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Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com
Copyright ©2007 by Jonathan Lowe
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A HELPING HAND
(originally published in Easyrider magazine)
It happened fast. Josh Alford's new Heritage Softtail had just topped 60 MPH on the Old Sonoita Highway south of Tucson when a stray cow decided to cross the road fifty yards ahead. Hearing the intermittent slide of wheels on dirt, the huge spotted heifer stopped in the middle of the narrow span and turned toward the approaching motorcycle. With a look of terror it tried to bolt forward, but not fast enough to prevent the left crash bar of the Harley from swiping its rear flank. Braying in pain, its muscle pulled and gashed, the animal hobbled headlong into the low thickets of creosote which had been its destination.
For the motorcycle's part, the encounter had destroyed any final attempt at tracking, causing a total loss of stability. So at the end of a forty yard stretch of tire tracks—and after two distinct slidings and corrections—the tracks became a swath of dirt, as if a plow had gone through. A furrow dug by the protruding chrome along the center of the disturbance pointed like an arrow toward the wreck at the base of a palo verde tree beyond. There, beside the twisted front end of the bike, lay Josh, face down, unmoving. The Harley's engine grunted twice more and died as silence returned to the desert.
After a moment there was a twitch in Josh's left hand. Fingers fingered the air. Finally his head turned and his eyes opened to stare back at the place where the cow had vanished.
Not a sign of movement, or even a solitary moo of protest or pain. The only clue to the incident was that fishtailing track he'd made in braking down to thirty, and the sick wobble and slide as he went down after contact. The damned beast had appeared suddenly, and just as suddenly disappeared, probably to lick its leg wound or chew its cud. Maybe Josh was already forgotten.
He sat up, and felt himself. Nothing seemed broken. Yet if he'd gone forward another five feet, and hadn't braked, the story might have been different. The palo verde might have ended him. As it was, he was lucky. A sandy side wash balanced a ledger that his foolhardy recklessness weighted on the other side.
He cursed and stood to his feet, surveying his downed bike at last. Only four hours ago it had been in the showroom as pretty as a magazine layout. Now, with just under a hundred miles on the odometer, and heaps of dirt glutting its once shiny engine fins, it had a twisted fender, a collapsed crash bar, and a bent clutch lever. What would Alison say? he wondered. Probably the same things she already had, except this time she'd have her mother join in the chorus ... a dirge or ditty of I-told-you-sos. What a fool to ride it down a dirt road at such speed.
He knelt beside the bike and tried to lift it, but couldn't. He strained, this time succeeding in lifting it two inches off the ground. Suddenly he remembered something the salesman had muttered about its weight versus his own: “One thing, partner,” the man had almost whispered after the deal was done. “You ain't big, and this bike, it's, well, heavy. So if God forbid you drop it out in the yard or somethin', you may need some help gettin’ it up."
Heavy? He had sensed that, especially at low speed. It was, after all, a big bike for a little guy. But it was a beauty, and could hit a hundred twenty on the highway with a ride that bellowed freedom like an iron stallion. Enough power to stay ahead of those tailgaters who'd ridden the bumper of his smoking Honda all the way to his retail job selling evaporative coolers while his wife pecked and his mother-in-law plain old henpecked. Enough power to weave around those Zeros, as he called them ... those impatient fools with zero tolerance on their way to some single's bar or ball game.
The enemy.
He looked both ways along Old Sonoita highway, and frowned. This old dirt road was good for nothing since they'd paved Highway 83 somewhere to the west. No reason for traffic to use it anymore. People in a hurry to get to Sonoita, and the cooler temps there, would use 83. It was a straighter shot. No curves and dips, and no gravel to chip your windshield. What made this a great motorcycling road for, say, a BMW GS, also made it damn foolish for his dream machine, just as it was for retirees in their lumbering Winneabagos.
A rancher, that was his best bet. He spotted a side road ahead, like a driveway beside a sign which read OPEN RANGE. After setting the gas pet cock to Off, he took his Harley's keys and set off at a brisk pace.
The narrow driveway rose up and over a hill as he walked quickly along it. Near the summit he glanced back, already half-expecting someone to be hoisting his Hog into a pickup truck with a block and tackle. Would it be stolen before he could make the first payment? He'd already had his first wreck, and Alison and her mother hadn't even figured out his can't-afford-a-baby-now excuse yet. They were still busy learning the old Honda's quirks ... like that sudden pull to the left when the brakes were applied sharply. Or how the odometer made a foreboding clicking sound now that it had turned over the big numbers ... with all those zeros staring like eyes.
He noticed the dirt drive was cleared in places at the top of the hill to reveal a paved surface beneath. Odd, he thought, a paved driveway leading from a dirt main road. He stopped and looked down at a strange round building half hidden beside a sloping hill of sand. Not a ranch house, certainly, but what? He couldn't see any doors or windows in the edifice, which was like a circular ball rising from a mound of dirt. The top half of a rectangular building was just visible beyond it. So here were two house-sized structures, covered in some kind of dull metal, half buried in the middle of nowhere. Spaceships?
He moved closed. Metal, yes. But with holes in a few places, with concrete showing in the holes. Marks like scrapes indented the metal too, in places. So only the surface was metal. Beneath was concrete, as whoever had tried to get inside had discovered. And beneath the concrete, what?
He climbed up on top of the round building from the back, where the sloping earth gave access. It was a perfect ball, half buried, and still no indication of any door or hatch. What could it—
He laughed at himself as it came to him. He even remembered reading about these sites in the paper a few years back. Sure! It was an old Titan missile base, abandoned by the military back in the mid 70's when it became obsolete. There were a dozen sites like this out in the desert surrounding Tucson, and they'd been sealed in concrete for years, their warheads long removed and dismembered at Davis-Monthan Air Force base just south of town.
He climbed down and paused, thinking he heard something. Like a click. He cocked his head, listening.
Now what?
There it was again. Distinct but distant. Was it coming from the silo?
He put his ear against the rough metallic surface.
Nothing. His imagination, most likely. He looked up and saw the frayed end of a broken cable protruding from a hole in the metal hide above him.
Then suddenly another click.
He tried to imagine what might cause such a sound. Heat expanding the metal? A fissure in the concrete? Or a ratchet pulley lifting a Heritage onto a flatbed truck?
He ran up the hill. At the summit, breathless, he looked down at the lifeless stretch of dirt road beyond. In the ditch along it he could see his beloved Hog stretched out on its side as if in pain, a still life of candy red against the gray dirt. “L
ike one'a them damned Hell's Angels ride,” Alison's mother had said at seeing the photo layout in Cycle World. He'd laughed at that, and not just because she didn't know her Harleys. Also because she didn't see the nursery which wouldn't be built until well after his payments were completed.
He walked back down for his jacket he's dropped, feeling easier now, and for good measure he put his ear once more to the metal hide of the unearthed control room. The clicking was louder this time, and followed by a humming sound as deep and resonant as a radial arm saw.
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From the top of the hill he did a slow 360 degrees, looking for ranch houses. Only sagebrush, barrel cacti, more low hills, and the distant peaks of the Santa Rita range stretched in front of him, no doubt crawling with tarantulas, Gila monsters, and Western diamondbacks. He guesstimated thirteen miles back to the nearest service station on the other side of I-10. A two or three hour hike in the approaching heat of noon, unless he could get over to 83 and hitch. Or maybe a driver would help him? Hey buddy, can you help me lift my bike—it's out by an old Titan missile site where I just heard what sounds like a missile fueling itself.
No. Better not to mention the sound in the silos. Just the cow. If he stuck with the cow, maybe the driver of that third or fourth car who saw him waving his arms like a maniac would stop, roll down the window a crack, and take pity. Otherwise, fat chance.
He thought he could see it, too ... 83 like a thin ribbon of asphalt two miles beyond the dull gray behemoth rising from the sand.
As he passed the thing he threw a rock which clanged off the top and skidded into the sand on the other side. Then he cursed when he came to the edge of the clearing, meeting a low barbed wire fence. It was almost low enough to step over and seemed long rusted, but it had enough jagged curlicues to tear into his new leather chaps. He found another rock and was in the middle of trying to separate a strand of wire from one of the posts when he heard another kind of click behind him. And he jerked round to see the muzzle of a .45 automatic staring him in the face.
"Can't read signs?” the old geezer behind the gun said.
"Signs?” he replied, his voice cracking.
The old man was in his mid-seventies, had a pained look about his permanently wrinkled forehead. He wore baggy jeans, patched in places, and a Wrangler shirt rolled up above the elbow. A stain of sweat smiled at the armpit of the arm that held the automatic.
"You heard me. Signs, like the one back there at—” The old man had turned to point back at the hill, and stopped. “Well, I'll be damned, they did it again."
"Did what?” Josh asked, casually dropping his rock.
"Or maybe it was you did it.” The .45 lifted up from the vicinity of his crotch to his face again. “You take down the chain with my sign on it?"
"What sign? Didn't see no damn sign."
The old man's crow's feet became folds of prickly skin. “Keep out sign,” he said. “Means—"
"Yeah, I know what it means,” Josh told him, feeling some anger amid his frustration. “But there was no sign, and I wrecked my bike over there, and I need help lifting it. Damn it."
The old man looked him over for five long seconds, then lowered his pistol. “Nice jacket,” he said. He stuck out his other hand, and held it out. “Name's Kyle Sommers. This is my place, now."
They shook hands. “Your place?"
"Bought it for a retirement home three years ago. Went on vacation to see my son in Florida a month ago an’ when I got back somebody had stolen my sand.” He pointed with the barrel of the .45. “Used a dump truck, the bastards, and uncovered the top of the control room. It's high grade stuff, that sand. Air Force trucked it in here back in the late sixties when they built this place. Kept the place cool as a rabbit's burrow, see."
Or a rattlesnake's, thought Josh.
"What about water and electricity?"
"Got a storage tank underground, fed by a well. And a generator too. I burn candles mostly, though. Make my own. Actually I bought two sites, and use the other one for spare parts. One's a museum, you know, and a fourth was bought by some guy from New Jersey plans to turn it into a cafe. ‘The Lame Duck,’ he's gonna call it."
"So where do you get in? There's no windows or doors."
Kyle Sommers laughed. “There's a reinforced tunnel on the other side of that hillock. My pickup's over there too."
Josh cleared his throat. “Doesn't it get ... I mean ... boring?"
"No, not really. It's a kick fixing things up. Got me a TV, books. Plenty of peace and quiet ... and security, a’ course. No chance of some punk comin’ in and holdin’ a knife to my throat. No chance at all. And if somebody like Osama drops the Big One, I guess I'll live through it, won't I? Will you?"
The old man's laugh was big and booming, and it meant he knew he'd be dying a peaceful death in his bed below tons of concrete and steel while those in Tucson and around the Air Base worried about crime and nuclear terror.
"So you're alone here, then."
It was more of a statement than a question, but Kyle nodded anyway. “Wife's in Florida with the kid. ‘Cept he's no kid anymore."
"They ever been here?"
The old man looked up from his boot. “We're not on speaking terms anymore,” he said evenly.
Josh shifted stance. “You reckon you could give me a hand with my bike? I ran off the road to miss a cow, and I can't lift it ‘cause it's pretty heavy."
Old man Sommers flexed a muscle. “Sure, I reckon I could do that. I keep fit. You wanna have a look-see at my setup first? I don't get many visitors."
The tunnel from the iron outer doorway fifty yards behind the sand hill was darker than roof tar. “Nothing to bump your head on,” Kyle reassured him. “I removed the rusted ends of the reinforcement bars, and the unnecessary fixtures."
"What did you do?” Josh asked.
"I just told you, I—"
"No, I mean what did you retire from."
"I was an engineer,” the old man explained. “A mechanical engineer.” They continued walking in the dark. “You?"
"I ... ah ... I repair air conditioners for a living."
"Oh really? Well, maybe you can help me with mine, then."
Josh's voice faltered, his white lie echoing hugely in the close dark space. “What I mean is those small units. Window units. I don't know much about industrial models. When did you put it in?"
"Recently. Didn't need it before. You'll have a look anyway, won't you?"
He said nothing as the old man opened the inner lock. A sliver of light shot out the crack and widened as the two foot-thick steel door was pushed open.
"Watch your feet,” Kyle warned.
He looked down at a metal plate which served as a bridge over the threshold. A deep crack ran along the wall all the way around the circular room. Giant springs were mounted at four points connecting the floor-platform of the room to the surrounding walls. On the platform sat an array of control consoles, two of which had operating monitors and blinking lights.
"Hey, you got it running. I expected..."
Josh paused, not knowing what he'd expected. Layers of dust twenty years old? Piles of Playboy magazines dating back to the beginning of the Cold War? He certainly hadn't expected a fully functional control room set up like the Star Trek bridge, complete with assorted buzzing and clicking sounds. He half expected Spock to enter and proclaim it fascinating.
"Amazing,” he concluded. “But that sound in the background, what it that?"
"That's the generator,” Kyle replied. “Don't like to run it too much. Uses fuel. Mostly I use the candles, like when I get up to take a piss and need to aim.” He walked around his mock bridge like Kirk giving a tour to a visiting Klingon emissary. “Those springs keep this room safe from shock waves—handle anything but a direct hit. The monitors give readouts of system functions. Temperature, humidity, that kind of thing. And silo observation."
Josh touched one of the monitor's screens. “But there ... there's a missile in t
here now."
"Just a tape for effect.” The old man flipped a switch. “See, it's a television set this time. The Price is Right ... and it was.” He laughed and flipped it again. An image of the clearing outside appeared. “Here's how I knew you were out there. Got a camera hidden, ran a cable through a fissure in the concrete below ground. It wasn't easy, believe me."
"I'll bet."
"Now, about that air conditioner ... you wanna lend me a hand? Then I'll help you with your bike.” “Great. Can I use your bathroom first, though? Have to, well, take a leak."
Old man Sommers grinned and pointed to another opening on the far side of the control room. “Watch your feet, then straight ahead twenty yards or so."
Josh stepped onto another metal plate, and over the threshold into a second tunnel. “Will I need a candle?” he called back.
Sommers didn't answer, already engrossed at his monitors.
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He made his way up the narrow tunnel toward a glimmer of light at the end. The other building, he realized. The tunnel led to the rectangular structure he'd seen half buried in sand outside. And sure enough it opened up into a bedroom of sorts, with a single bare bulb in the center of a low stone ceiling supported by heavy iron pylons running vertically every six feet or so.
The walls looked thick. Maybe they were twenty feet thick. It certainly felt cooler in here than in the control room, and the sound of the generator was almost completely absent. He walked around the bed, which was really no more than a cot, with its thin soiled mattress visible beneath a mussed sheet. On the far side of the room was the toilet, open to the room, its lid up. Not married, for sure. Beside the toilet was a shower stall, then a bookcase, a dresser with a toy gyroscope on it, and what looked like a closet. A framed 8X10 glossy photo of a shirtless young man on a Galion crawler-tractor hung on the wall over the dresser. Behind the tractor in the photo were two large cement trucks with military insignia on them, and behind these stretched the familiar sawtooth shapes of the Santa Rita mountains. He leaned closer for a better look. The man in the tractor held up one thumb and grinned. A bumper sticker atop the tractor's cowl read LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG.
Ghost Rider: Stories by Jonathan Lowe Page 1
