by Lukens, Mark
He needed to calm himself down.
The elevator finally slowed down and stopped. The dots on the black computer screen above the doors stopped streaming by. For a few excruciating seconds they were stuck and Ray fought a geyser of panic rising up inside of him as he waited for the doors to open. He was afraid the doors would never open and the world would go dark.
The doors swished open.
Ray didn’t hesitate—he was out through the doorway in a flash, out before the others, stepping into some kind of gray lobby area with a huge desk along the right side of the room. A black swivel chair was behind the desk—no one sitting in it. A few fake plants were in the corners of the large room. It was murky, but not too dark. Soft light came from rectangular fixtures set flush into the walls near the ceiling.
Josh held Emma’s hand as they stepped out of the elevator. He still had his M-16 in his other hand, his backpack on. Mike had his pack on and his gun was in his hand. He looked around with wide eyes after stepping out of the elevator.
“Don’t touch any buttons,” Ray whispered at Mike.
Mike just nodded.
The lobby was bigger than Ray had expected. It looked more like an office building than a bunker. He could almost feel himself believing that he wasn’t several stories underground.
At least the electricity was working down here, the lights still on. More lights lit up a wide hallway off the lobby, doors on each side of the hall, all of them closed. Everything was uncluttered and sterile, but Ray noticed a light coating of dust everywhere. The room was much warmer than the ground above them, but not like it was heated. The air smelled stale.
The elevator doors closed. Ray turned around and stared at them. The triangle above the doors didn’t light up so maybe that meant the elevator was still there, still waiting behind the closed doors. He hoped so. There were dark circles in the corners recessed into the metal walls like the lights: cameras.
“Hello?” Ray called out.
No answer.
He looked up at the camera in the corner up by the ceiling. “Hello?”
Still no answer.
The place felt empty. It felt abandoned.
“Everybody be careful,” Ray whispered at the others. He clenched his handgun, his backpack straps pulled tight in case he needed to run or move quickly.
Josh nodded. He still held Emma’s hand.
Ray had made sure the safety on Mike’s handgun was off. He looked at Mike. “You don’t use that unless you absolutely have to. Understand?”
Mike nodded, eyes still wide.
“Where is everyone?” Josh asked. “I thought you said this place . . .” He let his words trail off.
“I don’t know,” Ray answered. He wondered if someone was down here, if someone had sent the elevator up to bring them down. There was no sense being quiet or sneaky if someone had sent the elevator up to them—they’d already seen them.
“Hello?” Ray called out again, his voice echoing in the room. The ceiling was high, and that made his claustrophobia a little more bearable. The room was large, the hallway off of it very wide. He wanted to say something else besides hello. The phrase “we come in peace” came to mind. He wanted to convey that they weren’t here to hurt anyone, but it would sound ridiculous coming from a group where three out of four were holding weapons.
“Thank you!” Ray finally yelled, his voice reverberating back from the walls. “Thank you for sending the elevator up for us. I know this place is called Avalon. I’m assuming it’s part of the CDC. I used to work for the CDC. My name is Ray Daniels.”
No answer. No voice coming from an intercom. Nothing except the far-away sound of machinery running, perhaps air handlers recirculating the air.
Ray looked at Mike, then at Josh and Emma. They all looked back at him, even Emma seemed to be watching him; it felt like it, anyway. He looked back at the opening to the wide hallway, but then he marched over to the desk in front of the wall to his right. He went behind the desk and moved a mouse on the desktop. The slim computer monitor standing on the desk remained dark. He opened drawers, looked through stationary and supplies. There wasn’t much in there.
“Let’s check the rest of the place out,” Ray said.
They followed Ray through the archway into the wide hall, the lights flicking on as soon as they entered. There were two doors in the hallway almost directly across from each other. Each door looked sturdy, made of metal with chrome handles. To the side of each door was a keypad with a scanner for an ID card. The keypad and scanner were dark. The door to the right was locked. The door to the left opened easily enough, lights coming to life as Ray opened the door and stepped inside.
It was some kind of meeting room. He held the door open so Josh, Emma, and Mike could enter. He wasn’t going to let the door close. He didn’t think the door would lock from the inside even though it needed a keycard to open from the outside; the doors in the offices in the CDC building in Washington didn’t lock when you were inside, so he didn’t think these would, either. But still, he didn’t want to take any chances.
A large table dominated the middle of the room with comfortable, plush office chairs all around it. At the far end was a big whiteboard attached to the wall, and a monitor that could be lowered down from the ceiling. The walls were metal and painted a dull gray, the Berber carpeting tan.
They left the meeting room and ventured farther down the hall, the lights coming on as they walked.
Two more doors faced each other from across the hall, both of them locked. A nameplate above the door to the right read: Computer Room. The door across the hall was labeled: Lab 1.
“This one’s locked,” Josh said after wrenching down on the metal door lever, pulling on it.
Ray led them down the hall to another hallway that branched off to the right. The short hall opened up to a large dining area. A cafeteria-style serving line was at the far end of the room, two doorways beyond the serving line must lead to the kitchen, Ray figured. The chairs around the tables were all pushed in, the tables clean. The metal rails of the cafeteria line were shiny, the bins behind plastic sneeze shields were empty and immaculate. Yet the smell of cooked food lingered in the air, making Ray’s stomach ache with hunger.
“Where is everyone?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know,” Ray said. “But someone was here recently. You smell the food?”
“I smell it,” Emma said.
“Me too,” Mike added, smiling.
They entered the kitchen. The smell of cooked food was stronger in the kitchen. But there was an underlying smell under everything that sickened Ray’s hunger, an all-too-familiar odor these days, the smell of blood, of death, of rotting flesh somewhere under the strong scent of cleaning agents.
A door led to a large walk-in pantry stocked with cans, boxes, and bags of food.
“Jackpot,” Josh whispered. “It looks like some of the food has been taken, but not too much.”
“It seems like a lot of people were here,” Ray said. “But it’s like they all left.”
“At least food and supplies are here,” Josh said, looking at Emma. “And it’s safe here. The power still works. Probably from those solar panels on the roof or some kind of generator.”
They left the kitchen area, then the dining area. After walking farther down the main hallway, they found another hall off to the left that led to sleeping quarters; all of the rooms had bunkbeds inside. Back out in the main hallway again, they explored further and found another lab with an even sturdier door and a biohazard sign on the outside of it. This door was locked. They found restrooms, storage closets full of supplies, a gym, a media room, and other locked doors with no signs on the outside of them. They found rooms, but no people.
“The place is empty,” Josh said with astonishment.
They walked back down the main hall toward the shorter hall that led to the dining area.
A noise from behind them stopped them.
They turned.
A man stood twenty feet down the hall aiming a rifle at them.
CHAPTER 43
Ray
“Don’t move,” the man down the hall said, still aiming his rifle at them.
“Take it easy,” Ray said, not moving a muscle. “My son is right here. And this is Josh and Emma. Emma’s blind. We haven’t come here looking for trouble.”
“Put your weapons on the floor,” the man said.
“Okay,” Ray said, nodding at Josh and Mike, then looking back at the man. “Okay. We’re doing it. Just take it easy with that gun.”
The man didn’t reply. He couldn’t be more than five foot five, maybe not even as tall as Mike. He had a slight build and dark, thinning hair that was combed back and a little long in the back. He wore dark pants, hard shoes, a button-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the shirt untucked and wrinkled. He was tense, clutching the rifle hard, trembling. He had large, bulging eyes, a five o’clock shadow, straight and even white teeth that seemed brighter in contrast to his olive complexion.
Ray leaned down and set his gun on the floor. Mike did the same right beside him. Josh set the M-16 down.
“Okay,” the man said, relaxing just a little. “Just . . . just kick them forward. Out of reach.”
Ray nodded and kicked his gun. It slid along the slick floor. Mike kicked his a little harder and it slid farther than Ray’s gun had. Josh did his best to kick the M-16 forward, but the weapon was heavier.
“Go ahead and back up,” the man said. “Back up a few more steps.”
“What’s your name?” Ray asked. “You know our names. You saw us on the camera, didn’t you?”
The man didn’t answer.
Ray backed up. The others backed up with him.
The man ventured forward, hesitantly at first. He bent down and picked up the two handguns first, stuffing them into the waistband of his pants, barely fitting them in. He picked up the assault rifle and scuttled back a few feet. He lowered his own rifle, relaxing a little more now.
“I’m Ray Daniels,” Ray said. “I worked for the CDC in Washington D.C. This is my son Mike. This is Josh and Emma. We’ve come looking for Avalon. This is Avalon, isn’t it?”
The man sighed. “Sorry. I just needed to get the weapons from you.”
“We understand,” Ray said. “What’s your name?”
“Gerald. Dr. Gerald Dubois.”
“Okay, Dr. Dubois,” Ray said.
“Please. Just Gerald. I’m not a doctor anymore. There are no doctors anymore. No scientists. No degrees. There’s nothing anymore.”
Ray didn’t want to argue with the man. “Okay, Gerald. This is Avalon, right?”
“Yes,” Gerald said.
“This is part of the CDC?”
Gerald nodded.
“A bunker?”
“A bunker of sorts. An underground lab, really. There are a few of them around. How did you hear about this place? The clearance is pretty strict. I don’t remember you ever being here.”
“I’m not a doctor or a scientist,” Ray said quickly. “I’m . . . I was an accountant. My supervisor, Craig Schuller, he was the one who told me about Avalon. When the Collapse began, he called me before the cell phones went out. He told me to get my family to his house, that he had information. The phone was breaking up at the time, but he had mentioned the word Avalon. We went to Craig’s house, but Craig and his family were already dead. I looked up anything I could find about Avalon on his laptop. I found a map to this place.”
Gerald just nodded, not saying anything, still holding the two rifles down by his side.
Ray had decided to leave out a few details, including that Kim had died and Vanessa had turned into a ripper along the way to Craig’s house. He had left out the part about Craig killing his own family in their garage after he realized he and his family were turning. There would be time for those details later.
“I don’t know a Craig Schuller,” Gerald said. He seemed to be struggling through his memories, perhaps the name had rung a bell, but that was from an earlier world, a lost time, and now those things didn’t matter anymore.
“We’ve come a long way to find this place,” Ray said. “We were hoping . . . hoping for—”
“What?” Gerald asked with a sigh. “You were hoping for salvation? For a rescue crew? Some kind of civilization left? A cure to the Ripper Plague?”
Ray didn’t answer; he only nodded.
“Sorry,” Gerald said, frowning. His apology sounded sincere.
“We came for answers,” Ray said. “Craig said the answers would be here.”
Gerald shrugged. “I might have some answers, but maybe not the ones you’re looking for.”
Ray didn’t want to push it just yet. He nodded again. “Any help would be appreciated.”
“You guys have already toured the place,” Gerald said. It didn’t sound like a question; it sounded like Gerald already knew, like he’d been watching them on different cameras. “It’s nothing too special. Just a basic underground lab.”
“Are you the only one here?” Emma asked.
Gerald stared at Emma for a moment, and for that moment Ray wasn’t sure he was going to answer her question. “Yes.”
“Where are the others?” she asked.
“Turned. Dead.”
They were silent for a moment.
“We have supplies here,” Gerald continued. “I guess you’ve seen that already. We have food. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” Josh practically shouted.
Mike blurted out a laugh.
Gerald seemed caught off guard by Mike’s sudden laughter. He smiled. “You guys seem safe enough, but I’m just going to store these weapons away, if that’s okay with you.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Ray said.
Gerald walked back down the hallway and used a keycard from his pocket to swipe a panel next to a door. He opened the door and set the weapons inside, and then closed it again. He walked back down the hall. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”
Ray and the others followed Gerald down the hall to the dining room and cafeteria, then to the kitchen. He went to a walk-in refrigerator and pulled out sandwich fixings. “How about a sandwich? Some soup?”
“That would be great,” Ray said.
“You’ve got bread?” Josh asked.
“Yeah. Frozen. I take out a loaf every so often. We’ve got meats, cheeses, some tomatoes and lettuce left. Onions. Make whatever kind of sandwiches you want.”
*
Thirty minutes later they had finished their sandwiches and soup.
Ray sat back in his chair, full and satisfied. He drank down the rest of the iced tea that Gerald had brewed.
“When I saw you on the camera, you said you came from a store,” Gerald said.
They hadn’t talked much while eating, growing a little more comfortable with each other. Gerald had given them time to eat. But now it was time to get down to business.
“Yes,” Ray said. “We’ve been traveling south from West Virginia. We were in a cabin there and we left to find this place. On the way down, in North Carolina, we came across people in a store. It’s called a Super Bea’s.”
Gerald didn’t seem to recognize the name.
“It’s like a Wal-Mart,” Ray explained.
Gerald nodded for Ray to continue.
“A woman named Jo runs the place. She was the manager there. Everyone else she knew has died or turned. She’s managed to keep the rippers out of the store. There’s a lot of food and drinks and supplies there. Maybe a year’s worth for the people there. Maybe more. There are also guns and ammo. Medicine.”
“How did she keep the rippers out?” Gerald asked.
“There were safety steel wire screens that they pulled across the front of the store. I’m guessing they were put in place in case of looting or a hurricane. The rippers were able to break the glass, but they weren’t able to get through the steel mesh. She also had the people there ram a lot of the stock in front
of the mesh doors, boxes and pallets of stuff, barricading it, making it stronger. The back area is fenced in and they hooked the fence up to several car batteries to electrify it.”
“That’s pretty smart,” Gerald mumbled.
Ray nodded in agreement. “They secured a ladder onto a lift so they could get through one of the skylights up to the roof. They have spotters and shooters on the roof, looking out for rippers.”
“And Dark Angels,” Josh said.
Ray watched Gerald’s reaction when Josh mentioned Dark Angels, but Gerald didn’t comment about them.
“We have the store for now,” Ray said, “but the Dark Angels want it. They want the supplies inside. They are a large gang led by a man who calls himself the Dragon.”
“Have you heard of the Dark Angels?” Emma asked point blank.
Gerald shook his head. “I’ve been down here since the Collapse began.”
“Do you know what happened?” Josh asked Gerald. “Do you know how the Ripper Plague started? Why it started?”
Gerald just sighed.
“When I was looking up information on Craig’s laptop,” Ray said, “it seemed like there wasn’t an explanation for the plague. No bacterial or viral infections found. No proteins or any other kind of toxins or pathogens.”
“I heard the same thing,” Josh said. “I was in a FEMA camp right at the beginning. Well, actually, they arrested me and forced me to go to the camp. While I was in there I talked to someone who claimed to be a scientist, and he’d said the same thing, that no one knew why or how this plague had started.”
“Is it true?” Ray asked.
Gerald nodded. “Sort of. We’ve figured out some things, but the answers are very strange.”
Ray sat back in his chair waiting for Gerald to continue. This was what he had come to Avalon for.
CHAPTER 44
Josh
Josh watched Ray as he hunched forward in his seat, tense, alert, ready to hear the reason for everything. But then Josh looked at Gerald. He could already tell from the scientist’s expression that the answer wasn’t going to be so simple.