The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse (18 page)

I stood perfectly still, breathing the dank air until all six of the soldiers had descended and we stood in a cramped knot. The lead soldier stabbed his hand at one of the tunnel openings and I stepped forward. The soldiers fell into single file behind me.

“The next chamber,” I recognized the voice of the soldier who had spoken to me on the hiking trail. He was close behind me, his voice rasping and his breath stale. “That’s where Valles is waiting.”

I went forward slowly. There was no choice. I could not turn back. As I got closer to the end of the shaft, the light became stronger. I felt myself walking down a gentle incline, the floor seeming to slope away beneath my feet. I counted one-hundred-and-twelve paces before the shaft finally ended and I stood at the edge of a large underground room, perhaps fifty feet square. The walls were roughly finished, the ceiling and support beams arranged with less precision than the chamber below the ladder. Light flickered from torches hung on the walls and from curious pinpricks of sunshine I realized must also have been concealed ventilation shafts that reached all the way up to the surface. The air was heavy but not fetid.

Clustered against the walls were desks and tables: an eclectic assortment of odds-and-ends furniture and chairs. There were grubby-faced people sitting at some of the tables, eating. They were wearing sweat-stained t-shirts and shorts. Their bodies were slick with sweat and the dirt of hard labor. They looked up at me with flickers of curiosity and then returned hungrily to the food before them.

Standing under a shaft of white natural light near the center of the chamber stood a man, removed and apart from all of those around him. He was wearing combat fatigues. On the sleeve of his jacket was the famous red and blue ‘AA’ badge of the 82
nd
Airborne. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his expression thoughtful. He glanced at me, and then his gaze swept to the faces of the soldiers who were gathered at my sides.

“Damian? Is this him?”

The soldier from the hiking trail stepped forward and nodded his head. “Yeah. He checks out.”

“Anyone following?”

“No,” the soldier made his report. “He was watched all the way.”

“You took all counter-tracking precautions?”

“Yes.”

The man in the middle of the chamber seemed to relax. “And his vehicle?”

“Secure. Nothing suspicious.”

“Very well.” The man took his hands from behind his back and strode towards me, smiling.

“Mr. Culver. I am Roman Valles. It’s good to meet you at last.” He extended his hand.

“You’re a hard person to track down, Mr. Valles,” I said with classic journalistic understatement.

Valles shook his head. He had a short-cut crop of dark hair and a wide, unremarkable face. He looked ordinary, yet exuded a confidence and compelling force of character. It was easy to believe he was this group’s leader. He carried himself like a General.

“I’m not hard to find… if and when I want to be found,” the smile stayed on his face. “But if I didn’t want to meet you, Mr. Culver, I would either have ignored your messages and you would never have found me. Or… I would have brought you here – like I have – and then execute you.”

Valles’ smile seemed to flash with sinister intent. It lasted for only a split-second – so brief that it could merely have been a trick of the light or my imagination.

I felt an ice-cold chill shiver down the length of my spine.

“Why did you reply to my messages?” I managed to ask.

Valles shrugged like that information was secret. He dismissed the soldiers who had been my escort and they drifted away. Valles stared into my eyes like he was trying to see my soul.

“Why did you send the messages?”

“I’m a journalist,” I said, which answered nothing. I let Valles draw his own conclusions. He arched his eyebrows at me and the smile slid across his lips until it became just an upward tug at the corner of his mouth. “Damian is my brother,” Valles said, changing the subject. “My other brother, Adan, is here too. Adan is in the new shaft at the moment, leading the digging. Perhaps you will meet him before you leave.”

I kept my face impassive. “Will I leave? Or did you bring me here to execute me?”

Roman Valles laughed. It was a sound that didn’t suit the man. He clapped me on the shoulder the way a man greets a buddy at a bar.

“I didn’t bring you here to silence you, Mr. Culver,” Valles was still smiling, bemused. “I brought you here because I
want
you to tell our story. I want the publicity.”

That caught me off-guard. I tilted my head to the side and looked at Valles with curiosity. He nodded, as if the gesture was in answer to my silent question.

“Yes, I mean it,” Valles confirmed. We had drifted towards a wall where a primitive radio set-up was arranged on an empty desk. A man was sitting before the set with headphones clamped over his ears and his back arched over the desk, listening with concentration. Valles touched the man’s shoulder and the radio operator twisted around with a sudden start. He snatched the cans off his ears.

“Anything?” Valles asked.

The operator shook his head. “Just the usual.”

The operator turned back to the Ham Radio set. Valles grunted and then turned back to me. “I intend on building an army here in Texas,” Mr. Culver. “A new army, made up from the remnants and survivors of the U.S. military, and anyone else fit and willing to restore order. That’s why you are here. I want you to write about us. We’re patriots. I want you to bring the people to us.”

“An army?”

“Yes,” Valles insisted. “The new world will need order, government, organization and law. Those things cannot be restored without the support of a strong military.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You want a dictatorship, with you as the leader?”

“No!” Valles’ face became hard and fierce in an instant. The denial was spat from his lips. “I’m a soldier, not a politician. When a government for the people can be established, I will hand over control of the army we build to those leaders. But first we need an organized, restored military. That’s my mission… and that’s why you are here. You will write your book and you will tell them about this meeting and the information I give you.”

“You need publicity.” It wasn’t a question.

“Correct.” It wasn’t a denial.

* *

Roman Valles cleared away space at one of the tables and we sat. I took the notebook from my pocket. Valles watched me in silence, his hands clasped on the raw wood of the tabletop, his gaze fixed. He looked composed, calm and in control. He waited patiently until I had found a fresh page. When I looked up again he was watching me expectantly.

“Okay,” I took a breath. “Let’s start from the start. I heard a whisper that you were in North Carolina when the ‘Affliction’ broke out. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Valles said. “I was born and raised in Texas, but moved to Hope Mills in North Carolina.”

“And what were you doing when you heard of the outbreak? How did you find out?”

Valles delivered his answers without emotion. His face remained composed, his expression impassive. I doubt his pulse rate rose a single beat.

“I was at Dunn, in North Carolina. I was at my favorite gun range. I was a competitive shooter before the Apocalypse and I had gone to the range to practice.”

“And that’s where you heard the news?”

“Yes. I got a text message. I don’t watch television news.”

I sat back for a moment. Some people had died defenseless in their homes when the ‘Affliction’ had spread across the nation. Others had died in traffic jams, helpless and trapped on the highway with nowhere to go and no hope of escape. But Valles had been at a gun range – a location stocked and stacked with weapons. If anyone had a chance of surviving the Apocalypse it had been this professional soldier. And survive he had. In fact it seemed – more than just survive – the man was now thriving.

Ambition, training and opportunity had meshed together in a fortuitous twist of fate that Roman Valles had been cunning and clever enough to seize upon.

“How did you get to Texas?”

“I drove.”

“From the gun range?”

“No,” Valles shook his head. “I went home and assembled my weapons and grabbed my SHTF bag. It had my Plate Carrier with ten MagPul 30 round magazines fully loaded, my Battle Belt with five fifteen-round Glock 19 magazines fully loaded and a rucksack which was filled with a thousand rounds of 5.56, and a hundred rounds of 9mm ammunition. For the first twenty-four hours I didn’t move. I fortified my home and waited for the ‘Affliction’ to sweep over the town.”

I was puzzled. This man was the epitome of
‘be prepared’
and yet his home had not been fortified in advance. That struck me as odd.

“Why wasn’t your home already fortified?”

Valles was dismissive. “I was Army, Mr. Culver. I didn’t have the time to Apocalypse-proof my house, and it wouldn’t have been practical. I was constantly moving bases. My home was only ever meant to be a temporary hold-up location.”

“But you waited. You didn’t head for Texas immediately.”

“Yes. I wanted things to die down before I took to the roads. It’s the same reason I didn’t evacuate to Fort Bragg. I knew everyone within fifty miles would head for the Fort. It would be just a matter of time before the base gates would turn into a fatal funnel, choked with desperate humanity”

“Did you always know you would strike out for Texas?”

“Yes.”

“It was always going to be your plan?”

“Yes.”

“Because you wanted to be with family?”

“No. Because my two brothers were already embedded here.”

“Embedded?” It seemed the most curious choice of words.

“Yes. Damian and Adan were infantrymen in the Army. When they got out of the service they were invited to join a doomsday prepper group here in Texas. This is that group. I came west to join them.”

“And now you are the group’s leader.”

“Yes.”

I wrote a scribbled page full of notes to delay asking the question I knew I had to ask… but didn’t want to ask. When I had nothing more to write, I looked into Roman Valles’ hard, piercing eyes.

“How did you get control of the group? Was it a democratic vote… or a coup?”

Valles seemed unfazed by the implication of the question. He remained expressionless. “Mr. Culver, I served for twelve years as an infantryman with two combat deployments to Iraq and another two combat deployments to Afghanistan. As I said, my brothers also served. Between us, we have the experience and technical knowledge to ensure the survival of the group. Those who had begun the group realized that. They had done a poor job preparing for the Apocalypse. They weren’t hardened combat veterans. They were well-intentioned, incompetent amateurs. I didn’t seize power. I found it lying in the gutter like a tarnished crown, and I picked it up with the barrel of my AR15.”

Eloquent.

I wrote the quote down. It was a classic.

“And since then?” I asked.

Valles relaxed a little. I saw the tension go from his knuckles and the stiffness in his back and shoulders ease. “Since I arrived, we’ve transformed from a group of survivors into a prepper group that actually is prepared; prepared to survive and prepared to take the fight to our enemies. We began with a two-room bunker. The room we are now in was once the group’s supply storage warehouse. Since I took control, we have expanded our base, and we continue to expand. We now have a seven mile long network of tunnels and rooms, complete with several sleeping quarters and a weapons room.”

I felt my expression change into a look of surprise. It was impressive.

“How many people?”

“When I arrived the group numbered sixty-four. We now have one-hundred-and-six. There are fifty-four women here, and everyone accepted into the group is a willing and worthy contributor. We run this group like ancient Sparta, Mr. Culver, because we need to. There is no one here who can’t fight. We carry nothing and no one who is unable to contribute.”

“So can I speak to the former leader of the group?” It was a barbed question. Valles bristled. For the first time the look of genial hospitality on his face slipped, and his expression became something darker.

“He is no longer part of the group,” Valles’ voice turned brusque.

“Where is he?”

“Not here.”

Without another word Valles kicked back his chair, the legs scraping harshly on the concrete-like earth of the chamber’s floor. He stood ramrod-straight for a long moment and then leaned over the table, pressing his face close to mine. I could see the anger simmering behind his eyes.

“I don’t shy away from hard decisions, Mr. Culver, but I don’t act in my own self-interest – ever. My role is to prepare and protect these people and to build an army. Discipline and order are essential. I am the enforcer of that discipline and I don’t apologize for that. There is no room in this group for the ill or the infirm. And regardless of what you might think, I’m proud of what we’re building here. I’m doing my job. I need you to do your job. Write the story. Don’t sugar-coat it. Tell it like it is, because that’s what life has become; hard and uncompromising, where only the strongest and fittest will survive. I didn’t bring on the ‘Affliction’, but it’s my job to deal with it and to endure. We’re doing that. You can help us, and in helping us, you’re helping America.”