Heading In

By the time Maria managed to get herself dressed and out to where Miller was waiting a group of close to a dozen suited and booted troops had formed up around the wide back door to the place. This was the first time Maria had really had a chance to get a look at the place she had been found and rescued by the teams.

Nothing had been moved, all of the troops were making great pains to give the whole scene a wide berth. The white van still sat in place, its back doors hanging open and engine still idling. The body of the driver slumped over the steering wheel. A single bullet hole in the windshields glass giving away the cause of ****.

The second body was flat out on its back, a woman in rubber coveralls. Dead eyes staring up into the sky, a single red tear trail just below her left eye from where the round entered her skull. She had been standing off to the side of the van, swinging the second door out.

The third body had been the one that had fallen across Maria. Laying in a crumpled heap beside the gurney was another woman. Maria was glad she could not see the woman's face, the round had entered the back of her skull and exited through her face. That was not something she needed to see right now.

The gurney itself looked like it had seen better days. Rust covered large parts of the metal frame and even the body bag looked well worn. The black of the material hiding the blood from the eye as she looked at the place she had awoken after having been taken for dead.

That still bothered Maria. Why had they thought she was dead?

That strange woman had said she knew who she worked for, surely she must have known that simply being suffocated would not put her down forever.

“Cambell!”

The voice of Miller pulled Maria back into the moment. The older woman still had the same look of mild annoyance she had had when Maria was in training as she moved over to her.

“You asked what would get my ass down here?” Miller asked as they moved through the double doors and into the building itself. What Maria had taken for a basement revealing itself to be a quickly and cheaply partitioned warehouse space. Troops stood every couple of feet, with a knot of them around a pair of stainless steel doors halfway down the hallway,

“Yeah,” Maria confirmed, suddenly not so sure she wanted to know the answer.

“Well let me show you,” Miller replied, pushing open the double doors.

A stench of disinfectant and rot washed over Maria as she moved forward.