by Won, Mark
What I found was a tracking device. It was a civilian model, the sort that a private detective might have occasion to use. It’s purpose seemed clear. Obviously, the townies intended to follow us to the reconditioned missile silo and take it from us. The kid had been right.
Luke took one look at the tiny transmitter and his jaw just about hit the floor. He said, “Sorry, Gideon, you were right. But, why would anyone steal one of your badges?”
“Sometimes people like shiny things. Anyhow, the only time anyone could have looked in my stuff was when we were away from the van. There were sixty-three people in town, twenty-nine women, twenty-five men, four boys, five girls. Only two people stayed on the roof, plus there was the guy standing guard at the town gate. Tracer told me that there was no one outside when we pulled up to the mall, so my guess is that maybe one of the two guards that kept watch during the night climbed down and stole my badge. One of those two people left on the roof was Alan.”
That still didn’t explain why Alan, or anyone else, would want a policeman’s badge (or where Gideon had gotten a collection of them from in the first place, for that matter), but I got us moving again, sans the tracking device. After a few miles I could tell that we weren’t being followed so I saw no reason to abort the mission. We’d make sure to return home by another way.
I did manage a very carefully worded conversation with Mark using our remaining shortwave. It was a simple code but thorough enough to warn the people back home not to trust anyone from Pine Woods. Forewarned is forearmed.
Once we were in Kansas, Luke started to pull his weight as a navigator, and it was about time. Up to that point we’d been making one wrong turn after another. I can’t blame the man too much since we still had to avoid all the main highways or risk getting cut off by a massive pile up. Still, it was aggravating.
We pulled up outside the main gate to the underground silo and Luke got out to open it. Immediately, he came hastening back and exclaimed, “We left the chain locked when we left, now the lock’s been cut. Somebody’s been here already, and if they’re still here then they might be watching us right now!”
Luke had already told me that the large central dome contained a small parking area, which I reasoned could be holding a number of the interlopers’ vehicles. There could be dozens of antagonists already waiting for us inside. The smart money was on backing off and reevaluating the situation, preferably before coming under attack.
I drove us back about a mile and we took some cover in the garage of an old country home. I noted that Gideon had stopped acting like a little kid and the situation had his full attention. At least now I knew what it took to do that.
I asked Luke, “Did you talk to anyone at Pine Woods about where this place is?”
“No,” he replied. Then he went on, “Although Tiffany was curious about whatever trouble we’d had on our journey east.”
Inwardly groaning I asked, “Did any of what you told here mention this area, this county maybe?”
Luke answered, “Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean I had to say something, didn’t I? Do you think it’s them in there?”
“It does seem likely, doesn’t it? Think now. Did you tell Tiffany, or anyone else for that matter, anything before we stayed for the night?”
“Yeah,” came the answer, “I talked to Tiffany just after we got the tires off that rig.”
“That means they’ve had a night to steal a march on us,” I informed him.
Gideon had something to say, deadly serious, “I like that, ‘steal a march’ bit. That was an excellent use of idiom. But what I want to know is, do we kill ‘em or not? Are they the enemy because they got here first. I know they’re not our friends, but does that make them our enemies? If you see what I mean.”
The kid had a point. They saw an opportunity and took it, but killing all of them would be an act of war, and perhaps a bit extreme. It seemed more prudent to let them swipe everything before we moved in to secure the place. We could all (and by ‘all’ I especially meant Luke) chalk this up as a learning experience.
Gideon continued, “I guess they wanted the tracking device to tell when we were coming close. Probably to avoid a conflict. I say I go up there and knock on the doorbell. I’ll congratulate them on how they pulled one over on us and invite them to get out. If they want to avoid a fight then they’ll take the opportunity to leave. If not, then we treat them as bandits, brigands, and highwaymen. What do you think?”
Luke said, “Are you nuts? What if they shoot you?”
Gideon answered, “Then I die and Haven knows that it has a serious enemy. I’m willing to risk it.”
I broke in, “Well, I’m not. We’re going to give them one day to clear out before we give fair warning and then move in to expel them. You do remember your way around in there, don’t you Luke?”
And so we waited out the day. Come morning we waited until noon for them to clear out, but they still hadn’t moved. It occurred that maybe we were barking up the wrong tree. Maybe they weren’t there after all. Maybe it was someone else entirely who had taken up, perhaps permanent, residence. If that was the case then I had no intention of kicking the strangers out. After all, I couldn’t blame folks for moving into an empty home they happened upon.
We drove back to the gate and got out. Moving up to the gates, clearly marked ‘Danger Electric Fence’, Luke thumbed the intercom, “Hello, can anybody hear me?”
He turned to me and said, “This isn’t right, the idiot light should be on. They haven’t got the power on.”
I asked, “Is there any way they could be faking us out?”
“I don’t see how. The external cameras are on the same circuit as the exterior intercom. Maybe they have the power on inside and just left the exterior applications off. I don’t see why, though.”
Gideon reached out a rubber gloved hand holding a plastic handled screwdriver. He touched the dangerous area on the gates and reported, “The juice is off.” Then he opened the gate, still cautiously using the tool.
We entered the fenced in area, walked by a number of smaller cars which looked like they had been partially stripped years ago. Luke had mentioned that he had needed the scrap to use as armor for the other vehicles of his exodus. Now the rusting hulks gave us some limited cover as we advanced.
Luke led us around to a secondary, emergency, entrance/exit for the silo. It was little more than a foot high concrete circle covered with an oversized manhole cover. Luke produced a key and we had a helluva time lifting that big metal cover into its open position. Below there was a set of switchback stairs leading downward. All was dark.
Down we went.
Chapter 5: A Walk in the Dark, A Change, Guilty Knowledge
Anticipating such an eventuality, we had all brought along a powerful light source. At the bottom of the steps we came to another locked door. Again, Luke provided a key.
Luke informed us, “This leads to the old mission control, or whatever. Now it’s management and employee living space. We should come out in Mr. Ready’s private apartment. He was the boss back then.” He’d already told us all that, of course. Clearly he was feeling a bit nervous.
Through the door and into the plush accommodation of upper management. I checked the lights and found they still didn’t work. From there we moved into a hall lined by doors.
Luke explained, “That one was for Major’s rooms. Down there are Bob’s and my rooms. That one was for the Weavers’.”
We gave each place a very brief search, just enough to ensure that no one was lurking in wait or trying to get behind us. What occurred to me was how tiny Luke’s room was. The place was basically a glorified closet.
I asked him, “You lived like this? For how long?”
“Seven years. It was all free, too.” Luke said it like that made it all okay, like it was an accomplishment or something to be proud of. We hadn’t really talked about it all that much, but I’d always had the impression that the man had some kind of great deal working her
e. He’d always spoken of his bosses in glowing terms.
We moved to the door at the end of the hall and moved down some more steps and into what used to be some kind of underground convenience store. From there we moved to a stairwell and moved up to security. Luke had told us that when he and his had abandoned this bunker they had shut down everything. It wouldn’t be possible to turn the power on from that location.
From there we passed up to the dome itself. We could see that someone had cut the stair door open with a welding torch. Then we went into the garage area and saw three pickup trucks and a van parked. The garage door was of reinforced steel and had clearly had its locking mechanism cut, probably by the same torch used on the inner door.
In the interests of being thorough, Luke led us to the pool room. The area was a large rectangle which abutted the main dome. It had a half sized Olympic sized swimming pool full of four year old stagnant water. Luke had forgotten to drain it when they’d left.
Finding the area empty of hostiles we headed back to the stairs. Just as Gideon said, “Wait!” I opened the stairwell doors, and there stood a zombie. Before I could bring my rifle up, Luke put a bullet in its head. It must have been lurking deeper in the silo, and then began climbing upward toward us as soon as it saw our flashlights. We proceeded cautiously.
Gideon took a look at his dog and told us, “There’s some more coming up the stairs,” Sure enough, two more zombies came crawling up the stairs toward us. After dispatching them we began clearing the levels below, one by one. About half the condominium doors were locked, but Luke always had a key ready. We discovered no more threats until we made it to the eighth level.
That was the level Luke had warned us about. I looked to Gideon and he said, “There’s a bunch on the other side, I don’t know how many, but they’re just on the other side of the door.” It was the section where Luke had sealed a number of the undead in a room; welded them in actually. So as soon as the stairway door opened we were ready.
There was quite a little crowd considering how tight the quarters were, there must have been six zombies waiting for us, standing over an armless corpse with a bullet hole in its head. Between Luke and I, we managed to put them all down in short order. Then three more came from inside one of the condos on the level. The door to the living area looked like it had been bolted shut at one time and then cut off more recently.
We had a brief bit of trouble, then, as the three of them were ghouls. They came charging straight at me while Luke and I opened fire. I killed one and glanced a shot off another ghoul’s head before it rammed me, knocking me to the floor. I had my hammer out in no time but Gideon had already pierced its head with one of his swords. While I’d been busy Luke had finished of the remaining enemy with his combat knife.
I noticed that one of the ghouls used to be a woman, by the clothes it wore. They looked pretty fancy, like she was on her way to a party. I asked Luke, “Anyone you knew?”
He answered, “I think that used to be a mother-in-law, but she was just a zombie when last I saw her.”
Gideon added, “That’s bad, I guess it makes sense though. I been under the impression that there were more ghouls and ogres lately, now I know why. They’re changing from one thing into another, from zombies into worse.”
“Maybe,” was all I could say to that. I hoped it wasn’t true, but time would tell. Something to report back, in any case.
After that excitement we continued our search until we made our way down to the classroom level. When we opened the door we found a single zombie, marred by a single bite wound, which Gideon’s dog had warned us about well in advance. And that was it. We’d cleared the place.
In the lowest level, what Luke referred to as the ‘morlock breeding ground’, we got the power back on. Luke stayed below to make sure everything was working correctly and to get together whatever might be necessary to fix the damage done to the various ruined doors. Gideon went to the theater level to watch ‘The Little Mermaid’ and I moved back upstairs towards security, to the silo’s radio.
Once the elevator doors opened I was confronted by four men pointing guns at me. I recognized them from Pine Woods. Slowly, I raised my hands away from my rifle.
“Don’t you move, you piece of shit!” one of them said.
“Get his gun!”
“Be careful!” That was from Alan.
“I got his guns, see!”
Being a big fan of diplomacy, I tried, “What’s this about?”
“Don’t give me any of that shit!”
“Like you don’t know!”
“We should just shoot you now!”
“Yeah, shoot him Bill!” begged Alan.
That’s when Jay showed his face. He looked pretty upset about something. He pointed his pistol at my face and asked, “Where are the others? The giant and the crazy kid.”
I thought that was a pretty stupid question. Any answer besides the obvious wouldn’t be believed, anyhow. I said, “There down below, where else? We’re in a silo, you know.”
He didn’t like my tone, but I didn’t really care. I asked, “We could have worked a deal, you know. You thieves could have stolen our stuff and we’d have let it go. Not worth killing over, see? But right now your in the process of screwing yourself.”
He pistol whipped me in the face and down I went. He hadn’t hit me that hard, but because of the blow I got to feign unconsciousness. They tried hauling me to my feet but I managed to stay in character, hanging limp.
“He didn’t know shit, Jay.”
“Why was he talking about stealing?” I think that came from Bill.
“I’m telling you it was that big guy! We need to find him and shoot him!” contributed Alan.
“So what? They all gotta be in on it. Guilt by association, that’s what it is. We can’t let them get away with it,” that goon sounded like he was on the brink of tears. It’s hard to deal with people in that kind of mental state. Reason doesn’t matter as much to such folks.
Jay got his mob under control, “Shut up! I don’t know what’s going on here. Paul here-”
“If that’s even his real name!” interjected one of the men.
Jay continued, “Don’t be stupid. We’ve been listening in on their communications for years now and this Paul seemed like a straight shooter. We may have to kill him, but I hope not. This could really work out to our advantage, I wish I hadn’t hit him.”
“What are you talking about,” asked Bill.
Jay replied, “At first I thought we’d have to kill all three of them, but now I’m not so sure. See, if we kill Paul here, then that Haven place might just try and do something about it, and they sound big. It’s possible that he didn’t know anything about Herman and Veronica. We need more information.”
“Like what?” asked a goon.
“Like, which of them owned the bike that had the cop badges in it,” Jay supplied.
The conversation went on like that for a while and I learned a few things. Apparently, while we had been sleeping in the mall back in Pine Woods, someone had been busy performing a double homicide. Both had been killed by head wounds. Then the clever killer had managed to stash both bodies in a restroom. Found clutched in a hand of the body of Veronica was a policeman’s badge.
It seemed that Alan, one of the roof guards had slipped down to the demolished parking lot while my friends and I had been busy negotiating with Jay. There he found Gideon’s stuff. He returned with an itemized list. I suspected that he’d also returned with a piece of potentially incriminating evidence, something to plant in the night.
Once the bodies were discovered, Jay got together a crew to hunt us down. After all, they already knew about where we were going. Once they came upon the reconditioned silo they walked down the stairs until they came the security. That’s when Luke had managed to get the lights to come on. While they were talking about it I just happened to take the elevator up to them.
Someone asked, “Where is everybody else, anyway? D
o you think these guys killed them all?”
Jay said, “Probably not. How could two men and a kid kill ten people? Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
One of the goons noted, “Hey, someone’s using the elevator again!”
There was an animated discussion as everyone waited for it to stop at the security level. It continued up to the top level, to the surprise of everyone.
Jay said, “They don’t know we’re here yet. You guys come with me. You two watch him. Tie him up or something.” Then the remainder of Jay’s group called the elevator and got in.
As soon as the door closed I acted. I stood up and jabbed one man in the ribs while the other got an upper cut. It took another two blows to knock the men into insensibility. Unfortunately, that was all the time it took for the elevator to reach the top. I scooped up the nearest fallen firearm and ran for the stairs.
As I climbed them two at a time I could hear gunfire from above. As I reached the top I saw Luke had dove down the stairs face first with two of Jay’s goons in pursuit of his prone form. Luke quickly corkscrewed onto his back and began cutting loose with a full auto barrage. Both men fell back in the face of such an atypical tactical maneuver, one of them dropped his firearm to clutch a bloody arm. I grabbed Luke by the scruff of his neck and finished hauling him down the stairs.
We managed to get back to my two unconscious guards in security. Their radios were squawking at them to get Luke on his way down. I took a couple of shots and let out a vague, “Ha!” Jay and his men came bolting down into Security, right into our sights.
Luke didn’t look so good. That guy likes to get hurt a lot, but he managed to keep his M-16 level enough. It was my turn to say, “Don’t move! Drop your weapons now!” They were accommodating enough to comply.
We stayed like that for a few seconds while Luke got his breath back. He’d been shot but his armor had held. Once Luke regained his strength, I had him clear off their weapons and line them up by the wall. Then I called Gideon on the intercom.
With his arrival, he asked, “What did I miss? This looked fun. Wow, Luke, you really like to take a beating, don’t you?” Luke did not respond. He was busy looking at Jay and his men like he was ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
