by Lukens, Mark
Mike stared back at him with wide eyes, but he nodded.
Ray got out and caught up to Josh, who stood in front of the gate.
“What’s wrong?”
“Chains are already cut,” Josh said.
“Someone’s already been here. Going in or coming out.” Ray wasn’t sure if that was a bad sign, or maybe a good sign that someone had been here at Avalon recently.
Ray helped Josh push the gate all the way open. It didn’t squeal or make a noise as they pushed the thick metal bar with the stop sign attached to it to the side of the road. Ray looked at the woods, searching for movement, listening for the sound of pounding feet on the forest floor. But there was nothing, not even the rustling of rodents in the dead leaves or birds chirping, everything seemed to be holding its collective breath.
Right up this road, Avalon might be waiting. Ray had only been searching for this place for a short time, but the journey felt so much longer than that. He felt like a weary traveler who had braved oceans of time to reach a promised land.
Echoes of conversations with Luke and Jo haunted his mind: What if Avalon isn’t what you think it is?
What? Salvation?
What then? He still had to try. What else could he do? But now, at the moment of truth, doubts were flooding his mind. Maybe they should have stayed at the store. Or maybe he and Josh should have gone to help Luke and Max take down the Dragon. He was so scared he had made a really bad decision coming here.
“Seems pretty quiet,” Josh said.
Ray nodded in agreement. He looked back at the van, its engine running—the only sound; no other sounds coming from up the road, still no sounds coming from the woods.
They hurried back to the van and got in. Ray drove through the open gate, the van climbing the slight hill easily into the thick woods. He drove around sharp bends in the trail, the trees and brush even farther back from the road now. Ray rounded the next turn and saw the glimpse of a clearing through the trees in the distance, the woods beginning to thin out. He drove out of the woods onto a vast plain at the top of a gigantic and nearly flat hill, like a grass-covered mesa. Other hills and mountains stood in the distance, trees everywhere. In the middle of the field, a few hundred yards away, was a small white building inside a high chain-link fence with barbed wire strung across the top in coils.
“It’s the same,” Ray whispered as he drove into the field. “The same place I saw in my dreams.”
Ray drove across the field, looking all around, pulling up to the gates in front of the chain-link fence. A chain was wrapped around the two gates, padlocked. He wondered if he should wait near the woods for a while, watch the building. But there were no rippers in the fields. That didn’t mean that there weren’t rippers watching from the trees. Or Dark Angels.
Ray and Josh got out of the van, leaving it running. They hurried to the double gate. With both doors opened, they could drive the van inside the large fenced area easily.
“This gate’s locked,” Josh said. He had the bolt cutters with him, but he was hesitating. “The gate was unlocked on the road, but this gate is locked.”
Ray knew what Josh was getting at: Why would someone cut the chain on the gate blocking the road, but not the one on this gate?
“Looks new,” Josh said, nodding down at the padlock.
Too many questions buzzed through Ray’s mind. He stared at the small building in the distance, the only building inside the fenced area. The roof was flat and layered with what looked to Ray like solar panels. A large satellite dish sat inside its own small fenced-in area a few hundred yards away, a group of solar panels fixed high up on metal poles. There were metal signs attached to the fence everywhere declaring this site as government property, prohibiting trespassing, and warning of the same severe penalties. The grass was tall inside the fenced area, weeds taking over. There were a few empty dirt parking areas off to the right, no cars or trucks parked inside. The field all around them was nothing but tall grasses and weeds, blowing back and forth in the cold wind.
Ray’s skin crawled as his dreams came back to him. He saw the rippers from his dream, pushing against the fence all around them, pushing against themselves, crushing themselves, their bodies liquefying as they oozed through the chain-link. He saw Kim and Vanessa inside the fence, standing in the fog, Vanessa back to normal for a moment, telling him that they had cured her. Had that dream meant something? Did it mean there was really a cure here? Not for his daughter, not now of course, but maybe for the rest of them.
“Cut it,” Ray told Josh. They weren’t going to waste any more time standing in front of the gates.
Josh went to work snapping the chain in a few places. Ray helped Josh push the gates open, each of them pushing a gate against the weedy ground, forcing them open. Ray went back to the van and got in while Josh waited inside the fenced area. He drove in and parked in one of the dirt parking spots at the far end of the fenced area. He shut off the van and got out.
Mike got out and opened the side door for Emma while Ray opened the back doors of the van. They got their backpacks out, slipping them on, making sure they had all their weapons.
Josh grabbed the box of glass bottles, filling two of them with gasoline and stuffing the rags back down inside. He taped the tops of them again so the gas wouldn’t spill out and stuffed them into the pockets of his backpack. “Just in case,” he said with a humorless smile.
When they were sure they had everything, they closed the van’s doors and looked at the building. Ray glanced at the fields all around them. He still didn’t see any movement anywhere, didn’t hear any sounds.
Maybe they were alone here.
They walked across the weedy field of grass to the door of the small building. Ray looked up at a camera poking out from under the eaves of the flat roof, one on each corner of the building, both aimed toward the front door, neither one of them moving, no tiny red lights flashing. Ray waved at the camera to the left, smiling. He was trying to look as friendly as possible, but he wondered how friendly they could look with guns in their hands.
“We’ve come to Avalon,” Ray said, hoping there was a hidden microphone somewhere. “I worked for the CDC in Washington D.C. A man named Craig Schuller was my supervisor. He told us about Avalon. He said there would be help here.”
Ray paused, waiting to hear the door unclick or open. He waited to see a red light shining on either camera. He waited for a voice to respond.
Nothing.
Ray looked at Josh. He checked the door, pulling on the handle.
“Locked,” Josh said.
Ray looked back at the camera. “My name is Ray Daniels. My son here is Mike. That’s Josh and Emma over there. We’ve come down from Washington D.C. to find this place. Let us in, please.”
No reply. No noises. No sounds.
A voice in Ray’s mind began to whisper: Nobody’s answering because nobody’s here. This isn’t Avalon. This is just some outpost to collect meteorological data or some kind of satellite station. This isn’t the bunker you’ve been looking for. Does this place look like a bunker?
“Please, we need help. We have other people at a store. A Super Bea’s. They have food and water there. We’re not with the Dark Angels or any other gangs. We’re good people.”
Still nothing but silence.
Ray waited a moment longer and then sighed. He looked at Josh. “Can you open it?”
Josh studied the door for a moment. “I can try.”
Ray walked away as Josh started working on picking the lock of the door. He pulled out a screwdriver and a few other smaller tools from a small pouch inside his backpack.
Emma walked over to Ray.
“This isn’t it,” Ray whispered.
“It is. Something’s here, I know it.”
Ray wanted to believe Emma; he knew he should believe her. But the doubt was crushing him now. He couldn’t help feeling like he’d made a big mistake coming here, maybe the biggest mistake of his life. He couldn’t help feeling like they were
being watched. Not by the cameras—no, those were just dead pieces of metal and plastic now—watched from the woods in the distance.
“You get the door unlocked yet?” Ray asked Josh over his shoulder.
“This isn’t a trailer door, you know,” he snapped.
Ray turned back around, still watching the woods in the distance as the minutes ticked by.
“Got it,” Josh sang out. He shoved his tools back into his backpack and slipped it on.
“Get back away from the door,” Ray hissed at Mike as Josh picked up his M-16 and opened the door. Ray stood beside Emma with his gun in his hand as Josh entered the darkness of the small building. He was inside for a moment. Ray could see Josh’s flashlight beam shining around inside through the open door.
A moment later Josh came back to the doorway.
“What is it?” Ray asked him.
Josh shrugged. “There’s nothing inside except an elevator door.”
CHAPTER 38
Ray
Ray stood next to Mike and Emma in front of the elevator door. Josh was farther back by the door that led outside—he’d left the door ajar. They all had their backpacks on, their weapons in their hands. The inside of the small building was clean. Josh was right, there was nothing else inside the building except the one elevator door; there were no other doors, none leading to a set of stairs down below or even a closet. No windows. No posters or signs on the walls, no furniture. Nothing except two small dark cameras up on the ceilings in the corners, the elevator door with a keypad next to it and an upside down triangle above the door—the triangle was upside down because the elevator only went one way: down.
The lights flush with the ceiling were dark. There were no lights on the keypad or the triangle above the elevator doors, no little red lights blinking on the security cameras. The inside of the building was cold, but at least it was a little warmer than outside.
This place is dead, Ray thought.
Josh peeked out through the partly opened door, watching and listening in case rippers or Dark Angels were moving in. Ray wished they would have thought to bring their own padlock and maybe another length of chain. They could have locked the gates shut, locking themselves inside.
But what did it matter? If they couldn’t get down to the bunker, then what did any of it matter?
“Should we try the button?” Mike asked.
“There’s no button,” Ray told him. “Just that keypad. Needs a pin number punched in.” He sighed. “But it doesn’t look like there’s any power to this place, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“Everything’s still clear out there,” Josh said.
Ray thought of getting back in their van. And then what? Driving back? Staying the night in the same house, waiting for the man and his skull collection to show up again? Back to the store, back to the fighting? He felt like crying, like screaming, like breaking something. He had bet everything on this. He’d been so sure about this.
Craig’s voice from the dream he’d had recently came back to him: You think I knew what the hell I was talking about, Ray? I was turning into a ripper. I was talking gibberish.
Yeah . . . gibberish. That’s what it all had been.
They couldn’t stay here tonight. If rippers or Dark Angels came up the road through the woods (or a gang of cannibals) they would see their van inside the fence. They would be sitting ducks inside this building.
He looked up at the camera to his left. “Hello? If you’re down there, please let us in. We can help. We’re good people. We have supplies. A whole store of them. And we’re fighting the Dark Angels. Fighting the Dragon. We’ve got people going there to kill the Dragon right now.”
Even if there was someone down in the bunker below, Ray wasn’t sure they would know who the hell Dark Angels and the Dragon were. Maybe they’d been down there since the very beginning of the Collapse; they would have no idea how the world had changed so suddenly.
Then again, maybe no one was down there at all.
Maybe I’m just talking to a dead camera.
Ray stared at the camera for a long moment, then turned away. He walked over to Josh, who was still peeking out the door that he’d left cracked open, staying on watch. Emma was near him, standing beside the wall. He wanted to ask Emma what to do. She was the one who had told him to take the dirt road up through the woods and onto this hill; she’d known where this place was even though he’d lost the map in the cabin fire. But just because she knew where the place was didn’t mean there was anyone down there now. Maybe whoever used to be here had fled this place; maybe they had gone back home, wanting to get back and protect their families like everyone else had wanted to do.
“Still good out there?” Ray asked Josh.
Josh pushed the door open a little wider, poking his head out and looking at as much of the field as he could see. Josh seemed tense; he knew they could be trapped inside this small building if a horde of rippers or a troop of Dark Angels came. He shook his head. “Looks clear so far,” he answered.
Again, Ray’s dream came back to him. He knew the part about seeing Vanessa and Kim was just a dream, but the part about the rippers surrounding the fenced-in area, pushing against it, thousands of them coming out of the fog—that felt more real, like some kind of portent of things to come. He felt jittery, ready to get back in the van and leave. At least get outside of this fence and back down the road where they might have some kind of chance.
“Hey!” Mike said. “Something happened.”
Ray turned around.
Mike stood in front of the elevator doors, moving out of the way of the keypad. He had a strange expression on his face, like he couldn’t make up his mind how to feel: confused, scared, thrilled. The keypad was lit up.
“What did you do?” Ray asked, hurrying over to his son.
“I don’t know. I . . . I touched it. I didn’t think it was going to light up.”
“Did you press some numbers in?”
Mike shrugged, getting the same look he usually got when he thought whatever answer he gave was going to get him into more trouble.
“I’m not mad,” Ray said quickly, shaking his head a little as if to prove his words were true. “I just want to know what you did.”
“I . . . I just started pushing some numbers. I didn’t think it was working anyway, so I figured why not just start pressing some numbers.”
“Okay,” Ray said.
The red upside down triangle lit up. The sound of quiet motors and activity behind the metal walls and elevator doors could be heard. A moment later there was a ding and the doors opened.
Josh was over in a flash, Emma right behind him.
They stared at the empty elevator car.
“Holy shit,” Josh whispered.
Ray stared inside the elevator. The car looked like most of the other elevator cars he’d been in, like the ones at the CDC building: wood grain paneling on the bottom half of the walls, mirrors on the top half to make the car seem roomier, a metal handrail drawing a line between the two surfaces, flat and brown carpeting on the floor, lights shining down from a false ceiling above. Ray saw their four reflections staring back at them from the back wall, four haggard and frightened people.
The car was just waiting there, the doors wide open.
“What do we do?” Josh asked.
“How did that elevator come up?” Ray asked. “No way Mike just happened to punch the right code in. The chances of that are . . .” He let his words trail off.
The doors began to close. Josh reached in with a hand to block one of them, opening them back up again. The doors were wide open, the elevator waiting.
“Should we get in?” Josh asked. “Go down there?”
“What if we can’t get back up?” Ray had a sudden crushing fear of being trapped underground.
“Power’s working,” Josh said. “Must be a way back up. Maybe you don’t have to punch in a code to get the elevator back up.”
The doors began to close again
. Josh put his arm inside. As soon as one of the doors touched his arm they opened back up smoothly, almost soundlessly.
Ray looked at Emma. “What do you think, Emma?”
“I think we should try. This is what we came for. Maybe someone is watching us on those cameras. Maybe they heard you and sent the elevator up for us.”
Ray had thought the same thing, but he couldn’t be sure, and he hated not being absolutely sure.
“Okay,” Ray said. “Let’s try it. We’re all in agreement?”
Josh and Emma nodded. Ray looked at Mike. He knew his son was scared, but he also looked excited at the same time, ready to embark on the next part of their adventure.
“Okay,” Ray said again and stepped inside the elevator first.
Josh had to block the elevators doors from closing again, and then Emma and Mike entered the elevator.
They were all inside the large elevator; all of them fitting inside easily even with their backpacks on and the guns in their hands. Ray watched the doors close. There was no keypad inside the elevator, no buttons to push, so maybe there was only one floor below, one destination that they could go to.
The elevator began going down.
CHAPTER 39
Luke
It had taken almost an hour to get close to the western wall of Hell Town, but Luke had it in his sights now. He was crouched down by the back corner of a house on Warner Street, a large group of shrubs in front of him, concealing him from the spotters and shooters patrolling the wall. Luke had only spotted two Dark Angels above the top of the wall, walking along some kind of platform behind the wall, some kind of scaffolding that had been set up—that’s what Dawson had told him. Luke thought there would be more Dark Angels watching the wall, but maybe the Dragon had sent most of them out to search for them.
Max, Phil, and Dawson were near him, crouching down and hiding. The rippers had become a little more active, some of them screeching and calling out in the cold morning air, but they hadn’t seen any near them yet.
Luke had chosen this house to watch the walls of Hell Town because it was close—only five hundred yards or so away from the wall where Warner Street seemed to disappear right underneath the wall of mismatched panels of wood and corrugated metal attached to 4x4 posts and metal supports. He’d also chosen this house because, after a forty minute search of the other houses in the area, he’d found a vehicle that he could use to ram the wall. It was a large Chevy van, older, but the battery still had power and it had sounded like it would turn over after he had bumped the key just enough to hear the starter engage. Luke found some lengths of old rope in the attached garage and tied it to the steering wheel after positioning the van behind the large group of shrubs. The other end of the rope was loose, but it was ready to be secured to the center console with a slipknot as soon as they needed to do it. Luke had used a shorter length of the rope to tie a brick to the gas pedal.