The Survivalist (Solemn Duty)

by Arthur T. Bradley

  “So, do people still want it, even now, with the world upside down?”

  “For a time, I suspect they couldn’t have cared less. But now that things have settled a bit, yeah, it’s become valuable again. Also, the New Colony tied its currency to it, which means as long as that government stands, gold will have value.”

  “That means a truckload would definitely help Mother buy lots of things for her people, right?”

  “It would, but more importantly it would give her the ability to influence others. And that’s what can really lead to change.”

  “Like the infected being treated better.”

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  Major had just turned onto Lentz Avenue, and Tanner brought him to a stop. The road split into two parallel paths with a long row of white hangars interspaced along both sides. A mile in the distance, the roads rejoined only to end abruptly at a nondescript lot with the Ohio River directly behind it. The ground between the two rows of hangars was lifeless and dry, spotted only with clumps of sage grass and the occasional withered bush.

  “Why’s everything so dead?” she asked.

  Tanner was wondering the same thing. It looked as if the whole area had been carpet bombed with Roundup.

  “Dry, I guess.”

  She pointed ahead. “I can literally see the river. How can it possibly be dry?”

  “You got me.” He motioned for her to dismount. “Let’s walk from here.”

  She slid off and began unhooking her backpack from the saddle.

  “Leave the pack,” he said, lifting the saddlebags off Major and draping them across his shoulder. “Weight’s going to be our enemy if we have to climb.”

  Samantha withdrew the flashlight from her pack and draped a coil of rope across her chest.

  “Should I bring anything else?”

  Tanner freed the Mare’s Leg and patted a pocket full of ammunition.

  “Weapons?”

  She felt to ensure that her knife and derringer were both in place, one at the small of her back and the other at her hip.

  “Check.”

  “Then I guess we’re good.”

  Together, they turned and studied the desolate landscape dotted with white hangars. Thankfully, the buildings had been aligned into two neat rows, making their search straightforward, albeit requiring a bit of legwork.

  “It would have been nice if Reverend Purdy had told us which one of these buildings has the silo inside,” she said. “There must be at least twenty.”

  “Let’s hope we get lucky,” he said, leading Major onto the lifeless patch of land.

  “I wonder if the buildings were put here to be decoys, you know, so that no one knew which one had the missile?”

  “More likely they were used by local farmers, and the silo was just hiding in plain sight. The military liked to do that sort of thing.”

  As they approached the first building, they saw that it measured a hundred feet in length and fifty in width. There were no windows, but narrow vents covered with rain shields ran along the side of the structure.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the vents. “Maybe they kept animals inside.”

  “More likely the air was let in to help dry something out.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, not wanting to give up on the idea. “These buildings look an awful lot like chicken houses.”

  “Let’s hope not. A hangar full of dead birds is going to reek like…” He searched for the right descriptor.

  “Like a hangar full of dead birds,” she offered.

  “Exactly.”

  Tanner studied a line of deep ruts leading to a sliding wooden door positioned at one end of the structure. The tracks had the wide knurl of tractor tires, but they appeared to be many months old. He had no idea what had been carried to or from the hangar, but based on the depth of the tracks, whatever it was had been heavy.

  He approached the sliding door and discovered a padlock and chain lying in the dirt. The lock remained intact, but the chain had been cut in two.

  “Someone’s been in here,” Samantha said, nudging the chain with her boot. “Maybe it was Reverend Purdy’s men.”

  Rather than speculate, Tanner slid the door open a few inches and leaned his head in. It was dark, but there was the distinct odor of grass. He shoved the door the rest of the way open and let light flood in. To either side was a long array of stalls, many of which were filled with thick rolls of hay set on wooden pallets.

  Samantha stepped around from behind him to get a better look.

  “Well, that’s not very exciting, is it?”

  Getting wind of the hay, Major nudged his way past and wandered to the nearest stall to enjoy an early evening meal.

  “I think Major disagrees.”

  Samantha stepped forward and gave his reins a tug.

  “No, no, Major. It might not be safe.”

  The big horse cast an annoyed look, planted his feet, and continued eating.

  She turned to Tanner. “What do you think? Is it okay?”

  He moseyed over, plucked out a handful and gave it a good sniff.

  “It’s fine.”

  “And you know that how?” Samantha had found Tanner to be a man of many talents, but she was also convinced that he often pretended to know things when he didn’t.

  He held the hay out for her to see.

  “You want to make sure the color is pale green or gold, not dull and brown. Also, it should be leafy, rather than filled with weeds and thistles.”

  “And the smell?”

  He raised the hay to her nose, and she gave it a sniff. It had a distinctive outdoorsy odor that caused her eyes to water.

  “If it was molded,” he explained, “it would smell sharp and musty. Good hay smells sweet.”

  Major let out a little snort, as if voicing his agreement.

  Samantha took another whiff. It sure didn’t smell like a slice of chocolate cake, but there was something a little sweet about the pungent odor.

  She leaned back and cleared her nostrils with several forceful breaths.

  “How do you know so much about hay, anyway?”

  “I pay attention.”

  “Seriously, did the hippies you lived with raise horses or something?”

  “Nope. I used to date a lovely bronco rider named Nettie ‘Big Guns’ Callahan.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really? Did she travel with a rodeo, putting on shows?”

  “She sure did.”

  Samantha put her hands on her hips like she was wearing a couple of six-shooters.

  “I bet they called her Big Guns because of her pistols, right?”

  Tanner grinned. “You could say that.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool. No offense, but what could you and a cowgirl possibly have in common?”

  “I thought that was obvious. We both liked to horse around.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you’re hilarious.”

  “I try, darlin’,” he said with a laugh.

  Still chuckling, Tanner stepped further into the hangar. Light shone in from the open door as well as from the small vents high along each wall. As far as he could see, nothing looked out of the ordinary. It was a hangar filled with hay, nothing more.

  “Do you think the silo’s entrance is hidden in here somewhere?” Samantha said, moving up beside him.

  “Purdy said we’d know it when we saw it, so I’m guessing no.”

  As Tanner turned to leave, Samantha reached for Major’s reins.

  “Leave him,” he said, preparing to close the door.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’ll be safer in here, not to mention have a chance to fill his belly with some of the good stuff. We’ll come back for him when it’s over.”

  She gave Major a pat on the side.

  “Enjoy your dinner, boy, but don’t eat too much or you’ll get a tummy ache.”

  As she stepped from the hangar, Tanner slammed the door shut. Major wouldn’t like the darkness, b
ut they couldn’t risk having him wander off.

  “I sure hope he’ll be okay,” Samantha said, following Tanner as he started toward the next hangar, roughly a football field away.

  “Quit worrying so much.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m a worrier. You know that.”

  “All you can ever do is your best. After that, the world’s gonna decide what happens.”

  “Is that one of your Buddhist teachings?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So, you’re saying I should accept that bad things might happen no matter what I do?”

  “Not might happen, will happen.”

  She made a face. “That’s terribly depressing.”

  “Or liberating, depending on how you look at it.”

  “True,” she said, puckering her lips. “Okay fine, I’ll try not to worry so much.”

  Tanner smiled. Asking Samantha not to worry was like asking a politician not to lie. In the end, people had to be true to themselves, no matter the promises they made.

  Moving from one hangar to the next, Tanner and Samantha continued their search. Most of the hangars were loaded with hay; a few were empty. None housed a secret entrance to an abandoned missile silo filled with body-snatching mutants. It wasn’t until they approached one of the last hangars that Samantha spotted several clumps lying ahead in the dirt.

  “Are those dead animals?”

  “Not sure,” he said, squinting. “Stay alert.”

  “Stay alive,” she said, slowing pulling the derringer from its holster.

  Coming closer, they saw that what she first took to be animals were in fact mutations, all of them dead. Most looked like they had barely been able to move along the ground, equipped with hands or feet in locations that made locomotion slow and arduous. Each had a head, but many were misshapen, like victims of the Zika virus.

  “What do you think happened to them?” Samantha said, holstering her pistol.

  Tanner nudged one with his boot.

  “They weren’t viable. Either couldn’t move well enough or lacked some other basic necessity.”

  “Some of them have black eyes, but some don’t.”

  “Means whatever’s happening goes beyond the original virus.”

  Her eyes shifted to the open hangar door. Only darkness shone out.

  “Are you sure we can handle this?”

  He flopped one of the creatures over onto its back. An ear poked out where a belly button should have been.

  “You kidding? We’re not gonna be taken out by these rejects. They can barely move, let alone think.”

  “So, we’re going to use our brains to defeat them?”

  He patted the saddlebags. “That, and a few jars of the old Sriracha. We’ll get in, find the nest, and burn them while they sleep.”

  Samantha did a quick count of the creatures lying dead. Eleven, if she counted the one that was nothing more than a squishy sack of flesh surrounding a head with a single foot poking out from the bottom.

  “Maybe we should have made more firebombs.”

  “It’ll be enough.” He pointed to an area behind the hangar where a long, dark seam opened in the earth. “Let’s take a look.”

  “What is it?”

  “Might be our way in.”

  They advanced toward the seam, neither of them exactly sure of what they were seeing. As they came closer, they discovered that it was a long rectangular hole perhaps thirty feet in length and two feet in width.

  Tanner squatted at one end of the hole and brushed aside some of the loose dirt. A metal plate lay underneath. He tapped it with the butt of his Mare’s Leg.

  Hollow.

  “Are those the silo doors?” asked Samantha.

  “Must be.”

  “How’d they get them open without power?”

  Tanner sat on one side and used both feet to try and force the doors the rest of the way open.

  They didn’t budge.

  “Apparently, not like this,” he said, grunting.

  Samantha got down on her knees and cupped her eyes to see into the hole. It was like staring into a bucket of oil. She tried her flashlight, but that too failed because the sun setting behind her washed out the light.

  “Do you think there’s a missile inside?”

  “Nah. Atlas rockets haven’t been used since the sixties.”

  “So, they just left this empty silo out here? That seems wasteful.”

  “Some were sold to people wanting underground houses. Others still sit empty. This one apparently became the home of mutant body snatchers.”

  She used her hands to measure the width of the hole and then held them up to Tanner. It wasn’t even close.

  “We’ll have to find another way in.”

  Tanner stood up and started for the hangar.

  “Gotta be in there.”

  She hurried after him, doing her best to tiptoe through the dead mutants. When they arrived back at the hangar, Tanner stepped through the open doorway and stopped to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few seconds later, he felt Samantha’s presence at his side. She held the derringer in one hand and her flashlight in the other.

  “Should I turn it on?”

  “Wait until we need it. The light’s likely to draw them to us.”

  “Right,” she said, tightening her grip on the pistol.

  They stood motionless for several minutes, the dark hangar slowly growing lighter and lighter as their pupils dilated.

  “Too bad we don’t have any more of Dr. Jarvis’s special sauce,” she said, referring to the time they had used his blood to become temporarily infected.

  “May he rot in hell.”

  She shrugged. “He’s suffered more than most.”

  Tanner didn’t argue the point. The truth was that without Jarvis, they would never have met Issa. Even so, it was impossible for Tanner to forgive a man who had brought so much suffering and death to the world.

  As their eyes adjusted, the room slowly came into view. Unlike the other hangers, this one was not divided into stalls. Instead, there was a small interior building set on a thick slab of concrete. The door to the building stood open, but they couldn’t see what lay beyond. There were more dead creatures littering the floor, and while they saw no movement, they heard the sounds of flesh dragging across the concrete.

  “There’s something alive in here,” she whispered.

  “Not for long.” He nodded to her. “All right, Sam, give us a little light.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Might as well get it over with.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  At the sound of their voice, a figure raced toward them, scrabbling across the floor like a giant cockroach.

  Samantha clicked on the flashlight as Tanner swung the Mare’s Leg around. Boom! A splash of dark liquid sprayed out as the creature flipped over backwards.

  She swept both flashlight and derringer from left to right and then back again, scanning for what might come next. Fortunately, the only movement was that of the flashlight heaving up and down with every breath she took.

  “I think that might have been—”

  A creature leaped up from the floor, barely ten feet from Samantha. Instinctively, she shrank back and fired the derringer. The tiny gun nearly bucked out of her hand as it belched fire, the slug ripping through the creature’s torso. The impact sent it toppling by her feet, and she fired again, this time striking it in the belly. Still not dead, it heaved and moaned in the darkness.

  She quickly dumped the spent casings and reloaded.

  As she brought the weapon up to finish the creature, Tanner said, “Leave it.”

  “But it’s suffering.”

  “Let it suffer. We need to save our ammunition.”

  “Purdy gave us a hundred cartridges. Surely, that’s—. Wait a minute,” she said, her eyes widening, “you don’t think there could be a hundred of these things!”

  “No idea. But for now, we assume the worst. And that means i
f we put one out of commission, we leave it.”

  She nodded.

  They stood still for a moment, Samantha continuing to scan the room with the flashlight. There were at least ten other creatures on the floor, but none were moving.

  A thought suddenly occurred to her, and it caused her gut to seize.

  “Tanner,” she breathed.

  “What?”

  “We need to hurry.”

  “Hurrying’s going to get us killed.”

  “Maybe, but remember what Purdy said. These creatures come out at night.” She glanced back at the open hangar door. While it was still light outside, they had less than an hour before nightfall. “If a hundred of these things start coming out, we’re going to be in real trouble.”

  She had a point.

  “Right. Let’s get to it.”

  With a fresh sense of urgency, Tanner shuffled toward the small internal building. The structure had been made of poured concrete, and there was a thick steel door opening to a ramp leading down.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Samantha said with excitement. “Why don’t we just barricade the door? If they can’t get out, everyone’s safe.”

  “Won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Remember that slot in the ground outside? For all we know, they can get out that way.”

  “We could try to seal it too?” Even as she said the words, she knew that doing something like that would be nearly impossible.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” he said, stepping onto the ramp. “There’s only one way to get this done. We gotta go down.”

  Chapter 14

  Night was firmly taking hold by the time Issa and Kendra left the barracks in search of Chloe’s killers. Much of the compound had grown dark, with only the occasional candle or lantern lighting its space. Thanks to heavy generators, Mother’s headquarters and a few other crucial buildings maintained electrical power, but fuel was far too precious to use for the comfort of the masses.

  As Issa darted between the cover of buildings with the heavy Merkel clutched in both hands, she was reminded of when she had stepped in to rescue a truckload of slaves, killing three men in the process. This time, however, it was personal. Chloe was a good soul, certainly not deserving of what had happened to her. More than that, Issa felt a sense of responsibility. Despite her denials, a part of her feared that Chole’s death might indeed have been tied to her transgression with Tanner.