The Survivalist

by Arthur T. Bradley

  Tanner led them off the paved road and through an open hole in the fence. They cut through the grassy field, eventually arriving at a ring of soft gray dirt that stretched around the depository like a moat.

  They stopped, and Samantha hopped down to study it. She scooped up a handful of the dirt and let it run through her fingers.

  “It’s like something you might find on the moon. What do you think it’s for?”

  “No idea. Maybe it gets on people’s clothes to make them easier to see with infrared cameras.”

  Samantha brushed off her hands and mounted back up.

  “At least it’ll be soft for Dusty. I think her feet hurt after all that walking yesterday.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Tanner said, urging Major out into the soft dirt.

  When they were about halfway across, Tanner stopped and quietly studied a three-foot-wide hole in the dirt to their right. There was a dark discoloration surrounding it that resembled a scorch mark.

  Samantha urged Dusty up beside him. “What do you think they were digging for?”

  He said nothing as he looked left and right. Similar holes littered the gray patch of dirt. Each was marked with the same burnt pattern.

  “What is it?” she asked, following his gaze.

  Sweat began to bead on Tanner’s brow.

  “Listen to me, Sam. I’m going to climb off my horse, and when I do, you’re going to lean over and let me catch you. You understand?”

  “Why? I can just climb off myself.” She started to swing a leg over.

  “No!” he barked.

  Samantha grew very still, knowing full well the sound of Tanner’s “danger is near” voice.

  “What’s going on?”

  He didn’t see any way to sugarcoat it.

  “I think we may have walked into a minefield.”

  “A what!”

  “Just stay still.” Tanner gently placed one foot on the ground and then the other. Thankfully, he didn’t explode into a thousand bloody bits. Major let out a little snort, and Tanner patted his neck softly. “Easy, boy.”

  He turned and reached up toward Samantha.

  “Okay, Sam. Lean over, gently now, and let me catch you.”

  She hooked an arm through her pack and slid sideways in the saddle until she felt his hands clamp firmly around her waist.

  Tanner carefully scrubbed his boots sideways, making a place for her to stand. As Samantha settled onto the soft gray dirt, Dusty pulled the reins from her hand, and she instinctively reached for him.

  “No, Sam!” he cried, pulling her close.

  His outburst startled the horses, and both skipped away. Tanner immediately pushed Samantha to the ground and collapsed on top of her, waiting for the thunderous boom.

  Nothing happened.

  After a few seconds, she croaked, “You’re suffocating me.”

  “Sorry, I thought—”

  An explosion shook the earth, and a rain of warm wet chunks splatted down on Tanner’s back. Neither of them dared to look up for nearly a full minute, certain that a second explosion was inevitable.

  It wasn’t.

  Instead, they heard Major let out a frightened whinny from the grassy field behind them.

  Tanner pushed up to his knees and helped Samantha sit up. What they saw caused even his stomach to turn. Dusty’s hind legs had been blown off, her torso ripped entirely in half. Thick chunks of hide, muscle, and bone lay scattered for twenty yards in every direction.

  Samantha’s face turned white, and she seemed ready to cry.

  “Poor girl,” she choked, doing her best to hold back the tears.

  “Mourn the horse later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”

  She wiped her eyes, and took several deep breaths.

  “You good?” he asked.

  She forced a nod.

  They both took a moment to consider their options. Directly ahead lay the large octagonal wrought-iron fence surrounding another grassy patch. To their rear lay the open field they had previously traversed. Both were roughly equal distance away.

  Samantha said, “Should we go back the way we came? We could try to walk in the horses’ footsteps.”

  “Too risky. An inch off, and boom, we’re chili con carne.”

  “Then how are we going to get across? It must be twenty feet to the fence.”

  Tanner slid the Good Samaritan from its sheath, reminding himself that sometimes things come to a person for a reason.

  “Navigating a mine field is an exercise in patience.” Still kneeling, he stabbed the blade into the soft dirt directly in front of them, then moved it over a couple of inches and stabbed again. He repeated the action until he had covered a row just wide enough for him to move across it. “We’ll clear it inch by inch.”

  Samantha slid her knife free, preparing to do the same.

  “No need,” he said. “Just follow behind me.”

  “But what if you hit a mine?”

  “If I find the housing of a mine, I’ll mark it, and navigate around. You just stay directly in line with wherever I go. Got it?”

  She nodded and tucked her knife away.

  Tanner returned his attention to the gray dirt. Stab, shift, stab, shift. It was as monotonous as it was important. Each time he cleared a row, he scooted forward and began the process over again. After about three feet, a hollow clunk sounded as the blade struck something metal. There were no signs of anything protruding from the dirt, no prongs for a boot to step on, no lever to trip. The entire mine was underground, the soft dirt ensuring that simple ground pressure would be enough to trip the device.

  He turned ninety degrees and proceeded in that direction. Once he was confident that he was clear of the mine, he turned back toward the fence. Twice more in that twenty-foot stretch of dirt, he had to detour to avoid mines, and twice more, he managed to keep from ending up like poor Dusty.

  When he finally arrived at the wrought-iron fence, Tanner carefully got to his feet and turned to face Samantha.

  He cupped his hands out in front of him.

  “Step up, and I’ll help you over.”

  “How do we know there aren’t mines in the grass?”

  “Grass has to be cut.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that folks had to drive over it regularly with lawnmowers and such.”

  “Still, you can’t be sure,” she said, stepping up into his hands.

  “We’ll know soon enough.” He hoisted her higher, and Samantha carefully pulled herself over the fence, nervously dropping to the other side.

  Nothing happened. No explosions. No pop-up machine guns. Not so much as a blaring siren.

  “I think it’s okay,” she said. “Just to be safe, though, I’m going to inch along the fence line until I get back to the driveway.”

  “Good idea.”

  Tanner grabbed the top of the fence and began pulling himself over. His shirt snagged on one of the prongs, and as he worked to free it, he lost his grip and fell flat on his back into the grass.

  Samantha jumped away, both hands coming up to protect her head.

  Tanner blinked a few times to clear the fog and then extended a hand toward her.

  “Do you mind?”

  She peeked out at him from between her fingers.

  “A few more seconds please. I’m waiting to see if you explode.”

  He rolled to his feet. “If I’d landed on a mine, it would have blown us both up.”

  “Maybe not. You’re pretty big.”

  “Just follow behind me,” he growled, brushing past her.

  With Samantha taking every step like it might be her last, they slowly made their way back to the bleached concrete road that intersected a paved ring surrounding the depository.

  She tapped the concrete with her foot a few times.

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “I do,” he said, confidently marching ahead.

  Guard booths stood at either corner of the building, as well as
two on the first floor’s roof. Thankfully, all of them sat vacant.

  “It feels weird, doesn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Walking right up to what was supposed to be the most secure building in the entire world.”

  He shrugged. “We’ve been to the White House. This seems like the next logical place to vacation.”

  She grinned. “Vacation. Funny.”

  They passed tall black poles on either side of the road, cameras and speakers mounted to each. Beyond them lay a thick concrete barrier meant to prevent someone from driving a car bomb up to the front doors. The barrier had been crushed into rubble, thanks to an M1 tank proving that there wasn’t a whole lot that could stand in its way.

  Tanner and Samantha hopped over the crumbled barrier, careful not to cut themselves on bent pieces of rebar poking out. As they approached the front doors, they stopped and studied the building.

  The outer surface of the depository had been constructed of an off-white granite that made it look more like a penitentiary than a bank vault. The first floor was in the shape of a large rectangle, and much like a wedding cake, a second recessed level sat atop it, leaving a ten-foot-wide walkway for rooftop sentries.

  The face of the building had six heavily barred windows on the first level and four more on the second. All were marred by gunfire, but none had been breached. Where the front door used to be, however, there was nothing but a gaping hole.

  Samantha looked down at the huge black slabs of granite that had once served as blast doors.

  “What could have destroyed those? Grenades?”

  “Too thick. Must have taken a few shots from a tank.”

  “The army was shooting at their own vault?”

  “That, or someone took control of one.”

  As they stepped through the open doorway, they found more rubble and destruction inside. Interior rooms had been demolished from explosions, leaving piles of concrete and mangled metal doors in every direction. A room to the right appeared to be a security station, computer monitors and high-tech control panels mixed into the rubble.

  “There’s no way the gold is still here,” proclaimed Samantha.

  Tanner started forward. “Even so. We came this far.”

  The interior of the depository proved claustrophobic, especially to a man Tanner’s size. Together, he and Samantha squeezed through one narrow hole after another as they made their way deeper into the building.

  After negotiating through thirty feet of jagged rock, not to mention leaving behind more DNA than Genghis Khan, the hallway opened to a set of wide concrete steps leading down. At the bottom was an enormous vault door. To their surprise, it too, stood open.

  “How’d they get that one open?”

  “Someone on the inside had to have let them in.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they decided to join in the looting. Or maybe someone held a gun to their head. Armageddon brings out the worst in some people.”

  She cut her eyes at him. “Believe me, I’ve noticed.”

  Tanner started down the long flight of stairs with Samantha following close behind. By the time they reached the bottom, only the faintest traces of sunlight remained.

  Retrieving his flashlight, Tanner said, “Gonna be dark from here forward.”

  Samantha already had hers in hand and clicked it on.

  “Why can’t we ever explore someplace bright and cheery?”

  “Like a beach house, or maybe an amusement park?”

  “Exactly.” She thought for a moment. “Better strike the amusement park.”

  “Why?”

  “Too many murderous clowns.”

  “Ah.”

  Together, they stepped into the gold vault, flashlights leading the way. The concrete ceiling hung low, and the walls were painted battleship gray. A single corridor went left and right, doors lining the sides like jail cells. Unlike a prison, however, the doors sat open.

  “Well, they certainly could have spruced up the place a little,” he muttered. “It’s almost like they didn’t know we were coming.”

  Samantha chuckled. “You’re funny today.”

  “I try.”

  Samantha pointed to a blue sign hanging over the closest door. This compartment contains 36,236 Gold Bars, 11,837,925,179 Fine Troy Oz.

  “Thirty-six thousand bars in that one room alone!”

  Tanner walked over and pushed the door the rest of the way open. Inside was a mini-vault measuring ten feet on a side. Heavy shelves had been erected from floor to ceiling along both walls, but other than a few cardboard boxes, nothing remained.

  Samantha inched past him and slid one of the boxes toward her.

  Empty.

  As she stepped back, her boot crunched on broken glass. She squatted down and studied a small aqua-colored vial that had broken on the concrete floor. Whatever had been inside had evaporated long ago, but she picked up the blue rubber stopper and read its label.

  Morphine, 10 mg/mL, 100 mL.

  She held it up for Tanner to see.

  “They kept drugs in here.”

  “Rumor was they kept a lot of things in here.”

  She set the stopper aside and straightened up.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Aliens, for one.”

  “Aliens? You’re joking.”

  He shrugged. “Just what I heard.”

  “What else?”

  “Hoffa’s body.”

  “What’s a Hoffa?”

  “Not what. Who. President of the Teamsters.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What’s a teamster?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Come on. Let’s see if there’s anything left.”

  They stepped out of the narrow room and continued their exploration. The next room had shelves similar to the first, but they were marred by drag marks. Something heavy had been pulled across them.

  “Told you. No gold.”

  Undeterred, Tanner moved to the next room. And then the next. Each had been cleared of its valuables.

  “I just don’t get it,” he muttered.

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Taking all this gold would’ve required a small army. Plus, they’d have needed heavy trucks to carry it away.”

  “Maybe the military stole it.”

  “Did you see the front lawn? Lots of our men in green died out there trying to keep it safe. I can’t imagine they decided to simply take it for themselves.”

  Samantha wandered over to another of the doors. The interior of the room was different in that no shelves lined the walls. Instead, there were thick scrape marks on the floor, as well as a few handfuls of packing straw.

  “What do you think they kept in here?”

  “Mummies, maybe?”

  She turned with a startled look, but when she saw him smiling, offered a friendly pat to his shoulder.

  “Yeah, right. Probably one of those big carsofaguses.” Samantha moved on to the next room, still chuckling about the possibility of mummies being buried at Fort Knox. “Next, you’ll be telling me that—” She stopped in mid-sentence as she stared into the room.

  Tanner glanced over at her. “What is it?”

  “Come take a look.”

  He hurried over to find an open metal hatch on the floor in the center of a small room. It resembled something that might be found on a submarine.

  Curious, they both stepped closer to get a better look. The hatch led down to what must have been a lower level, but water now filled it to the brim.

  “Why’s it filled with water?” she asked, squatting down and dipping her fingers into it.

  “They must have flooded it.”

  “To keep people from getting the treasure?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the system automatically fired when it detected an intruder. Either way,” he said, splashing a little water onto her, “it’s all wet now.”

  Samantha didn’t complain about the playful splash. She was too busy th
inking about what the water might mean.

  “If what you’re saying is right, there could still be something down there. Something valuable.”

  “Problem is neither of us happens to be a fish.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least take a look?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. A quick look would at least tell them if there was even a puzzle worth solving.

  “All right. How long can you hold your breath?”

  “Me!”

  “It was your idea.”

  She looked down at the dark water.

  “Well, yeah, but since I came up with the idea, shouldn’t you be the one to do it? It only seems fair.”

  “You’re afraid you’ll come out looking like a wet cat.”

  “No. I’m afraid, I’ll be drowned by a slimy sea monster with tentacles and big black fangs.”

  “Fine,” he said, standing up and pulling off his shirt and boots. “But next time you get to be the one to get wet.”

  “Sure thing. The next time we’re exploring a gold vault and find a chamber filled with water, I’ll go in. You have my word.” She held up her hand as if making a solemn pledge.

  Tanner sat down on the edge of the hatch and let his legs dip into the water. He swished them around until he made contact with something metal.

  “Aha.”

  “What?”

  “A ladder.” Holding onto it, he lowered himself into the water until it was up to his neck.

  “Don’t go too deep, okay?”

  “Just taking a peek.”

  Tanner took a breath and dropped under the water. With one hand securely gripping the ladder, he slowly turned in place. It was a hallway of some sort. The little bit of light coming in from above was enough to see that much, but little more. Swimming into utter darkness in a chamber filled with water struck him as a bit worse than foolhardy.

  He pushed back up through the surface.

  “Well?” she said excitedly.

  “Waterproof my flashlight with one of those sandwich bags we took from Gran’s.”

  Samantha hurried over to his pack and retrieved a plastic bag. She placed the flashlight inside, rolled it up, and taped the whole thing together.

  As she was handing it to him, she suddenly shrieked and jumped back.