Eden Plague - Latest Edition

by David VanDyke

  We passed by beautiful, rugged woodland with patches of snow lingering in the shady spots. We were glad of our high clearances and four wheel drives when we had to cross a shallow but swift stream of snowmelt that cut the road. Larry had to be shown how to engage his 4WD on the Escalade. I don’t think he’d ever used it in urban Atlanta.

  After another hour and progressively worsening terrain, we climbed a short way up a steep mountainside on what looked like a logging trail until we abruptly broke out onto a very wide, well-graded gravel highway. Turning sharply left, we climbed a couple of hundred yards more onto – into – an otherworldly landscape, a different world.

  The road had abruptly leveled out and we drove through an unnaturally flattened plateau, with odd-shaped, artificial-looking hills scattered around. It appeared that a giant boy had played with his toy earthmovers, making arbitrary excavations and dumping dirt into cone-shaped sand-castle mounds, all sharp angles and straight sides. The whole thing was about a mile across, overgrown with a thin veneer of scrubby grass and thistle, and the gravel road we were on turned black. It put me in the mind of a fantasy book I’d read as a kid, where the hero would shift through the thin shadowy layers between strange worlds with his mind, past an evil black road.

  “Mountaintop removal mining,” Zeke remarked. “Blast off the top of the peak, scoop up the material and process it for coal or whatever other ore is in it. Repeat as necessary. Not very pretty, but efficient. And our salvation.”

  He led the way in the Land Rover, turning off the black road that crossed the plateau toward the only remaining natural feature, a rising piece of the mountain that had not been removed. It loomed more than thousand feet above, showing a covering of thick, undamaged natural forest. It was as if the miners had excavated up to the perimeter of this peak and decided to stop. Or maybe something convinced them to stop?

  Zeke pulled the Land Rover to a halt, still well within the dug-out mining zone.

  The rest of us pulled up in a line, getting out and stretching after the long drive. The men moved away from the lone woman in the group to pee behind the last SUV. Like so often happened, the lady was going to have to wait or squat behind a bush.

  I looked at her and smiled, shrugged sympathetically.

  She lifted her eyes to the sky, sneezed, then noticed my gaze. Her smile was warm. “I hope wherever we’re going, we’re close,” she said.

  I nodded. “Probably.” Everything smelled of mountains: clean.

  The afternoon sun felt warm but the air was biting with the chill of late winter. An eagle screamed high above, making lazy circles among the turkey buzzards riding a thermal over the warmer, exposed ground.

  “We are really beyond hicksville,” Larry remarked. He had put on cammies this time, and had his war gear strapped on, sans armor.

  I guess he must be feeling invincible after coming back from those injuries. I knew better. No plague in the world would bring you back from a bullet to the brain, or one that tore through the heart. It wasn’t magic.

  I opened the back of the Jeep where I had packed my ice chest full of food, and slapped together a sandwich, popping open a soda can. I left the chow out for other hungry people, making a gesture of invitation. Then I went over to see what Zeke was doing.

  I watched as he opened up a case and laid a topographical map on the hood of the Land Rover. He took a lensatic compass out of his pocket and started doing a resection. I realized that he was trying to locate something specific, old-school, without the GPSs we had dumped.

  He took sightings on known points, in this case mountaintops, plotted the azimuths back from those points on the map, and found our exact position at the intersection of the plots. Once he had done that, he used a thin clear plastic military protractor to draw a line between our position and a point already marked on his map, measuring the angle. He then lifted the compass to his eye and sighted along it, turning until he was looking exactly along that bearing. He stared at something there for about fifteen seconds, fixing it in his mind. Then he turned back to the group, which by this time had formed a rough semicircle around him, watching. He rolled up the dummy cord attached to the compass, putting it in his pocket.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he began didactically. “One day about ten years ago I got a funny call at my desk in the Pentagon. I was doing my hated staff tour and I really don’t know how the call got routed to me, but a lot of weird calls come to the Pentagon from concerned citizens about everything from UFOs to unexploded ordnance. This one was from a manager at a mining company who had run across some kind of old underground government installation in the course of their operations.” He pointed with an outstretched arm at where he had been looking just a moment ago. “Right there.”

  “What is it?” Elise queried.

  With the air of a showman, he responded, “I was hoping you would ask. I’ll show you. Follow along, kiddies, and don’t wander off.”

  He climbed back behind the wheel of the Land Rover, and the rest of us piled back into the other trucks. He led the way directly across the plateau, powering over head-high thistles and through brambles, the only things that would take root in the mine tailings and basalt, a thin layer of green. After about three hundred yards we approached the untouched mass of older-growth forest. Majestic evergreens, ash and oaks rose abruptly at the dividing line, with lots of snow patches on the ground where the sun touched only weakly.

  Looking back under the trees, we could see a dilapidated cyclone fence, with rusted and unreadable signs hanging every ten yards or so on it. Some were lying on the ground where they had fallen off. The Land Rover drove leftward along the tree line for a few seconds, then abruptly veered right, onto a barely-visible remnant of a concrete road. Thirty yards in, we came upon a still-standing steel-poled gate. The sign on this barrier was newer, and contained common military warning phrases like ‘Restricted Area’ and ‘Use of Deadly Force Authorized.’

  Zeke hopped out, unlocked the new, heavy padlock on the chain that held it shut, then drove through. He must have been here before. Maybe the lock was his. We paused to let Spooky lock it up again.

  There was some chatter over the net, but Zeke kept his mouth shut, probably enjoying the sense of mystery he had created. I was curious, but then, I kind of like a mystery, when nobody is trying to kill me because of it. I just kept my eyes open and tried to figure it out on my own.

  We drove up the road, two hundred more yards of still-serviceable but overgrown concrete, until we came to an enormous set of double doors in the mountainside, hidden by trees that had grown up. The opening would be big enough to drive a five-ton military truck straight in if the doors were thrown back. I figured Zeke wouldn’t have driven us up here if he didn’t know how to get in.

  The doors had a large wheel mechanism, like a ship’s pressure hatch, holding them shut, and a big handle next to a hooded boxy metal fitting. It looked like it would take two men to turn the wheel, if it would turn at all in its current state of disrepair. Apparently someone had slapped a coat of paint on the door and mechanism a few years back and there was another of the steel warning signs bolted to the front.

  When everyone had dismounted from the trucks in front of the doors, in the twilight under the trees, Zeke called out in a loud, dramatic voice, “Welcome to the Bunker; code name: Sosthenes.”

  -16-

  Zeke sprayed some lubricant into the mechanism of the door, stuck a big odd key into a hole in the hooded box fitting, cranked the handle to the left like on a combination safe. It took two of us to turn the hatch wheel, and three of us to get it closed again from the inside. It was well-made, but it was old. There were manufacturing plates fastened to the inside of the door that said ‘US Army Corps of Engineers’ and ‘1943’ on them, among other things.

  We drove our little convoy into an unlit tunnel, bored into the mountain at a shallow downward angle. The headlights showed hastily cut living rock, the seams and veins visible as the tunnel descended through la
yers and lodes. There was crude and deteriorating bracing of riveted steel girders, and the whole thing was faced with rusting steel mesh. This kept most of the rocks out, but there was one part where we had to get out and manhandle some small boulders and rock fall where it had broken through into the open space of the tunnel. This place hadn’t seen any maintenance in a while.

  About a quarter mile down there was another huge double door, with a smaller, man-sized one inset into one side. We opened these too, with less difficulty since it hadn’t been exposed to the elements at all. We drove through, into a vast open space the size of an indoor sports stadium, perhaps two hundred yards across and a hundred high. Huge girders braced the roof, and more steel mesh. There were only a few rock falls that had broken through, along with a trickle of water that was forming limestone riffles and tiny stalactites along the rising, sloping wall-ceiling.

  There were rows of vehicles covered in dull green canvas tarpaulins – five-ton and deuce-and-a-half trucks, vintage jeeps, and construction vehicles, things I didn’t recognize that could be some kind of mining and cutting equipment. I saw a row of dusty glass windows along one side, and several doors. Two truck-sized tunnel openings led even deeper.

  We got out and turned off the engines, but left the truck lights on. Ten people shuffled around the four modern vehicles in the eerie silence, punctuated by dripping water and the sound of our engines cooling.

  Elise rubbed her arms, then pulled someone’s jacket out from behind a seat and put it on. I suppressed a flash of jealousy as I saw it wasn’t mine. I should have thought of that. She had nothing but the clothes she was wearing. I resolved to fix that situation. I resolved to give her whatever she needed.

  “What is this place?” asked Roger, peering nearsightedly around through his thick glasses. It appeared the question was somewhat rhetorical, for he started to answer it himself. “Some kind of government bunker, built back in World War Two…but that backhoe is a 1950s model.”

  “Right,” answered Zeke. “The Sosthenes bunker was commissioned in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when they thought there would eventually be a chance of air raids on the East Coast by the Third Reich. They had some super-bombers in development that never panned out. Then as that threat waned, they kept building because of the possibility of the Nazis getting the A-bomb – and because they’d already paid for it. Never underestimate the inertia of a government contract and jobs in a Senator’s home state. It was to be a place for continuity of governance, where the President, Congress and the Supreme Court could continue to function. It was kept active into the cold war, through the changeover to the Greenbrier bunker, code named ‘Greek Island,’ in 1961.”

  Arthur crossed his arms. “No way this kind of construction could withstand a nuclear attack. The whole thing would probably collapse. Glass in the windows? This is pathetic!”

  “Remember, they had no idea until the first test how powerful an atomic blast would be. It even surprised the scientists working on it. That’s why they built the Greenbrier bunker, after they knew what it would take. Remember, we were stretched to the limit in the Big One. Once it ended, we breathed a big sigh of relief – for about four years. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949 and immediately started to turn the screws with the Berlin blockade. So the US geared up for the Cold War. The government initiated Project Greek Island in the 1950s and once they had that super-bunker, this place got mothballed. Fortunately for us, over the next fifty or sixty years, it got forgotten about too.”

  “How do you know they won’t dig up the information on its existence, pardon the pun?” I asked.

  “Because I searched every database I could access and deleted all references to it. I buried the only hardcopy file I could find in the basement of the Pentagon, and I took the keys out. It’s in the wrong box on the wrong shelf in the wrong vault, in a section that has already been digitized. But the Sosthenes file never was digitized. It was intended to be secret. So barring incredible luck or a tipped-off search taking thousands of man-hours, no one knows about this.”

  “Except that mining official.”

  “Sure, but all he knows is he ran into some unknown government property bounded by a fence. He never got in. Once I took a look I knew I couldn’t let anyone in on this. I told him it was hazardous waste storage, and if their mining operations got too close they could release toxic materials. And…I kinda let slip something about nerve gas and national security.”

  Several of us chuckled. “So he thought you were giving him a cover story and it was really old chemical weapons.”

  “Yup. So unless all hell breaks loose and the government actually comes out into the open to find us, enlists the public, it’s very unlikely anyone will connect the dots. If they do…at least we have our Alamo.”

  “They all died at the Alamo, boss,” muttered Larry.

  “Okay, bad metaphor. It’s our Cheyenne Mountain, how’s that.”

  “That’s good, that’s an Air Force Base,” I chimed in.

  “Smartass blue-suiter. How about I show you the best part.”

  “I hope it involves food, because we only got enough for a couple days,” Larry complained.

  Zeke’s ever-present grin got wider. “Oh, baby, you have no idea. Here, let’s run a jump.”

  He drove the Land Rover over to a diesel generator sitting by the wall, then hooked up his jumper cables. A moment later he had the machine started, and a faint orange glow started above our heads from dozens of sodium lamps. Not all of them worked, but there were enough. We turned off the car lights to conserve our batteries.

  I wondered about the diesel emissions until I noticed its exhaust pipe ran up to a hole in the wall. The air in the cavern seemed fairly fresh, too. There must be some natural ventilation, like in those ‘breathing caves’ found here and there.

  Zeke walked over to the door at the end of the long row of windows. Vinny went with him. He turned on the lights inside, which were faint and flickering fluorescents. They looked like they wouldn’t last much longer. If we were going to refurbish and use this place, light bulbs were only the first of many things we would need.

  “Oh man, this is a trip!” Vinny blurted, looking at the half-century old equipment.

  “Yep, and not a computer in sight. Just good old dials, knobs and switches.” Zeke flipped some of the switches and the lights came on in the two big tunnels, stretching deeper down into the mountain. The generator coughed and strained under the increased load. He flipped another two switches and two-thirds of the sodium lamps above our heads went off. There was still plenty of light.

  “What happens when we run out of diesel?” I asked him.

  “That’s just for temporary use. Let’s go down and get this place running again. Larry, Roger, Vinny, you come with me. We’ll get the hydroelectric plant going. You guys look around up here. There shouldn’t be anything more dangerous than falling rocks. That reminds me – I suggest everyone wear a helmet. If you don’t have one, there are hard hats in there,” he said, pointing to a storage-room door.

  It took about four hours but eventually the tone of the generator changed, and a plethora of ancillary lights came on – exit lights over doors, secondary lights in the rooms behind the windows, and the sodium lamps got brighter. I also felt the soughing of a ventilation fan, apparently to supplement the natural air. That would help if we had to run any vehicles. Spooky took it upon himself to turn off the diesel generator, and nothing bad happened. It looked like the hydroelectric power was up and running.

  We’d been keeping busy exploring the cavern and the installations around it. There were locker rooms with showers and toilets, and after a lot of running, the water from the pipes cleared. The hot water faucets even ran fairly warm. There must be a hot spring or something like that. Life would be a lot better down here with hot water.

  There were offices with carefully mothballed manual typewriters, sealed canisters of replacement ribbons and bottles of ink. There were
airtight boxes with paper and envelopes and manila folders, straight out of the 1950s. There were light bulbs and extension cords and fans and swivel chairs and a whole huge room full of shelves stocked with automotive parts in tinfoil and cellophane packing. There were cans of bearing grease and motor oil and differential oil and paint and ammonia and on and on and on. I wondered how much money we could get for some of this stuff in an online auction. I knew one source of income we had if nothing else.

  A lot of stuff was unusable after all this time, but some was pristine, like the day it was made. I looked at a perfect, shiny set of hubcaps for the 1948 Ford Super Deluxe sitting on its flattened tires in the big cavern. The car itself had 257 miles on the odometer. It would probably fetch a year’s pay at an auction. This place was a museum and a goldmine.

  How right I was. Later on, Zeke showed us stacks of mint gold and silver coins in a vault, placed there to ensure the occupants had money if paper currency collapsed. There were also bundles of uncirculated US bills from the 1940s, which would fetch more than face value to collectors. There was at least twenty million dollars in there.

  Now I knew why Zeke hid that file. He was as honest and patriotic as the next guy but who wouldn’t be tempted by twenty million in ready cash and all this cool stuff? And it was all unknown, a victimless crime, a treasure trove just waiting half a century for someone to put it to use. I felt slightly guilty, but there were far more important considerations. If using this wealth was a sin, then it was the least of many evils.

  -17-

  We spent the next day moving in and trying to get the basics working in the bunker. There were months of effort in front of us if we were to live here long term.

  There was a residence level, with about a hundred individual rooms. There were open bays that could house many more people in less comfort. Elise and I took rooms next to each other. Neither of us trusted the emotions born of those first intense moments, and we were giving it time. I was okay with that, but we did spend a lot of time together, talking around our feelings, spiraling closer.