Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  “How long have the lights been out?” asked Jon.

  “Not long,” said Garrett. “They stopped working about fifty yards behind us.”

  Everyone pulled out their flashlights and played the beams in different directions, and the conversations changed to whispered concerns. It was amazing how a dark tunnel that echoed voices caused them to feel like someone was listening.

  Addison tripped over something but stayed on her feet. She aimed her flashlight at the tracks and saw a decayed body. When she let out a small gasp, everyone stopped and began shining their flashlights around at the ground. There were several more bodies, all in advanced states of decay.

  “The good news is, there aren’t any rats down here, or those bodies would be gone,” said Sim.

  Susan answered, “Funny how good news has changed from winning the lottery to not having rats.”

  “Right now I’ll take no rats over the lottery,” said Anne. “No place to spend the money anymore.”

  “How the bodies got here is what I want to know,” said Mike. “These people had to come from the shelter, so this can’t be good.”

  “Only one way to find out,” said Garrett.

  Garrett started walking again, but now they were aiming their flashlights more toward the floor instead of straight ahead. They passed more bodies, some obviously burned, and some appeared to have been destroyed by the concussion wave of an explosion.

  It was so dark in the tunnel that they almost walked right into the rear end of a subway type train that was sitting on the tracks. A landing was on the right side level with the doors, so they began helping each other up. When the last of them was on the landing, they all saw that Addison was shining her light on a huge wall mural of the Presidential seal. There were murals of scenic landmarks surrounding it, but some of them were blackened as if someone had started a fire near them.

  “I think we’re here,” she said.

  They saw that the train wasn’t actually sitting on the tracks. Something had lifted it and then sat it back down a foot or so to the right. That was why it was right up against the landing. The front end was also blackened, and the glass was missing from the windows.

  “Are these bullet holes?” asked Susan.

  She was shining her flashlight around the door of the train.

  “I think someone was shooting at the passengers as they got off the train.”

  Garrett had already walked up ahead of the train and his flashlight was illuminating a massive pile of rubble. The debris was stacked so high that it reached the ceiling of the tunnel. It wasn’t hard to imagine what caused such a collapse considering the scorched walls, bodies, and the train.

  When he moved his flashlight over the debris he saw the gap between the devastated tunnel and the wall on the right. He did a closer inspection, and the distinctive curve of a huge vault door took shape.

  “Jon, give me some more light over here,” he called out louder than he wanted to. The whole place felt like a tomb, and it didn’t seem right to be loud in a tomb.

  Jon joined him and saw why he needed the light. There was a dark gap between the vault door and the steel frame, and the door was blocked open by the body of a man and several large chunks of debris.

  They cleared away the debris, and a quick search through the tattered remains of the body revealed the man had been a Secret Service agent.

  They didn’t need to talk about what to do because going back meant walking miles just to reach the way out of the tunnel. If they weren’t going to find what they had come for, they would at least need to try to find another exit.

  Everyone lined up at the narrow gap between the vault door and the wall and Garrett stepped through into the darkness of the Presidential shelter.

  It was quiet, but there was a faint tingling sensation in Garrett’s hand when he leaned against a wall. It was a vibration that hinted at either mechanical or electrical activity somewhere inside.

  Once they were clear of the entrance the surface of the walls changed texture under their fingers, and Addison walked right into something that was protruding at an upward angle from the left side.

  “Is this brick?” she asked. “And what is this stupid thing for?”

  When they aimed their lights at it, they saw it was a lantern, or at least a facsimile of an old style lantern. To the right of the lantern was an oil painting of Ulysses S. Grant. Addison reached up out of reflex and turned the small switch on the lamp, and they all stared at it in disbelief when it turned on.

  A scraping noise from the dark hallway ahead told them they weren’t alone, and they all drew their knives. Guns in such a small area would be difficult to manage.

  The first infected stumbled into view, and Garrett waited to see if it was alone. A second one was just coming into view behind it, so he gave it a hard shove instead of aiming for its head. When it fell backwards it collided with the second infected and revealed two more had come up from behind them.

  Addison had a blade attached to a pole, and she passed it up to Garrett. He quickly stabbed each of the infected in the head, and then they just listened.

  There were no sounds, but there was a dim light coming from somewhere up ahead. It wasn’t a difficult decision to go in that direction, but as they passed two other openings in the wall on the right, they shone their flashlights into ink black darkness.

  The light was coming from another lantern just like the one Addison had turned on, but this one sat on a desk in a small replica of the Oval Office. A very realistic wax figure of President Grant sat at the desk.

  Addison said, “I wish I had never read Alice in Wonderland. This has got to be the rabbit hole.”

  Mike was shining his light on a wall where a bronze plaque was attached. When he finished reading it, he asked Sim, “Didn’t you say something about a tunnel built under the railroad tracks in downtown Columbus?”

  Sim nodded and said, “North High Street. A tunnel that was sealed off and never reopened. The entrances at neither end were ever located.”

  “This sign says we’re in that tunnel. I hope it doesn’t just get us to the other side of the tracks.”

  “How could that lamp still be on after all this time?” asked Susan.

  The question made everyone uncomfortable. Either someone was expecting them, or they had done something to make it turn on.

  Addison took the lead again and twisted the little switch on the side of the lamp. Instead of turning off, lights turned on everywhere. Recessed ceiling lights lit the brick hallway, and brighter lights turned on in the dark corridors they had passed. They stepped back to the previously dark void and stared in wonder at the beautifully decorated hallway. There was a security checkpoint complete with a metal detector, but beyond it were rows of doors. The hall became wider at the end, and they could see an atrium in the distance.

  “Well, this is what we came here for. Might as well take the tour,” said Garrett.

  The first door on the left had a small sign on it that said Secret Service Dormitory One.

  “Sim, time to use your navigation skills to memorize our movements so you can draw us a map later,” said Jon. “Let’s pass that door and come back to it. I’m a bit worried about what might be inside.”

  Sim gave a nod, already constructing a map in his mind.

  The first door on the right was unmarked, so Mike tested the knob. It opened easily, and he found that the light switch worked.

  An infected stood in the far corner of the room, and Susan thought he was vaguely familiar. Then she remembered she had seen him board Executive One with the President. Jon and Mike stepped past Susan and disposed of the former White House staffer, then checked the rest of the room.

  “This room was lived in for a while. I would have to guess the infection got inside after they got here,” said Garrett.

  “Maybe because that explosion made the door stay open,” said Anne.

  “That’s one way, but someone may also have been bitten but didn’t tell a
nyone,” said Susan. “I think we all saw how well they took care of themselves but not others.”

  There was general agreement that they shouldn’t expect a warm welcome if they found someone alive in the shelter. As a matter of fact, they should expect the opposite.

  As they moved further into the complex that was the shelter for the command and control of the entire country, their hopes of finding it functional grew more and more dim. Sections were without power, and there were pockets of infected dead scattered throughout the rooms.

  Where they could, they eliminated the infected, but some rooms were so crowded with them that they just marked the doors by cutting a big X into the wood.

  They reached the atrium, and it stretched several hundred yards away in all directions. It had a curved dome for a ceiling that made it feel like the structure belonged in Washington DC. The center of the atrium had a doublewide spiral staircase that descended to the main floor, but it circled around an aluminum cylinder that was at least ten feet wide. They couldn’t miss the row of buttons on the side.

  From the railing of the staircase they could turn and take in the panorama that spread out below them. Unknown to them, other shelters existed that offered similar amenities, but not quite as upscale.

  “Is that a Starbucks?” asked Addison.

  “It sure is,” said Susan. “I’m sort of torn between finding the President and getting a cup of coffee. Any chance we could get our coffee to go and then search for people?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Garrett. “I could use a cup myself.”

  Behind the rest of the group, Mike was inspecting the buttons on the shiny aluminum cylinder. There was no door visible to him, and the buttons weren’t labeled. They were just red, green, and yellow in two parallel rows of each color. He pressed the green button, but nothing happened. It occurred to him that he would have to push a sequence of buttons to get something to happen, so he walked away.

  The rest of the group had picked up speed in pursuit of a promised cup of really good coffee, and they had their backs to the cylinder when it turned. Mike had only reached the top of the spiral staircase, so he couldn’t miss it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the open door rotate into view. He couldn’t tell if the door had opened, or if it was open already and the cylinder had turned it to face him.

  Mike leaned over the railing and saw that his friends had already reached the Starbucks and were going inside. He wanted to get his own cup of coffee, but he was worried the door wouldn’t come back. It didn’t take a moment for him to decide to step inside the elevator to press the stop button. He stepped inside, but the walls were smooth. His confusion lasted just long enough for the door to shut in the blink of an eye, and he couldn’t tell if he was going up or down, but he was moving.

  The coffee machines still had power and water, and Susan was well versed in the operation of the equipment. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t that different from the equipment they used on their Boeing 737. It was only a few minutes before the aroma filled the room.

  “Where’d Mike wander off to?” asked Sim.

  Everyone turned around as if they had to verify he wasn’t there. The reaction only took seconds, but it seemed longer to them. They spread out from the door of Starbucks yelling his name and backtracking toward the spiral stairs.

  Moving out from the stairs they started going into all of the other stores. The place was like any other mall, but some of the displays were wrecked, and blood streaks were dry, black patches on the otherwise shiny floors.

  They found bodies in some of the stores, especially the ones that had emergency exits. Strangely, the bodies seemed to be closer to the exits, and some of them appeared to have been shot. No one would ever know what had happened when the end came, but it had played itself out a thousand different ways inside the shelter.

  A pair of infected were found trapped in a restroom, but Garrett and Jon had been fast enough to finish their miserable existence.

  Addison was caught off guard by one when she sat down on the pedestal of a floor display in a clothing store. It had been standing stock still behind the mannequin, and it reached through to grab a handful of her long blonde hair. She screamed, but her fear quickly turned to anger. She was frustrated by the constant threats and the disappearance of Mike.

  Despite the fact that her head hurt where the hair was being pulled, she backed away and yanked her head downward. The infected was forced to fall over the pedestal onto the floor. It didn’t let go of her hair, but now she was looking down on it instead of the other way around. She drove her knife straight through its left eye.

  Addison had to pry the hand out of her hair, but as soon as she finished she started making sure there were no more infected in the store.

  Sim backtracked all the way to the security station and then came back toward the atrium. He was trying to think like Mike, and it didn’t take him long to think about the rows of buttons on the aluminum cylinder.

  He studied the buttons and thought back to a Psychology class in college. Western cultures read from left to right, and green is seen as a more positive color than yellow or red, so he pressed the green button on the left row.

  Nothing happened at first, but since he was standing close to the cylinder, he felt a vibration in his feet.

  “Hey people, I think I’ve got something up here,” he called out.

  They came running as fast as they could, and they were all standing at the cylinder when the door opened so quickly they couldn’t really tell where it had gone. The chamber inside was like a round elevator, so they all got inside together. There was plenty of room for everyone, so they all got their weapons ready. They didn’t know if they would be facing safety when the door opened or if it would be hell.

  The door closed and there was a faint feeling of motion, but when Anne asked if they were going up or down, everyone just shook their heads and said they didn’t know.

  When the faint movement stopped, there was another long pause before the door opened. It was hell.

  It was another level of the shelter that was similar to the main dining areas of any large hotel, and apparently the majority of the shelter’s occupants had been dining when the infection had gotten inside. Hundreds of infected dead were converging on one end of the dining room trying to reach the top of a small platform.

  The dining hall must have doubled as an entertainment club, and there was a spotlight attached to the platform. Mike was sitting on the platform just out of reach from the infected. He was holding his right arm against his stomach, and it was covered with blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE DOOR TO the strange elevator didn’t close, and in the time it took for the door to open onto the chaotic scene of the dining hall, Garrett had concluded it was probably operated by personal remote controls carried by each individual. The remote would only give an individual access to preprogrammed floors. Garrett quickly told the others that he had read an article about security in the Pentagon, and a new feature was the remote controlled elevator.

  Knowing that the elevator door was just as likely to stay open, it seemed like their only choice was to get out before the horde of infected noticed their arrival. The decision to get out became a moot point when Addison screamed for Mike to stay where he was.

  There was little doubt that the two youngest members of the group had become emotionally attached to each other, but Addison’s outburst was unexpected and more than enough to draw some of the infected away from the crowd.

  “Everybody out,” said Garrett. “Stay in a group and follow my lead. I think I see a way we can get to Mike.”

  Garrett went through the door and cut to the left instead of the direction where the infected were gathered below Mike. Garrett had his eye on a door outside the dining hall that could be a stage door, and if it was, it would at least put them four feet above the crowd of infected. A couple of them had gotten up onto the stage, but the height would allow them to dispose of those easily j
ust by pushing them off the stage again.

  As they ran past the dining hall a few of the infected broke away from the crowd and came in their direction.

  “Don’t bother with them,” yelled Garrett. “We can outrun them.”

  They made it to the stage door, and it was unlocked. They went through and pulled it shut behind them. They were at the bottom of a short set of steps leading up to the stage. As soon as they went up, the infected on the stage turned toward them, and a few others tried to climb up from the dining hall floor.

  Sim and Jon met them head on and did it the easy way. They just grabbed them by their outstretched arms and gave a shove in the direction of the groaning crowd at the front of the stage.

  Anne saw an interesting switch on a panel with a big sign on it. It said to be sure the area around the orchestra pit was clear before opening it.

  “What orchestra pit?” she said out loud.

  Susan heard her and realized what the sign was for. She flipped the switch upward, and the infected along the back of the crowd disappeared. The roof of the orchestra pit retracted into the stage in a wide curve, and the crew of Executive One was able to stand back and watch them fall. As the pit filled, more of the infected tried to walk forward, and the dining hall gradually emptied.

  The pit held hundreds of bodies when they were in a prone position, and since the infected don’t know the difference between falling and walking, they landed like sacks of flour and became entangled with the others. Even as the pit filled close to capacity, they wouldn’t be able to climb out.