by Gary Chesla
“I’ll take shorty and the tiger with me, just in case,” Tony added. “So you won’t have to worry about her until we see what’s up.”
Tony drove around the next bend and pulled the car over.
He quickly got out of the car and ran back and opened the trunk.
He grabbed a crossbow and two packs of arrows for the bow.
He tossed Mike the keys.
“Open the hood like you are having car trouble,” Tony said. “And if they ask you where you were going, tell them you are trying to get back home in Johnstown.”
Mike grabbed the keys out of the air and slipped them in his pocket.
Jamie sat in the car looking nervous.
She became very nervous when Tony helped Jamie get out of the car and quickly led her across the road and disappeared behind the row of pine trees that lined the highway.
Mike stood in front of the car and looked at the engine.
“Get ready,” Mike said as he saw the old blue Dodge pickup truck come around the corner. “Here they come.”
“Be careful, Mike,” Linda said, her voice began to crack.
“It will be fine,” Mike said. “Just stay in the car.”
Mike was staring at the strange looking engine in the old Buick when the pickup truck pulled in front of the Buick.
Two dirty unshaven men got out of the truck and looked at him.
Mike didn’t think much about the fact that the men hadn’t shaved in a while.
Mike himself now had a full week’s growth on his face, not having had the chance to shave since before he went up to the cabin.
What did bother him was the men’s body language.
They kept looking at each other and acted nervous, their eyes kept darting from Mike and then around the area as if they were trying to make sure that they were alone.
When their eyes settled on Linda, Mike made up his mind that they could not be trusted.
“Having car trouble?” the driver of the truck asked.
“I haven’t seen a car like that for a long time,” the passenger added.
Both men slowly moved towards Mike, their hands moved nervously at their sides where they had handguns tucked into their waist bands.
“Yeah, the damn thing just stopped on me,” Mike replied as he looked at the engine, but kept one eye on the two men. “I really don’t know much about cars, especially this one. It belonged to my old man, he loaned it to me because my car was in the shop. I guess I won’t be getting it back anytime soon.”
“I guess not,” the driver replied. “Where you live?”
“I live in Johnstown down on Franklin Street. I haven’t been home for a week. It was getting bad when I left, I hope things have settled down back in town,” Mike said. “Thanks for stopping. Where are you guys heading?”
“We are just out looking for supplies,” the driver replied. “In fact, I think you took some things that belonged to us.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“You were just back at Outdoor World,” the passenger said. “Whatever is in Outdoor World belongs to us.”
“Do you own the store?” Mike asked.
“No, but whatever is in there belongs to us, not some outsider,” the driver replied as he pulled out his gun and pointed it at Mike.
The passenger pulled out his gun and aimed it at Linda, “Out of the car little lady. Now!”
Linda nervously opened the door, stepped out and stood by the car.
“Over here,” the passenger said as he waved his gun at Linda.
“Now why don’t the two of you start unloading that old heap and put what you stole in the back of our truck,” the driver grinned. “We need what you took.”
“We’re not greedy,” Linda said. “We would be willing to share to help you out.”
“I’m sure you would,” the passenger laughed. “What else would you be willing to do to get us to let you live?”
The passenger walked over to Linda, grabbed her arm and yanked her to the front of the car.
“What do you say Andy, maybe we should keep this one?” he grinned.
“Yeah, hang on to her,” the driver growled as he moved over and shoved Mike towards the back of the car. “Now start loading our truck.”
Mike stumbled towards the back of the Buick when he heard something fall to the ground.
He glanced back and saw the driver was lying on the ground behind him.
The passenger yanked Linda to the side of the car and stared down at Andy.
“What the hell,” he said and then pulled Linda around to use her as a shield when he saw blood running from the side of Andy’s head where a small arrow protruded from his head, two inches above his ear.
Linda was in a state of shock and stood frozen in front of the man.
“I’ll kill her,” the man yelled as he put the gun to the side of Linda’s head. “You come out now or I’ll blow her head off!”
Mike made eye contact with Linda and glanced to the ground in front of the car.
Then he mouthed the worlds, One, two, …”
Linda nodded nervously.
When Mike mouthed the word three, Linda dropped to the ground.
The man holding the gun was taken by surprise.
Before he had a chance to react, an arrow hit him in the center of his chest.
He dropped the gun, looking shocked, then fell to the ground.
Mike rushed over and helped Linda get to her feet.
He could feel her shaking in his arms as he held her.
Tony walked across the road, leading Jamie by the hand.
“Well, I guess they weren’t just some decent people trying to survive,” Tony said.
Mike nodded as he looked at the two men on the ground.
“I guess you have shot a crossbow before,” Mike replied.
“Unfortunately, more than I care to admit,” Tony said.
Tony handed Mike the bow.
“Get Linda and Jamie back in the car, we need to get out of here. These two might have some friends that are looking for them. I’ll clean this up while you get the car ready.”
Mike helped Linda and Jamie get back in the car. Then he closed the hood and got in the passenger’s seat.
Tony lifted the two men and dropped them in the back of the truck.
Tony then got in the truck and started the engine.
He drove the truck off the road and down behind the row of pine trees where he hid a few minutes earlier with the bow.
After getting the truck out of sight, he ran back to the car and started the engine.
They started to drive the last few miles back to the house.
“Thanks,” Mike said after they started driving again.
“You’re welcome,” Tony said. “It had to be done. It was us or them.”
“Yeah, thanks Tony,” Linda said. “I guess I better get used to the idea that I can’t trust people anymore.”
“It’s unfortunate,” Tony replied.
“It’s a new world,” Linda said. “It’s going to be hard living like this. I can only imagine what you and Mike went through to get back home.”
“I hated to leave that truck behind,” Tony said.
“What?” Mike asked.
“It had an automatic transmission and power steering,” Tony replied. “I would have left the Buick but the truck wouldn’t hold us all and if these creeps had any friends, they might recognize the truck somewhere along the line and that would cause more problems.”
Linda looked curiously at Tony, “Didn’t that bother you, shooting those two creeps. God knows they deserved it, but still?”
“Yes, it bothers me,” Tony said. “But I’ve learned to do what I have to do. All I can say is it is better to be on this end of it rather than being stuffed in a truck and left in the woods. It’s not my first time and I have a feeling it won’t be my last time. When it comes to kill or be killed, you just do what you have to do to survive and deal with the nightmares later.
”
They rode home in silence and parked the car behind the house.
They unloaded their supplies and took everything into the house.
They had found a lot of things they needed, but they had also been reminded that even though they had escaped the city and found a relatively safe place to regroup, that their ordeal was a long way from being over.
Chapter 35
Wednesday, May 12th, Granite Mountain, Utah
Doc had spent much of the night working at one of the computers in the administrative office where the men had set up for the night.
After looking at files late into the night, Doc finally gave up in favor of getting some sleep.
Chervy had watched the doctor, as the light from the computer screen reflected off the doctor’s face.
He was going to ask Doc if he could help, but he was too tired to be of any help and soon fell asleep.
Morning had finally arrived, Chervy confirmed it was morning when he looked out the door and saw the sunlight shining in through the bars in the door down at the entrance to the facility.
Chervy ordered Connors and Reynolds to take up a position down at the door while the others got ready to see what they could do to help Doc.
As everyone woke up, the doctor was again, back in front of the computer.
“I noticed you were staring at that computer screen half the night,” Chervy said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No, not yet,” Doc replied. “I was so damned tired last night that I don’t think I would have recognized it even if I would have seen it. I wanted to use the computer while the system and the power were still up. I’m sure the facility is on emergency power. I don’t know what kind of backup system they have here, but I assume it won’t last much longer.”
“Did you try to get on the internet or contact anyone?” Chervy asked. “Maybe we could make contact with someone on the outside?”
“I tried that, it doesn’t work,” Doc replied. “I think this is a closed system and isn’t connected to the internet.”
“Yeah, I doubt there is anything left out there to connect to anyhow,” Chervy said.
“If what I suspect is true, I don’t believe that they would have wanted their system here to be accessible to any outside systems,” Doc replied. “They wouldn’t want anyone to be able to hack into their records.”
Chervy nodded.
“What is it that you are looking for Doc?” Chervy asked. “Are you looking for some religious stuff or your family tree? That’s what this place is, isn’t it? Isn’t that what the Mormons were supposed to be keeping here?”
“No,” Doc grinned. “I’m trying to find the blueprints and the construction records for this place.”
“What will the wiring diagrams for this place tell us?” Chervy asked.
“Hopefully more than meets the eye,” Doc replied. “I don’t believe that this place is just a record storage facility, at least not just a storage facility for the Mormons.”
“That’s what Davis said,” Rogers said.
“Davis said he thought this could just be a diversion for the Government’s survival facility,” Chervy added. “Davis was the one to find that possible trail into the mountains on the satellite photo you used to convince the Captain to evacuate the base. Is that what you are thinking, that this place is just a diversion?”
“That or that this place is the government’s survival facility,” Doc replied.
“Do you think, Doc?” Chervy asked. “It could make sense, but as we saw, this place isn’t as big as I expected it to be and there isn’t any food or supplies here.”
“Before you guys got up this morning,” Doc replied. “I decided to take a walk down and check out that last room on the left side of the tunnel.”
“That machine room?” Rogers asked.
“Yes,” Doc replied. “I’m not an engineer, but just what little I know about other heating and cooling units I’ve seen at other locations, I think what they have down there is way too big for just this facility.”
“So you think that environmental units they have here may also be servicing more than just this place?” Chervy asked.
“Very possible,” Doc replied. “In any event, it seems to be the logical place to start before we begin climbing this mountain looking for another secret facility.”
“If it is here,” Chervy said. “It will be the only secret facility the government has been able to keep from the public.”
“They were able to keep Area 51 a secret for a long time,” Rogers said.
“Area 51 was before there were all these satellites in space looking at everything,” Doc replied. “I believe the government has learned a few things since then.”
“Well Doc, I hope your right,” Chervy said. “What can we do to help?”
“While I finish looking at Computer records, why don’t you, Rogers and Davis start going through these file cabinets and see if you can find any records about this place,” Doc said.
“OK,” Chervy replied, “but where should we start?”
“Try A for architect, B for building, G for government,” Doc replied. “C for construction, S for survival, or anything else that comes to mind.”
“I bet it has a code name,” Rogers said. “Like E for end of the world.”
“That sounds as good as anything else,” Doc replied. “It could be anywhere.”
“Then we better get started,” Chervy said as he looked at all the file cabinets in the room. “This could take a while.”
“We do seem to have all the time in the world,” Rogers said.
“Not really,” Chervy replied. “I only have enough MREs to last for a week. We might have to start hunting mountain goats before long.”
“I hate goats,” Rogers said. “My grandmother had a goat when I was a kid. It ate my baseball glove and butted me in the ass.”
Chervy laughed.
“If it would have still been alive when I got my first gun, I would have shot the little bastard,” Rogers grinned. “If you want a volunteer to go out and shoot goats, I volunteer.”
“You got it,” Chervy smiled. “Right now, how about hunting for charts, blueprints and diagrams.”
“I think I will start looking under G for goats,” Rogers said as he walked over to the file cabinets. “I have a feeling that G is going to be my lucky letter today.”
Chervy laughed, “I hear you’re a lucky gambler.”
“You must have been talking to Davis,” Rogers grinned. “I wouldn’t trust a damn thing that he says about me. That son of a bitch cheats like hell.”
The men worked until well past 1400 hours scouring through the file cabinets, but they didn’t find anything remotely concerning the facility.
By 1500 hours, they had looked at every record in every file cabinet.
“Well, I guess that’s the end of that idea,” Rogers sighed.
“Not yet,” Doc replied. “There is one more administrative office across the tunnel.”
“Maybe we should save that one for another day,” Rogers said. “It took us almost all day to get through this room. I’m going to need glasses if I keep this up.”
“Quit bitching,” Davis said. “The sooner we can find the survival vault, the sooner we can get on with things.”
The men took a break and ate some dehydrated potatoes and vegetables.
Then they walked across the tunnel into a smaller room.
This room didn’t have any computers, so the men divided up the file cabinets and went back to work.
“At least this room isn’t as large as that other room,” Rogers said as he went through the first set of records.
“We should be able to finish this area pretty fast,” Davis added. “I can’t seem to make any sense out of any of this shit. It looks like it is written in Chinese or something.”
Doc moved over next to Davis.
“Let me see,” Doc said.
He began to scan the documents that Dav
is couldn’t read.
Doc smiled, “You can’t read this because it is in code. It looks like some kind of encryption. We must be getting close.”
“Maybe you are looking at what you have been searching for,” Rogers added. “You just don’t recognize it because of the encryption.”
“Possible,” Doc replied. “But keep looking, as far as I know, they can’t encrypt charts or blueprints.”
The men searched the file cabinets for another two hours.
When they had finished looking through every file cabinet, they sat back against the wall to take another break.
“You might be right about what you’re looking for,” Chervy said. “But without some kind of encryption key, we won’t know if we found it or not.”
“Yeah,” Doc sighed. “But I now believe what we are looking for is here, I don’t believe that the Mormons would have encrypted their files like this. I just have a feeling we are close, damn close.”
Davis got up and began to walk around the small office to stretch his legs.
He stopped in front of a picture on the wall and studied it for a while.
“This looks like a picture of what this mountain looked like before the facility was built here,” Davis said. “And if you look at the picture, there doesn’t appear to be that trail leading up around the mountain side like that satellite image we had back at the base. That must have been put in later too. I still think the survival vault is up on the mountain behind us.”
Doc got up off the floor and came over to Davis and studied the picture.
“I think the only difference between this picture and the satellite image is the angle of the sun,” Doc said. “This picture was taken in the morning hours. See the sun is on the right side in the sky on this picture. Our satellite image was taken in the afternoon. The trail you saw I believe could have been a shadow cast by these cliffs on the left.”
Now Chervy and Rogers were standing next to Doc and Chervy, studying the picture.
