“Who is us?”
I looked down, embarrassed. “Us, meaning the United States. The good guys. I may be self serving, but I haven’t forgotten I’m an American.”
“So you still haven’t told me where all this stuff is.”
“It’s underground,” I hissed at her. “It’s right under your feet.”
It took a minute for what I was saying to register with Pilgrim. Then I saw the light click on.
“So what do we have to do to get past our friend?”
“Well, I’ve been figuring,” I said. “That critter either uses a motion sensor or a heat sensor to target with. If it’s a motion sensor, we got problems. Chances are, we’ll have to shoot it, and I suspect that it’s armored. There might even be more of them out there.
“But if I were building it, I’d be more likely to make it with a heat sensor. That way if a paper bag blows into the valley, it won’t use up all its laser shots shooting at something just rolling along the ground. A human body—heck, even an animal, as we saw—puts off heat. That’s likely what it’s shooting at.”
“So how do we test your theory?”
We crept down to the bottom of the hill. There were a few trees and a ravine at the bottom of the hill. I had Pilgrim climb a tree to watch where the rabbit killer was. When it got over where we were, I lobbed a few rocks out of the ravine toward the robot. The first one was short, the second one rolled past the front of the robot, and the third ended up hitting the robot right on top of the turret. In none of the cases did the robot respond.
“Now comes the hard part,” I told Pilgrim after she climbed down from the tree. We stripped down as far as we could; me to my t-shirt and jeans, she to her halter top and fatigue trousers. Then we entered the ravine and found a mud bank. We covered ourselves with the smelly mud from head to toe. At one point, I had to cover her back and the back of her legs and head, and she did the same for me.
“I hope they have showers in there,” she said.
“If not, we’ll come out for another bath in the creek,” I said.
We checked each other over, head to toe, to make sure there was no skin showing, then slowly climbed the bank and walked toward the valley and our rabbit-killer friend.
“Sure hope this works,” she said.
“It’ll work,” I said, but doubted my own words.
We had walked maybe forty feet before we saw the robot. And when we saw it, we also saw that it was not alone. Three more robots were patrolling at a farther distance. Each apparently had its own territory to cover.
We walked slowly toward it, instinctively holding our breath as we got closer and closer. I looked around as we walked and saw birds, deer, a horse and several rabbits that had been killed by the robots. Then I saw the skeleton of two people not five feet from the entrance. They’d been there at least a year or two, and their uniform marked them as Coalition soldiers.
“We still don’t know if the robots were left here by the U.S. to protect its own armory, or by the Coalition to keep us from accessing it,” Pilgrim said.
“Does it matter?” I asked. “If this don’t work, these guys’ll kill us either way.”
“It does matter,” she said. “Because if they’re from the U.S., I bet there’ll be a way to turn them off inside.”
“I like the way you think, girl.” She frowned at me, and I corrected myself. “Uh, Pilgrim. But to tell you the truth, you don’t look much like a boy dressed like that.”
I indicated her muddy, wet clothes, which clung to her body. She blanched, and then changed the subject.
“How are you going to get past the electronic lock?” she asked.
“What electronic--,” I said, then saw what she was motioning toward. The door had a keypad on it, ready for me to add the right combination of letters and numbers. I frowned. I could try a hundred combinations and still be wrong, and by that time, our skin would dry out and our rabbit-killers would be looking for us.
“I—I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
She stepped up to the keypad and pushed the buttons. Nothing happened. I noticed that the screen above the keypad was blank. Instinctively I pulled on the door. The lock clicked and the door pulled open freely.
“A victim of the EMP, I guess,” I said to her. I looked behind us at the robots, which circled aimlessly in the yard, still looking for another victim.
“Come on, let’s get inside,” I said, and she followed me into the darkness. Back to ToC
21. BURIED TREASURE
MACK HAWLEY: OUTSIDE POPLAR BLUFF, MO: DAY 1571
The space inside the metal door was small—less than 10 feet by 10 feet—and there weren’t much to see. I was torn between leaving the door open for light and closing it to keep out those robots. In the end, I left it open a crack and looked around.
There was a desk, more like a duty station, that had some papers on a clipboard, a small radio and a light switch in front of it on the wall. I flipped the switch and tried the radio, already knowing that both would be dead. Behind us we saw another hatch with a wheel for locking it closed. We looked at each other.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said to Pilgrim. “If there’s such great stuff down there, how did they get it down this itty bitty hole? Well, from my way of thinking, this isn’t the only entrance. The others are hidden around here somewhere, possibly quite a ways from here.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” she said. “I was thinking, how are we going to see what’s there when there’s no light? Do you have a flashlight?”
I shook my head. “I have one in my backpack, but the batteries are dead. And that backpack is back at the creek with the rest of our stuff.”
“I guess you want me to climb down there in the dark,” Pilgrim said, her face grim.
“Nope, that’s my job. I’m hoping that at the very bottom of this shaft there’s an emergency generator. If they were smart, they would have put it there to protect it from things like The Event. I plan on climbing down there and seeing if I can turn it on. You wait here.”
“And you are planning on doing this in the dark?”
I shook my head again. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the one thing I’d decided to carry, holding it up for her to see.
“This was my daddy’s,” I said, letting her see the brass cigarette lighter I held. It featured a Marine insignia on its side. “He carried it through the Pacific in World War II. He was quite the smoker. Died of lung cancer 20 years ago. I never go without it.”
“Lucky for us,” Pilgrim said. “Are you planning to climb down the ladder and hold a lit lighter at the same time?”
I shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”
I tugged on the wheel atop the hatchway and it slowly began to turn. After a couple of turns, the hatch door pulled free and I swung it up with a squeak of its rusty hinges. I looked back at Pilgrim, who stood there watching me. I shrugged.
“If the lights come on, you’ll know I was successful. If they don’t, well….” I didn’t complete my sentence, trying not to think about me falling down a dark shaft to slowly die with a broken back. I flipped open my lighter and flashed it once at the entrance to the shaft. The only thing I could see was a solitary metal ladder that descended into darkness. I sighed and climbed onto the ladder and started my descent.
I descended in total darkness, feeling for the rungs with my feet as I climbed down. I sensed large openings on either side of me as I dropped, and the air, though stale, got cooler as I went down. I decided to count the rungs as I lowered myself. When I got to 252, my left foot touched down on concrete. I hesitated for a moment, then brought my right foot down as well. Not knowing how large a platform I was standing on, I turned carefully and stood very still. I pulled out my lighter and flicked it on. Then I hit the dial and adjusted the flame to provide a little more light.
I was in a room with equipment around me, with what looked to me like generators, gears and pumps. I smiled to myself, knowing how many ot
her possibilities could have been at the bottom of that shaft. I raised my flame high above my head and tried to decide where I needed to go.
I moved slowly across the concrete floor until I found a wall. I followed the wall to the right until I found a desk and a bulletin board. There, mounted on the bulletin board, were instructions for starting the emergency generator.
Five minutes later, I jerked on a rope once, twice, three times and heard the happy chug of a gasoline-powered generator kicking on. I smiled to myself, thankful that someone had the insight to install the generator deep enough in the earth to protect it from the effects of an electromagnetic pulse. Twenty seconds later, for the first time in four years I heard the buzz and saw the flicker of fluorescent lights kicking on.
I walked back to the hatchway that had seemed so far away but really was only about 15 feet and looked up. I counted 12 levels between me and the dark opening far above me. I strained and thought I saw a small figure waving at me from the other end.
“Come on down,” I shouted up at Pilgrim.
“Level 3,” she shouted back. I had no idea what was on level 3, but I figured it was as good a start as any. Sighing, I rubbed my aching legs and started to climb the ladder again. Then I hesitated. If I were running this place….
I looked around the room and saw it in the corner. Five minutes later, my elevator arrived on level 3 just as Pilgrim climbed down the ladder. She looked at me and then the elevator and grinned.
“Nice,” she said.
“So what’s so special about level 3?” I asked.
She pushed through double doors and led me into a barracks, complete with bunks and lockers for a company of soldiers. At the far end of the row of lockers, I could see what looked like showers.
“I didn’t get a chance at a hot shower when I was in St. Louis,” she said. “When you talked about restoring power here, I hoped they would have a barracks here. So while you were hunting for an on-switch down in the bowels of the earth, I went through that desk up there, and found a directory for the levels. I get first dibs on the shower!”
“Fine,” I said, looking back at her bright eyes surrounded by caked mud. “I won’t even peek. You can probably find some fatigues—and towels—around here as well. But I would imagine it’ll take a little while before there’s hot water.”
“A cold shower still beats bathing in a creek,” she said. She rummaged through a couple of lockers and found some clothes that she thought might fit her, then disappeared into the shower room.
A few minutes later, I heard the hiss of the shower and eventually steam began to float out of the doorway to the showers. I wandered around the locker room until I found a desk and looked for the directory that she’d talked about. While I rummaged through the drawers, I heard her singing to herself in the next room. It had been a long time since I’d heard a woman singing, and it reminded me of my wife, back in happier days, when we were young.
I found the directory. It was a laminated yellow sheet with a diagram of each of the 12 levels, with descriptions of what was stored on that level. It also showed two entrances that appeared to be about a mile north and south of where we were. I took the directory and walked over to the doorway. Pilgrim was still singing.
“”I’m impressed,” I shouted in the doorway, my back to her.
“Mack!” she shouted. “You said you wouldn’t peek.”
“Who’s peeking?” I shouted back. “Hey, did you look at this list? They’ve got enough supplies to equip a battalion here. They’ve got everything.”
“I wonder if their equipment will still run.”
“Depends on how deep they had it in the bunker,” I said. “We’ll have to check it out.” I hesitated when I heard something clattering through the ventilation system above my head.
“Well, I didn’t think--.”
“Quiet!” I said, interrupting her. “I think I heard something.”
I stood there silently, waiting for the noise to return. In the meantime, I heard Pilgrim turn off her shower behind me. A moment later, I felt her presence behind me, wrapped in a towel.
“Is it one of those—?” She didn’t finish her question. I gestured with my head toward a large vent mounted on the opposite wall. As we watched, long tendrils reached out through the slats of the vent and pushed the door open. It fell to the floor with a bang.
Inside was something that looked vaguely like a spider, about the size of a terrier, but with a mechanical turret on its back. It swiveled the turret around, with the two tendrils it had used to open the vent sniffing the air in front of it.
“Another variation of our rabbit-killer friend,” I whispered.
Pilgrim gasped, and I looked down at the mud still caked all over my body and then at her clean, wet, hot skin. I shoved her back in the doorway and closed it between us.
“What if it comes in the vent here?” she asked.
“Just make sure it doesn’t,” I responded.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think of something.” I looked around the barracks at anything that I could use as a weapon. All I could see was an old wooden push broom in the corner. I crept over to the broom and unscrewed the handle. I now had a pole made of thin wood to use against a laser-wielding robot with thick armor sides.
As I watched, the tendrils on the robot sniffed the air, and then it started off in the direction of the shower-room door. I suspected that the shower was putting off heat that it could sense. Halfway across the floor, it stopped as if it noticed something else. I hesitated again when I saw that it was turning my direction. I looked again at the mud that caked me, and realized that it had dried and in several cases, had begun to flake off.
It sniffed the air for a long moment, then decided to continue on to the shower door. It paused at the closed shower door, then I saw the laser begin to cut through the metal door.
“It’s cutting through!” I heard Pilgrim shout from the other side.
“I know!” I shouted back.
“Do something!”
I shook my head, trying to decide what the wisest course of action was. Finally I launched myself and my broomstick at the robot. I jammed the broomstick under the side of the robot, and flipped it over. The laser flashed wildly in all directions, but I jumped on the underside of the robot with both feet. I stood on the belly of the robot in my bare feet while looking for an off switch, but there was none. Frustrated, I finally decided to pick the robot up. Despite its small size, the robot weighed close to 50 pounds. I grabbed it with both hands, its legs clutching at me, trying to make me let it go. The laser fired wildly in all directions.
I carried the robot as fast as I could back to the hatch where Pilgrim had climbed down. As it fired the laser and grabbed at me, I tossed the spider-like mechanism down the shaft. It bounced off the sides as it fell to the mechanical pit nine floors below.
“Is it dead?” I heard Pilgrim say from behind me. I turned to see her standing there, already dressed in fatigues.
I shook my head. “No, but I bought us some time. I took a look at it, though, and I ’spect that a well-aimed shot from a 12-gauge will take care of it.”
“There’s a locker of weapons up one level. I can get us some shotguns while you get your shower,” Pilgrim said.
“Let’s both go,” I said. “My shower can wait.”
We went up one floor and loaded up on weapons and ammunition. Pilgrim chose twin 45 automatic pistols and a crossbow. I chose an M1 automatic rifle with a grenade launcher and a wicked-looking 8-gauge trench gun. When the spider robot returned, I took great pleasure in dispatching it with one shot from my trench gun. Then Pilgrim stood guard while I got my shower and got changed.
Despite the unnerving attack that afternoon, the rest of the time went smoothly. We visited the fourth floor for some MREs and other food supplies. Then we visited the garage on the 11th floor where we had our pick of vehicles. I found a dirt bike, loaded it with enough
gas to get me back to Wickliffe, and fired it up. It started with the first crank.
“I’ll travel a lot faster alone,” I said. “I should be back in 24 hours. I know of a buyer who’ll be thrilled with what we found.”
“Buyer? What about all that talk about America and taking back St. Louis?”
“It’ll happen,” I said. “But we need to be paid for our efforts. This guy will give us a mountain of caps for this bunker.”
“I don’t want a mountain of caps,” Pilgrim said. “I want to do what’s right. I want to go west to House of the Interpreter and then Camp Zion.”
“Listen,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re young. Still idealistic. Trust me. Taking payment for this stuff is the best for everyone involved. I’ll be back in 24 hours.”
I saw Pilgrim’s face fall, and I felt like I’d betrayed her. But I was no soldier, and I knew she wasn’t either. My philosophy was to leave war to the professionals.
I left her standing there in the garage, two 45s in her hands. I took a passageway north to the secret entrance on the other side of that hill, and exited in the dead of night. It took me about four hours to get back to the Muddy and find our canoe.
Despite what I’d told her, I decided to give the bunker over to the National Guard. By the next afternoon, I was back to the bunker with two dozen guardsmen. This time, we went in via the secret north entrance.
They were amazed and grateful for the treasure that Pilgrim and I surrendered to them in the name of freedom. But despite hours of searching, I didn’t find Pilgrim anywhere in the premises. She had headed west. Back to ToC
22. HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER
INFINITY: HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS: DAY 1579
I really did know what I was doing when I took the second dirt bike and rode west from the hidden bunker. I do admit that I was dismayed by Mack Hawley’s parting comment and attitude about making money, which turned into pot-boiling anger. And it didn’t settle down with time. In fact, I felt if I were to stay there I would have shot him as soon as he returned.
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