8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8
It took Mac a single breathe inside the place for him to know that they had found their main crime scene.
Human fear leaves behind a distinct smell that can't be mistaken for anything else. It's not always there and it doesn't occur with any kind of fear. In fact, only one kind of fear leaves behind a mark like that.
Fear of death.
Pointing his flash light towards the opening as Stella and Aiden made their way down, Mac could see that they had felt it too. The trill of discovery had been toned down and a sudden sense of respect and grief for those who had suffered in there was clear in both faces.
"This is where he brought them," Stella whispered, overwhelmed by the silent screams of the murder's victims.
The three of them spread their flash lights to get a better look at the place. They stood in what appeared to be an entering chamber, from where a larger division could be accessed. The pitch black they'd all been expecting was soften by a moody green neon light, coming from an emergency lamp with the words 'exit' beaming in white.
"What is this place?" Aiden asked, looking at concrete walls with family pictures hanging from them.
In the larger room there was some furniture adorning the place, but what ever few pieces there were, they had long passed their prime.
A pale brown couch lay against one of the walls, the pale being more due to the layer of dust covering it than actual colour. There were some sheets folded on top of it, probably to lay open a bed if there was the need.
On the opposite wall was a wooden table, dark from old age. Its current use was more as bookcase than anything else, filled as it was with papers and dusty books.
In front of the table there were four chairs, all turned with their backs to the table, like the front seats of some bizarre show about to begin. It was very dark, but they could still see the ropes dangling from the chairs' arms and legs.
On the opposite side from where they stood there were two narrow doors. Mac gently pushed them open, revealing a small bathroom and a storage room, both empty and smelly.
"It's a bunker," Mac supplied, having already guessed what the place was when he'd saw the reforced steel of the opening shaft. "These things were a success during the cold war years. Safe houses completely sealed off from the outer world, with independent air supply and power generators that promised to last for decades. "
Stella just shook her head. Those years of cloth and dagger suspicion and hostility were long gone by the time she was born, but the fact that people could be that fearful about a nuclear attack that they would blindly close themselves inside these concrete tombs left her utterly confuse. Had they truly believed that they could survive any potential radiation threat trapped in there?
"Found the light switch," she announced, flicking it open.
The blast at the door was more heard than felt, as the tick walls shielded them completely from the small explosion.
Stella looked at the dangling naked lamp on the ceiling and coughed against the dust raised in the air.
"That wasn't me, right?"
It wasn't the right time to answer such question. They had all recognized the muffled sound of an explosive device going off at the door. What ever had triggered it, they would worry about later, out in the open.
Hastily making their way to the entry room, the sight that greeted them was something worthy of the worst of horror flicks.
The steel door had closed shut with the force of the explosion and, where before had stood the turning wheel to pry it open, now stood twisted metal that showed no promise of ever functioning again.
"This ain't good," Aiden growled, blowing her dark bangs away from her eyes. She watched as Mac silently passed his flash light to Stella and climbed the ladder to the opening.
Hoping that the hatch had simply fallen shut, Mac placed both hands up and pushed against it. When it didn't move, he examined it more carefully and sighed. The trap door, unfortunately, had a security handle. Once closed, it locked automatically.
Testing the metal's temperature and finding it sustainable, the CSI tried to open the latch by turning the barely existent wheel instead. It didn't budge an inch.
"We're trapped," he was forced to admit.
Stella's eyes focused on him like laser beams.
"This place is an antique… we can't be trapped."
"Built to last decades," Aiden said sarcastically. Of all the advertisements, this had to be the honest one.
"Flack is still outside," Mac reminded them.
Looking up, he could just imagine the younger man looking the opposite way, probably wondering if they were alright.
"Pass me one of those flash lights," he asked Stella.
Figuring that the steel door and the walls would be too thick for his voice to be heard, Mac chose the next best thing.
"Morse code," Stella said with a smile when she recognized the thump, thump sounds that Mac was doing against the steel. "Think Don will understand it?"
"I hope so," Mac said, never interrupting his coded message, "or else his years as Boy Scout would've been a waste."
8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8O8