Hangar 18

Hey Guys, Taking a break from Five things, kinda lost that story to father time, having a hard time writing it, so here is Hangar 18.

WOOP, WOOP. The overhanging code red siren chirped throughout the steel and concrete facility. "Captain! What's Happening!?" An obviously scared shitless private yelled from behind the barrier. "Run a diagnostic on cryo-chambers three through thirty-seven!" the doctor yelled at him. 'Good, keep him off my ass Johnson.' I thought but didn't say. I double checked my rifle and ammo. "Open the blast doors." I radioed to the remote control center. Three teams of twenty were already in position next to and around me. The yellow caution light whirred to life as the two hundred pound door lurched open and twenty scientists poured out. "Where's the other seven?!" I yelled at one of them. The scientist just pointed behind him and gave me a mortified look. The blood was everywhere. We already knew what was coming before the roar. "CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!!" I screamed frantically into the radio. I launched a grenade through the door and emptied my clip before I made a brake for the secondary blast doors.

Three thousand miles away in rural Nebraska, a suburbanite from Chicago settled into his fathers rocking chair on the porch for an hour of quiet whittling as the he awaited the his wife and children to rise for a day of cleaning and packaging his father's belongings. His father who'd succumbed to cancer a week before had been a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, and had been sent to the afterlife with a hero's send off. It had been beautiful. He wiped a tear from his eye. "He was a good man." he turned around, stifling the tears from his wife. "Tim, sooner or later you'll have to accept it and cry." she said. "When we get back to Chicago, dear. Right now go get the girls up for breakfast. I'll make some pancakes." He lazily slumped into the kitchen and flipped on the news. "..... the magnitude of this troop movement has surprised even the president who says he hasn't authorized any on this scale since operation Iraqi freedom first went into effect......" Being a former marine, this surprised Tim. He was suddenly worried beyond all reason. "Samantha get the girls packed and ready to leave now!" He yelled as he grabbed his father's old nam rifle and all the ammo hidden around the house. He also grabbed the hunting and survival gear he had bought over the years between summer retreats. "Tim what's wrong?" Samantha asked. "The army is moving outside of Nevada. Large scale armor. Tanks, rockets, troop numbers in the thousands." He started going into battle mode, ready to fight. "Tim, sit down, calm yourself. Aliens aren't real, hangar 18 doesn't exist. Your conspiracy buddies have you all riled up for nothing." She didn't know it at the time, but she was deathly wrong.

"Johnson." I whispered to the doctor. "What cryo number was that one?" I asked as I heard foot steps whose volume was equivalent to a small concussion bomb. "Number twenty four, twenty feet tall, thirty feet wide, weighing in at seven tons. A monster." He said as I typed it into my hand held archives. Good, intelligence low, no armored skin. Proposed weak point; The head. I loaded my rifle and carefully peaked around the corner. I fired three times into it's skull and hurried Johnson and the private across the hall through the secondary blast doors, and closed them. We'd scanned the facility for human life first. We'd come up empty. We hurried to the surface where we were met by an armed team of green berets. Once they confirmed we were human they debriefed us on the situation inside. They sent a negotiator and several platoons down below, against my advice. Ten minutes after they went down, only a single private returned, but when he returned, he wasn’t himself, broken, destroyed by the volume of carnage he’d seen. Suddenly three large, armor skinned aliens appeared and began destroying trucks and armor. I made a mad dash for the truck that the private and Johnson were sitting in and we high tailed it out of there. I had faith in my brothers in arms, but I wasn't sticking around to see out it turned out.

"Tim, did you hear?" the voice on the other end asked. "Yea, John, I want to evacuate to somewhere safer but Samantha says I’m just a conspiracy nut." He replied. "If I were you I’d pack Tina and Ronny into your truck and just go. We have an outpost here in DC if you want to make it out here. But I got to go. John, out." He hung up the phone and walked to his truck. The gear was all packed. The gun his father used in nam was in the passenger seat. The rifles and shotgun in the rack and under the backseat. "Tina! Ronny! Get your coats on and get in the truck!" Samantha hurried them outside along with their dog, Mylo. "Honey, my sister just called, she saw them! She saw the aliens, destroying trucks, running through buildings, we have to get somewhere safe." He sighed and hugged her. "Ok, We’re headed to an outpost in DC. Sound good?" They buckled up and headed for what they hoped was the safest place to be.

"Fuck!" I slapped the wheel. "Out of gas! Fuck!" I yelled again. Ten minutes outside of Denver. We grabbed our rifles and started jogging along, trying to hitch a ride. After twenty minutes of walking a marine jeep finally stopped. Unfortunately they saw our rifles and forced us down. When they authenticated our Ids then let us off the ground and into the jeep. "What’re you boys doing here?" the CO asked. "Well we just came from Nevada, trying to reach the army base here to warn the brass of.." "Of what?" He cut me off. "Aliens? From Nevada?" He chuckled. "Yes." I replied. "Boy, you off your meds or something?" he asked. I replied "No, but I’m was almost killed during the escape, we’re the only three that made it out of the Nevada facility, and yes, it was hangar 18." I said annoyed that he didn’t believe me. He grabbed his radio. "Base, I have a Captain Marcus McGee here, says he’s from hangar 18, what you want me to do with him? Over." He got an instant reply. "Hurry him here so he can be re-outfitted and choppered back to the area. Is there a private and a Dr. Johnson with him?" I heard the base ask. He replied. "Uhh, Yea. There is. We’re on our way. ETA, seven minutes. Over and Out." He finished. "Well Captain McGee, looks like you’re telling the truth." He said to me. "Yea, you gotta come with us. You ain’t really seen war until you’ve been in hangar 18 after a cryo-chamber failed." I told him. "Alright." We hurried to the Denver military base.