And the doors did not open.
There were more doors along the grand hallway, unlabeled, closed, and metal. Gus passed by a fire station, complete with a hose but missing an axe.
The hallway ended and he wandered into an exceptionally large chamber, where the red paneling ended in angular cuts of bedrock. A single mighty column of wet rock, perhaps the girth of a California redwood, stood at the center of the room. Water trickled down over the rock and dribbled into a pool that ringed the rock’s base. The air was moist and pleasant, like that of a small lake in the summertime. The ancient-looking pillar of corded rock reached the ceiling, which, again, simulated a clear night sky. Gus stopped and gawked at the stars, and realized, as his eyes drifted to a rocky edge, that one section was gradually getting brighter, as if heralding the approach of the moon. Constellations spiraled into focus, the stars twinkling through a soft cloud.
That got him thinking. Remembering. A report he once watched on television. Regarding bunkers for the ultra-rich. Subterranean dwellings, particularly bunkers, might impart a touch of claustrophobia upon long-term residents, in addition to other mental illnesses he couldn’t rightly remember, so creating an underground world that mirrored the one above was crucial. Convincing the mind that one wasn’t living beneath the earth for months, even years, was essential for long-term mental wellness. Maintaining the illusion of day and night, and its regular passing, right down to the precise second of sunset and dawn, was crucial for long-term survival.
The stars above were probably some elaborate screen playing a recording…or even the actual onset of night as seen by a hidden camera posted outside and broadcasting real-time feeds. In any case, it certainly looked like Gus was standing at the base of a solitary butte, deep within a hidden slot canyon, enjoying the onset of night. Except it was entirely manufactured. Constructed. A technological mirage, designed by experts, and convincing enough that Gus almost wanted to stop, pull up a lawn chair, and just stargaze.
As he watched, the outer edge of a full moon peeked into view, beginning its arc across a cloudless night sky. As his wonder grew, he became aware of the sound of crickets chirping all around him.
Four passageways led out of that fabricated canyon. Only one of these had its emergency lights on. Gus paused, listening, and other than that soft chirping of crickets, he heard nothing. Certainly no mindless.
He decided to explore the lit hall.
The size of the installation and its attention to detail staggered him. Mesmerized him. At one point, the corridor widened into three lanes. Sky-blue walls replaced the panel wood, while artificial palm trees, beach grass, and colorful flowerbeds adorned the path. In some places, trees rose up on both sides only to be chopped off at the ceiling, but dark imaging that resembled branches thick with leaves spread outward, creating an illusionary canopy. Soon the trees grew in number, narrowing the path to just one lane. Meadows broke out throughout the wooded area, where all sorts of flowers sprouted, while in the distance, some ten feet back, a calm sea—or a wall-sized flat-screen showing a calm sea—shone under a starry night. The distant silhouettes of giant mountains soared above the horizon, while columns of rock garnished with green tops sprouted out of the seafoam below. Lawn tables and chairs were set up along the walkway, so people could sit and enjoy the imaginary view. Behind a wall of glass was a nighttime beach, facing a pool fashioned into the guise of a sea. The horizon disappeared into a lightless ink that Gus suspected would be blazing with starlight if he walked into the beach room. Or sunlight, come the morning.
He reached the sliding doors leading to that wonderous mirage but they were locked. Access denied.
Gus’s face soured at that. He really needed a bath.
More mind-boggling sights came into existence the deeper he wandered into the bunker. Office parks and homes shone under the pale moonlight. Glass partitions revealed well-kept but shadowy interiors of pure escapism. There was an amusement hall, with an arcade right out of the 1980s. A pool hall with billiards tables, bars, table tennis, the works. Two small movie theaters, a mini-golf course, shooting range, gyms, and swimming pools. This underground city rivaled anything he’d seen in Annapolis. He even spotted a go-kart racetrack perhaps a kilometer long. There was even a goddamned food court, with a dozen different restaurants, and that blew Gus’s mind more so than the go-karts.
A government bunker had a Pizza Hut.
Oh, that pissed him off. That pissed him off more than being denied a dip in the pool.
When the fuck were the elected officials supposed to be working to save the world?
None of the doors leading to the compound’s attractions would open for him, as if sensing he wasn’t worthy to enter. Gus meandered through it all, lost in a daze. The lights behind him switched off once he was a certain distance away, while the road ahead continued to light up every three or four steps in front of him. Gus felt he was drifting through a museum of sorts, where every modern amenity of pre-outbreak civilization was on display. There were no people, however. Not a soul in sight, and no living quarters, either. Gus figured he was on a level geared toward fun and relaxation.
All out in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Under a goddamn mountain.
Considering the size, scope, and grandeur of the place, Gus was surprised politicians even bothered with Parliament Hill. He wanted to run for office just to get into one of those underground beaches.
The thought of his people back on Tancook sobered him up. He wondered if they might be up for a little relocating. Unless he was missing something, the bunker seemed intact. Perfect, even.
Except for that little thing about the mindless. And the bastards controlling them.
Especially them.
He entered another walkway—Gus certainly didn’t call it a hallway, because no hallway was built to create the illusion of a beachside boardwalk, at midnight, with sailboats floating on an ocean as calm and flat as glass. He wanted a Mai-Tai just from looking at all that Caribbean goodness.
The floor lights kept coming to life, guiding him along.
Until he got to the waterfall.
The canyon behind him had grabbed his attention, and the seaside stroll amazed him, but the sector he just entered stopped him cold in his tracks. The first thing he noticed was a waterfall, pouring from three stories up, over a glistening rockface. Tropical greenery clung to either side and flourished all around. The relative humidity in the room went from a comfortable thirty percent to a borderline sixty. Two pagodas created an ambience of Zen within the chamber. Arched bridges crossed over narrow canals, all lit up in a serene display of misted flora.
Gus stepped onto one little bridge, because it was lit up, and saw the goldfish swimming beneath him. That was the cherry of this subterranean cathedral of serenity. He shook his head and felt like swearing, a lot, but God probably expected him to curse a blue line, so he kept his mouth shut.
Then he saw it.
Behind the waterfall.
A single archway of fragmented light, blurred by falling water. It was off the illuminated trail, but at this point, nothing surprised him.
Gus stepped off the bridge and onto a slab of rock. He carefully threaded his way through a thick garden that he probably wouldn’t have been allowed to walk on, but there was no other way unless he plunked down in the water. And he wasn’t about to piss off the goldfish swimming in the canals.
The lights behind the waterfall flickered, and when he reached them, the most astonishing thing happened.
The archway blazed through the water in a fluid white rush and the rock wall within parted without a sound. A small elevator waited there, with that familiar redwood paneling and shiny brass railing.
Gus hesitantly stepped inside, enduring a brief shower.
The doors closed behind him.
And the trail lights leading up to the doors winked out, as if the golden walkway he’d been following had never existed in the first place.
40
The elevator doors opened.
One incandescent ceiling lightbulb flickered to life, forming a pale cone of light just outside of the elevator shaft. Beyond, Gus could see several computer terminals, each with a battalion of monitors stacked two high and three wide. These workstations ringed a central command console, where a naval officer’s chair was perched upon a raised dais. A second source of light caught Gus’s attention, a solitary glow that slowly drew him out of the elevator. There, some twenty paces away, was a secondary ring of computer terminals with accompanying monitors.
The light came from a small lamp, set to one side, well within that second ring of workstations.
Gus stepped into the high-tech grotto, scrutinizing the deep shadows of the chamber. Processors whispered evil nothings in the background.
Not a soul in sight.
At least, no one Gus could see.
The elevator doors closed behind him.
“Don’t be… don’t be alarmed,” a voice said, causing Gus to jump.
The voice came from the second ring of computers. The little lamp flickered, as if someone briefly blocked its light by passing in front of it.
“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “I… I wasn’t able to communicate with you. There’s been damage to the system, isolating me up here. Communication isn’t my forte.”
A giggle then, low and hoarse and strained.
Gus didn’t move. He was still well armored, but weaponless.
“I… I won’t hurt you,” the voice said. “I think that should be clear. You wouldn’t…” another unnerving giggle. “You wouldn’t be here… if not for me.”
“You were lighting up the hallways?” Gus asked.
“Ah… yes. To a point. In the main sectors the emergency lighting is automatic. To conserve power. We still… have considerable stores of it, but… why waste it? These days, power is like clean water. Clean air. Come closer. I won’t bite.”
But the words finished in a scratchy, throat-blasted giggle that rattled Gus’s nerves.
“Please,” the voice said.
The lights emanating from the monitors switched off, but the table lamp remained on. There was a motorized whirring, and half a figure—the shadowy head and shoulders of a man—rolled into view from behind the stacked computer screens.
“I’m here,” the dark outline said. “Come closer.”
Gus wavered. “You’re not going to try anything?”
“I will not. You…” he chortled again. “You have my word.”
“That don’t mean much these days.”
“Please. Remember. You’re here because… I wanted you to be here.”
Gus supposed that was true. “Where’s here?”
“Security… command. The… the watchtower—the inner keep… of the king… the kingdom.”
Gus took a cautious step forward, staying close to the wall. He eyed the edges of the room, watchful for others potentially hiding in the dark. All the while, the seated figure remained still.
Gus’s boot kicked something, freezing him in place. He looked down and saw the outline of a plastic container the size of a pack of cigarettes on the floor. It was too dark to see anything else.
“Oh…” the giggle again. “The floor might be… might be filthy. Keep your boots on.”
The giggle spiked in a wheezy piping that damn near made Gus look for a keyboard or a chair to swing, just in case.
“You’re awfully fucking merry over there,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” the figure said, and genuinely sounded like he was. “It’s a nervous reaction. If you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you’d be… you’d be a little nervous, too.”
“You’re not crazy, are you?”
A solemn reckoning, then. “I don’t think so.”
Which, in Gus’s mind, gave him a fifty-fifty chance that the man was fucking insane.
“Come closer,” the figure urged.
Gus took another two steps before his foot crunched on another plastic container. Then another.
“You don’t houseclean up here?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. Really. I… I didn’t expect anyone. Really. Not ever. I thought… I thought I’d be alone here for the rest of my life… so… you understand. Things just got thrown around.”
Gus kicked a clutter of plastics, and what he kicked rattled off more unseen garbage. He took another step and looked down. A carpet of discarded plastics covered the floor, thick enough to crowd the ankles of his boots.
The giggle again from the shadowy figure. “I’m sorry. The… the janitors haven’t made their rounds in… in some time.”
“Guess not,” Gus said, and without thinking, he bent over and picked up one of the containers. Oddly enough, they all seemed to be the same size. He brought the item in close.
Deodorant stick.
An empty deodorant stick. Right down to the inner plastic.
“Well, at least you don’t stink,” Gus said under his breath. He casually dropped the used container.
“No, I don’t stink. Well. Not much anyway. You get used to… to the smell. I suppose.”
Gus moved closer to the man. He took a quick look at the computer screens, all showing video feed from surveillance cameras around Whitecap. Storefronts. Living quarters. Hallways. A screen switched feeds and displayed the empty beach that he’d just passed, but from the inside looking out. Sitting next to a keyboard in a bloom of ripped packaging was a case of deodorant sticks. Four of them, unopened.
Gus looked to the mystery figure seated in front of him. The man was in a wheelchair, some fifteen feet back or so, his features indiscernible in the dim light. What Gus did see, however, made him uneasy.
He’d seen this before.
Gus became aware of a smell, of unwashed flesh and unscrubbed crevices.
“Don’t worry,” the man said. “Don’t… worry. As I said, I won’t hurt you.”
The silhouette shivered then, around the jawline. The speaker’s skin was dark, again just barely visible, but the eyes, the right more so than the left, were wide open and blinking. All the while, the man’s chin quivered as if he’d just taken a dip in arctic waters.
“Don’t stare,” he said, catching Gus’s scrutiny, and he smiled, quelling that alarming trembling of the mouth. “Don’t. It’s not… it’s not polite.”
He ended that with another chuckle, one that he cut off, as if realizing the sound might very well be unnerving to his guest.
Which it was.
“Just stay right there,” the seated man said. “Where you are. That’s… that’s close enough. For the moment.”
The smile was a permanent thing, Gus soon realized, only diminished with a concentrated effort. The shivering of the lower jaw was just as continuous, as was the smell of the man’s unattended ass crack.
“My name… is Joshua… Rogan.” The head twitched then, but Gus forced himself to pay that no mind. “I was… I am…a research assistant working in…biology. With the medical corps stationed at Whitecap.”
Gus nodded a greeting.
“I…” Rogan giggled again but quickly gained control over the involuntary action. “I… watched you come in. Watched you all… come in.”
Gus straightened. “Watched us all come in. You do anything to the people with me? Because if you did…”
Rogan raised one arm in an odd jerk, as if a marionette was manipulating the limb.
“They’re on the lower fifth,” he said. “Looking for the hidden evacuation route.”
“How do you know that?”
The edges of that shadowed face hitched in a smile, the lower jaw still shivering. “Been watching them, too. Watching everyone. Months of nothing and, suddenly, everything’s on TV.”
Rogan cackled then, and he allowed that ghastly laughter to fill the room.
“Been watching you, in particular. You’re very brave. Or suicidal.”
Gus didn’t respond to that, but he did shuffle his feet, stirring up all that plasti
c underfoot.
“You’ve brought the barbarian hordes,” Rogan said. “… to the gates. Of the kingdom. I never thought I’d see people again. Never, never. Let alone….”
He lifted an arm, pointing a finger. Gus looked over his shoulder, at the computer screens.
The mindless. Plowing through a corridor. Pawing at doors, at walls. Arms waved madly, shaking broken hands and fingers, destroying, polluting the charm of each sector in the compound. They slammed the screens of woodland wonders. They knocked over trees and trampled through greenery. They smashed into the wall displays, breaking scenes of seaside delights, shattering the careful illusions of Whitecap.
There was no thought to their search, no reason, just the maddening attraction to the residual stink clinging to Gus’s armored ass.
“They’re searching for you,” Rogan explained, his jawline quivering. “Only you. I watched you shoot them, with the automatic weapons. I bet… I bet that was fun.”
Gus frowned.
“No?” Rogan asked. He quickly changed the subject. “When you climbed into the ductwork, you surprised me. Surprised me even more when you… when you pulled out that dead tech. I … knew that man. To see him. I think… I think his name was…”
Rogan’s shoulders trembled.
“Chris!” he blurted with a wild, lingering chuckle, stopping only when Rogan realized Gus didn’t join in.
“Sorry,” Rogan apologized, suddenly serious. “That wasn’t as funny as I thought it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“In any case… the zombies… they’re following you… by scent. By smell. I mean… you… smell badly.”
“Sorry,” Gus said. “Guess I’m in the right spot. How about you give me one of your no-stink sticks?”
“Certainly.”
Gus didn’t go for one, however. “So you’ve been waiting here, leading me along.”
Rogan’s trembling eased, just a bit. “I’ve been waiting… for someone… to come along. Anyone… to come along. I’ve been waiting. To turn over this… all of this… to what’s been left over. I’ve been waiting for… you. I think. And your… companions.”
Mountain Man (Book 5): Make Me King Page 28