meet anyone no chance there of course, to our left and right came several men in Corcas labelled coveralls with hard hats to suit. They did not look happy to see us, we got to end of the catwalk and hung a left into what looked like a complete dead end. Louise shouted and pointed at a flapped chute, she lifted it up and slid down and I followed. It was a very tight fit for my bulk, it went down at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Before we got the bottom however I heard the men in the corridor say “Looks like the Boss's pet will get them instead, definitely saves us the trouble.” I was not I liking the sound of that at all.

The bottom smelled absolutely awful and the ground seemed to be covered in mushrooms. It was extremely dark really glad I brought the torch. From what we could tell in the range of the torch we were in a large open space. Louise said she could see a faint light off to the right so we went that way, we didn't get very far when the torch started to flicker. Louise immediately took it me to look at it and in the process managing to blind me when the light came back on momentarily. I backed off a little and realised I walked into a soft but fur like wall, I saw Louise stare beyond me with a look of complete fright although she managed to hold torch quite steady. I tried to turn round but then what felt like a long snake crawled over my shoulder and straight into my coat pocket. There was a snuffling sound and I saw with horror in the torch light that the snake was a furry trunk, my coat pocket contained my bag of jelly-babies. As lightly as I could I pulled the trunk aside and got out a couple of jelly-babies, then held out my hand with them on. The trunk snorted somewhat and the jelly-babies were no longer there.

I turned fully and saw that I had backed into what looked like a Woolly Mammoth, its trunk came by again and I gave it some more jelly-babies. I looked back at Louise and said quietly “Looks harmless enough as long as we don't run out of jelly-babies.” Louise had got over her initial fright and walked up to the beast and petted it, to which it sneezed directly into Louise's face. Before she could say I word I dragged her in the direction of the light she saw earlier. It became apparent however we were being followed, what is it they say at zoos do not feed the animals.

The light resolved itself into a door and another nine digit keypad. The door itself was huge and I can only assume it was there let our new friend into its cage. Louise typed in Max's code and door slowly opened, it was about foot thick they obviously did not want the beast leaving. Fortunately for the moment he/she seemed just happy to follow us, we walked through straight into three guards with guns. However they took one look at the beast lumbering in behind us and ran in the opposite direction. The corridor we were in was large enough to hold our new friend with no problem, it went on for about twenty yards and forked left and right after that. There did not appear to be any other means of transport so we just walked along and occasionally I had to supply another jelly-baby. We chose the right fork and after ten yards we were in a huge circular room, some technicians working right in the middle on a towering column noticed us. They stared for a moment goggled-eyed and then ran off. We got to the central console and I was glad Louise insisted on coming cause it all looked double Dutch to me. Louise said “Looks pretty simple to me, I think this is an auxiliary control station for the satellite, give me a moment to figure it out...” no sooner had she said that when from around the curve of the column came three men. I recognised Dennis Stern straight away and assumed the other two were Johnny Howard and Dwight Sunderland.

Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger but I'm still very tired, so I will post up the rest tomorrow evening.