“Good enough,” Larkin said. He turned the wheel to the left and ran the SUV out onto a grassy, fairly level spot clear of the shoulder so others could get by. “Let’s get the gear.”
He stepped out of the vehicle and holstered the .45 on his right hip where he had clipped its holster earlier. Susan got out of the other side and joined him at the back of the SUV. Larkin opened it and started taking out the bags, slinging the heavier ones on his shoulders and handing the lighter ones to her.
“Are we just going to leave the car here?” she asked.
“It’s no good to us in there,” he said. “If nothing happens, maybe we can retrieve it later. If it’s gone, well, I’ll trade a stolen SUV for the world being safe.”
“You’re right. There are a lot of things it just doesn’t make sense to worry about anymore, aren’t there?”
“Almost everything,” Larkin said.
They were both pretty weighed down when they started across the road toward the gate, stepping between the barely moving cars. Larkin hurried them along as much as he could, wishing there were some way they could do this without drawing attention to the gate that was their destination.
No one tried to stop them. The AR-15 he carried, the. 45 on his hip, and the grim look on his face probably had a lot to do with that. But it was inevitable that someone would notice him and Susan, and sure enough, he heard somebody shout, “Hey! Where are those two going?”
Someone else yelled, “They must know where it’s safe!”
“Follow them!” a third voice chimed in.
“Shit,” Larkin muttered. He told Susan, “Come on, fast as you can.”
Ahead of them, with a faint rumble of its motor, the gate started to open, the two halves sliding apart. Larkin and Susan broke into stumbling runs. Behind them, angry shouts and howled curses filled the air. Larkin heard footsteps rapidly slapping the ground as people ran after them.
Graham Moultrie appeared from somewhere, a weapon of some sort in his hands. He shouted, “Come on!” to Larkin and Susan, then the gun he held began to chatter and spew flames.
Chapter 18
Moultrie was off to one side, so he was able to fire through the iron bars past Larkin and Susan as they hurried toward the gate. Larkin threw a glance over his shoulder, thinking that surely Moultrie wasn’t mowing down the people from the road. They were all fellow Americans, after all.
The slugs from the automatic weapon chewed up the asphalt in front of the charging mob and made them all throw on the brakes. Some of them might have been hurt by ricochets or chunks of flying asphalt, but at least it wasn’t wholesale slaughter.
Larkin and Susan reached the gate, which was open barely wide enough for them to get through, one at a time. Larkin hung back a step to let Susan go first. She slipped through the gap, one of the bags she carried catching for a second before she tugged it free. Larkin was right behind her. The machine gun had fallen silent, but Moultrie still stood there pointing it at the crowd, and the grim look on his face made it clear that if he had to pull the trigger again, it might not be for warning shots.
The gate began to rumble closed. Moultrie hadn’t moved, so Larkin figured someone else was probably close by with the remote control, probably Deb. She could easily be hidden in the brush close to the entrance.
A man yelled, “You son of a bitch!” and the next instant a shot blasted from the crowd. Larkin looked around to see that the press of people had scattered, leaving one man holding a revolver. Larkin wasn’t surprised that somebody else on the road was armed. There were probably plenty of guns out there in those stalled cars.
Larkin didn’t know where that lone bullet had gone, but he knew where the burst Moultrie fired in return landed. The handful of slugs punched into the gunman’s chest and knocked him backward as blood sprayed from the wounds. Screams came from the crowd as they scattered even more.
“Get in the Jeep and go,” Moultrie snapped at Larkin and Susan. He swung the machine gun back and forth, menacing the crowd outside the gate.
Deb raced from the brush and jumped behind the wheel while Larkin and Susan were piling their gear into the back. Larkin hung on to the AR-15 and told Susan, “You go with Deb! I’ll stay here and help Graham!”
Deb looked around from the driver’s seat and told him, “No need! Help’s on the way!”
Larkin looked along the road leading to the project’s buildings and saw several more Jeeps heading toward the gate, each with several armed men in it. Rifle and shotgun barrels bristled from the vehicles, and on the back of one of them was mounted . . .
“Good Lord!” Larkin said. “Is that a .30 caliber machine gun?”
It certainly was, he saw as the first of the Jeeps raced past and then slewed to a stop with a screech of brakes. The gunner on the back fired a long burst over the heads of the mob. People scrambled to get back in their cars and started driving again, closing up the gap that had opened while they were trying to get into the Hercules Project. There were plenty of curses and angry shouts hurled at the gate as the vehicles slowly rolled past, but nobody was willing to face the threat of a dozen armed men and a high-powered machine gun.
A thoroughly illegal machine gun, Larkin thought, but right now he was glad Moultrie had broken that law.
With society falling apart around them, the law of the gun might soon be the only one that counted for anything.
Susan was in the Jeep’s front passenger seat. Larkin swung into the back, and Deb punched the gas. She handled the wheel expertly on the winding road.
“Are you two all right?” she asked as she drove. “You look like you need medical attention.”
“Just cuts and scratches from broken glass,” Larkin said. “A guy busted out our windshield and one of the windows trying to steal our SUV.”
“You stopped him?”
“Yeah,” Larkin said, thinking about the way the guy had flown backward when those two rounds from the. 45 struck him. He was stopped, all right.
“I never dreamed people would act so crazy.”
“They’re crazy with fear,” Larkin said. “I suppose I can’t blame them . . . too much. Who were those guys in the other Jeeps?”
“Our security force. They’re all residents here. Cops, military, ex-military like you, Patrick. Graham was going to ask you to join, just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. And then this happened . . .”
“We knew something like it was coming. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for the Hercules Project.”
Susan said, “Our daughter and her husband aren’t here yet, are they?”
Deb shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. I’ve been trying to keep track of everyone checking in. It went pretty fast at first, before the traffic got backed up so badly on the road. Nobody even seemed to notice that some of the cars were turning in here. What happened to your SUV?”
“We left it on the other side of the road,” Larkin said. “Couldn’t get through with it, and well, we don’t really need it anymore, do we?”
“Not unless this is a false alarm. God, I hope it’s a false alarm!”
“We all do,” Larkin said. But whether the bombs fell or not, right now the world was an immensely more dangerous place than it had been earlier today, and now that Susan was safe, all he could think about was Jill and her family.
* * *
Jill wanted to know what was going on, but she kept the radio in the crossover turned off because she didn’t want to scare Chris even more than he already was. He bit his bottom lip and kept looking around like he expected some sort of monster to jump at him without warning.
But monsters weren’t real . . . unless you wanted to count the human race. On this day, Jill thought, at least some of humanity definitely fell into that category.
Impatience made her want to bang her hand on the steering wheel. She suppressed that urge, too. It wouldn’t make the traffic in front of her move any faster. It had been bad enough on the Interstate and then on the loop around Fort Worth
, but once she had gotten off onto the country road that led into the hills west of the city, her progress had slowed down even more.
Trevor and Bailey were somewhere in this mess, she thought. She hoped her mom and dad had already made it to the bunker, but given the geography, it was too much to hope that her husband and daughter were there by this time. They probably weren’t even ahead of her. Their cell phones were useless—the wireless networks were likely overloaded.
“We’re going to that underground place, right?” Chris asked.
“That’s right. We’ll be safe there.”
“Dad and Bailey will be there?”
“Of course.” Jill managed to smile reassuringly—she hoped—as she said it.
“And Grandma and Granddad?”
“Yep. We’ll all be there.”
“Good. Maybe it won’t be too bad, then.”
“It won’t be bad at all,” Jill said. “It’ll be fine.”
Chris was quiet for a minute, then he said, “You know, this is the first time I’m glad you didn’t let me get a dog after all. Because if you had, we were in such a hurry we’d have had to leave him behind in the backyard to get blown up along with all the other dogs and cats and people.”
Jill’s heart seemed to twist painfully in her chest. She swallowed hard and said, “I hope nobody gets blown up, including all the dogs and cats.”
“That’s what some of the kids said was gonna happen. They said the bad guys were coming to blow us all up. Is that what’s gonna happen, Mom?”
“No,” Jill said firmly. “We’re going to be just fine, Chris. You have to believe that.”
He nodded and said, “I’ll try.” He didn’t sound convinced, though, and his obvious fear made Jill feel that awful pang in her chest again.
It just wasn’t right. The grown-ups in the world owed it to the kids not to do stupid shit like this. Somebody should have realized what was going on and never let things get this far.
But that would have required the politicians and the media to act like reasonably intelligent adults, she thought bitterly, and nothing in the past seventy or eighty years indicated they were capable of that anymore.
Jill had been out to the Hercules Project several times. She and Trevor had taken a few things out there and stored them in their unit. She knew the roads, knew there was only one way to reach their destination. At this rate, they might not get there in time.
Of course, there was no way of knowing just how much time they had, she reminded herself.
Since they were moving so slowly, she pulled out her phone and opened the maps app. It didn’t take long to find the map of the area where they were. She switched to satellite view and zoomed in on the Hercules Project.
What she saw made Jill catch her breath. She zoomed in more just to be sure she wasn’t imagining things.
A number of years earlier, with the advent of fracking, a natural gas boom had swept through north central Texas as companies tried to reap the bounty of a geological feature known as the Barnett Shale. That had resulted in scores of gas wells popping up all over the countryside. In order for the gas company trucks to get to those wells, roads had to be put in. Most were just primitive gravel roads, but they crisscrossed the area and didn’t show up on maps.
Very few drilling rigs were to be found these days, but the wells already put in were still producing and there were dozens of storage tanks. The companies still needed access to them, as well, so the roads were still there.
Those narrow gravel lanes showed up on satellite view, and Jill saw that one of them led from the road she was on up into the hills alongside the property occupied by the Hercules Project. It came close enough that she and Chris could reach the boundary on foot . . . if they could get in that way.
Jill lifted her eyes from the phone and realized she was almost to the spot where the gas company road turned off. In fact, she could see the gate that closed it off up ahead. The gate was fastened with a lock and chain, but they didn’t look like they were meant to keep anyone out who really wanted to get in.
There was only one way to find out.
As she drew even with the gate, which was set back about forty feet from the road, she turned the wheel, poised her foot to press down on the gas, and told Chris, “Hang on, kid.”
Chapter 19
“Whoa!” Chris exclaimed as the crossover leaped toward the gate. Jill floored the accelerator to get up as much speed as she could before the front end of the vehicle crashed into the wood and aluminum barrier.
The chain snapped under the impact and the gate flew open. The crossover lurched through and came to a stop as the airbags deployed.
Jill was shaken but still clearheaded. She pushed against the airbag and said, “Chris! Chris, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” came the muffled reply. “Dang, Mom!”
The engine was still running, so she pushed the airbag down until she could see again, then started up the gravel road.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked Chris.
“Yeah. I saw what you were gonna do, so I was ready when the airbag came out. It didn’t hit me very hard.”
“Good. I hated to do that, but I think this way will get us to the project quicker. I’m just glad the engine’s still running.”
There had been a chance the collision with the gate would damage the vehicle so much she wouldn’t be able to drive it. The cars on the road were barely moving, though, and her impatience had gotten the best of her.
Trevor had told her many times that she was a little too reckless and impulsive. Under the right circumstances, it could be an appealing quality, but it could also get her into trouble.
This time, the gamble had paid off . . . at least so far.
The little road twisted and turned through the hills with their scattered clumps of trees. It went past leveled-off clearings with three or four or more natural gas storage tanks on them. Those clearings were usually near large, muddy wallows that were the remains of pools where water from the fracking process had been collected. The gas boom had left its scars on the landscape, but right now Jill was grateful for all the drilling. Without it, this road wouldn’t be here.
“Can we get in this way, Mom?”
“I don’t know, kid, but we’re gonna try.” Jill thumbed the phone on, and said, “Call Trevor.”
All she got was “Call Failed” on the dashboard display.
“Crap.”
“That’s a bad word.”
“I could’ve said worse. We were probably doing good to stay in touch as long as we did. I’ve got to let your dad know about this road, though. He may need to take it, too.”
“I can try calling Bailey on my phone while you drive,” Chris offered.
Jill had never been a strong proponent of giving little kids phones, but everybody did it these days, and for once she was glad she had gone along with a helicopter parenting technique.
“You do that, Chris. This road is narrow and has enough holes in it, it’s probably better if I concentrate on where I’m going.”
Chris’s call to his sister wouldn’t go through, either, he reported, but he kept trying. When they had gone a half-mile or so on the gas company road, Jill spotted a high brick wall on her left, a couple of hundred yards away. That had to be the edge of the project’s property, she thought, remembering how the terrain had looked on the satellite map.
“Mom, I got her!” Chris said as Jill braked to a stop.
She reached over for the phone, took it from him, said, “Bailey, honey, give the phone to your dad.”
“Okay, Mom,” Bailey said, and Jill felt a pang of relief just hearing her daughter’s voice again. She wished she could have talked to Bailey for a moment and tried to reassure her, but there might not be time for that.
“Jill, are you and Chris still all right?” Trevor asked as soon as he had Bailey’s phone.
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“We just passed . . . let’s see . . . V
erna Trail, but the traffic’s barely moving now.”
“All right, listen close. In another mile or so, you’re going to come to a gas company road on the right side of the road you’re on. It had a gate blocking it, but that gate is broken open now.”
“Did you do that?” Trevor asked quickly. He knew her pretty well, all right.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Jill, are you crazy—”
“I told you to listen to me,” she cut him off. “Take that road, follow it until you come to my car, then get out, bring all the gear if you can carry it, and hike toward the brick wall you’ll see off to the left. I’m pretty sure that’s the border of the project’s property.”
“‘Pretty sure’? Jill, our lives may be at stake here!”
“Stop that. You’re probably scaring Bailey. If you stay on the road until you come to the main gate, it’s going to take you an hour or more. You can cut that time in half by coming this way.”
“You don’t know if you can even get in where you are.”
“They’re not going to keep me out,” Jill said. “Please, Trevor, do like I asked.” She paused. “We don’t know how much time we have left.”
She hated to say that in front of Chris, but it was true.
“Oh, all right,” Trevor said. “I’ll look for the broken gate—What’s that?”
She heard the alarm in his voice. Her hand tightened on the phone. “Trev, what’s wrong?”
“The warning sirens . . . they had stopped, but they started again just now.”
Jill opened her door and stepped out. She could hear the sirens’ howl floating over the hills. She didn’t know what they meant, but it couldn’t be anything good.
“Hurry, Trevor,” she half-whispered. “Please.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” he promised, and then the connection went dead.
Panic tried to well up inside Jill, but she forced it down. She handed the phone back to Chris and said, “Come on. We need to get moving.”
The Doomsday Bunker Page 11