by Angela White
This kind of existence went against everything she’d been raised with. Her sheltered childhood and wealthy parents allowed her to stay above all the human misery she was seeing daily now, and it was heartbreaking. So many times she had the thought of just gathering supplies and hiding somewhere, but the idea of real safety at the compound had kept her feet moving through Rawlings, where rats as big as a loaf of bread were starting to take over, and by Table Rock, where she’d been chased out of a barn by an animal that looked like a cat and acted like a rabid raccoon.
This morning, she had bleached her yellow locks to kill the lice that were now immune to pesticide products. She wasn’t sure where she had picked them up, thought it was likely from the dead soldier when she’d taken his gun and ammo. In all reality, the tough little bugs were the least of her worries.
To distract herself, she’d been looking for a groundhog, only a little interested in knowing if another six weeks of winter was in the future. Even more so, she needed a break from the flashes of murdering Henry, of the fear that Melvin was lurking, looking for her, but mostly, of finding no help. She hadn’t seen one of the elusive creatures, but she had seen a dead porcupine with what was probably a gunshot wound, and wasn’t comforted.
Bracing against the stiff, gritty wind trying to shove her off of her feet, Samantha shifted her battered pack onto her other shoulder, stepping carefully over broken glass and wide cracks in the rough, weedy pavement. Ahead, she could see a lump in the street that was surely a body.
With the sole of her boot flapping with each step, Samantha drew in a ragged breath and kept going. Instead of giving into the tears that wanted to drown her in disappointment and fear, she took another step. When she passed the uniformed man, who had been shot in the back, she wiped away a stray tear, telling herself it didn’t matter if they were all dead. There would still be something she could use, maybe even a radio she could listen to for some idea of where to try next.
Longing for the warmth of the sun she could only just make out behind the thick layer of debris covering the sky, the Storm Tracker instinctively stayed to the left as she came to the top of a hill, where the wind was sharper, stronger…reeked.
Glad for her goggles in the heavy smoke that swirled over the top of the road in waves, she moved between the trees so she wouldn’t be outlined by the dim sky. Kneeling down, Sam looked own at the place she would have been, where she would have died, if not for the chopper crashing.
Buried inside the Cheyenne Mountain complex, the huge steel doors to the government’s once impenetrable compound were open, releasing pillars of thick, black smoke. They drew Samantha’s eye repeatedly as she looked over the devastated shack city that was spread out far into the distance. There were no signs of survivors.
The fences which were supposed to protect the cave-like entrance were gone. Entwined with blackened strings of holiday lights, she could see parts of barbed wire littering the sprawling refugee camp that lay smoldering on the canyon floor at the base of the enormous stone entrance. The sign announcing what was inside wasn’t visible through the smoke and flames still shooting out of the airtight doors.
The refugee camp was a sad, pathetic mix of moldy, box homes. Most covered in plastic, boards and wood of every kind formed haphazard living quarters. There was also a crowded cemetery at the far corner, telling her that these people had come here just after the War. These were the families of those who’d been taken in the draft and they had been here ever since, slowly dying on the indifferent doorstep of safety. Had anyone been let in?
Almost able to hear the hum of flies swarming around the dead, Sam's horrified eyes went over row after row of destroyed cooking, sleeping, and laundry areas. A junkyard of cars stripped of everything usable or tradable, more than a few obviously used as shelter. She raised her goggles, unable to stop the tears. No. Not one of them. These people had been desperate, dying. They would have overrun the guards the second the door was opened.
This was something the government had planned on doing nothing about, and those running things inside had probably watched the slaughter with relief. Well, probably, until just one compassionate soldier or unwilling "draftee" had opened the door to help, unable to watch his own people, maybe even his own family, be murdered, and the compound had been breached.
Sam settled deep in the cover of the flower-dotted brush, sheltered from the sharp wind, while she waited for the fires to burn out. It could have happened that way. Then again, these people might have just been the bait to get the doors open. That also had a ring of truth to it and she looked at the battle scene with new understanding.
Blackened, smoldering piles of debris highlighted dead bodies lined up on the compound’s huge front steps, mostly men with gunshot wounds. The women and girls were gone, obviously taken. She pushed away the thought of how bad their lives must be now.
Sam wasn’t sure if she could see anything moving, her view blocked by huge mountain slopes of constantly swaying spruce trees, but from this vantage point, she might be able to see their campfires tonight, she decided.
The thick layer of clouds overhead threatened rain, or worse, by morning so she began setting up her small shelter - a painstakingly tight-woven roof made of rubber bands around straw and leaves, and lashed over a wooden frame. Tomorrow she would go down. She was dreading it, but hoped there would be little bits of food and maybe, just maybe, the location of another compound she could go to.
2
Early the next morning, with the smoke mostly gone from the front doors, Sam went to see what remained of the facility.
She had a very hard time forcing her feet to pass through the blackened, bloody entrance to the bunker. She tried hard not to stare at the dead, but again, she couldn’t help crying for them as she moved over and around hands outstretched for mercy that hadn’t come. Another two hundred American lives, gone.
Footsteps echoing back eerily, Samantha slowly entered the tall, concrete tunnel with wide, nervous eyes, as sharp, glittering pieces of glass crunched loudly under her boots. Thin clouds of smoke still lingered above her head, and snapping flies tried unsuccessfully to invade her long trench coat and gloves as she walked.
The red lights that signaled a backup generator in use comforted her as the dim daylight faded from view. She wasn’t sure she could have come in without it. The feeling made her think of the King novel where the guy walked through a tunnel crammed with cars full of dead bodies - in the pitch black with only a lighter. Not her and not for any reason.
She had a gun, a Taser that may or may not work, two knives, and a can of mace, but she didn’t feel any safer as she wound deeper, ears straining for any sounds. This new world was full of death and destruction, more of it down here in these long, dark, concrete halls. As she picked through each room, Sam kept a hand on her weapon, thinking the downside of the red lights was that she could see the horrors too.
Dead men in uniform littered the stone halls, blood smears and bullet casings hard to avoid slipping on. She flipped her belt light to high as she stepped into the first room. It was obviously a security area, the four stiff bodies and blood splatter making her step right back out.
The next three rooms held more of the same. There were no corpses, but the spray on the walls showed that there had been, and she wondered why these bodies had been removed and not the rest. A trap for troops just making it to the complex?
Catching a faint hint of gasoline, Sam moved by open doors marked Utilities and Lavatories, knowing they wouldn't hold anything she needed. The tunnel she was in quickly dead-ended into a spacious, bunk area with a lot of bodies in the beds, wearing clothes that were an even mix of uniforms and Capitol Hill casual.
Not sure if she could make herself go into the room despite the lights, Samantha went back to the stairs, thinking she would try it last if there was nothing else. There had to be three dozen corpses in that big room and she didn’t want them between her and the outside for any length of time.
; Certain the main compound would be deeper, Sam chose the door marked ‘Sub-basements E-M’. Moving into the bowels of the Cheyenne Mountain operations center, she could hear water gushing like falls, beating down above her. The next level was K, marked ‘Water’. She stepped through the doorway, but only stayed for a minute. The reservoir was there, but the reek of gasoline told her the attackers had filled their own supply, and then ruined what they couldn’t carry so that no one else could use it.
There was damage was on the stairs too, torn pieces of signs and posters, more bullet casings. Sam eased further down the narrow metal steps, wincing when her sole flapped loudly. She went through each door she found, coming right back out of most - the fire damage and reek of corpses was simply too much. On the wall next to the door marked only as ‘M’, was a charred and broken hand scanner, and Sam knew she was in the right place.
Open, riddled with gunshots, the door hung crookedly on the frame and looked like it had fared the best. The room itself was destroyed - broken furniture, bodies, glass, and bloody papers littering the thin, red carpet. Her eyes scanned the room, but saw no other exits, no other doors. Surely, there was more than this?
Climbing the stairs to the previous floor, Samantha noticed another door in the shadows of the wall, another melted hand scanner. When the door wouldn’t open, she frowned. Survivors who had locked themselves in? What should she do? Sam looked down, saw that the floor was dark and blackened as if it had been burned. Her stomach lurched as she realized what odor was lurking under the harsh smell of smoke.
The Storm Tracker stumbled back up the metal stairs, trying not to gag. After that, it was a struggle just to make herself open the next door, let alone explore the two or three tunnels off each one. She found closets and storage areas, a lot of offices and strategy rooms, but the damage was complete. The blood was so thick on some floors that the Presidential seal was no longer visible.
She'd found a lounge that had been stripped of everything, two burnt-out cafeterias, laundry rooms without a sheet or blanket, and three medical bays that were heavily damaged - not even a box of bandages spared. The men who had done this had made sure that anyone who survived, would find nothing to help keep them alive.
Back on the ground floor, her eyes were drawn to a small painting of President Clinton. It hung askew, revealing another dark shadow. Set into the stone, it was a "throw room", a secure area where the Secret Service could literally throw a person so they’d be safe, while the agents guarded the hatch, the only way in or out. This one had a bloody handprint on the rail that she avoided as she hefted herself into the 4x4 opening, thinking it clearly hadn't held.
The hole dumped her out onto a thick mat, in a narrow hall with seven doors. She listened intently before opening each one, but heard nothing. Although constructed with comfort in mind, the Presidential retreat contained no little treasures with which to line her pockets. Nothing had survived, and the smells had her covering her mouth as she explored the site of her country's last stand.
The sixth door was a secondary war room; computers destroyed, communications equipment lying broken on the carpet, bodies of uniformed men that Samantha vaguely recognized draped across chairs and desks. The blood puddles and spatters were impossible to avoid as she checked stacks of papers and books. None of the intact electronics responded to her fingers.
Samantha realized that the dark red Spanish writing on the walls wasn’t marker, and backed out of the room with her stomach in a knot. There was nothing here.
Scratch…
Sam spun, fingers fumbling for her gun. She stopped when she saw the big rat, thinking if not for the noise, she would try to kill it anyway to keep it from doing what the insects were. Scowling at the alert rodent, she slapped at a fat fly and moved on.
The last door led to a lavatory. When she saw no bodies, not even blood smears, she allowed herself to use one of the dusty, cobwebbed stalls, thinking peeing had never been so bittersweet. Even taking paper from the almost empty roll hurt, and it was a struggle not to cry. It was all gone.
A shadow, dark and small, dropped suddenly from the ceiling above her, landed on her bare knee.
“Damn!” She slapped at the mutated freak as it ran upwards, missing its extra legs. It was very fast and she gritted her teeth as the arachnid bit her, sending a rush of pain up her leg that shot straight into her spine.
Sam squashed the fleeing spider against her jeans, grinding the 12 legged and more than 10-eyed mutation into little pieces, and she wiped the remains down the dusty stall wall with a smirk of short-lived satisfaction, “Serves ya right!”
She wiped the bite with the last of the paper on the roll, a bit uneasy at how sore the wound already was, and then put it from her mind. She would check the lounge she had passed on the ground floor, and then get the hell out of this mausoleum.
The climb back out of the bunker took her longer, made her even more anxious, as she half waited for someone to jump out of one of the doors she was passing. She breathed a sigh of relief when the open tunnel came into sight, able to see the faint, dim glow of daylight at the other end. One room and she was outta here!
Sam stepped into the smoky, vomit-smelling, vending machine room, eyes spying unbroken glass. She went to the three tall dispensers eagerly, but every ring was empty.
She slapped her hand against the dirty glass in frustration. “Damn it!”
“Help..."
Sam jumped, turned and fumbled for her gun with shaking hands.
“Yes, please."
Samantha drew in air, glad her bladder was empty as she raised her belt light for a better look at the man dying on the dark brown and white striped sofa.
“Please."
There was total awareness in those dead eyes and Sam wished her peripheral vision would disappear as he begged her silently as well.
The gore and blood was everywhere, and she began breathing through her mouth to keep from gagging. As she stepped closer, trying not to look at his emaciated body, she realized it was a white sofa. The brown was his blood and rotting body that had begun to dry into the material. He had the sickness. The oozing, bald head and open, leaking sores were undeniable, and her eyes filled with tears, with pity.
“Please… help me."
The pitiful whisper made the man seem more human and she slowly moved closer. “What can I do?"
“Kill me," came the immediate answer. Before she could tell him no, her hand had raised her gun.
She couldn’t do it though, and the man moaned. A wet, liquid sound, she heard the grinding of his jaws as he coughed violently. Scarlet flew from his mouth, ejecting one of his teeth, and reddish drops of agony rolled down his distorted face.
“Please!" he begged.
She raised the gun again as his gasps for air filled the room. His body was no longer responding to his commands, the radiation destroying him from the inside out. She pushed past her horror to talk, voice shaky.
“Where else can I go?"
He struggled to answer. “Only a base... in Cheyenne still taking calls. All gone...faulty air valves.”
“What about the Essex?”
“No! Ground... Zero. Evac'd after the hit... No transportation made for... radiation.”
His eyes had begun to run with reddish-green liquid in thick clots, but she could still see the hell in them.
“There must be someplace. What about all the Joint Chiefs and Secretaries?”
“Breached... Burned alive... wouldn’t touch me.”
Samantha’s mind went to the only locked door and the smell of gasoline she’d noticed, and she shook away the horrible images. At least their struggles were over now.
“What about the men who did this?”
The dying man on the gory couch began to heave, coughing, and Sam took a step back as thick blood and puss sprayed from his grossly-swelled lips.
“Mexican... Guerrillas... came during the... storm. Hit Ft. Carson first. Attacked the refugees... and took all females... doo
rs opened, malfunction... retaliation for the War.”
Sam couldn’t think of anything else to ask, and the man raised a finger, skin sliding nauseatingly to the side of the bone. “Please…do it now. Don’t know... anything else.”
She tried to smile as she raised the gun. “I’m Samantha Moore.”
“Pat...Mi...Michaels.”
She smiled in horrified recognition, and when he closed his eyes and tried to nod, she pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed, his body jumping like Melvin’s had when she hit him with the Taser, and then Sam was running, her steps echoing, mocking her flight. She had no idea where she would go, only that she shouldn’t have come here. These were not her people anymore.
Chapter Ten
February 6th, 2013
Ohio
1
She definitely needed help.
It had taken Angela a while to convince herself that calling Marc was what had to be done to get her son back. The voice of fear was constantly warning of past punishments, but now that she’d called, it was a struggle to keep from doing it again. She hated being alone, hated being scared.
Angela was dreading the journey she was about to make, but most of all, she worried about the edge of panic in her dreams that said it would all be much worse than her life with Kenny, if that were possible. Her nightmares said she would face dangers that made the Marine look like an amusement park ride and if not for the deep love in her mother’s heart, she wouldn’t go.
The woman frowned at her thoughts. None of her fears mattered. Only her boy did, and she could wait no longer to leave. The circled day on her calendar was still over a week away, but she was going now and needed to know where Marc was, had to be sure he was really coming this time. Without his help, her plans stood little chance.
She wasn’t looking forward to telling him her story, planned to put it off as long as she could, but the odds were against her making it alone. And then there was Kenny. He wouldn’t just hand her son over and let her go. Between her Marine and the terrain, she would definitely need help, and Marc Brady was the only one she had left to turn to.
