by D. J. Molles
Tango was a good working dog and had been Schutzhund trained since Lee had bought him four years ago from a breeder in Germany. He was trained mainly to defend Lee or attack a specific person upon Lee’s command. Recently, Lee had been training Tango to protect an item or a different person on command. Though children and Schutzhund-trained dogs weren’t usually a great mix, Lee had found that Tango was protective of children and was noticeably gentler around them.
Lee wondered whether, if Tango attacked a person infected with FURY, he would become infected. How contagious was the plague? If it were a bacterium, it could presumably transfer from person to person from something as simple as a touch.
How many people had already been infected?
What was going on up there?
Lee had no family to worry about. His father had died from a heart attack when he was in high school, and his mother had died in an automobile accident while he was in Iraq in 2004. He had girlfriends off and on, but never anything serious.
He thought at length about his last girlfriend, Deana. He wondered if she was still alive or whether she had found her way to a shelter. It wasn’t that he planned on finding her during the end of the world, but she had been a genuinely good person, and he hoped she was okay, wherever she was. They had split on good terms in March. Since then, aside from casual encounters, Lee hadn’t been with anybody meaningful.
He pushed her out of his mind. There was nothing he could do for her now.
Was this acceptance?
* * *
It was July 15 when Lee woke up and finally admitted to himself that Frank was not going to call. There was no conceivable technical problem that could last for nearly a week and a half and not be repaired. If Frank needed to contact them, he would have been able to do it by now. He would have told them to stand down by now if they were not needed.
After realizing this, Lee stayed in his bed for the first half of the day. He didn’t get up to take a leak or to eat or drink until almost 1500 hours, when Tango was restlessly growling at the side of the bed. Although Tango could have easily walked into the other room and relieved himself, a good Schutzhund-trained dog did nothing without the consent of his master.
Lee accompanied him to the back room to do his business and realized he had to use the restroom himself. He threw Tango’s soiled pads in the toilet and relieved himself before flushing the entire package.
The only easy day was yesterday, because yesterday was done. Time to man up. Lee exercised. He wasn’t excited about being thrust into a dying world and watching civilization crumble—God, that sounded crazy—but he did feel a sense of urgency now. He didn’t know what lay beyond the sealed doors of his bunker. He wanted to be in the best shape of his life. He wanted to give himself the best chance at survival.
Yes, this was really happening.
How bad it had become topside was anyone’s guess, but the fact that he had not received any sort of communication meant only one very bad thing: The United States government no longer existed.
* * *
It was July 18, fifteen days until he was on the move.
Lee could no longer stand it. He had had enough of lounging around and entertaining himself. He had gone through almost every film, wasn’t interested in any of the books that remained, and had beaten all of the video games (except one that was based in a postapocalyptic world, which Lee found too disconcerting to play).
He needed to do something. He opened the door to a large closet behind his couch and flipped on the light. The fluorescent bulb flickered then glowed brightly, illuminating several wire racks of equipment. Lee always thought he could have spent the rest of his career as the quartermaster of a base—there was nothing he loved more than the sight of neat racks of equipment.
From the bottom of the closet he yanked out a very large coyote-tan backpack and tossed it on the floor. The pack would hold everything he would need. Fully stuffed, it would weigh more than a hundred pounds. There was a smaller pack that he also removed and tossed next to the large one. It was also coyote tan, as Lee was a firm believer in light colors being the best camouflage. Dark colors attracted the eye. Even in woodland or swamp environments, desert colors were still good. And since Lee would potentially need to work in several different types of terrain, most of his gear was coyote tan.
The Coordinators had spent the largest amount of their full year and a half of training with the Green Berets, due to the similarity of their missions. The large and small backpacks were a by-product of his association with the Green Berets.
The large pack, or main pack, would hold most of the items he would need on the trip. Various medical supplies, computer equipment, equipment for the maintenance of weapons, food, water, clothing, his sleeping bag and bivy sack, etc. The smaller pack was known as the “go-to-hell pack” and would never leave his side. Because the main pack would be so heavy, it was not realistic to become involved in any sort of tactical engagement while wearing it. If shit hit the fan, the main pack was dropped and Lee would finish the engagement wearing only his go-to-hell pack, which contained the basics: food and water for a few days, extra magazines for his weapons, very basic first-aid supplies, and a single change of clothes.
Lee pulled out an M4 assault rifle with an M203 grenade launcher attached to the Picatinny rails under the barrel. He had DuraCoated the entire rifle in splotchy tans and light greens. He laid this on the ground. Underneath it he placed thirteen empty thirty-round magazines. The magazines were polymer rather than the usual aluminum “box magazines.” The advantage was that the polymer magazines fed more reliably and were “true thirty-round magazines.” Aluminum box magazines could be loaded with thirty rounds, but it was not advisable, as they often jammed when fully loaded, but the polymer magazines could hold all thirty rounds with a little room to spare.
Next to the M4 and his magazines, he placed a green ammo can containing a thousand rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. He also had a case of 40mm grenades. He pulled out another smaller ammo can that contained a thousand rounds of .45 pistol ammunition. He pulled out a Heckler & Koch MK23 USSOCOM and placed it next to the smaller ammo can.
While he personally preferred the Glock platform for pistols, Lee chose the H&K MK23 for the combination of its detachable suppressor and the stopping power of its .45 caliber round.
Bring plenty of ammunition that packs a stopping punch, Frank had said.
He would also carry the smaller Glock 19 as a backup, which was a 9mm. He had a box of a hundred cartridges for the 9mm, as he intended to only load the three magazines that went with it. The 9mm was smaller and less powerful, but it was excellent as an urban survival weapon, because 9mm ammunition could be found everywhere and in significant quantities.
Left on the shelf was a wooden case containing fragmentation grenades. He would leave those until he was ready to load up and move out. From the racks he pulled down a pair of satellite phones, large things that looked like cell phones did in the early nineties. He was unsure how long these satellite-reliant items would last, as it was likely that the satellites they used would fall out of orbit without human intervention. He would take them anyway.
He also had a handheld GPS device for land navigation. This he set aside next to his go-to-hell pack. That device was his bread and butter, the lifeblood of his mission. Without that GPS device, he was just another survivor.
He pulled out a folded pair of MultiCam combat pants and shirt. He liked the shirt and pants for the built-in elbow- and kneepads, and for the zippered flap on the ass of the pants for taking a shit without having to be caught, literally, with his pants down. He preferred MultiCam as a pattern. Though other more modern camouflages had been touted as superior, he found that MultiCam was effective in almost any environment, while the others stood out in certain places or were generally too dark.
He set these off to the side. He would wear them when he left.
He had two extra sets of each that he would pack, one in his main bag and one in
his go-to-hell pack. He would also carry some civilian clothing: a pair of khakis, a pair of jeans, a few polo shirts, and a fleece for colder weather. For extreme cold he had a tan Gore-Tex jacket that was rated for–32 degrees. Overkill for North Carolina, but better slightly warm than freezing cold.
The civilian clothing was for integration with “Indigenous Personnel,” which in this case would be American citizens. Should he ever need to hide in plain sight, he would be wearing his civvies.
Inside the closet he pulled out a large charging board with four slots for a radio to be locked in and recharged. He plugged this into an outlet in the closet. He slapped rechargeable batteries in four VHF radios and filled the slots on the charging board. Even without the use of repeaters, the VHF radios had a range of several miles over most terrain. He would pack all four, along with the charging board. He set aside a prepackaged medical aid kit that had everything one would need for minor surgery and life-saving efforts on himself or a third party. Lee was a trained combat medic, as were all of the Coordinators. The medical kit would be attached with clips to the webbing on the back of his main pack.
The remainder of the closet space was taken up by cases of water and Meals, Ready-to-Eat. He would leave those until he needed to pack them when he was preparing to leave.
He stood back from his array of gear. He didn’t feel good looking at it anymore. Every day for the last two weeks, he had woken up and thought to himself that none of it was real. He would not believe it until he looked at the calendar and saw that it was, in fact, far past July 3.
Though he had long since abandoned the thought that Frank would call, he allowed himself to believe that it could not possibly be that bad outside, that his mission would not be difficult, that there must be some remnant of the US government still operating but unable to make contact with him or—quite possibly—unaware that he and his teammates even existed. He clung to the belief that everything would be made right in the end.
Solitude began to take its toll.
One of the burning questions for all of the Coordinators during their training phases was why only one Coordinator per bunker? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a team in each bunker at the very least? They mumbled about it amongst themselves, and eventually their handlers got wind of it.
The answer that they received was an old saying, smarmily quoted.
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
In their private discussions, the newly christened members of Project Hometown suspected that the motivations for having only one per bunker were probably more politically and fiscally motivated. State-of-the-art bunkers didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Top-of-the-line hardware was not simply donated by defense contractors. Everything cost money, and if it cost money, it had to be approved. And there wasn’t a soul in the US government who was going to stand in front of Congress and declare that they had a plan for the eventual downfall of the country.
But somewhere along the line, someone decided it needed to happen anyway. So how do you get money without having to explain it? You “reallocate resources” from other earmarked budget items, and you funnel them into your special project. And you never take enough to raise a red flag.
And apparently that magic number was enough to pay for forty-eight of them.
After arranging his gear outside of the closet, he wandered around his bunker, thinking calm thoughts. He thought a lot about Deana. He knew he was idealizing her, remembering her as someone more perfect than she was. It was his loneliness, being stuck in The Hole for so long that was causing him to think this way, to cling to memories of the last, most meaningful human interaction he’d had.
He stood for a long moment, leaning his head against the wall, and tried to remember details about her. Pretended for a moment she was in the room with him. He wanted her to be there. He thought of how her pillow smelled after she’d slept next to him, how the small of her back felt through the fabric of the dress she’d worn on New Year’s Eve. He couldn’t even remember the color of the dress, but he could remember how she’d felt in it. And her kiss tasted like cherry lip gloss and champagne.
He pulled himself off the wall and knelt down to his array of gear. He grabbed one of the M4 magazines and opened the green ammo can containing the 5.56mm ammunition. The smell of gun oil, brass, and the musty metal container ripped thoughts of Deana far away. He loaded the magazine with thirty rounds, then the next, and the next, until all thirteen were filled. Then he started on the pistol magazines.
Later that night, he woke up with tears in his eyes and a sinking feeling in his stomach, though he couldn’t remember what he had dreamed to make him feel that way. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
* * *
On July 19 he packed everything. His magazines were stashed in his chest rig, his MK23 was snug in a drop-leg holster, the Glock 19 cradled in a hidden compartment of his go-to-hell pack. He had enough water and food in his main pack to last a week. He estimated his main pack at about eighty pounds, his go-to-hell pack at about thirty pounds. It was a lot of weight for one man to carry, but he was trained to do it over rough terrain for miles on end.
He was 100 percent ready. He paced his bunker, thinking everything through.
Eventually, Lee returned to the closet and unpacked everything.
* * *
He was listening to music a lot. It helped him cope with the sense of loneliness. Often he thought he was the last person in the world. He wondered if he would find a soul still alive outside. He thought that by the time he got to the surface, everyone would be dead, and he would be the only human being left. Alone for the rest of his miserable life.
Sometimes he would think he heard a noise somewhere in the bunker. The noises appeared furtive in nature and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Lee got in the habit of keeping his MK23 strapped to his leg… just in case. Theoretically, there was no way anyone or anything could get inside his bunker. He knew that if he was hearing anything at all, it was a perfectly explainable sound.
More likely, his mind was playing tricks. Solitary confinement. That’s what this was beginning to feel like. For a length of time he considered the possibility that he was the subject of a secret government experiment and that his bunker was bristling with cameras and microphones. Somewhere nearby, a team of scientists watched him with intense interest and catalogued how often he brushed his teeth.
He began talking to Tango at length. About Deana, about the deaths of his mother and father, which were both long before Tango was born, so obviously he wouldn’t remember. Sometimes they would talk about pop culture or politics. Tango never replied, of course, but between the music in the background and his own voice, Lee sometimes felt like he wasn’t alone.
He was a survivor in a life raft, adrift in a world covered by endless oceans.
* * *
It was July 23. A week and a half out.
Lee sat on the couch with the chessboard before him on the coffee table, the pieces in frozen battle, scattered about the board, an invisible strategy forming. Dead soldiers were set to the side of the board, white on the left, black on the right. Across from Lee, Tango sat and panted on his black chess pieces. Lee had been thinking for a few minutes now, but Tango was a patient adversary.
“You think you got me, but I’m only luring you into my trap.” Lee looked at Tango as though he expected a pithy response. Finally he sighed. “You know, the whole sphinx routine is getting old. Not talking shit doesn’t make you the better man; it just makes you a quiet loser.”
Lee shuffled his knight in its L-shaped move and pushed a black bishop out of the way with it. He removed the bishop from the board and set it to the right with the rest of its fallen comrades.
“Yeah.” Lee nodded. “What do you think about that?”
Tango sniffed at his king, still safely ensconced behind a row of pawns, then licked it.
“A ballsy move on your part, Tango. But I don’t know if it’s going to pay off in
the long run.” Lee eyed the board for a moment and then moved a black rook into a position that forced Lee’s white knight to run back from whence he came. After he moved the piece, Lee hissed through his teeth. “Ouch. You got me. No, seriously. You’re getting better at this. I mean, what’s the score? Two to three? Two to two? I know I’ve won twice. You might be smarter than me.”
Tango rested his chops on the table and huffed, obviously bored with chess. The force of the huff knocked the black king over.
“Oh.” Lee sat back on the couch. “It’s like that, is it? I’m not a worthy opponent, so you’re just not going to bother with playing me? God, you can be so conceited sometimes.”
He reached forward and rubbed Tango on the head to let him know it was all in good fun. Tango looked pleased and banged his tail on the ground. Lee sat back on the couch and fiddled with the retention strap on his drop-leg holster. His eyes wandered the room and finally came to rest on the door.
The locked and sealed door to the outside world. Well, actually to the basement of his house. But still… it was freedom. He wanted to open that door.
Strange.
He hadn’t thought of that before. After so many hours trapped down here, he had never even considered violating the protocols and leaving his bunker early. After all, if there was no US government, then there was no one to give a shit if he broke some protocols. If there was a US government, then there was no reason for him to be shut up down here for the next week and a half. It made sense.
“That”—he pointed at Tango, garnering a look of confusion—“is dangerous thinking.”
He stood up and walked to the door, mumbling to himself. “Protocols are meant to protect you. The rules are there to guide you when you are not thinking clearly, such as if you have been in a sunless underground bunker for the past month. Like me. I am not thinking clearly.”
