045. Lazaretto, 5

(Luka)

We made it into the shelter tunnels. It's worse than we thought inside. Our first thought that they were actually sewers isn't farfetched.

Weird fruits the size of pumpkins are growing down there, like cysts. We don't tread close to these ominous looking things, afraid they'll burst open and why not release tiny monsters.

Who knows... We keep our distance to the weirder things, trying not to breathe too much the stagnating stench.

We didn't find any good ladder or cable in the zoo before, so we're now betting our luck on the locked museum.

We reach its underground fences, from this shelter tunnel, turned sewer swamp in time.

The gate is locked as well here, but now the guys are used to force this open. While they do, we keep watch.

The torchlights look around these swampy corridors. With so much slime or grime and gunk sticking to the walls and dripping from the ceiling, it's like a jungle or a haunted cave.

We hear the lock finally giving in. We all rush inside and climb the stairs. The doors open to dusty galleries with barely any light of day reaching in.

Displays are covered with dust but untouched. We look around this place that had been spared all this time, from looters and young party goers like us.

We're not in the mood to vandalize or have fun anymore however.

We brush the dust from an evacuation map on the wall, to look at where we are and where to go. There are offices in the upper floors above the main visitors' galleries. There's this unique wide dome making a huge greenhouse by the water, with unique turn of the century architecture. There are mangrove gardens next to it on the lake side. We see where the dry docks for the boats could be.

Most doors we find around are locked though. Before we exhaust ourselves breaking all of them one after another, we chose to head toward the offices.

We're giving ourselves an hour to find some keys.

Afterward we'll just use force.

So we head upstairs and split into two groups to look around this floor.

~

Morgan and I manage to open some of the curtains by the windows, to get some light in.

It looks rather gorgeous around honestly. A well preserved research study, with high ceiling and shelves of books or display cases. Long working benches made of wood, with drawers filled with old tools and such.

An archaeologist dream...

We look through the director's offices and desks. We pass by old portraits and posters.

I wouldn't have believed there could be so much to know about plants and stuff. I guess the more you know in a field, the more you can do.

We don't linger on the scattered notes and documents left lying around by the last people who came around here. They had left in somewhat rush, but not panic.

O - Found some keys. And a magnetic badge.

L - I doubt that one will help. Anything on the keys?

Orel reads their labels. They're opening other offices mostly, and an archive room.

O - Even older stuff?

L - I'll have a quick look. You go further.

We share the keys and he goes for the other offices. I enter the archives room.

This storage room feels even more like a vault. Shelves and books, from an age without computers.

I wish I had reached this place a month ago. I would have had time to investigate then...

I shut the door behind and leave as well.

~

The ground shakes.

Something wrong is happening. I return to see Orel but can't find him nor anyone else.

I rush downstairs, calling for them.

I hear like a loud shot, resonating loudly through the building.

We gather in one of the galleries, where they're yelling and pointing at a damaged door.

They had begun breaking through it already, and something exploded, I mean really exploded.

Shards were blown away and Shura was hurt. He's yelling and bleeding on the ground while the others try to help him.

It wasn't a gunshot I realise. It was a small explosive on the ground behind the door... A landmine?

M - Why the fuck would there be mines in the greenhouse Luka!

L - I... I don't know!

Shura got a few puncture wounds that we're rapidly helping suture and bandage with what we have around. It's not dire, but it's not good either...

There were clues all over the building, but we didn't stop to look at them.

The names and pictures of people. Their affiliations with Forodlystiev, or worse... The underground society.

And before they left, they put landmines behind some doors.

When Shura broke open this one, the old weapon a few steps behind blew up randomly.

He's stabilised. Yura and I cautiously open the doors that have been pierced all over by shrapnel but not entirely blasted off. Lots of metallic shards are embedded in them and the walls around.

The greenhouse we open to is dirty from years and years without cleaning, making the glass above us all opaque and green. It's dim inside. Weird trees have all died a long time ago.

There are the channels of water going around and through, to tour the place from boats about two metres below and bridges above in the past.

The water level is now reaching the ground here and the bridges are rotten. The place with workshop where they could store a boat or two in dry dock is on the opposite side.

We also need to open a way out.

Y - Look. There are other mines. They sealed this place.

L - Why...

Y - Something they wouldn't want kids like us to reach?

It's a greenhouse Jesus. What could be so important... In the middle of the place, there's a collection of dead trees that look spooky. Maybe they're moving slightly as if there was wind against them, but I must be dreaming.

I start to walk my careful way around the mines and without falling into the deeper waters. There's surely no sharks down there, but I'm still very scared. Yura follows me.

The others try to get the bay doors open and leave Shura behind to rest.

~

I eventually do fall in the water in a gasp as the wooden floor collapses below me. I panic a little but manage to swim my way. My friend stays behind, asking me to tell him if he really needs to swim too. Yeah, yeah...

I swim slowly around the barriers of the normal path, now that I'm in the water and lost my way.

I then climb back near the end of the path, and the open door I aimed at. There's an exit door for visitors, and next to it a more discreet one that should lead to a maintenance workshop.

As I get closer I see another landmine rusting there in plain sight. I don't know which way it will blow. They seem to be directional, but hard to say for me which way it will go...

I'm freezing as I glare at this thing.

I go for the closest tree to break a dry branch. One long enough...

But the ground shakes again. Now I feel clearly that something below us had moved. Like a captive whale below the building it feels. I don't get it...

Y - What was that?

He felt it too and looks below his feet as much as he can.

Meanwhile I push the mine very slowly out of the way from the tip of the stick, and make it fall into the water. I sigh in relief.

But then, things shake again. There's a tremor. And the dead things try to move again.

As I enter the workshop where an old boat rests, I notice it too.

L - Yura! Behind you!

~