“Welcome back to all you night owls, working the graveyard shift out there in the great white north. This is Rich Gallard, and I’ll be keeping you company while you all do the hard work of keeping Northern Alaska alive and moving while all sane people are sleeping soundly in their warm beds. With us, as always, is my producer and stalwart companion, Melissa Walker, who will be doing her best to keep me honest and on-track as we make our way through this frigid and snowy October night.” My eyes shifted to the diminutive young woman dressed in an oversized sweater on the other side of the booth window, busily scanning through emails and news feeds on her computer. She raised her steaming coffee mug in silent greeting but didn’t take her eyes from her screen.
I smiled and continued. “As some of you may know, tonight is a special adventure for us, as we’re currently broadcasting from our annex studio, nestled at the end of a particularly exciting logging road in the lonely western peaks outside of Black Wolf.”
I didn’t miss Melissa’s scrunched face at that; I knew she didn’t like being out here in the remote station to begin with. Letting everyone in our listening area know about it didn’t make her any happier.
“And why are we out here this evening, Melissa?” I said, grinning at her through the glass.
She raised her eyes to meet mine, and I could see that she wasn’t amused at being put on the spot. She leaned in towards the auxiliary mic, boomed over her workstation, and pressed a button. “Generator maintenance, Rich,” she said simply.
“Generator maintenance,” I repeated dryly. “That’s a polite way of saying that the storm that’s been burying us all under this blanket of icy snow has not only decided to take down the municipal power lines to the station, but also decided to make our lives even more interesting by somehow rendering our backup generator inoperable. You all know that I’m not a native to this area, hailing from the unrelenting sun and heat of the southeast in the lower-48, so this is a particularly thrilling treat for me.”
Melissa caught my attention with a rolling motion of her wrist, urging me to move on. She spoke into her headset, her voice in my ear. “Keep it moving, Rich. We’ve got to hit those weather advisories.”
I glanced over at my monitor, to the updates that she was relaying. I read through them obediently, ticking through the various road closures and weather impacts before cueing in the prerecorded ad roll.
“You doing okay, Melissa?” I asked off-air, the drone of some public announcement playing in the background. “You seem a little on-edge tonight.”
She looked around the dusty studio, the small space spartan and utilitarian. “I’m fine. I’ve always hated the annex,” she replied into her headset. “Out here in the middle of nowhere. Isolated. It just sets my teeth on edge is all.”
“Well, don’t worry; they’ll have the generator fixed and back online pretty quick. We’ll be back in the station tomorrow night, I’m sure.”
Melissa shrugged and took another sip of her coffee as the last of the recordings drew to a close.
I straightened in my chair and pulled the microphone close.
“I just read the latest from the national weather service, folks, and it’s not pretty. The storm system that’s dishing out all this winter snow looks to be slowing down in its easterly travel, which means it’s going to hang around a bit longer, so be careful out there and watch out for polar bears.”
Melissa rolled her eyes and spoke into her headset again. “We don’t have polar bears this far inland, Rich. Don’t give folks anything else to worry about, please.”
I grinned at her. “So, who is our next caller, Melissa?”
She leaned in closer to the boom mic over her desk. “We have Nate calling from location undisclosed, Rich.”
Nate was a semi-regular caller to my show, an enigmatic and eccentric local who always seemed neck-deep in whatever conspiracy theory tripped his trigger that week. Fortunately for us, he was also the type of fringe personality who was just fanatical enough to investigate these things on his own. This meant he often seemed to have an interesting story to help liven up the long overnight airtime. Based on the feedback from our listeners, they were invested in him and his adventures, so it was always welcome when he called in.
I nodded to her, and she pressed an illuminated button on her console, connecting the caller to the booth.
“Nate, it’s good to have you again, my friend. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. I was afraid you’d finally gone underground for good. What’s the word on fighting the good fight?”
The voice came through the monitors with a slight crackle to it, and when I glanced at Melissa, she just shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t anything she could fix.
“Hi Rich,” the familiar voice said. I noted that he sounded stressed, perhaps a bit anxious. “Sorry, but I had to go radio-silent for a while, until I could make sure I wasn’t being observed. They’re always watching. I think I got a little too close and drew their attention a few weeks ago, but I’m pretty sure I’ve thrown them from my trail now.”
Melissa rolled her eyes; she didn’t buy into any of Nate’s conspiracy theories and the only reason she still put him on the air was because of the audience feedback when he made an appearance.
“I hear that, Nate. So, what clandestine mysteries are you working on exposing now?”
There was a long pause on the line before he answered. “I’ve got them this time, Rich – it’s the mother lode. I found a source that was part of the project – someone who was finally close enough to the grave that they were looking to unburden their conscience before they shuffled of this mortal coil.”
I felt the corner of my mouth tense in an anticipatory smile. Nate rarely failed to deliver, so I prodded him a little.
“Got who, Nate? We’re, um, we’re getting some static on the line – I’m guessing you’re not warming yourself by the fire tonight with a nice mug of hot cocoa?”
I heard a quick bark of amusement before he replied. “Hardly. I can’t afford to rest while they’re out there maneuvering in the shadows. Even if nobody else is willing to open their eyes and see the truth, I’m not gonna let them just run unchecked. Not this time. Not when I’m finally this close.”
“My interest is piqued, Nate. So where are you on this frigid and stormy arctic night?”
“I can’t tell you exactly where I am – not until I’m long gone; it’s too much of a risk. I can tell you that it’s a decommissioned research facility. Completely abandoned – looks like it’s been dead for decades. Definite black site,” he said.
I frowned a little at that. Nate was notorious for his explorations of abandoned places, but it sounded like he may have actually broken into government property this time.
“A government research facility? Out here?”
“Yeah, they’re all over the place out here. There’s no better place for their black-book projects than the wilderness of Northern Alaska. There’s over 600,000 square miles of nothing out here. It’s like a damned playground for the shadow government. They can do whatever they want without fear of discovery, or at least that’s what they thought,” he said with a self-satisfied chuckle.
“I see. Well, I hope you’re not doing anything that’s going to get you into trouble, Nate. I’ve don’t think the feds take kindly to people trespassing where they don’t belong, and I’d hate to see you end up in Guantanamo Bay. Those orange jumpsuits aren’t very flattering,” I said, trying to insert a little levity into the discussion. Nate was good for the audience, but we needed to keep him from descending too far into his paranoia and losing the interest of the listeners.
“Don’t worry about me, Rich. They’re not smart enough to catch me.”
I glanced at Melissa, who wasn’t looking too pleased. I think she was starting to wonder if we were skirting a little too close to condoning illegal activity, perhaps putting the station at some sort of liability.
I continued to press. “So, tell us, Nate. What’s going on? Give us some context.”
“Have you ever heard of Project White Rabbit?” Nate asked. Again, there was that same stress in his voice, perhaps a small shortness of breath.
“Project White Rabbit? I can’t say that I have, Nate,” I admitted. My eyes flicked to Melissa, who’d been typing rapidly on her keyboard. She looked up at me and shook her head, shrugging.
“I’d be surprised if you had – it’s not one of the bullshit bait projects that they’ve released over the years to keep people from looking too close at what they’re really doing. It’s the real deal; we’re talking deep state stuff.”
Melissa flinched at the profanity and hit the dump button, muting that section of audio. We ran a 5-second delay on broadcast audio, so it wasn’t a problem to catch it before it hit the air.
I let it go, not wanting to interrupt his momentum.
He continued. “It’s an offshoot from all the chemically facilitated mind control work they were doing with MK Ultra back in the 50’s. MK Ultra – what a shit show. Those researchers must have been giddy when their big demonstration at Jonestown went off without a hitch.”
“So, what does that have to do with where you are right now, Nate?” I said before he had the chance to wander off on a tangent.
There was a moment of silence before he answered, and I had the impression that he was distracted by something nearby. “Something happened during the MK Ultra experiments, Rich. I don’t know exactly what it was – some mix of chemicals or radiation or infrasound or whatever other crap they were messing with. I don’t think they knew how they’d done it. In 1962, two of their unwilling test subjects vanished from their cells. No explanation, no trace – just gone. Security footage showed them there one second and nothing but empty cells the next.”
Nate paused again. “Six hours and fifty-two minutes later, they were back. Or, at least, what was left of them. Along with something else.”
“Something else? What do you mean, Nate?”
The line was silent.
“Nate? Are you still with us?” I looked up at Melissa, who shrugged and shook her head helplessly.
We’d lost him.
Hell. Just as it was starting to get interesting…
“Okay, folks. Well, we seem to have lost Nate for the moment. Let’s take the opportunity for a word from our sponsors while we try to get him back on the line.” I cued the recorded commercial spots and slumped back in my chair.
Melissa’s voice sounded through my headset. “I don’t like this, Rich,” she said. “I mean, it’s all well and good when he’s telling us stories about tracking down bigfoot or some UFO, but if he’s actually broken into a government facility – even a decommissioned one – he’s breaking some pretty serious laws, and we’re along for the ride.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed at the bridge of my nose, trying to keep the forming tension headache at bay. “It’s fine, Melissa. We’re not complicit here. Hell, I’d be willing to bet that he’s probably sitting in his basement right now, having a good laugh over a warm drink. Secret government facilities? Around here? Come on.”
When she fell silent, I opened my eyes and looked at her through the glass. I could see she was mulling over something, biting absently at a fingernail.
“What? What is it?”
She hesitated before answering. “You haven’t lived up here very long, Rich, but you know I grew up here. Nate’s a wackjob, sure, but he’s not wrong about the government installations. There are three or four unmarked complexes that I know of within twenty miles of here; God knows how many there are that I don’t know about. They were our version of haunted houses when I was a kid, only with razor wire fences and security cameras instead of ghosts and witches.”
I sat up, my interest piqued. “Really? I didn’t know that. What are they?”
Melissa shrugged. “No idea. Most of them have been shut down for a long time, I think, but I’ve heard stories of unmarked vehicles driving in and out from time to time. Maybe they have someone go out every now and then to check on them.”
“That’s interesting,” I replied thoughtfully. I generally didn’t have any faith in Nate’s stories or conspiracy theories, and mostly wrote them off as the imaginative wanderings of a bored mind driven to paranoia by the long and dark winters out here.
Now, though, the possibility that this guy was actually out there, exploring the abandoned remains of some secret research facility, drew a smile to my face. I still didn’t believe the fanciful stories about some deep state shadow government, but it definitely made the whole thing much more compelling.
The commercial roll was wrapping up, and as I leaned forward closer to the microphone, prepared to read through the latest list of school closures, I saw Melissa answer the landline phone on her desk. Her eyes flicked to me anxiously, and I knew what was coming before she even spoke through my headset.
“Rich, it’s Nate again.”
I motioned to her to patch him through as I clicked away from the ad roll.
“All right, folks. It sounds like we’ve got Nate back on the line with us. How are you, Nate? We were worried about you there for a minute.”
“Sorry, Rich. I had to cut the call and relocate,” he said. I could tell by the rushed tone of his voice that he was on the move. I thought I could hear the hollow echoes of his footsteps in the background and imagined him rushing along empty and darkened corridors. “There’s someone in here with me,” he hissed in a harsh whisper. I absently reached over and boosted his channel, watching the VU meters as I balanced them. “I don’t know how that’s possible, but I’m not alone in here.”
“What’s going on, Nate?”
“Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have called you while I was still in here,” he said, almost to himself. “Stupid. Stupid! You know better than that, Nate. That’s how people like you disappear.” He paused a moment and took a heavy breath. “There’s nothing to be done for it now – just have to keep moving.”
“Now, just calm down, Nate. Tell us what’s going on,” I said, trying to sound as soothing as I could. I needed to keep him on the line and talking, try to keep him from going too far down the spiral and losing him completely.
“Something’s not right here, Rich,” he said. “This place is long since decommissioned, but there’s someone in here with me. I can hear them moving around. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the dark, causing me to see shadows out of the corners of my eyes. As I went farther into the facility, descending to the sub-levels, I started hearing voices in the distance, but that’s not exactly accurate. It was something that sounded like voices, but… wrong, somehow.”
“Nate, let’s start from the beginning. Walk us through it; help us understand,” I said.
I heard him take a deep breath, pausing to collect his thoughts. “I arrived at the gates a couple hours ago. I had originally planned to be here a lot earlier in the day, but this damned blizzard had other plans. I had to abandon my four-wheel-drive outside the perimeter and make my entry on foot.”
“Hold on a second, Nate. How did you get in? I’ve got to imagine the place was locked up pretty tight, wasn’t it?”
I could hear him snort derisively before he responded. “The gates were secured with a heavy chain and high-security padlock, but they always forget that the simplest way in is to just cut the fence itself and crawl through. Typical bureaucratic planning – buy a four-hundred-dollar lock and then attach it to a chain-link fence.”
“What about the building itself?” I prompted, trying to keep him focused.
“That’s the thing that struck me as strange. There’s only one entrance that I could find during my recon of the exterior. There were three heavy steel bars across the main doorway, fitted with some plain old commercial padlocks like you’d find at the local hardware store. It was clear that the locks were only there to keep the bars in place – to keep honest people honest, which seemed odd to me.”
“How so?” I asked.
“You need to think things through, Rich. I think you’re a smart man, but you’re still taking everything at face value. You have to dig a little deeper, look less at the ‘what’, and more at the ‘why’ of things.”
If his reply was meant to be a slight, I didn’t rise to it.
“Help me understand, Nate. I want to understand,” I said.
“Think, Rich. Why would someone go through the trouble of installing such serious hardware across the door, and then just throw some cheap padlocks on as an afterthought?”
I hesitated a moment before just answering instinctively. “Because they weren’t worried about someone trying to break in from the outside?”
I could hear the triumph in his voice when he replied. “Bingo, Rich! The crossbars themselves were heavy-duty stuff – if they’d been on the inside of the doors, there’d have been no way I was getting in here, regardless of whatever padlocks were on them. Hell, you could have left the locks off entirely and there’d still be no way I’d be able to remove the bars.”
I was still confused. “So, why have them on there at all, Nate?”
I heard the sound of shuffling through the phone, and I knew he was on the move once more. When he spoke again, it was in that same harsh whisper. “Shit, that was close. What the hell is in here with me?”
“Nate?” I asked.
“Look, when you go to the zoo, they have some pretty serious hardware on the lion cages, right? But they don’t go out of their way spending money on expensive locks; it’s the cages and bars that keep the animals in, not the security of the locks. The locks are just there to keep dumbasses like you and me from wandering into the lion paddocks and getting eaten.”
“Are you saying that the government put the bars across the entrance to the facility to keep something inside, Nate?”
He sounded slightly winded, like he was harried. “Give the man a prize! You’re starting to catch on, Rich. I was stupid enough to not make that connection until after I’d already cut the locks and removed the bars. The doors themselves weren’t even locked – I just walked right in. The whole place was abandoned, like it had been forgot- shit!” he hissed, then went silent.
I listened closely for a moment and could hear ragged breathing on the line. The connection was still open, but Nate wasn’t talking.
Abruptly, a sort of multi-tonal screeching erupted violently from my headphones, sounding like angry and staticky feedback. Wincing in pain and surprise, I yanked the headphones off, sending them clattering to the console in front of me. The sound faded almost immediately, and I snatched them back up, pulling them over my ears while simultaneously reaching for the volume sliders.
“Nate? Are you still with us? Nate, talk to me,” I said anxiously.
A frantic rustling, a hissed curse, and then the line went dead.
I looked at Melissa, who simply shook her head. She was definitely not thrilled with this whole thing – her eyes were wide and had a vaguely spooked look to them that I didn’t quite understand at the time.
Realizing that we were broadcasting dead air, I quickly cut to more commercials and pre-recorded announcements to fill the silence.
“Holy hell,” she said through my headset as soon as the spots were rolling. “What is going on here, Rich?”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say. For the first time in a long time, I was at a loss for words. “I have no idea,” is all I could manage.
“We’ve got to call someone,” she said. “If Nate is telling the truth, we need to call someone before it goes too far.”
I frowned, her words pulling me from my stupor. “Call who? Tell them what? That someone called into the station with a crazy story straight out of the tabloids? We don’t know who Nate is or where he is. Hell, we don’t even know for sure that this isn’t some prank.”
“It sounded like he might be in danger,” she countered, but her voice had lost its vehemence; she realized that what I was saying was right. Even if we wanted to, there was nothing we could do.
We sat there in silence for another couple of minutes while the recorded ads and announcements played, staring at each other through the soundproof booth window. I was starting to wonder exactly what I was going to say when I got back on the air. How was I going to fill the rest of the show after all this? I couldn’t just go back to reading school closures and weather updates.
I thought we could probably go to the phones if necessary; I was sure that they were probably ringing off the hook with callers at this point. Curiously, Melissa hadn’t put any through to me yet, likely not wanting to interrupt Nate’s call.
I was getting ready to ask her to start patching through callers when her desk phone rang. She grabbed the handset and answered it. A moment later, she glanced at me with a sharp nod and pointed to the handset, then to me, indicating she was patching it through.
I sat up straight in my chair, pulling the microphone close. The quiet familiar static of Nate’s phone filled my headset.
Flipping away from the final commercial recordings, I went live again.
“And we’re back, everyone. If you’re just joining us, we’re following along with longtime caller, Nate, who is currently exploring what he claims is an abandoned government research facility somewhere outside of town. Are you with us, Nate?”
When he answered, there was no question now about the tone of his voice. He seemed to be trying to catch his breath, as if he’d just been running, and his words were now colored with something I’d never heard from him before.
Fear.
“I’m here, Rich, but I don’t know for how long. This makes no sense. I don’t know what’s happening. I think those sons of bitches actually did it.”
I frowned, trying to unpack what he’d said. “Excuse me, Nate? I don’t think I understand. Did what?”
“Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? I managed to get away from whatever the hell was down in the dark, at least for now. I made it to an operational elevator, barely got the doors closed before that thing hit them like a freight train. It shook the whole elevator car in its shaft. I thought I was a goner. I rode the elevator up the few floors I had descended during my initial exploration and got out just down the corridor from the main entrance. I’m standing outside the elevator doors right now. I think I’m safe for the moment, but I can hear it echoing up from the staircase down the hall. I think it’s looking for me.”
I leaned in even closer to the mic, as if I could make him hear my words any better by doing so. “Listen to me, Nate. I think it’s time for you to go now. I want you to head for the doors and get out of there, okay?”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said absently, and I heard him moving again, rushed footsteps echoing in an empty corridor. Then a surprised exclamation followed by the unmistakable sound of running.
Nate’s voice came again through my headphones, but it was distant, as if he was shouting to someone else.
“Hey! What are you doing? Wait! No!”
I could hear what sounded like the distant clanking of metal, followed a few seconds later by the slowing of footfalls as Nate halted his flight.
“Assholes!” he shouted in helpless frustration, and I heard a muffled banging.
“Nate, are you still with us? Tell us what’s happening,” I said anxiously.
“They’ve locked me in. The bastards locked me in!” he shouted, followed by what sounded like gloved fists banging on metal doors. “Hey, out there! Let me out! You can’t do this!”
“Slow down a second, Nate. You said someone locked you in? What do you mean? Who’s there with you?”
The banging stopped and I heard Nate take a deep breath before he answered. His voice was shaky and tinted with the edges of panic. “Black-bag ops. I didn’t get a good look at them, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on. They’re wrapping up this loose end in a tidy little bow without even having to get their hands dirty.”
“How can we help you, Nate? Where are you? We can call the police, send them your way. Just help us understand.”
I heard a muted chuckle. “The police? What are they going to do, Rich? They can’t step foot in this facility, and they know it. If you called them, they wouldn’t even log the report. Hell, they’d probably try to erase any record of your call.”
He took a deep, steadying breath, collecting himself before he continued. “Okay, listen – when the remains of those two MK Ultra test subjects reappeared in their cells, something came back with them. Nobody knew where they’d gone or what had happened to them during those six hours and fifty-two minutes they were missing, but whatever had come back with them was alive, and it was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. Maybe pulled from some other dimension or wherever – who knows? Fourteen guards, eight scientists, and a high-ranking military liaison were massacred before they were eventually able to contain it. Project White Rabbit was born a month later in efforts to understand and replicate what had happened. Here, at Site 2-Sierra.”
I frowned. “But, according to what you’ve told us, that was more than sixty years ago. You said yourself that the facility was decommissioned.”
“Yeah, that’s true. From what I was told by my source, the project was shut down and the facility abandoned in the seventies, but clearly, they’re still watching it. I think the lion is still in the cage.” He paused and then let out a small, resigned chuckle. “And now, I’m the asshole who wandered into its paddock.”
Through the headphones, I heard an echoing cry, a distant keening sound. Nate cursed, now unable to keep tremble from his voice.
“Nate, what was that sound?” I asked, realizing that I was now literally sitting on the edge of my seat, lips almost touching the pop filter of the microphone.
“It’s been hiding in the dark, Rich. I think that’s where it likes to be*,*” he said. “It knows I’m here. It’s looking for me, and it’s getting closer.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but a sharp, brief burst of static filled the line, followed by silence.
The connection had dropped again, this time with a strange feeling of finality to it. I didn’t think we’d be getting another call from Nate again.
I sat there motionless for longer than I’d like to admit before I realized that we were once again broadcasting dead air. Pulling myself together, I cleared my throat and forced my shoulders to relax. “Okay, folks, you’ve been here with us while we’ve been talking with Nate about his latest investigation. While we try to get him back on the line, let’s go to the phones and take a few calls. Melissa, who do we have up first?”
Maybe I could still save the segment by filling the rest of the time with callers. The audience always seemed to enjoy that.
But Melissa wasn’t paying attention to me; she was focused on her computer screen, face twisted into a frown. There was a troubled set to her eyes that I didn’t like. She picked up her cell phone and dialed, putting it to her ear while I tried to recover, quickly cueing up the same recordings I had played earlier.
“Melissa?” I asked, now clear of the broadcast. What was going on? “What’s the prob-.”
She just held up her hand to me, cutting me off. Her frown had turned to one of confusion, and a moment later she pulled the phone from her ear and stared at the screen.
“Melissa,” I barked, trying to pull her attention.
I was just about to march out of the booth to figure out what was going on when she replaced her headset to her ears and keyed her mic. Her voice was unsteady. Uncertain.
“Rich, I have an email here from Mark,” she said, referring to Mark Dewitt, our station manager. “It came in a while ago, but I just saw it. He’s asking why we switched to pre-recorded programming.”
“What?” Now I did get up from my seat to join her outside the booth. “What the hell is he talking about?”
She looked up at me as I stood next to her, looking down at the email messages on her screen.
“That doesn’t make any sense. We’ve been live all night.”
She shook her head. “I tried calling him, but I don’t have any signal. I sent him an email reply, but it’s just sitting there in my outbox, trying to send. I think the internet connection is down, too.”
“Did you try the landline?”
“It went dead when we lost Nate,” she said.
“Switch over to the broadcast feed,” I said, pointing to the panel that controlled the studio speakers.
When she turned the knob, the sounds of indie folk rock filled the air instead of the weather reports I had recorded earlier, which should have been playing right at that moment.
“Someone’s hijacked our feed,” she said, her eyes going wide. There was a flicker of understanding in them, a horrified realization sweeping across her face. “Mark’s email came in about a half-hour ago…,” she said, trailing off.
“…which would have been shortly after Nate’s first call,” I finished, a chill making its way down my spine at the implication of whole thing.
Who could have hijacked the feed? There weren’t many, that was for sure. Even fewer who could kill cell signals and block our internet connection, effectively cutting the two of us off from the rest of the world.
Had we heard too much?
This was bad, and we both knew it, made all the worse by the knowledge that we were miles away from the nearest civilization in the cold Alaskan night, at the end of a lonely and unused logging road.
The sound of the exterior door to the annex reverberated through the concrete building, bringing with it the fierce howling of the late October storm outside. I thought I could hear quiet bootsteps on the floor above, over our heads, and my eyes darted anxiously to the wooden staircase in the corner of the room – the only way in or out of the studio. Even if we wanted to, there was no place to run or hide.
But those thoughts vanished when the lights went out.