by L K Hingey
Kimber’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. The store was set up like a warehouse and had nearly been cleaned out. They wandered around and halfheartedly found the canned goods aisle. They each picked out a couple things without speaking, before exiting and picking a spot in the parking lot near a couple concrete barriers. The pair sat down in the small amount of shade and opened their cans. Kimber had picked out some split pea soup, and Tristan had picked out his standard can of chili beans.
Kimber was grateful that Tristan didn’t try to coax her into speaking. She wanted to be left alone with her overwhelming thoughts and somehow, he sensed and respected that. The quietness did not feel awkward. Instead, it felt surprisingly comfortable. They sat on the cool ground, sizing up the landscape around them. It was a dismal scene of concrete and ruin under the red light of the morning. Absentmindedly, Kimber fiddled with the vial of teeth attached to her vest, and her thoughts drifted to her mother’s pleas.
She was not exactly looking forward to discovering the crimes that had haunted Kimberly for twenty years. Kimber had always looked up to and loved her mother. Would what she might find make her question that adoration? Was there anything in the world that could jeopardize that kind of love? And would they even be able to pull off getting inside the labs? Kimber’s mind spun on the unknown, and Tristan watched the anguish and anticipation roll like thunder in her lightning-like eyes.
When they were done eating, Tristan took the cans and set them aside. Kimber had not eaten all her soup, but the butterflies had at least made room for some of it. He didn’t say anything, grateful that she had at least tried. He did not know how he would feel or act if he was in her shoes. Well, bare feet, he thought. Either way, he did not envy that task that was before her. Kimberly had always been a respected figure in Inanna, but more importantly he knew she had been Kimber’s best friend.
As they stood up, Tristan silently renewed his resolution to help Kimber bear whatever burden she would pick up in the clinic, for as long as she would need help carrying it. Kimber simply smiled in shy gratitude for the mental space he was giving her. She loved him being near, but every step that brought them closer to Fort Knox seemed to tax her emotionally. They each drank some of their water and then they were off again. No fanfare, no jokes, just business. They were on the last leg of their journey north, and the fort would soon be on the horizon.
Chapter XIV
There was no mistaking Fort Knox when it swam into view. There were no impenetrable concrete walls to scale or fences of barbwire that tangled themselves into the distance, like one might have thought. There was only a single, oddly segregated, building atop a hill far off in the distance. It looked stoic and angry, as if it were a soldier himself imprisoned in granite. As they traveled closer and closer, both Kimber and Tristan hoped the building was not their destination.
The map had told them to veer off to the east onto a road called Bullion Boulevard. The street sign had been long ripped away by winds, but the massive road curving into the huge military complex was quite distinctive. On the right side of the road, they could see skeletons of old military buildings. On the left, were the remains of an old golf course. Now it was nothing more than a groomed desert with narrow plateaus cut strangely into its rolling hills.
They followed the boulevard until they ran into a massive military tank decorating the main gate of Fort Knox. It had been graffitied and was so sun-bleached the olive color had turned into a peeling pastel green. The gate itself stood in front of them like a broken sentinel. What once used to be a passageway of merit was now left unguarded for the ghosts of the world to come and go as they pleased.
Kimber was not the only one who felt odd walking past the old security buildings, Tristan was frowning as he looked around, as if a field of land mines might have been planted to deter unwelcome visitors. But no bombs went off. Instead, they were funneled into a zig-zag pattern of cones and concrete barriers topped with barbed wired. No soldiers rushed at them with guns ready and so the pair kept walking, each step making them feel guiltier for trespassing.
In front of them, road spikes had been deployed to puncture the tires of vehicles that may have made it past the funneling system. Abandoned military police vehicles were scattered about, some of which had been tipped over onto their sides. Kimber shuttered, imaging the riots that must have ensued after the deadly effects of the flare started to manifest themselves. When starvation and dehydration settled in, the people had nowhere to turn except on their own government.
Everything had a layer of grit on it, and Kimber felt like they were intruding on a very sad secret. The base had clearly once been a place of prestige and now, like everything else in the world, it was being swallowed by the dustbowl the continent had turned into. Tristan led the way as Kimber trailed behind, taking in all the sights of the old military base. The strange building, that had looked more like a prison than anything else, was weighing on Kimber’s mind.
She had read about famous North American penitentiaries before. The one that always captivated her attention most was the prison located on Alcatraz Island. The building at the front of the base had held similar qualities of haunting isolation and impressive build, to the Alcatraz in her books. She desperately wanted to know what it was and decided to ask Tristan if they could check it out on the way home.
Their map did not go into detail about the base’s layout and they had come as far as written prescription would grant them. Now they would have to find the clinic on their own. Once they found it, they would have to turn the power on, something neither of them had done outside the classroom, in order to get into the lower levels of the building. The sun was almost directly overhead, and they had a lot of work to do.
Tristan made a beeline for the Fort Knox Visitor’s Center. Smart, thought Kimber. The center was likely to have a plethora of resources, including a map of the base. As they walked into the building, they were greeted by the full history of the fort and its many armor-centric accomplishments. Glass cabinet after glass cabinet had been set up, displaying the proud history of the units stationed here and their heroic deeds. Kimber wished they had time to read the plaques, but she knew they had to stay on track.
Tristan set about searching for a current map and Kimber set about secretly searching for any info she could find on the prison at the entrance to the base. The information was not hard to find, and before long she was staring at a giant picture of, not a penitentiary, but rather a gold vault. She read the description of the vault and its four feet thick walls of granite. Apparently, both the outer and inner shells of the building, both engineered independently, could withstand nuclear blasts.
So, this was where the U.S. treasury had stored most of its gold! Even a few historical artifacts, to include the constitution, had been stored in the hulls of this vault at one time or another. It seemed like the fort had been built around this iconic vault, and for its entire lifespan, was hailed as one of the most secure and impenetrable places on the planet.
Now that her burning question was satisfied, Kimber walked around to find Tristan and see if she could gather any other useful tidbits of information on the way. She found him bent over a map enclosed in a plexiglass case. Tristan’s brow was furrowed as he memorized the roads and landmarks around them.
“We could break in and take the map?” she suggested as she walked up.
“Something feels wrong about breaking things here. Plus, there’s not too much to have to remember, just a few roads and maybe some buildings that could help. Let’s save any destruction for later.”
Kimber glanced down and looked at their route. She would leave it to Tristan to navigate since he seemed to like doing it, but she wanted to have some wherewithal in case they were separated.
“Hey. In case we are separated,” she spoke her thoughts aloud, “let’s meet here at the visitor’s center. Sunrise, noon, and sundown for two days after.”
Tristan nodded. “Good idea. But don’t think I’m going to let you get
too far away. Not going to lie, even letting you walk around this building alone made me nervous.”
Kimber smiled reassuringly. It felt nice that he cared so much. They made their way back outside and drank a bit more water. Tristan settled back into his position on point, and they eased back into a light jog that took them a bit farther north to their first intersection. They turned right and kept their pace as they ran around several curves, a library, and a few more intersections. Finally, they reached a road that branched off to the left, and they knew that they were on Ireland Avenue.
Tristan looked at Kimber, and she nodded seriously. They jogged down the road until a large and bland building came into view. Kimber had expected the building to be new and flashy. Many of the medical clinics in the larger cities had been state-of-the-art facilities, complete with top-notch equipment and streamlined architectural designs. This building was the opposite of new and flashy. It was downright ugly and looked as though it had been in use since before the war.
As they came closer to it, they realized it had been built before the war. Kimber and Tristan were both surprised, but after thinking about it, it started to make some sense. Since genetic modification had been such a highly contested subject, maybe the Bureau did not want its headquarters to stand out amongst the uniformly plain buildings around it. The topic had been so hot, after all, that the war itself had been partially named after it. Gen-En was the slang term for the collection of proxy wars during the Third World War, standing for “Genetic Modification and Energy.”
After the infamous attacks on the nation’s nuclear super-plants had leveled entire cities, the United States’ leadership must have wised up and decided they needed somewhere discreet to conduct the exceedingly contentious testing and research. No one would suspect that in the basement of an old military medical clinic would be some of the most high-tech laboratories on the face of the Earth. The more Kimber thought about it, the more genius it became. She just hoped the electrical grid for the subterranean laboratories would be as plain and down-to-earth as the rest of the clinic looked.
The sun was now directly overhead. Since no light was spilling into the clinic’s blown-out windows from the east or the west, the holes looked extra dark and ominous against the red-hued sky. The ten-story building looked ready to topple at any given moment, and Kimber was thankful that no breeze stirred the frayed curtains that hung in many of the windows. She would have not wanted to be underneath it in a windstorm.
Kimber and Tristan swapped glances. Now what? they silently asked each other.
“Let’s circle the building once and check out the layout of the external utilities. Then we can go inside and check out the first floor,” Kimber suggested.
Tristan nodded and followed behind her like a hawk. They wound about the massive square base of the building looking for any indications of electrical or gas supplies. Tucked behind the building in a far corner, they found the building’s power station. Covered under brittle plastic domes were two emergency generators, the external breaker boxes, and the meters through which the main power and gas were fed. Tristan tipped the covers off and crouched by the massive generators.
Kimber and Tristan had both had many lessons on electrically driven machines: how to diagnose them, how to repair them, and even how to rebuild them from junk parts. The educators in Inanna had pushed the learning on every Aurorean “in case an event on the surface would cause them to need such skills.” The Auroras knew the real reason for the advanced mechanical training was to prepare them for the day when the humans would ask them to build solar-powered generators on top of the caverns. Either way, Kimber had always enjoyed the practical application and the hands-on tinkering.
Tristan was still evaluating and hopping around the machines. These were not solar-powered generators. They were old school gasoline driven beasts. Getting gas for them would not have been hard, but it would have sucked precious time from their day to find a gas station and syphon the gasoline out of a gas pump.
“We may be in luck,” Tristan said, his entire body relaxing with relief.
The machines had nearly full tanks of fuel. Tristan leaned his forehead against the side panel of the metal workhorse and silently thanked the effective supply train of the military logistics system. Demand on the clinic would have undoubtedly been high, and the Army would have routed all available supplies here. The quality of the gasoline would certainly be shot, but Tristan and Kimber did not need to care about the longevity of the generators’ internal systems. They simply needed the machines to turn on and supply power for a couple hours.
The protective coverings that surrounded the generators had been their saving grace. This was another ode to the attention to detail of the military. Decades of warfare in desert conditions had taught them that sand and machinery do not mix well. Had years of sand been allowed to grind its way into the inner components of the generators, any hope of the machines running reliably would have been drastically reduced.
“Leave it to the military to take care of their equipment. Let’s find the electrical panels inside the building and switch the main power feed to these back-up generators. If the machines won’t start up from inside, I can run back out here and start them manually,” Tristan announced.
Tristan looked hopeful and even a little excited. The challenge was something tangible that he could apply his energy to. Kimber just hoped the process would be as easy as he was picturing. They competed their loop around the perimeter of the building and arrived at the front doors. A large overhang greeted them with masculine lettering Ireland Army Medical Clinic, Fort Knox, KY. They walked into the shade and tried the front door of the building. It was an automatic sliding glass door set to failsafe to the locked position.
Kimber knelt and got to work picking the lock on the doors as Tristan got the flashlight ready. Locks in general varied quite a bit, and over the years, the Auroreans learned that electrically signaled locks were typically trickier to pick than traditional locks, requiring more patience and finesse. Some of the Auroras had developed the knack for picking locks more quickly than others, but they all carried small loops of wire on their belts just in case.
After a few minutes, they heard the sweet click of the lock opening. Kimber coiled her wire back onto her belt as Tristan pried the doors apart. They were heavy and cumbersome, but the doors did slide under the manual pressure, and the travelers quietly slipped into the sliver Tristan created. This first floor of the building was dark, lit up by the beam of light in Tristan’s hand. The pair stood there, taking in the smells of the clinic, their senses on high alert as the rhodopsin in their eyes adjusted to the low light conditions.
Kimber’s eyes confirmed what her nose had immediately detected. The Auroreans had been inside hospitals before to retrieve medicines for Inanna, and the medical runs were always the most dreaded missions of all. Sprinkled with patches of peeling wallpaper were skeletons laying haphazardly around the room, the odor mingling with the strange sterile smell all hospitals seemed to share. It was clear that although this building had been converted from a hospital into a clinic, it had been overrun after the flare and once again had been operating as an E.R.
Ceiling tiles had collapsed all over the place, covering many of the bodies lying on gurneys. The hospital had not had enough rooms or equipment to handle such an influx of patients, and makeshift spaces had been built around chairs and in the corners of the room. The last thing Kimber wanted to do was to go farther into the belly of this ghost clinic, but she knew they had no choice. Stepping over bits of building and bone, they made their way down the halls, searching for the utility room.
Tristan led the way with the flashlight, and Kimber stayed close behind. The rooms to the right and left had been filled to max capacity and every desk around the clinic had been cleared to use as beds or operating tables, blood-stained curtains serving as sheets. Glass, supplies, and papers were strewn about everywhere... everything frozen in time. Nothing stirred, and again Kim
ber thanked whatever god that may have existed that it was a windless day.
Tristan let out a sigh of relief when they found the sign for the utility room. It had been tucked away inside a large janitorial closet. They stepped through the closet space and into the room beyond it, grateful to be out of the main hall. Though the room was pitch black, it was well laid out, and it didn’t take them long to identify the complex system of panels and subpanels. Tristan opened the faces of the many of boxes and traced out the electrical feed.
Once he had a good understanding of which subpanels controlled which floors of the hospital, he went over to the main panel. Beside it was an emergency box that controlled the auxiliary power. He switched a few breakers to the ON position and then attempted to start the back-up machines with a green starter switch. He did not have much faith that this would work, and after a few failed attempts, he stopped.
“Yeah, so it looks like I am going to have to go out and manually start the generators,” Tristan said uneasily. “I don’t like us splitting up, but once I let you know the generators are on, you’re going to have to flip the diverter breaker in the main panel to the aux position so the electrical draw can come from the machines outside. Looks like Kat’s walkie talkies may actually come in handy.”
Kimber nodded and fished around for the hand-held transmitters. She pulled them out and popped in all four of the spare batteries they had. Kimber quickly tested them, and to her relief, they worked. She did not know who had been given the worse task... her standing in the pitch-black room with naught but the beam of yellow light, or Tristan, who had to pass over the chaos of the clinic again.
As soon as Tristan was out of ear shot, she tested her walkie talkie.
“Tristan, can you hear me?” Kimber asked apprehensively.
