TALES FROM THE NOBODIES AT THE SCP FOUNDATION

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Tales From the SCP Foundation and no profit is earned.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is always more behind the scenes than most realize. An organization like the Foundation has more moving parts and support personnel than most businesses and some countries. What goes on behind the scenes?

CH. 7: GUARD DUTY or OH TO BE BORED

Simon Rosen watched the road that led to site 22 with some trepidation. He had worked for the Foundation for three years doing low-level security at site 42 and had seen some fairly unnerving things. The transfer to site 22, a remote and unimportant site, had been a relief, at first. Working the front gate at night was not glamorous, but it was necessary. It was also really boring. Shifts passed on which nothing happened. There had been routine deliveries once a week, and new personnel would occasionally arrive. Both usually during the day. It had all been routine, for about two months. Three months into his stay at site 22, he was no longer bored.

OOOOOOOOOO

One morning, just before dawn, a helicopter arrived at the site's helipad, bypassing the front gate. Several important looking people were visible getting out, but that was all Simon knew. New and presumably high-ranking personnel had arrived.

In the days that followed, there was a lot of rushing about on the part of the research and facilities staff. The maintenance crews were especially busy, but Simon wasn't cleared to know the details of any of it. He shrugged it off after listening to the gossip and hearing only vague speculations and a few barked orders to stop speculating.

A few days after the chopper dropped off its load of VIPs, a convoy arrived consisting of six long-haul trucks and more than twice that number of carefully camouflaged armoured vehicles. None of them would have looked out of place on any highway in the country. All of the vehicles and equipment, though, were military-grade or better and the people in the accompanying vehicles were well-trained MTF members that were heavily if discretely armed.

It was all hands on deck and Simon worked a double shift, helping to screen the new arrivals, but he never learned what was in any of the trucks or the nature of the project they were attached to. That didn't concern him. His job was ensuring that the trucks, drivers, and the MTF troops were who they claimed to be and had access to the site. It was a hectic day from start to finish, and he was relieved there were no serious problems. The vehicles and personnel were processed into the site as efficiently as possible, and at the end of it, Simon returned to his quarters for a shower and a long nap before dinner.

The cafeteria was busier than normal with all the new arrivals. Most would be leaving, but some were part of a new and permanent security detail. He met a couple of them during dinner, but they weren't very talkative. Knowledge was power, and the Foundation knew that better than most. Any information about people involved in highly classified projects was also classified. How long would they be there? Where were they normally posted? What projects had they worked on before? In some cases, 'what is your name' was responded to with suspicious look and a non-answer.

Simon knew this from experience and didn't bother to engage with the visitors beyond polite greetings and answering basic questions about the site. He also knew from experience that visitors of the uptight a-hole variety took a dim view of being told the location of the bathroom was classified.

Well, it got a laugh at the time.

Best to not engage. He kept his own curiosity and any speculation he had to himself and sat with his usual group. Like him, the others didn't speculate and kept chatter to a minimum. Everyone was tired anyway. He finished his meal quickly and headed for his quarters. He wanted to do some reading and then hit the sack.

OOOOOOOOOO

The next few days were relatively busy, but then, the visitors began to leave and the routine he had become used to reasserted itself with only slight changes. There were a few new procedures to learn and the ones already in place underwent some alterations to accommodate the new personnel and whatever the new SCP objects were.

It was a full week before anything else interesting happened. A car with a Domino's logo pulled up to the gate of the supposedly secret and definitely remote facility. The driver was there to deliver a stack of pizzas to a research assistant that had been transferred to another site over a month ago. The pizzas were accepted and paid for and the driver interrogated. Simon learned later that the poor man had known nothing about the Foundation, the site, or the origin of the order. He was given amnestics and a cover story before being turned loose. The pizzas proved to be perfectly ordinary and safe to eat. The whole business was dismissed as a prank of some sort, and Simon managed to snag a couple of pieces of meat lovers for himself in the cafeteria.

Two nights later, there was another delivery. Neither man knew quite what to think when a man on horseback rode up to the gate wearing an outfit Simon vaguely recognized from a history book. The man pulled his horse to a stop and announced himself as a pony express messenger while eyeing the high fence and their uniforms warily.

"I have a letter for… A. Nomaly?" The man shrugged. "Weird name. It French or somethin'?"

"Or something," Simon agreed, not overly amused by what he thought was likely another bizarre prank.

The MTF members that took the messenger and his letter inside after Simon and his counterpart had subdued him were not amused either, and presumably, neither were the higher-ups. All Simon knew for sure was that the man was sent on his way the next night and that the sound of hoofbeats vanished abruptly a few yards beyond the reach of their lights. He had no idea what was going on, but he did know better than to ask.

Three nights after that, Simon alerted the shift lead to a set of headlights approaching the gate. When the source of the lights arrived, it proved to be a sky-blue 1955 Chevy Bel Air. He had seen one like it in a classic car museum in Reno once. He had no idea what it was doing pulling up to the gate of site 22. The passenger side door opened and a man in a suit as dated as the car got out. He looked at them curiously as he approached, as if he was unsure what he was looking at. He opened his mouth to speak and abruptly vanished. Simon looked to the car, but it had also vanished.

"What?" Reggie, the other man at the post that night asked. Simon just shook his head. "I'll call it in."

Simon never learned what was behind that either, and both he and Reggie were ordered not to talk about it by a senior researcher that was some sort of expert on 'extra-temporal anomalies.' He wasn't sure what that meant and he suspected he was better off for it.

Two nights later, at roughly the same time the Chevy Bel Air had arrived, he and Gordon, his usual partner on gate duty, heard something odd coming from the east. It was pitch black beyond the reach of the security lights at the gate, but it sounded almost like an avalanche, which made no sense the land around the site, while barren and rocky, was relatively flat. He looked at Gordon, who was looking nervous and already raising his radio.

"This is the front gate, Mills reporting in. There's a strange noise out here. Sounds like a stampede, but whatever they are must be pretty small. No visual contact yet."

"Hold position. Reinforcements are coming."

"Stampede?" Simon asked. The other man nodded.

"I grew up in a small town. During the summers, I'd help out on my uncle's cattle ranch." He nodded toward the source of the noise that was getting louder. "That sounds like a stampede, but not cattle. Something smaller."

"Hell of a lot of somethings," Simon muttered, making sure his sidearm was ready. Before the reinforcements arrived, the source of the noise appeared, running across the road before them. The spotlights on the fence that snapped on gave them an excellent view. There must have been nearly 100 creatures about the size of chickens crossing the road about 20 feet in front of them. They had beaks, rudimentary wings, and they ran on two legs, but the resemblance to barnyard fowls ended there. The things lacked feathers and had tails a few inches long. The skin looked leathery and reptilian from what Simon could tell. Details were hard to come by given the speed they were moving and their numbers. He also developed another concern.

"What the hell are those?" Gordon demanded.

"I've got a better question," Simon answered. "What are they running from?"

Whoever was controlling the spotlights must have had the same thought as one swung to the east, clearly trying to find the reason for the stampede. Something else emerged from the darkness. Something much bigger. Like its prey, it ran on two legs. Unlike them, it was made of metal and resembled something out of an old Saturday morning cartoon.

"What?" Gordon asked, as the thing ran past, pursuing the smaller creatures. A few seconds later, the mechanical thing vanished and they realized that the smaller creatures had disappeared as well.

"What the hell was that about?" Mathers, the security lead for the evening, demanded as he joined them a moment later with several members of an MTF in tow.

"No idea," Simon admitted. He suspected he would get another order to keep his mouth shut soon and maybe even an injection that would lead to yet another suspicious void in his memory. He understood the reason for amnestic drugs, over and above the keeping of secrets, but he didn't have to like it. There were some anomalies that he had heard rumours about that would destroy your mind or outright kill you if you saw them. At least, if you remembered seeing them.

Much to his relief, he was only warned to keep his mouth shut. The researcher, to Simon's carefully hidden satisfaction, seemed as baffled as he was. Gordon's only comment on the matter after they had been given their orders was; "Glad it's not us that has to figure this crap out."

OOOOOOOOOO

The next night his shift passed without incident, much to his relief. He noted in the morning, though, that several of the researchers were in a panic about something. He only caught a word here and there and couldn't guess at what was happening. Maybe something had happened, and it just hadn't happened in front of him. He would just have to wait and see if whatever had happened affected his next shift. If it did, hopefully it wouldn't be in a dramatic way.

It wasn't. That was why he missed it at first.

Neither he nor Gordon were sure how long it had been going on before they noticed.

"Isn't site 22 in a desert?" Gordon asked suddenly,

"More or less. Why?" Simon looked where Gordon was staring. "Uh…"

"That's a very nice spot of green grass," Gordon remarked, "and I'm pretty sure that's a young pecan tree growing out of it."

"Growing very fast," Simon nodded, raising his radio to his mouth and reporting the problem. Before reinforcements could arrive, though, the grass and tree withered to dust and blew away. The cameras at the gate had caught the entire thing, though.

"This is getting ridiculous," Gordon sighed as they walked out of their debriefing.

"SSDD," Simon chuckled.

OOOOOOOOOO

An uneventful week passed and Simon was getting anxious. Nothing unusual had happened in days, and it felt like the entire site was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Simon wondered if there were anomalies with bizarre numbers of feet, but quickly shoved the idea away without voicing it. Did the Foundation have a shoe wearing centipede in containment?

No. Bad brain. Don't think about that.

Just before midnight, as Simon was preparing to breathe a sigh of relief that another day, if not another shift, had passed uneventfully. A pair of headlights appeared in the distance and the rumble of a truck engine could be heard.

They were no deliveries or new personnel scheduled for that night. Gordon reported the arrival of the truck and verified that nothing was expected. The driver did not respond to attempts at communication until the truck reached the gate and pulled to a stop. The back of the truck swung open and the men who got out were greeted with drawn guns.

The men wore the standard combat gear of MTF personnel and they largely ignored the weapons and orders to hold position and raise their hands as they unloaded a large crate even as reinforcements started to arrive from inside the fence. One of them approached with a clipboard and tried to hand it to Simon, but vanished as he reached a point about 15 feet from the gate. The truck and MTF troops also vanished. Unfortunately, the crate remained.

Abruptly the crate, about the size of a small car, shook violently and something inside started making unhappy noises.

"What are we supposed to do with that?" Gordon asked, eyeing the box warily, his drawn pistol shaking a bit.

"Call for a containment team," Simon answered nodding toward the men inside the gate already approaching at a run. "If we can't cuff it or shoot it, its above our paygrade."

"I need a vacation," Gordon muttered.