by Phil Maxey
Zach stared at the door. “Wonder what the hell is in there.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“How did you end up here? Where are your parents?” said Ray.
“I came here looking for my dad. He was a coder. He made Cloud Pirates.” Dee said proudly. Ray had a blank look on his face.
“You know, the best-selling game of last year?” said Dee waiting for some kind of response.
“The last game I played, kid, I had to load with a tape recorder,” said Ray, now it was Dee’s turn to look confused.
“Why did you stay? Didn’t your parents come for you?” said Abbey.
“I was going to leave, when I saw those wolf creatures attacking everyone, so I came back inside, I waited for my dad to come, but he never did.” Abbey placed a hand on Dee’s shoulder.
“How far do you live from here?” said Ray.
“We live over at Sandy Heights, it’s like fifteen minutes by car, I kept thinking about making a run for it, but each day I see those wolf things in the streets, it never looks safe. My dad always said to me if I’m ever in trouble I should stay where I am until he comes.”
“Here.” Jacob handed Dee a bottle of water which he gladly accepted. Michael appeared from the stairwell. “Abbey you’re needed up stairs, fifth floor.”
“Find anything useful up there?” said Jacob.
“There’s some kind of computer room on the fifth.”
“Yeah that stuff is still working, but I couldn’t figure it, all password protected or something. That’s where I sleep because it’s got some light and it’s warm at night,” said Dee.
Abbey walked towards the stairwell. “Why don’t you come and show me what you know of it?” Dee dutifully followed.
“So how long you been here?” said Abbey.
“Five weeks, three days, my dad had a calendar on his desk, I use that to keep track.”
They both arrived on the fifth floor. Zach was standing facing them. “All these doors got keycard access, you reckon you can get inside the rooms? There’s another one above us.”
Abbey bent down in front of one of the keycard slots and examined it closely. “Pretty standard stuff, if we run electricity through it, it might short, but you said there was a ‘computer’ room?”
Zach gestured. “Just round the right there.”
“Let’s take a look at that computer room shall we,” said Abbey to Dee.
“So where you from?” said Dee.
“Originally Boston.”
“I’ve never been to Boston, but it looked nice on the web, old time like.”
“It certainly is that,” said Abbey as her thoughts drifted to the home she grew up in. They entered the computer room.
Dee pointed. “That’s where I sleep, under that desk.”
Abbey looked around the room. “Smart to sleep here.” Dee smiled.
“So what do you know about what’s on these screens?” said Abbey. They both looked up at the two rows of three screens, positioned one row above the over.
“The top one on the left, that’s like a map of the USA, and sometimes it has red dots flashing on cities I think, not sure what the white dots are, but there were more weeks back.”
“And this one?” said Abbey pointing at the monitor with the title “Feeds” on it.
“Yeah that’s a message from the UFO guy, everyone around town knows him, used to have a radio show that crazy people listened to, listen,” said Dee, walking over to the speaker, and turning the volume up. They both stood and listened until the whole message had been played, then Dee turned the volume down.
“Why do you think they were crazy to listen to his show?”
“Dad always said crazy people listened to it, but now I’m not sure. I kind of liked hearing someone, so I would leave it on sometimes.”
Abbey tried typing something on the keyboard, a message flashed up on the screen.
“PLEASE INPUT SECURITY PASSCODE.” Abbey’s fingers furiously tried various combinations. “Sometime the passwords on these systems are ridiculously easy… but looks like I’m going to have to circumvent it.”
“That’s so cool, my dad would have liked you.”
Abbey smiled and grabbed one of the chairs with wheels. Sitting down she started to go to work. Zach entered the room.
“You might want to sit down, or join the others downstairs, this is going to take a while,” said Abbey.
Dee hesitated. “Do you have food?”
Abbey stopped the typing and turned around. “Sure do, go downstairs and see what there is.”
“I’ll show you what we got,” said Zach then turned to Abbey. “Let me know when you can open those doors.” He and Dee then left the room.
Zach showed Dee a box of sweets they had snagged from the gas station, then approached Fiona. “I feel we should check out the lobby before we close up for the night, want to come with me?” Fiona nodded.
Zach stood in the ground floor stairwell, head pressed up against the door to the lobby. “Can’t hear anything, but we don’t know how quiet these things can be and the lights going to be pretty dim in there.” He removed the chair keeping the door to the lobby closed, and gestured to Fiona who was holding her pickaxe to be ready. He then opened the door. None of the light from the setting sun made it to the area near the stairwell and shadows lurked in all directions. The lobby though and the statue in front of it was still relatively well lit because of the large glass windows near the entrance to the building. Zach moved into the lobby cautiously looking in as many directions as possible, but mostly concentrating on the entrance and the street beyond, which almost looked peaceful, bathed in the setting sun.
In the center of some sofas towards the front left of the lobby a three-foot high statue sat, circular in nature and abstract enough that anyone could make a random guess as to what it is and probably be correct.
“Keep an eye on the street,” said Zach who then moved around the left of the counter where another door was with an ‘Exit’ sign just above.
He noticed another card access point but tried to open the door anyway, it didn’t move. He then turned and looked at the statue and an idea came to mind.
“Give me a hand with this thing,” said Zach, walking over to the statue, “We could use this up against the bottom stairwell door, and just roll it out the way when we want to leave.” Fiona nodded in approval.
Their first attempt was a failure, but with a deep breath Zach and Fiona managed to lift it from its stand, and shuffled across with it to the open stairwell, placing it just beyond the open door. Fiona then pulled a latch across above the main entrance door securing it, and pulled one of the lobby sofas across the front of it. When they closed the stairwell door they slid the statue up against it.
“It might not keep one our wolf friends out but it should slow them down,” said Zach.
When they arrived back on the fifth floor Dee was sitting on a chair next to Abbey eating a chocolate bar. One of the screens in front of her was black with white programming code scrolling by faster than Zach could read it.
“Are you in?” said Zach to Abbey.
“Almost, another few minutes, if I were… hacking from the outside this would take days, but from in here piece of cake. I’ve already turned off the alarms for this floor, and I found this.” Abbey typed some key combination, made one of the bottom screens come to life showing the outside of the building as well as a changing view of the different floors.
Zach put his arm on Abbey’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “Now that’s impressive,” he said with a smile. “We will need someone in here pretty much twenty-four seven to monitor those feeds, we will work out a schedule.”
“I’m good to be in here most of the time, this feels like home.” Abbey looked a bit embarrassed. “I guess that’s kind of sad.”
“Hey, geeks took over the world, nothing to be sad about,” replied Zach, smiling. “Me, Cal and Fiona will be ready to open these doors when you give the shout, but
when you unlock them, you and Dee stay in here with this door closed, we can’t be sure what’s in those other rooms, I’ll let you know if we find anything interesting.”
Abbey nodded while still looking at the screen.
Zach, Cal and Fiona stood in front of the first door, charge batons and pickaxe at the ready. They just about heard Abbey shout ‘Unlocked’ then they heard a click from the three doors close to them. Zach put his hand slowly on the first door and pulled the handle down.
It opened with little effort and a rush of cold air hit them all making them hesitate moving forward, but they quickly realized it was a room of computer servers with blinking lights, but nothing else of any use. Dee peered around the left corridor wall, then followed them into the server room. He walked around the walls of plastic boxes in awe, while the three others left and opened the two other doors. These were just were just plain offices, with mundane looking desks.
“One more left, whatever’s upstairs,” said Zach. He told Abbey to unlock the top floor door in about thirty seconds then himself, Cal and Fiona raced up the remaining stairs to be in front of the door when it unlocked. With perfect timing soon after they got there a click was heard. Zach opened the door revealing a penthouse apartment in darkness. Glass windows were on two sides gave an unparalleled view over the town. A three-part white leather sofa sat towards the windows and an open plan kitchen area was to the right. Just in front of them, to the left and right were open doors with large bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms.
They all walked slowly forward into the gloom, their eyes adjusting to their surroundings.
“Well I know where I’m sleeping tonight,” said Fiona, wandering into the right bedroom.
“We will need the supplies up here, but this looks like…” said Zach, as memories of his former life flooded his view, and the gloom around him transformed into a room filled with light and sunshine, with his wife and children. Zach junior ran around the marble table, and his wife was cutting vegetables in the kitchen. Terra sat on the sofa playing with a redheaded doll. Zach knew he had to look away, he knew soon the scene of perfection would spoil, the horror could not be kept out for long, but he wanted to stay in this moment, it seemed more real to him than the life he was living. As he watched, the doll sprouted legs and climbed over his daughters face, but she still smiled, he tried to run forward but his legs felt as cold and solid as the statue he had just carried. He looked to his wife, who was still cutting, but instead of the vegetables on the wooden board in front of her, it was fingers, a small neat pile of them. He wanted to scream for them to run, to hide from what was happening but no sound came from his throat, only rasps.
“Zach?” Cal’s voice snapped him out his trance. “You okay? You were just standing there, not replying.”
Zach slid his hand over his face; he was sweating. “Yeah, I’m fine, I wonder if the water still works.” He walked into a small bathroom to the left of him. Standing in front of a marble sink, turning one of the golden taps, he splashed the water over his face, its coolness making him feel more at one with his surroundings but the image of the spider doll crawling over his daughter’s face clung to the front of his mind. He shook his head then dried himself with a towel that was hanging on a chrome bar on the wall. In the gloom he looked at himself in the mirror, it was a man he did not recognize. I probably look like my father he said to himself smiling, knowing that he had never met his father.
When he came out of the bathroom Cal stood near the windows looking through an old brass telescope, in a southeasterly direction. “There’s movement down there, near that cream building and those cars, four hundred and fifty yards away, can’t see exactly what it was, but it was something fairly large moving quickly.”
Zach squinted best he could but couldn’t see anything, he noticed how at home Cal seemed with the scope. “Sniper?”
Cal looked to his left slightly then continued looking down the eyepiece. “Marines corps, scout sniper,” said Cal.
“We should probably have someone up here or on the roof twenty-four seven as well as in the computer room, Abbey’s got the external security cameras working, if those wolf things try to attack, we need warning. Although I don’t see where the roof access is,” said Zach, looking around the room.
“Fiona’s gone to tell the others, and to start shifting the supplies up here.”
“Whoa cool,” said Dee admiring the penthouse apartment. “Dad used to say that a rich man lives at the top of the building but we never knew it was this cool.” He wandered over to a computer console in front of impressively large TV and picked up its controller, playing with the small joystick and joy pad like there was an actual computer game to play. “I miss games.”
“There are still games, just ones that don’t require electricity,” said Zach, but Dee still looked sad.
“I’ll go see what else Abbey can learn from their computers, how you feel about keeping watch up here?” said Zach to Cal who nodded.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Abbey’s head was in her hands as Zach walked up to her, Jacob was sitting on a chair behind her.
“I’m guessing the news is not good. I already know about the camps, Ray and Fiona found paperwork downstairs, there’s five mentioned,” said Zach.
Abbey tearfully looked up at him. “This screen monitors the camps across the USA. The white dots are the camps that are still responding to the automated signal this network’s radio mast is sending them. As you can see only two camps are still responding, the last one went dark three weeks ago.”
Zach stood looking at the white flashing circles on the screen trying to ascertain where the remaining was. “Portland and Austin.”
Abbey’s head fell and she put her hands over her face. “The camp at Boston fell silent six weeks ago, my parents must have been there,” she said through the sobs.
Zach kneeled down beside her. “We don’t know that for sure, maybe they didn’t want to go, if you still want to go to Boston I’ll take you.”
“I don’t know, I need to know more.”
“That’s not all of it,” said Jacob.
“Dee mentioned to me there were red dots before, I wasn’t sure what he meant because as you can see there are none now, but looking through the records, the red dots were what this system used to symbolize a nuclear event,” said Abbey. Zach put his hand over his mouth then quickly moved it to his brow.
“They were on or close to two of the camps, San Diego and Minneapolis.”
“For now, let’s secure what we have here then we can decide what’s best going forward,” said Zach.
Abbey nodded then wiped her eyes and concentrated back on the screens in front of her. Zach heard noises from the corridor behind him.
“Where you want these boxes?” shouted Michael. Zach stood up and walked into the corridor near the stairwell, Cal and Ray were also there.
“Upstairs in the penthouse, we will be sleeping up there as well,” said Zach.
“Penthouse?” said Michael momentarily frozen. “Why didn’t you tell me already.” He disappeared up the stairs.
“This I gotta see,” said Ray who followed Michael. Zach and Cal looked at each other.
“Right let’s get these other boxes,” said Zach as Dee appeared walking up the stairs carrying a box.
“Drop it upstairs, then follow us, more needed up there,” said Zach to Dee.
“No problem, happy to help,” said Dee cheerfully, which made Zach and Cal smile.
After seven trips all the boxes of supplies were all on the penthouse floor. Abbey found the building’s plans on the network and discovered the roof was accessible via the kitchen in the penthouse. On the roof they found some garden chairs and some reasonably well-stocked mini-fridges. There were also large solar panels, which seemed to provide enough power to the penthouse to keep its refrigeration and electrics going. Zach stood against the west wall which ran along the edge of the roof and looked out towards the direction they had originally come, b
ut nothing could be seen. There was no moon and without artificial light only the vaguest rectangular forms could be seen in the intense darkness. The stars above bristled intensely.
“Beer?” Fiona offered Zach a bottle. “It’s a bit warm I’m afraid.” Zach smiled and took the bottle, knocking the cap off with a pocketknife he had picked up at the gas station. Dee and Abbey were sitting behind them. Zach was concerned the effect of learning about Boston would have on Abbey so it was good to see her up here having a break. Fiona joined Zach looking out into the void.
“Do you think we are the only people left alive?” she asked.
Zach sighed as he sipped on his warm beer. “We need to pay a visit to the UFO guy, see if he’s still there, and at some point we need to take a trip to Austin. Beyond that who knows.” They both looked out from the roof, trying to make out shapes.
“Do you feel it too?” said Fiona.
Zach looked straight ahead. “The feeling we are being watched?”
“Yes.”
“We need to be ready,” he said.
*****
Everybody slept well. Abbey had tried to convince Dee to sleep on the sofa in the penthouse but he stubbornly resisted and remained under the large desk in the computer room. She stayed awake longer than anyone else. The feeling of the keyboard beneath her fingers made her feel free even if the sadness of what she learned tried to creep over her, eventually she checked that Dee was sleeping and fell onto one of the sofas in the penthouse. Zach and Cal arranged to take turns sleeping for six hours, then going up onto the roof to look in all directions to make sure nothing was approach the building, they had also placed some chairs and other pieces of furniture in one of the lower stairwells to block anything coming up the stairs. Ray and Jacob shared one of the double beds, Michael a sofa, while Fiona took the other bed. The intense black of the desert night was starting to give way to a misty blue when Cal tapped Zach on the shoulder who was half on, half off one of the garden chairs.
