Shelter

by C A Bird

  “Shit!” He jumped to his feet, spasmodically rubbing his hand on his filthy pants.

  “God, what the fuck is happening to us?” he thought.

  September 15

  Mark tried to read his orienteering map as he sprinted down the corridor, coming to a set of doors where he impatiently shifted his feet while waiting for them to open. He’d cleared six “controls” with four more to go. The guys did a terrific job of laying out the course, leading him from the top floor to the lower level several times, through the dim eerie power plant cavern, then re-entering the shelter and down the corridor into the farm cave, where he found an orange and white recently sown windsock. He grabbed the small hole-punch and punched his card for the sixth time, indicating he’d managed to follow the course.

  He had encountered other runners at various stages of the race but they all had slightly different routes making it impossible to tell who was leading.

  Sprinting through the animal compound, he again had to wait for doors to open, this time into the “chicken ranch.” When they did, he jumped back as Tucker Smith, gangly, all arms and legs, came flying out the door heading in the opposite direction. Mark’s map flipped out of his hands and wafted to the floor.

  “Scuse me!” Tucker yelled as he disappeared around the end of a corral and turned toward the farm.

  Mark laughed, retrieved the map, and scurried into the next cave where he encountered three Dragon Doors. He knew the middle one led to the apparently bottomless chasm where they dumped the surplus animal waste they didn’t need for the compost pile. Examining his map he selected the left door, pushed the button and sprinted into the adjacent storage area. He passed stacks of hay and bags of chicken feed and went through another set of doors partially hidden by the haystacks.

  Sprinting about forty feet through the cave he became confused and skidded to a halt, glancing around as the tunnel quickly narrowed to become impassable. He had no recollection of ever being in this cave. He expected to see additional food and supplies for chickens and hogs but the cave was crammed full of boxes and large silver barrels. It was actually quite a large cave extending around to the left in a manner that would put it behind the animal compound. The floor was uneven and covered with piles of dirt and various sized rocks and, showing less signs of construction than other caves, it slanted downward slightly toward the far wall. There were a few small tunnels leading deeper into the mountain with crates stacked along these secondary tunnels.

  He wondered if this could be one of the forgotten caves Kate Barkley had mentioned, one stocked by the first warehouse person before he disappeared, Old Pierson she had called him. He looked at his map and realized he held it upside down and had inadvertently entered the left door instead of the right one.

  The race forgotten, he started examining the boxes. Many were unlabeled, but he became excited when he found Anheueser-Busch stamped on a huge number of cartons and he spied beer bottles through hand holes in their sides. He looked at the silver barrels more closely. They were full kegs of beer! There were cartons of Scotch and other types of liquor and stacked along another tunnel he found supplies for a bar, keg tappers and a box of chrome pour spouts.

  “Now you’re talking,” he muttered.

  To his amazement, he discovered supplies for brewing beer, what appeared to be supplies for making a still, and fifteen padded bar stools as well. It was obvious old Pierson thought any remnant of civilization would need a friendly pub to help them cope. He found himself praising and thanking old Pierson.

  And then he found old Pierson.

  He rounded a pile of crates and jumped back, his heart leaping into his throat as he espied a skeleton, clothed in ragged cloth, and curled in a fetal position, its clawed, bony fingers clutching the front of his shirt. Mark guessed that Pierson had had a sudden and massive heart attack. Quickly losing his appetite for exploration or orienteering he returned through the lost cave to inform the others of his grim discovery.

  September 17

  “Put it over here.” Mark instructed. He spread the tape measure along the empty room’s left wall. A row of rooms on the topmost floor consisted of the large multi-purpose room, with its stage at the far end, two unused rooms to its left and a single room to the right. Brian Morrison, a lay preacher, had already confiscated the room to the right for a non-denominational church. Mark designated the room immediately to the left of the MP room as “Pierson’s Pub.” Roughly thirty feet deep by forty wide, it was perfect for their purposes and he’d wasted no time in making use of the treasures he’d found two days before during the orienteering run.

  Yesterday they’d buried Old Pierson in an unused cave off the reservoir, a cave so far back in the mountain Mark figured it might even be beyond the power plant. It contained another of the deep chasms they had found in a few of the other caves. The body had been wrapped in a sheet of canvas and secured with ropes. It was slowly lowered into the narrow crack by letting out about twenty feet of line until they hit bottom, or possibly a ledge and the ropes went slack. Bud Nagle shined a light into the four foot crevice but, due to a curvature of the chasm wall, visibility was limited to about ten feet and they could no longer see the body. The ropes had been tied with special slip knots such that a pull on a second rope untied them and the ropes were then pulled up from the chasm. Had they not hit bottom they could have released the ropes anyway and allowed the body to plummet to the depths of the cavern.

  Brian had conducted a brief service that was attended by Will, Bud, Darryl and Glen, the only people who had known Pierson, and perhaps a dozen others including Mark. Their first tragedy had occurred even before the war, and Mark wondered if they would be burying others in this underground mausoleum.

  Two men hauled a stack of lumber into the pub and began laying out baseboards for the bar where Mark had indicated. A speaker was blaring out “Brothers in Arms”, by Dire Straits, one of Mark’s favorite groups. All the common rooms in the shelter had controls for accessing the computerized digital library with its thousands of songs.

  The atmosphere was festive. A roll of carpeting stretched across the center of the room where everyone had to straddle it to accomplish anything, but no one minded. A product of the woodshop, four round, wooden tables and accompanying chairs were across the room from the work site, three already occupied. Chris Hargraves, Lori Arnaud, Jean Barnes, and Aaron Brown sat at one, with Bud Nagle, Walter Thompson and Kate Barkley at another. Sandi and Pete were at a third conversing in low tones. Kevin and Ashley Arnaud and Jeremy Thompson played by the door with two other children Mark didn’t recognize. Jeremy was usually found in the company of his grandfather, whom he worshipped. Several empty beer bottles littered the three tables and everyone but Kate and Sandi had a partially consumed brew in front of them.

  More workers, loaded down with building materials, entered the room and the self-appointed group of supervisors shouted instructions, all completely ignored, of course.

  Mark marveled at the assortment of supplies Marilyn and Kate had tucked away. He and several others, having stayed up half the night planning the pub, had approached Marilyn in the morning to discover she had something they could use for every purpose including wallpaper, carpeting, building supplies and even a roll of padding and vinyl to cover the edge of the bar. A large mirror leaned against the wall outside the pub and a group of men had fetched the bar stools, lining them up in the corridor.

  A new group of workers entered the room. Two men tilted another table to get it through the door, put it down in the center of the room and unrolled rough, hastily drawn plans. An unusual work group, it consisted of Jack Harmon, a former contractor, Manny Hernandez, the man that helped him with the table, three teenaged boys and two teenaged girls. All of them wore tool belts. Jack and Manny began to issue orders and the kids went to work.

  “Hey Mark,” Chris called out from the corner table, “It’s getting crowded in here. You realize this room is right next to the multipurpose room?”

>   Mark walked over to the wall separating the rooms. He rapped on the wall in several places and yelled to the work group, “Hey Gorbachev, take down this wall!”

  Chris laughed and pushed him out of the way. “Hey Guys. How about just a door?”

  “Put a door through here!” Mark corrected himself. Jack walked over and immediately started measuring for a door.

  “You got a permit for that door?” Mark asked him.

  “If there wasn’t children in this room, I’d tell you what you could do with your permit.”

  A group of young men, led by Clay Hargraves, entered the room. Clay looked around, his entourage waiting for his direction. Chris called out to him, knowing full well what his answer would be, “Hey Little brother, did you come to help with the work?”

  “No, I’ll leave that up to the grunts.” he replied. “We came to sample some of the long lost brew.” Clay sauntered over to the table occupied by Sandi and Pete followed by the other three young men.

  “Mind if we join you?” He sat down before Pete had a chance to respond.

  A large glass front refrigerator, confiscated from the cafeteria, was stuffed full of beer bottles. One of Clay’s followers went to the box and returned with four bottles of Budweiser. He dragged over a chair from the empty table and Sandi wondered why they didn’t just sit there and leave her and Pete alone.

  “So Sandi, how have you been?” Clay looked directly at Sandi ignoring Pete as if he weren’t there. Sandi knew Pete and Clay didn’t like each other and they’d had an unpleasant encounter a couple of weeks ago. Angry words had been exchanged but it had gone no further. In a closed society with everyone crammed into a small space it was inevitable that sooner or later, there would be confrontations. She knew Pete was becoming angry but tried to make small talk to keep the situation under control.

  “I’ve been fine Clay. Keeping busy. How about you?”

  “I’m good but I’d be better if you’d have dinner with me tonight.”

  Feeling Pete begin to bristle next to her she stood up, “Pete and I were just leaving, Clay. I have lesson plans to work on.”

  “Petey’s beer is still full. Come on, chill, hang out for a while.”

  Pete scowled, “My name’s Pete, Clay, and we really have to go.” He stood up, taking Sandi’s arm and they hurriedly left the room.

  Clay watched them go, a smirk on his face and the others at Clay’s table chuckled.

  Throughout the day people visited the pub, helped themselves to beer, and checked on the progress. The kids were learning fast and with instruction from the men the bar was going up smoothly. Mark helped out, trying to learn something without impeding the progress. Satisfied all was going well he turned to ask Chris to go to the gym but found she was gone. He hadn’t heard her say goodbye.

  “Lori, did Chris say where she was going?”

  “No, but she and Aaron were talking about showing him what progress they’d made at the farm. They may have gone to check it out.”

  “Well, do you want to drop off the kids at daycare and go exploring? Maybe we can find some more treasure.”

  She dropped her eyes, nervously wringing her hands, but finally looked up and met his gaze. “Okay, Mark. Let’s go.”

  September 29

  Loud speakers blared forth with the sound of square dancing as the “caller” Jack Iverson sang, “Swing your partners round and round, allemande left to a Right and Left Grand.” The set ended and Mark and Chris embraced in a final swing and headed for the dinner table. Square dancing was a lot of fun but had been largely abandoned in the world before the war.

  When the survivors arrived at the shelter, those that got there before the bombs fell wore their street clothes into the elevator. If they arrived later, they had to be decontaminated and instead of their street clothes they were issued the “shelter scrubs” – lightweight cotton shorts or pants and a tee shirt and sandals. There were regular clothes in the storeroom but few people had checked them out. Two couples wore western square dance outfits that one of the women had made and the other dancers wore either the scrubs or regular clothing. It made for an interesting group of dancers.

  A few tables had been loaded down with the traditional foods of a summer hoedown.

  Several of the men had barbequed beef on portable barbeques, while other residents had prepared all the trimmings; salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, baked beans, a few raw vegetables, corn-on-the-cob, and apple pie. Beans were one commodity they had plenty of, every variety, in cans and bags. They used the last of the frozen corn. There was a small amount of lettuce and tomatoes for a salad, and they seemingly had a lifetime supply of dehydrated potatoes in #10 cans in several dragon caves. Preparing meals for over two hundred people each day was a major job. Everyone took fairly small portions to ensure they all got their share.

  Two of the cattle were sacrificed for the occasion. They were the only two young males old enough to slaughter. That left their small herd at three pregnant cows in various stages of gestation, two lactating cows with calves that produced milk for the survivors, five cows they were preparing to artificially inseminate and two bulls. Beth Wright was concerned about the small gene pool with only two bulls but as Will pointed out they weren’t planning on living here longer than two years at the most. The two calves were male. One would be consumed when older and one would eventually replace a breeding bull.

  Mark was concerned about the smoke, but it disappeared through holes and tunnels in the natural ceiling of the cave. He wondered where it went since the caverns were supposedly closed off from the exterior. “Hey Gregory, do you think there’s any danger from all this smoke?”

  “There are miles and miles of fissures throughout this mountain creating a natural draft.” Whitehorse explained. “I suppose if we did this often enough we could create some problems in the future. Of course, it’s a different story if we were doing this inside the shelter.”

  They took their plates with them and went over to sit on bales of hay; joining Kate, Lori, Chris, Aaron and Ted Wright, who worked with his wife Beth taking care of the animals. A group of musicians played country music and Karen and Jeana, sisters from Albuquerque, taught everyone line dancing.

  Mark danced with Lori and found that he enjoyed all this country-western music and dancing. He had never been exposed to it before but it was a lot of fun.

  After the line dancing, Candy Pitowski played a mean fiddle backed up by two guitars and an electric keyboard as Micah belted out “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.”

  Several children were playing tag, chasing each other around the hay bales and generally getting underfoot. Everyone seemed relaxed and for a while they were able to forget their troubles. Mark was sorry Will had skipped the party.

  “I wonder if it was such a good idea to eat the cattle. Don’t we need them to breed?” Chris asked Ted. “We have other bulls for breeding stock. These were meant to be food, although we were a little concerned about slaughtering them this soon. We’ve only been here a little over a month.”

  “Wow,” said Lori. “Those speakers are really vibrating this place. Did you feel that vibration?”

  “It must have been the bass.” Mark responded. “Either that or you’re imagining things.”

  “No, I felt it too, Mark,” Chris said. Could we be having some kind of aftershocks from the blast we took when we first got here?”

  Gregory looked around the cavern, “I don’t think so. This part of New Mexico isn’t known for instability, although a hydrogen blast changes the situation somewhat.”

  “It changes a lot of things,” Chris said. “What do you suppose is going on out there? We still haven’t heard from anyone that I know of. Do you think anyone else survived this thing?”

  Mark put his empty paper plate down on the bale beside him, “There are hundreds of shelters around the country and I’m certain that many people made it to them. This EMP thing knocked out the communications. Once everyone is able to leave the shelters we
should be able to hook up with others.”

  They heard voices raised in anger on the other side of the cavern where the younger people were congregated and they saw Pete and Clay nose to nose in what appeared to be a confrontation. Mark and the others jumped up and ran toward the two when some of Clay’s friends grabbed his arms to pull him from Pete. Clay pulled loose and threw a punch, connecting with the side of Pete’s face. Pete went down hard and Mark jumped in to separate the two.

  “Clay! Stop it!” He shoved Clay backwards and the others again grabbed him from behind. “What the hell is going on here?” Mark demanded.

  “He won’t leave us alone!” Sandi complained, through tears. “He follows us and provokes Pete wherever we go. We just want him to leave us alone.”

  Chris stepped in front of her brother and said something to him in a low voice. Mark didn’t know what she said but he shrugged off the grasp of the others and stormed across and out of the cavern.

  “Are you alright?” Mark asked Pete. A welt had appeared on his cheek underneath his left eye. “Maybe you should let Aaron look at that.”

  Aaron came over to check the injury but Pete shook his head. “I’m fine, but he had better leave me and Sandi alone.” He took Sandi’s arm and they left by the dragon door that led to the animal farm.

  The rest of the people dispersed, with Clay’s friends leaving the cavern and the others trying to resume the party, but the atmosphere had been ruined.

  “I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of this kind of thing,” Mark told Lori. “But then we’ve only been down here a just over a month. The younger people are feeling the confinement more than the others. We may need to come up with more activities for them to do.”

  Chris frowned at him. “I don’t think we can find enough for Clay to do. Everyone else spends a lot of their time working or learning new skills, but he doesn’t want to do any work so he just hangs out and causes trouble. Dad is worried about him and so am I.”