Calmed by my decision to let go of the responsibility of leadership and lulled by the soft snoring of Ben coming from above me, I finally fell asleep.
I’m not sure how long I slept. It was a deep, dreamless sleep and I woke slowly to the sound of shuffling feet and whispers. I opened my eyes. There were three strange boys standing at the foot of our bunk bed. They stopped talking when I sat up and looked at them.
“Hey,” said one of them.
The speaker had soft brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles on his face. Behind the thick glasses he wore, his eyes shone with a lively intelligence. He, and the second of the boys, a wiry lad with messy hair and a big nose, looked about thirteen. The third, a big strapping boy with short black hair and pale skin, looked about my age. They were all dressed in the white T-shirts and black pants and I wondered briefly if those clothes would start to feel like prison garb after a while.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m Isaac.” I pointed to the bunk above my head. “That’s Ben.”
“I’m Paul, this is Beau and Toby.”
I weighed them up. They all seemed like normal sort of kids and even though the big one, Toby, was as big as a full grown man, he didn’t seem particularly threatening. I climbed off the mattress and shook hands with each of them. I noticed their hands were calloused and tough and I asked Paul what discipline they did.
“We’re miners.”
“I meant to ask the Professor about that, what exactly are you mining?”
“Well it’s not mining exactly, that’s just what they call it. It’s tunneling.
“Tunneling?”
“Yeah, we’re digging a tunnel….through Drake Mountain. The Council wants a second way out in case the Chinese discover the lodge and work out we’re in the mountain. Personally I think it’s just a way of keeping us worker bees all busy, because even if they find the lodge, it isn’t likely they’ll work out that the facility is inside the mountain.”
“I think they might know all about the Lodge now…”
I told them the story of our flight from Lincoln with the Chinese hot on our tails and I was surprised at how greedily they listened to every word, guffawing and asking questions about anything that wasn’t quite clear.
“No way!” yelled Beau, when I told him that I had emptied my pistol into the chopper. “That’s ballsy man.”
“Not really,” I said, secretly pleased at his endorsement. “I thought I was as good as dead and was hoping to take a few of them with me. It was probably pretty stupid actually.” I finished the rest of the story and couldn’t fail to notice how they all looked at each other when I told them about the intervention of the facility’s soldiers.
“Did it happen like that for you too?”
“Kind of, although we didn’t have an army chasing us. We were taken in by two soldiers from the facility when they were on patrol. We flagged them down, but we still ended up with guns in our faces. It was pretty freaky.”
“You were together?”
“Yeah, there were the three of us and my sister Ava as well.”
“Oh right, where is she?”
Again they looked at each other, but instead of answering, Beau asked quickly, “So how many were with you altogether?”
I left it alone, but I made a mental note to ask Paul in private about his sister, clearly none of them wanted to discuss it, either because they were frightened or because it made them uncomfortable. Of course I also wanted to know how they had fared since the invasion, how they had survived before being picked up and brought to the Facility.
I told them our story, even touching upon the ones we had lost. I was pretty tired by the end but telling my story to kids my age seemed somehow more therapeutic than talking it out with Colonel Randall. Not sure why, but it did.
“So you said the Council wants the tunnel? I thought the Professor was in charge?”
The three boys looked at each other.
“Well he is really,” Paul continued. “But the Council was formed after some of the workers demanded to have a say in running the place. I think he gave in as a way of keeping the natives from getting restless. They have no real power.”
Beau now gave Paul a pointed look, almost as if he thought the boy in the glasses was talking too much. While I didn’t think they were keeping things from me, I got the feeling they were holding a little back, which was probably fair enough, considering they’d only just met me.
“I better wake Ben, he will want to meet you too.”
I couldn’t believe he had slept through my whole conversation with the three boys and for a second I was worried for him. He was dead still, just a shape under the covers and had a pillow resting over his eyes. I shook his arm vigorously and was rewarded when he sat bolt upright and yelled, “WHA…!!??”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Sorry old chap! I have some people who want to meet you.”
Squinting at me in the sudden light, his blonde hair a mess, he fixed me with a stare. “Did you just call me old chap? I see your knowledge of the English vernacular was learned from old black and white movies… buddy.”
The other boys laughed at our banter but could see that Ben was not totally amused at having his sleep disturbed. Wearing a half-smile, Ben climbed down and went to the bathroom. We chatted for another hour or so after that but it was obvious the boys were tired after a long day’s work, so we went to bed without the conversation becoming any deeper than swapping a few survival stories.
8
I was lashing out at Chen, but he was too fast for me. He dodged my blows and laughed at me. The scornful sound enraged me, and while I was scared, I kept pursuing him, knowing that if I didn’t kill him, he would kill me. Why didn’t he strike back? We both knew he could beat me. He was bigger, stronger, faster. What was he waiting for? I ran at him with one last supreme effort to punch his hateful face. Again he eluded me.
“Stand and fight!” I yelled, bent over with my hands on my thighs, trying to catch my breath.
He stood still, grinning at me demonically and opened his mouth to speak - BEEEP….BEEEP…BEEEP… the impossibly shrill beeping emanating from his throat terrified me and I awoke with a start, my heart thumping hard in my chest.
The electronic beeping ceased after the sixth beep and I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed as I tried to calm my breathing. I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t feel as refreshed as I should have, probably thanks to the late night talk with Paul and the others.
I could tell by the groans above me that Ben was in the same predicament and I felt a pang of guilt for waking him up to meet the boys. It wouldn’t have hurt to leave it until morning. I got up and rushed to the bathroom as I saw our new dorm mates starting to rouse. I didn’t want to line up for the john, the way my bladder felt, I wouldn’t be able to hang on longer than a few seconds.
We said our good mornings to Paul and the other two boys. Paul gave us a brief rundown on the day’s schedule. When the door was unlocked we would go to the showers and then onto breakfast before the boys headed off to the mine. He wasn’t quite sure what would happen with us as we hadn’t been allocated a discipline yet. At 1.00pm there would be a 45 minute lunch period for the ‘miners’. He told us that the lunches were staggered between the disciplines from 12.15 onwards. He didn’t get to tell us the rest because the door was opened by a guard we didn’t recognize and we were marched off to the showers.
Guards, curfews, work gangs. It struck me as we followed the guard, that if anything, our ‘safe haven’ was much more like a prison than a military or scientific facility and, that while a part of me understood that it might have to be that way, it left me uncomfortable and almost certain that there was another way it could be. But really, what was I complaining about? Better here than in a Chinese prison camp or clean up gang….or dead.
The showers were already heavy with steam and other bodies when we got there. I had to line up for several minutes before I took my turn. It looked like there were about forty ot
her boys in our ‘shift’, with only ten shower stalls to share. Everyone dressed in clean blue coveralls that were in a pile by the door and slowly filed out as they finished dressing.
Paul and I again dressed in the ‘uniform’ of white T-shirt and black pants. As I put my canvass shoes back on I noticed that everyone had the same shoes, albeit in various states of disrepair. I asked Paul why they didn’t have boots. Surely they would have been better for the work he was doing?
“They don’t have enough boots in supply, only these useless canvas sneakers. One boy’s foot was crushed last week, so it pays to be real careful.”
We were escorted to the cafeteria where we lined up and were served a tray of sausages, scrambled eggs and toast. I scanned the room as I walked to a table with Ben and my roommates. There were about thirty men and boys all in the blue coveralls. I assumed they were all on the mining shift. Did that mean that Ben and I would also be joining the mining crew or was it just that we were housed with other miners for the moment? No one had told us any different yet. Breaking rocks and digging in an enclosed space didn’t exactly sound inviting to me and I hoped the Professor would keep his word about letting us nominate which discipline we preferred.
Breakfast looked a lot better than it tasted. It was clear that the eggs were made from the powdered eggs that the Professor had mentioned, but more disappointing were the sausages. They were vegetarian sausages, and had a distinct nutty flavor. Ben and I gave each other a look of distaste while the other boys wolfed them down as if it was the last supper. Paul caught our look and grinned.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t think so,” retorted Ben.
Regardless, we ate everything on our plate and chatted quietly to the boys. Most of the people around us seemed focused on their plates. I avoided the subject of Paul’s sister, for the moment, I still wanted to ask him about that privately.
It turned out that their group was from a suburb of Lincoln. After the Pyongyang flu had killed all of the adults, Beau and Toby had sought out their friend Paul and holed up with him and his sister Ava.
They had been doing their best to survive. There had been no sign of the Chinese army back then and after food in the house had run out they had been able forage and scavenge enough from Lincoln to keep them relatively well fed. They had seen other kids, some alone and some in groups, but Paul had thought it wise to keep their group small. As he talked I found my respect for him growing.
Unlike us, they didn’t come to the Facility because of the signal. One day while foraging, they had actually caught sight of one of the patrols the Professor had sent out. After the initial shock of seeing adults, American soldiers to boot, they hid and observed the patrol rounding up another group of kids. Ava had wanted to flag them down straight away, but the cautious Paul had insisted they watch and wait. He wanted to make sure that these were friendlies and weigh up a lot of possibilities before they made contact.
“Of course I could see that they were American, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were friendlies.”
In the end, the food situation and weather had forced their hand and they decided to turn themselves over to one of the patrols. It took nearly a week and a half for another patrol to come through and by then, things had become quite desperate for the four kids.
“We were pretty much the last to be picked up by a patrol, they basically only send them out on night missions for food and supplies now.”
As we finished our breakfast, two men came through the door. One was John the army guy who had brought me in, and the other wore a Homeland security uniform. The Homeland guy blew a whistle and yelled, “Grubs over! Time to get to work ladies!”
“Asshole,” Paul whispered under his breath as they stood from the table and started filing out with everybody else. I shrugged to Ben and we both stood as John approached us, weaving his way through the crowd of blue coveralls.
“Hello boys,” the soldier said with a friendly smile. “You’re looking a little less disheveled than the last time I saw you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It was great to finally have a shower.”
He eyed both Ben and myself critically.
“You could both do with a haircut though.”
I self-consciously ran a hand through my hair.
“Follow me please, you’re coming down to the bottom level for the morning, the Colonel wants to interview you again.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant interview both Ben and I, but apparently we were both going down.
“See you tonight,” I called to Paul, as they filed to the left and we went to the right. He turned briefly and gave me a thumbs up.
I liked Paul, and while I was interested in finding out whatever was going on with his sister, now that we were safe I wanted to get back to the business of being a kid and making friends. Paul was easy to like and also seemed open to making friends outside of his group. It’s strange, but before the Infection, making friends hadn’t been really that important to me. In fact after my family had perished I had actively avoided it, determined to never be close to anyone ever again. The Pyongyang Flu and invasion had changed all of that. It was possibly the only positive I could draw from the whole experience, but I intended to run with it. I had seen firsthand that life was too short to waste alone.
9
Ben and I followed John back to the lobby where we had had been taken to dinner with the Professor. He didn’t acknowledge the Homeland guard patrolling the lobby but nodded to the one by the elevator doors as he summoned the lift. We took the elevator down one floor and upon exiting found ourselves in a more Spartan part of the facility. No paintings or carpet here, it was all polished concrete and bare metal.
As opposed to the middle or Living level, I didn’t see any Homeland Security personnel down here. It was all army, even though the soldiers I did see looked relaxed and weren’t patrolling like the Homeland guys seemed to be. We were led from the main corridor past a desk manned by an older soldier with a grey buzz cut.
“Boys,” he nodded in a friendly way.
I looked over his shoulder into a door opening onto some sort of supply room and I could see weaponry and ammunition stacked on metal shelves. It looked to be a whole lot more than a small contingent in a scientific facility should carry, but I didn’t have a chance to ask a question about it before we turned the corner and entered a long hallway. We stopped at the first door we came to. The brass plate read Col. Randall and I could see another door a little further along marked Situation Room. John gave the door in front of us a businesslike knock.
“Come in.”
John opened the door and stood aside to let us in. Randall was seated behind a small desk, surrounded by stacks of paper. He was wearing a regular camouflage uniform and a cap, and smiled warmly as we entered.
“Isaac, Ben…have a seat, please.”
From my seat I could just make out a framed photograph on the desk. It was a woman about Randall’s age and two younger women who resembled her closely. I assumed it was his wife and daughters, and I suddenly felt empathy for him. It was easy to forget sometimes that everyone in the Facility had lost people they loved. I wondered briefly, but uncharitably about Mr. Ragg’s family, surprised that he’d made such a negative impression on me in such a brief meeting.
“Thank you John.”
Dismissed, John saluted the colonel and promptly departed.
“Okay, talk to me,” said Randall. “How are you lads settling in?”
“All right I guess, sir,” said Ben.
“Good, and what about you Isaac?”
“Pretty good, glad to be out of the cold and eating regularly. So are we here about the discipline we want to pick?”
“Straight to the point, huh? I like that,” Randall chuckled. “Well this is where you give me your preferences, then I take them to the Council and give my recommendation, so no guarantees. If you don’t have a preference, you’ll be slotted into the mining crew by default.”
“What about the girls?”
A look I couldn’t quite work out crossed Randall’s face at my question and he seemed to measure his words before he answered. “The girls are under the jurisdiction of the Professor and his security people. Their role will be decided independently of yours.”
“Why? I’d like to talk to Brooke before I decide what job I take. We might like to work together,” said Ben.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. In the main, the females are kept separate to males here at the facility. It was one of the first things the Professor decided when we went dark.”
Ben looked at me, then back at Randall. “Kept separate? What the hell does that mean?”
“Now son,” said Randall, holding up his hand. “I don’t like it any more than you, but that’s what he has ordered. Honestly, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Some of the Professor’s methods are a bit…quirky, but he does have the best interests of all of us at heart.”
Randall didn’t seem quite as convinced by his own words as he should, but I didn’t press it. Ben did.
“How can it be good? Separating family…when will I get to see her?”
I immediately thought of Paul’s sister Ava and understanding dawned on me. They had been separated when they arrived in the Facility. But was that why he hadn’t wanted to talk about her? My impression was that it was something more serious than that, even if forced separation was serious enough.
“That’s hard to say, Son…”
I saw Ben’s face turn crimson as he stood up and leaned over Randall’s desk, his rage quite impressive to behold.
“Don’t son me! I’m not your son. You’re a…what are you? A colonel? You outrank everyone here, just order him to let me see her. I want to know what’s going on!”
Randall didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, his voice was calm and measured. “Unfortunately I don’t outrank him. He has absolute authority in this facility and the Homeland Security unit ensure it stays that way. You, like me and the rest of my men, must learn to live with that. It won’t do your sister any good for you to end up in lockup on half rations. The women are kept separated for their own protection. As far as I can tell, they are treated well.”
The After Days Trilogy [Books 1-3] Page 31
