The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse

by Keith T Jenkins

  Every time the bus touched a cell tower or Wi-Fi signal, there was updating. It downloaded updates of those, along with star charts, solar patterns, and more. It had photographs of almost every mile of highways and horizons, from all kinds of angles. There is a small camera assembly on top watching the sky every time we drive at night, and imaging horizons when driving by day.

  “It is constantly looking where we go, computing based on what the stars and horizons tell us about our location, and it logs it all, just in case we ask.”

  “So, how do we ask, and what does it say?”

  He taps the screen, typing into the computer helps, “coach needs service,” giving a moment for it to update the screen, and soon, there is a route to a service facility and they are on their way. Actually, there are three choices within a day’s drive, but Mark chooses the closest one.

  With the Suburban following close behind, they begin following the map in the bus. In a little over an hour, they are facing a cement wall, part of an entry to a tunnel through a mountain – or at least a very steep hillside. As they approach, there is a wall on each side, funneling the traffic into the tunnel, and they would be funneled into the tunnel, if there actually was any traffic. As they pull up, the coach maps say that the entrance is on the left, and so, Mark points it in that direction. As the bus gets within a dozen feet or so, the computer lights up with a one-word question: “Enter?” There are buttons on the screen for “Yes” and “No.” They choose “Yes.” A huge portion of the wall begins to recess back into the hillside, separate to the sides, leaving a concrete lintel fifteen feet above and seven feet tall, to stay the earth.

  As the wall moves to the right and the left, the lights come on inside, first in the front, and then in the back. It is a cavernous place, and in the dim lights, Mark sees people scurrying. They seem to be running from the light, or maybe they don’t want any company. Either way, Mark pulls the motorcoach in slowly, and the Suburban follows to the right. Once both vehicles are inside, a red light to the right begins flashing, slowly, and a number panel begins to count down from five. In five seconds, four, three, two, one, “BEEEP,” a claxon sounds for the attention of all, the doors begin to close, slowly, steadily, and surely, with a whumph of quiet finality which echoes through the cavern.

  Mark picks up the microphone that is normally used by a tour coordinator and, flipping a switch on the control panel to his left, he keys the mic, saying, “We are not here to hurt you. We are here to service and repair our motorcoach. We can be on our way in a few days, and we can share some resources with you. Are you stuck in here? Would you rather take one of these buses out of here? I can help you do that.”

  Whether it was the offer to share, or the opportunity to leave, Mark and the gang do not know, but in a minute – maybe half a minute – people begin to appear. It also becomes apparent that the place has more than a couple of buses to offer. Mark was unaware of how many more buses may be at this place, when they came, only that these places exist. It was all part of his protective training long ago, and he remembered it all, very well.

  There are four more coaches in this place, and two of them are articulated buses, meaning that they have two carriages bound together with a walkway between them, surrounded by a folding rubber-ish surround, rather like an accordion. The rubber-ish surrounds are made from Kevlar, interwoven with titanium, in a looser weave for flexibility, layered over by synthetic rubber, and loaded with the same nanites, but with a slightly different program.

  The articulated motorcoaches are almost seventy feet long, still double-deckers, and a much more complex design, intended to wait out whatever attacks may befall the nation, while the President is in transit within.

  If POTUS had been on board, and an overt national attack took place, the smaller buses were preprogrammed to find the nearest service center for transition to a larger bus, even for a convoy to be established as a mobile protection and command fleet. He could literally run the nation from a caravan of buses, if that became his goal.

  There are introductions all around – Janet, Skipper, Teague, Boot, and a few that are unremembered, wandering around, looking at the new people in the cave. They had wandered in, finding refuge through a drain tunnel that was designed to make certain that water or waste would not accumulate inside. The drain line ran nearly a mile to the other side of the hill, into a creek, almost undetectable to the human eye. But these humans found it as they were hiding from other humans who were less than kind. Realizing that their newfound lair may be discovered, they had gone out a few days later and arranged an avalanche that would fully hide the opening. It worked well, and no one ever bothered them, until today.

  Today though, they are not really being bothered. Today, whether they know it or not, they are given an opportunity for a life. Mark has the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, and he has no compunctions about sharing. He lets them know that he can start and run the buses, as well as a few of the things they can do, “if we all want to be friendly.” Otherwise, they can be guarded by a couple of armed folks, while Mark services the coach, picks out another ride, and they get on their merry way, leaving the others as they found them. They take a vote, and Mark offers details, enough details anyway, to where the cave dwellers decide to become part of the bus people.

  Tossing his rifle to Reggie, Mark shakes hands with everyone, saying, “Great! Let’s get to work.”

  He slowly maneuvers the mighty beast to the back of the garage, resting the tires in the proper slots on the floor, and he shuts it down. Exiting the bus, he goes to the mechanics’ station, entering a code to switch it on. Machines everywhere begin whirring and spinning, just a little to check their status, moving into position of “Ready” to do their jobs.

  Mark strokes a few keys, punching up the help screen whenever needed, and in a few minutes, there are six jacks lifting the bus so the tires come completely off the floor. Once the tires are up, a collection of robotic arms extend to each of the wheels – all at once – with wrenches snapping into place, spinning to remove the lug nuts of every wheel. In about two minutes there are large hands removing each wheel, carrying them to a conveyor, where each wheel is placed on a station that removes the tire from the rim, discarding it, replacing it with a new one.

  While the tires are being changed on the first coach, Mark and the rest examine the condition of the wheels on the others. They look pretty good, having been put on new, kept indoors, free of sunlight and chemical exposure outside. One less worry.

  “Happy Hallelujah Day,” says Boot, wandering onto the scene behind Mark and Teague. “Isn’t it the most gloiousest?” Mark asks what that means, but Teague only shrugs, letting him know that it is Boot’s regular greeting in the morning.

  “Every day is Hallelujah Day, don’tcha think?” says Boot.

  Boot is watching every move Mark makes, and every button he pushes, like a kid watches his dad do magic with the car. He seems to have no idea what is going on, and there appears to be no danger of him being able to do any of it, but he watches in excited enthusiasm anyway. He is medium height and a little lanky, he’s soft around the edges. He is animated in his motions, sometimes spinning left to go right, and almost always starting his walk with a brief jump. He doesn’t actually reach altitude, but he bobs a little when he moves. He’s twenty something, but he’s a kid.

  As one wheel is done, another moves into its place, until all eight tires are new, balanced and back where they belong. While the tires are off the bus, the system examines each brake assembly and determines they need new pads and rotors as well, auto-loading those from a hidden inventory. Wheels, brakes, and tires done, Mark grabs the giant torque wrench and double-checks the tightness of the nuts, manually. He had worked in a tire shop as a kid, and knows that the tires have to be double-checked. Back in the day, they had to go on a 30 mile test-drive whenever a tire was changed. That’s not an option today. He puts the wrench on each nut, pulling it up as hard as he can, ‘til it clicks once.


  There is a Danzig symbol of a flying stag on the front which, when lifted by hand, reveals a port that can be connected to the garage computer. Mark plugs that in, turns on the bus, sets the diagnostics for the computer, and in about two minutes, the computer reports everything that the bus needs.

  In the next thirty minutes, the engine will receive an oil change and new filter, the transmission will get a flush, a new filter, and fluid as well, and four gallons of additional nanites will be added to the surface maintenance systems, and activated. The nanites are poured into a nozzle behind the Danzig symbol, and look like mercury, a shiny, single surfaced, metal liquid. When put in the primary container, they migrate to whichever maintenance system needs them most, and are programed as they arrive to do their specific jobs. There are a few lights and lamps that have to be replaced, though that will be done manually, and finally, it is washed in a bay at the side of the shop.

  A series of brushes, soft, spinning brushes, move over the entire motorcoach, with water being added to the brushes as they go, soap suds floating as the brushes flow. Inside a box of plastic curtains, the scrubbing takes place, with mechanical arms visible through the haze of the skin, moving up and down, covering the curtains with foam. After the scrub, the spray of the bus and the walls begins, and in the final rinse of it all, the gurgle of the drain lets them know it is time to see the shiny beast, ready for the road. It is one big, beautiful, magnificently bold looking, brand new in appearance, fully reglazed beast.

  There used to be a crew that worked here, caring for the buses, keeping them clean and stocked, but that changed with the new situation. When the arrivals were reported, the def-con setting was changed, the President was not present or in the fleet, and the closets were locked down. All the employees probably realized that they were not getting any goods, left for their families, and never got back.

  The cave dwellers were a little more determined, and managed to break into some of the food stores, at least the forward stores. They tried to do this with in the containment area, with a pick and a tire tool, but got no joy. The next day, after everyone was up, the forward stores were discovered open, and when asked about it, Boot just says, “Magic!” And that was enough to keep them alive ‘til now. The forward stores were about six months from running out, so they would have had to leave in a while anyway, or open their backdoor and start hunting.

  Boot had already started tinkering with the tech and discovered that he could get into the back end of everything, but hadn’t seen the need ‘til now. With the added company, and the promise of a departure, he decides to open the greater vault as well. He goes with Mark and Teague, looking at the doors, with their dents and dings, having been violenced, and he puts his hand on the access screen beside the door, causing the doors to open slowly. There is a whump and a whoosh, followed by a slow buzzing whir, revealing a supply of stores that would feed a group of fifty for another twenty years if needed. But, they don’t have fifty, and, unbeknownst to Mark and the gang, twenty years is not on the table. They listen as he tells them what it takes to open the storage, and with very little thought, they are in. Mark wants to know more about Boot.

  All of the coaches will be put through the entire process, the fuels and fluids will be topped off, Oxy7Z will be added to the fuels, and extra fluids will be put in storage where the luggage compartments used to be. All buses are ready, a destination is plotted in the Nav systems, the larders are stocked, and they are prayed up for the journey. Rita sees to that.

  In a moment of camaraderie, Teague tells Mark that Boot is “different.” In more detail he explains, “He’s not actually ‘slow’ per se, but his brain works in ways I don’t get. The only one who really seemed to know what is going on inside of him was our dad.”

  “SpyDerMen,” says Boot.

  “Yeah, Boot! SpyDerMen.”

  “What’s he mean by that?”

  “Dad was SpyDerMen,” says Boot.

  “Dad was a hacker for the government, but he got locked up for doing a Snowden,” says Teague. “There was some sort of hideous money scandal regarding a campaign, and he let the cat out of the bag. He belonged to a hacker group called the SpyDerMen.”

  “Yeah,” says Boot. “With a ‘y,’ a big ‘s,’ big ‘d,’ big ‘m.’ SpyDerMen.”

  “He had named the collective SpyDerMen because they could write code that would allow them to spider into almost anything,” says Teague.

  “Anything!” says Boot, with certainty, and a little pride.

  “Boot seemed to pick up a thing or two from Dad, though, ‘cause he has apparently gotten us into everything we needed here. Sometimes he wouldn’t help us get into something though, saying we don’t need it.” He points to the rear, saying, “There is what says it is an armoury, but he won’t open it.”

  “We’ll need in before we go,” says Mark.

  Boot spins about to the left, turns off to the right, places his hand on the keypad for the door to the armoury, then “blip-blop-bloop” – it opens.

  “How’d you do that?” asks Mark.

  “Boots gots skills!” he says with a little pride, head high, and a smiling face. “Boot also gots names and passwords.”

  “Pretty cool, Boot,” says Mark, patting his shoulder.

  “Some people say that Dad left a code behind, spidered into the whole of the government before he got snatched, but I think it is just a paranoid delusion of those in power.”

  “There is some of that, to be sure,” says Mark in reply.

  “Boot do! Boot go! Dad gave it to me.”

  “What did your dad give you, Boot?” asks Mark.

  “He gave me the keys.”

  “He thinks he knows how to get into everything,” says Teague. “But sometimes it seems that his engine doesn’t fire on all cylinders.”

  “Wrong engine!” says Boot. “Boot not broke. My engine is different, thassssalllll,” he says with a bit of a sing-song in his voice. “Dad says I have a nine core rotary engine – no cylinders!” He smiles, bobs, spins and walks around Teague and Mark.

  “Could be true,” says Mark. “He got you guys all the food you need, and he got us into the guns!”

  “Gotza getza names and passwords. Once you got those . . . damn,” he says, leaning back with his arms sweeping in arches up and to the outside. Boot smiles and Mark nods. “Dad says to me, ‘needs be names is always SpyDerMen, and the needs be has superpassword times four.”

  “What’s superpassword?” asks Mark.

  “Shhhh,” says Boot, looking around as if trying to see if someone is listening. “Can’t tell you,” he whispers. “Dad said I had to know.”

  “Does it work on everything?” asks Mark.

  “Everything government in the world,” says Teague.

  “You mean American; right?” asks Mark.

  “Shhhh, no!” says Boot. “Everything government, anywhere, everywhere.”

  After almost a week in the facility, they have all the buses outfitted and ready to go. When the whole gang is mounted up and running, Mark presses a couple of keys on the master mechanic’s station and the exit doors open slowly. The cement panels slide gracefully into the room, then separate to the right and left, and as the panels separate, there is a low rumble at a loud volume, which Mark recognizes as the roar of a flock of Harley’s going by. This was not a matter of great timing. The bulk of the bikers have already passed, but the last few see the walls moving and slow to see what’s going on. Each of those ahead of them sees them turn in their rearview mirrors, turning around somewhere within the next mile or so. In a few minutes, the entire gang is headed back toward the caravan.

  There are twenty riders, twelve with passengers, two trikes, and one bike has a sidecar. The bus drivers have been instructed to pull out onto the road and head left, through the tunnel. Mark is backing his coach out as the others begin to pull forward from the cavern, seeing a few of the bikes circling back. Two of the bikes get inside the service center between Mark’s coach
and the next one coming out, and two more turn in after the last coach is gone, but with the departure of the coaches the logical automated process is the closing of the doors.

  As the doors close, one of the riders theorizes that the presence of a bike in the way may keep the door from closing, so he hammers his brakes, sliding the bike in a controlled – sort of – stop against the sliding door. He gets off and stands outside the door, in the road, shouting that the door can’t close now. He is elated that they have access to something that must be amazing. The doors glide toward one another, pushing the bike to the center as they go. When the doors stop against the bike, after crushing the faring, they open again by a couple of feet. A red scanning grid of lights illuminate the area, waving up and down, left and right, as if measuring something. From a small inverted manhole in the ceiling extends a small gun; about seven feet long, but only a foot tall, with two barrels, on a high-speed turret. It starts out pointing straight down, but quickly rises to the appropriate angle, rotating around to face the door, all within a half a second, and then both barrels blast the bike, slamming it out the door, bouncing it against the biker outside with enough force to smash him against the far wall of the roadway. He lay under the weight of the bike, unable to do more than bleed and sob.

  Luckily, for those few people on the inside, the stores are open and everything is functional, because, unless they can figure out how to run the security, they will live out their lives inside this cave. Four bikes, four men and three women; things could be weird. Of course, with the tools in this place, they could completely rebuild their bikes, though they can’t drive very far.

  Fifteen bikes swarm about as the coaches get down the road, though most of them are just getting turned around, preparing to pursue the buses. Mark calls to the second bus, telling Reggie, “Pull up beside me, take the whole left lane. Keep it at forty mile per hour.” Comming back to the second bus, he tells Teague, “Put the nose of that bus right up next to the rear of these buses, and Teague gives a “roger.”