The Sludge: Part 1
Abigail Graves took calm, deep breaths as she slid one leg and then the other into the hazmat suit. She had been on several EPA safety missions such as this, and she felt she was ready for anything they could find.
Her unit was tasked with the initial contact and evaluation of unmarked or unaccounted for hazardous waste. Their usual findings were often just illegal dumping done by a local business or corporation, and most times containment was easily set up. This particular call was very ominous, simply for how remote and downright spooky the area was.
It was a small forested peninsula, just south of the city, where darkness prevailed. A thick fog had rolled in and caused an eerie cascade of wisps and ghostly trails in a macabre kaleidoscope that twirled within the bright flood lights set up on site.
Within the lights was a disturbed area of ground, as if some sort of explosion had erupted from beneath the surface. The soil bore a large exit wound, and a heavy indentation that snaked its way along the ground. Within the freshly created cave, was a large concrete room, about sixteen feet wide and deep, and almost twenty feet in height. The concrete room was where the tremendous force had emanated from. The damage was from the inside out. Sitting in the center of the room was a large cylindrical tank, marked with hazardous and toxic material warnings, but with no other identifying marks. It was also damaged, but it looked as if it had melted more than exploded.
The concrete room both puzzled and alarmed Abigail. It was clearly built as a containment, or even as a sort of prison, and it had failed. With her full hazmat suit sealed up, and through the haunting mists that veiled the entrance to the concrete room, Abigail moved forward.
She could hear every step she took, the suit crinkling and shifting as she moved. Her breath filled the plastic head cover with a near uncomfortable heat, despite her filtration unit. This did not deter Abigail. She was the first in, with three of her team following closely behind.
The bright lights from outside did not fully illuminate the room, and as Abigail walked around the tank, she pulled up her flashlight to look for any clues to who or why it was there.
The tank was a maroon red, and had little to no rust. It was not very old at all, so this was a somewhat new structure all together. Biohazard, toxic, and hazardous symbols were lined up in a row on each side of the tanker, but nothing to identify its origins.
This was a secret, a bad secret, and someone wanted this to be found.
That was the thought that first ran through Abigail's mind. It was almost too obvious, she thought. The room, the tank, and the subsequent destruction all seemed to have happened relatively close to each other. The only other distinctive piece of evidence was a green, viscous substance. A green sludge, or the remnants of it, coated the inside of the tank, and painted the floor of the room with a grotesque brushstroke of sludge that lead straight to the opening.
Strange. The substance didn't explode from the tank, it seems to have just flowed that way, and then the wall was blown up, from the inside.
Abigail's thoughts were starting to make dangerous connections quickly.
It exploded from the inside. The inside. There is no way to get inside...
Abigail's thoughts kept racing as she carefully used tools to gather a sample of the sludge in a vial. She made sure to seal it properly and set in within a containment pack on her hip. She looked around at the room once more, and it felt like a tomb.
Suddenly, shouting came from outside, near the flood lights. Abigail moved as quick as she could as she exited the buried room. Another member of their team was jumping and waving his arms, shouting something, but Abigail couldn't quite make it out. As she got close, she finally heard the words being said.
"James spotted it, whatever it is. It's moving towards a drainage pipe further down along the peninsula! Hurry!" The man shouted. Abigail's eyes widened as her pace quickened.
It's moving? On its own accord? With purpose? Impossible!
Abigail and the rest of her team ran through the encompassing darkness, towards a flickering light. It was James, signaling them as he followed the sludge. Abigail was the first to get close enough to hear James as he shouted to her.
"You won't believe this, but this shit is alive!" It's moving on its own!" James's enthusiasm rattled along every word he spoke. His voice even cracked a bit.
Abigail pointed her flashlight in the direction James pointed. Just a few feet in frot of James was a large green slime-like mound, moving like a slug. Leaving a trail of sludge behind, it slowly lurched towards a large drainage pipe jutting out of a cliff along the peninsula.
"I...I think it's trying to escape." James said, disbelieving the words he was saying as they fell from his mouth. Abigail had no other explanation either.
"James. Move away from it. It could be very, very dangerous. We don't know if its radioactive, or even worse. Please! Please step away." Abigail pleaded with the awe swirling in James's eyes, and for a moment he appeared to consider it. He stood for a moment, looking back at Abigail.
"This is scientific history, I can't help myself." James said with a apologetic smile. He saw Abigail's face become ghost white in his flashlight's glow, and she began to tremble within her suit.
"James...you have to run...now!" Abigail spoke in panicked whispers. James began to lose some of his scientific adrenaline rush as concerned now pulse through him. He noticed the sound of something thick and wet hitting the forest floor. James turned around and dropped his flashlight in horror.
Towering above him was a humanoid form. Legs, a torso, arms, and a mound on top where a head might be. The sludge had stood up from its initial shape, green slime and sludge dripping off it at every spot possible. When it had become fully upright it was almost a foot and half taller than James.
James shrieked, and tried to turn and run. The long portion of the sludge that would have been considered its right arm and hand swung out, extending as it went and landed on the top of James's head. James fell back hard, and as he did the green sludge enveloped his face and seeped into his clothes, flowing from the form that stood behind him. James convulsed once, and then once more. The arm of the monster pulled back slowly, the front of it now with crimson swirling into the green hue.
The arm fully retracted, and the towering form then seemed to shake and collapsed back down to its original form. With much more speed than before, it moved like a crashing wave and maneuvered quickly into the pipe and was lost to the darkness within.
Abigail tried to process what had just happened. She was rendered frozen in shock, until a team member behind her screamed. Her head shot back at the now hysterical member, then to the body of James.
Abigail moved cautiously towards James and peered over at him, unable to fully see his condition. His head appeared covered in the green sludge, and there was a good amount of blood around him as well.
"James?" Abigail said quietly, and she immediately regretted it. She knew before she got there, that he was gone. She got just close enough to see the true fate of her colleague, and in doing so she almost lost the contents of her stomach.
The sludge had dissolved all of the flesh from James's upper torso, leaving only a sludge and gore covered skeletal figure lying on the forest floor. Abigail knelt down and felt a tear trickle down her cheek. She looked at the entrance of the pipe for a few moments, as everything slowly settled in her mind.
The sludge was loose, and it was alive.
STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO TOMORROW
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