Precipice: V Plague Book 9 (17 page)

The thrum of
an approaching rotor made the decision for me.  Dashing across the parking
lot I slipped through the door and past the man into the darkened store. 
He pulled the door shut, the lock making a satisfyingly solid thunking sound
when it closed.  Immediately a brilliant light was shone in my eyes and I
heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked.

“I’m pretty
sure you’re an American, but now that I see you up close that uniform looks
brand new.  You’d better start convincing me, son, before my old hand
starts shaking and pulls this trigger.” 

The voice
was old west, through and through.  And it was as hard as nails.  I
didn’t think his hand would be shaking unless he wanted it to.

“Major John
Chase.  US Army, sir.”  Hey, a little courtesy doesn’t hurt,
especially when a 12 gauge is pointed at your head.  “The uniform
is
new.  Killed a few Russians at the air base and got covered in
blood.  I just got it from the BX, stole a Hummer and got the hell out of
there.”

“Didn’t see
no Humvee,” he said.

“Hit a
goddamn cow on the road into town.  Totaled it.  Had to hoof it a
couple of miles to a farmhouse where I found a truck.  Drove that on in to
town.”  I said, spreading my hands and trying a grin.

“Well, you
sure ain’t no goddamn commie,” he said. 

A moment
later the light went out and I was just as blind in the dark.  I stood
there blinking for a moment, careful not to move as I wasn’t sure if the
shotgun was still pointed at me or not.

“Thanks for
letting me in,” I said.

“Why’s them
bastards want you so bad?  There’s a whole fleet of choppers out there
looking for you.  How many’d you kill?” 

“At least eight,
maybe more.  Left one with his head split open and I’m not sure if he’s
alive or not, but I’m betting he survived and is really pissed off right about
now.” 

“Hmmm. 
OK, sounds like you got a story to tell.  Let’s get under cover
first.” 

My night
vision was coming back and even though it was dark in the store I was able to
make out shapes.  I saw him turn and head across the room.  Falling
in behind him I tried to see what the place looked like, but it was too
dark.  It smelled of leather and gun oil, and the man’s body odor as well
as stale tobacco smoke.  The only thing missing was the sharp aroma of a
good glass of whiskey and it would be just like my favorite bar back home.

We stopped
in the back corner of the room and I could see the man bend down and grab
something on the floor.  When he straightened up a trap door came with
him.  Cool air flowed out of the opening and he stepped aside and waved me
forward.

“Watch your
step,” he said.  “There’s a ladder on that side.  Straight down ten
steps.”

I almost
hesitated, not sure about heading into a tunnel with this guy, but if he wanted
to do me harm he could have left me outside.  Or blown my head off after I
came in.  Figuring if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound, I moved
to the opening in the floor.  Kneeling, I stuck a leg into the hole where
he’d indicated, my foot landing on the top rung of a wooden ladder. 

Climbing
down I was appreciative that he’d had the foresight to tell me how many steps
before reaching the bottom.  It was pitch black, but I was able to pause
on the tenth rung and step onto a poured concrete floor without any
problems.  Arms out and feet shuffling so I didn’t step in a hole or off a
ledge, I moved to the side to give him room to come down.

I heard his
shoes scrape on the ladder and climb down a few steps, then he paused and the
trap door groaned as he closed it.  There was a loud click and a string of
incandescent lights came to life.  I blinked a few times, looking around
at where I was. 

The ladder
came down into what looked like the end of a tunnel.  It was about six
feet wide and over ten feet high to the ceiling.  The floor, walls and
ceiling were smooth concrete.  Fallout shelter sprang to mind.

The tunnel
ran several yards away from the ladder, ending at a heavy vault door that
looked like it belonged in a bank.  By now the man was off the ladder and
without saying a word strode to the door, dialed in a combination and spun the
wheel to unlock.  He tugged the door open and I was impressed to see it
was four feet thick.  I followed him through and he pulled it shut and
spun a wheel on the inside to relock the massive portal.

The first
room we entered was larger than I expected, at least twenty feet on each
side.  It was of the same construction as the tunnel, but rugs softened
the floor and a sofa and two recliners were arranged so that each seat had a
view of a large flat screen TV bolted to the concrete wall.

Looking
around I saw three closed doors to my left and a modern kitchen and two more
closed doors to my right.  The whole place was surprisingly clean and dry
and comfortable feeling.  The man rested his shotgun against a side table
that held a can of beer and an overflowing ashtray before flopping into a worn
recliner.

“You’d
better have a seat and tell me what the hell is going on,” he said, pulling out
a cigarette and lighting up.

“I’d be more
talkative with a smoke,” I said. 

“Keep ‘em,”
he grunted, tossing me the pack and a lighter.  “Got about ten years worth
stashed away.”

I lit the
cigarette and gratefully inhaled before sitting down in the other
recliner.  The side table was between us and I took a moment to look him
over as I started speaking.

He was in
his late 60s, or looked to be, and seemed to still be strong.  His face
was lined like someone who had worked outside his entire life.  Long, grey
hair framed a narrow face, which surprisingly was clean-shaven.  For some
reason I expected him to either have a beard or be in dire need of a shave.

It took some
time, and another cigarette, for me to tell him my abbreviated and edited
story.  He didn’t need to know a lot of the details about everything I was
dealing with.  The important part, that the Russians wanted my ass, was
what he really cared to know about anyway.

When I was
done he stared at me for a few moments through a haze of blue smoke that was
rising from the cigarette in his hand.  Finally, he took a last drag and
crushed it out in the ashtray.  Draining his beer, he looked up and
pointed at the kitchen.

“There’s
more in the ice box if you want one.  Get me one while you’re at
it.”  He just assumed I was going for a beer.  And he was right.

Settled back
in the recliner with a cold Bud in my hand I looked at him expectantly.

“How is it
you’re still alive?”  I asked.

“I could ask
you the same thing,” he said, taking a long pull off his fresh beer.

“We have a
vaccine,” I said.

“Fuckin’
figures,” he muttered and took another drink.  “Too late as usual.”

“Excuse me?”

“I must be
immune,” he finally said after a very long silence in which he stared at the
can of beer in his hand.  “Came down here a month ago with my wife,
daughter and grandson.  They all turned.  One at a time.”

I didn’t
know what to say.  Sitting there I tried to imagine the horror of being
locked in with your family when they started turning.  What the hell did
you do?  You either killed them or let them kill you.  I would give
just about anything to not ever have to make that choice.

“Daughter
went first,” he said, staring at the blank screen on the TV.  “Woke up in
the middle of the night hearing the most god-awful screams coming from her
bedroom.  I knew what it was and would never have opened that door, but my
grandson was in there with her.”

He took
another drink, emptying the beer and setting it down next to the ashtray.

“She charged
as soon as I opened the door and damn near got me.  It wasn’t her. 
Just this thing.  Got her with the shottie before she could tear into
me.  She’d already killed my grandson.  Started eating him! 
What the fuck?  Eating her own goddamn child.”

He was quiet
for a long time and I got up and collected the empty beer cans and
ashtray.  I left the cans on the counter, not seeing right off what he was
doing with them.  I dumped the ashtray in a normal waste can and realized
for the first time that despite both of us sitting there smoking in a closed
space, the air was clear.  Must be a hell of a good atmospheric
circulation and filtration system.  Fresh beers and empty ashtray in hand
I returned to the chair.

“Wife turned
three days later,” he said when I handed him the beer.  “After our
daughter, we tied ourselves up.  Each of us on opposite sides of the room,
one hand tied to something solid so if we turned we couldn’t kill the other.

“I woke up
to the same goddamn screams.  Almost put the barrel in my mouth. 
Would have been married to her fifty years next month.  Couldn’t bring
myself to shoot her, so I knocked her out and carried her up the ladder and
left her in the back parking lot.  She woke up after about thirty minutes
and took off.  Last I seen of her.  Last normal person I seen ‘til
you showed up.”

“How did you
see me?”  This was just one of many questions I’d been holding off on
asking.

“See for
yourself.  That door right there.”  He pointed at one of the closed
doors on the kitchen side of the room.

I got up,
expecting him to give me the tour, but he didn’t seem interested in anything
other than his beer and the blank TV.  Opening the door, I stepped into
another large room, my mouth hanging open.  A dozen high definition
monitors covered one wall, each showing a perfectly clear night vision image of
the area around the store.  Each image overlapped slightly, giving a full
360 degree view.  A large desk with a couple of keyboards was pushed
against the far wall, positioned so when seated the user could see all of the
monitors.  Chrome wire racks filled with various computer and camera parts
were against the third wall.

Seeing
movement on one of the monitors I stepped closer and watched as a patrol of
four Russian soldiers walked up to a business across the street.  The door
wasn’t locked and three of them made entry while the fourth remained on guard
at the door.  Five minutes later they came back out, secured the door with
a chain and padlock, painted a big red X with a spray can and moved to the next
business.

That one was
locked up tight and they spent a few minutes checking the exterior. 
Satisfied it hadn’t been entered, they still secured it in the same fashion and
left the same red X to indicate it had been checked.  They were on the
last business on the far side of the street and turned to inspect the building
over my head.

“Hey. 
Russians outside,” I called out through the open door.

“No
worries,” he shouted back.  “They won’t get through that security door
without blasting, and even if they do there’s four feet of reinforced concrete
all around us and you saw the vault door.”

I nodded,
still nervous to have them poking around so close to where I was hiding. 
They circled the perimeter of the store quickly, finding it as apparently
impenetrable as I had.  The leader of the squad reached out and banged on
the steel security shutter, then satisfied, painted the mark and waved his men
on to the next building.  I released a breath I hadn’t realized I had been
holding.

Turning, I
was momentarily startled to see the man standing in the doorway.  He was
watching me, not the monitors.

“Titus
Bull,” he introduced himself, stepping forward with his hand extended.

We stood
there and watched the Russian patrol check two more buildings on the same side
of the street as the sporting goods store, then they moved out of range of
Titus’ cameras.  He stepped forward and leaned over a keyboard and hit a
series of keys.  On the monitors the view changed as he put the system
into scan mode.  A few minutes later he set it back to stationary when we
didn’t see any other movement.

“Quite the
setup,” I commented.

“My dad dug
the hole in 1962 when the fucking commies were trying to put missiles in
Cuba.  Weren’t nothing much here then but the air base and a bunch of dirt
poor farmers.  Well, the crisis with the Russkies was over quick, but the
cold war was in full swing so he decided to expand it and finish it. 

“We lived a
few miles away in town, but he owned all this land and his father had owned the
land the government took to build the base.  Mom, well she was the smart
one.  Her dad was with a big, fancy law firm in Sacramento and she got him
to look at the paperwork.  Turns out them government fellas screwed up, so
he sued on their behalf.  Wound up getting millions out of Uncle Sam as
compensation for the land they took.

“That took
years, and it was the mid 70s by the time the money showed up.  He sunk a
bunch of it into finishing this shelter off, then started putting up commercial
buildings on top of it.  Pretty soon businesses were leasing his buildings
and this part of town just grew up.

“Mom passed away
in ’85 and dad moved down here.  Went kind of off the deep end without
her.  He went in ’87.  After that I didn’t even think about this
place for years, then 9/11 happens and after talking to my daughter and
son-in-law my missus says it’s time for us to make sure we got a hidey
hole.  I spent a bunch of Dad’s money cleaning the place up and making it
modern, and damned if we didn’t need it after all.”

Titus had
pulled another beer out of the fridge, drinking while he told me the
story.  Can empty he went back to the fridge and cursed to find all the
beer was gone.  Opening another of the doors he disappeared through it and
I could hear him cursing and rummaging around.  Stepping to the doorway I
just stood there amazed.

The room was
a pantry and it was massive.  Floor to ceiling shelves stretched to the
back wall which was easily fifty feet away from where I stood, and the room was
probably thirty feet wide.  The shelves were stocked full of canned and
freeze dried food.  Probably enough to have fed Titus and his family for
years to come.

He emerged
from a row towards the back, a six pack of Bud swinging from each hand. 

“Get the
lights and door, would ya?”  He asked as I stepped aside to let him exit
the room.

“Where’s your
power coming from?”  I asked as I turned the light switch off and pulled
the door closed.

“Solar
panels on the roof of all the stores above us and a big bank of batteries down
another tunnel.”  He clanked the two six packs into the fridge, pulling a
beer out for himself even though it was warm.  “Want another?”

I shook my
head.

“So what you
going to do, son?”  He asked as he lowered himself back into his recliner
and lit another cigarette.  “You going to Seattle?”

“Yes sir, I
am,” I answered, not at all sure just exactly how I was going to accomplish
that.  “But I’ve got to figure out how to get past these Russians, first.”

“That ain’t
no big deal,” he said and I noticed he was starting to slur his words.

“What do you
mean?”

“Funnels. 
I mean tunnels.  Lots of ‘em for storms.  I’ll show you tomorrow,” he
said and promptly passed out.

His head
fell forward, chin resting on his chest.  His cigarette was still burning,
held between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.  After a
moment I stepped over and took the smoke and crushed it out in the
ashtray.  Titus was already snoring and I suspected this was how he went
to sleep every night.  Hell, after what he’d been through it was probably
the only way he would ever sleep again.

Still too
keyed up to think about sleeping I began poking around and opening doors. 
I found Titus’ bedroom, the bed unmade and there was something about the feel
of the room that confirmed for me he was drinking himself to sleep in his chair
every night.

The next
door I opened must have been his daughter’s room.  Blood was everywhere
and it stank of death and decomposition.  Neither the woman’s nor the
child’s bodies were in the room and I imagined the heartbreak he must have
endured while disposing of them.  I closed the door in a hurry and moved
on.

I found a
large bathroom, complete with walk-in shower.  Set in the back wall of the
pantry was another of the enormous vault doors and I wondered if this led to
the storm tunnels he had mentioned.  Then a small room that was an
armory.  Half a dozen rifles, pistols and a good supply of ammo were
neatly stacked.  Several large cabinets were bolted to the back wall,
securely locked.  I wondered what was in them, but wasn’t curious enough
to invade my host’s privacy any more than I already was.

The final
room housed the equipment that recirculated and filtered the air and treated
the water.  I nosed around, surprised to find that the water supply was
actually a well.  The pump was apparently powered by the solar panels he’d
mentioned earlier. 

A large tank
rested in the back of the room that held water that had been pumped to the
surface and treated.  A booster pump supplied water pressure and another
pipe disappeared into the floor, marked as “septic”.  Shaking my head at
the elaborate shelter, I shut off the lights and headed for the bathroom.

Twenty minutes
later, freshly showered, and bandages changed, I stretched out on the sofa and
closed my eyes.  I’d checked the monitors before lying down, seeing a
Hummer full of Russian soldiers drive by.  The town above must have been
crawling with them.  Pistol resting on my stomach I struggled to sleep,
imaging I was hearing the screams of Titus’ family after they turned.