Precipice: V Plague Book 9

by Dirk Patton

  “Wife turned three days later,” he said when I handed him the beer. “After our daughter, we tied ourselves up. Each of us on opposite sides of the room, one hand tied to something solid so if we turned we couldn’t kill the other.

  “I woke up to the same goddamn screams. Almost put the barrel in my mouth. Would have been married to her fifty years next month. Couldn’t bring myself to shoot her, so I knocked her out and carried her up the ladder and left her in the back parking lot. She woke up after about thirty minutes and took off. Last I seen of her. Last normal person I seen ‘til you showed up.”

  “How did you see me?” This was just one of many questions I’d been holding off on asking.

  “See for yourself. That door right there.” He pointed at one of the closed doors on the kitchen side of the room.

  I got up, expecting him to give me the tour, but he didn’t seem interested in anything other than his beer and the blank TV. Opening the door, I stepped into another large room, my mouth hanging open. A dozen high definition monitors covered one wall, each showing a perfectly clear night vision image of the area around the store. Each image overlapped slightly, giving a full 360 degree view. A large desk with a couple of keyboards was pushed against the far wall, positioned so when seated the user could see all of the monitors. Chrome wire racks filled with various computer and camera parts were against the third wall.

  Seeing movement on one of the monitors I stepped closer and watched as a patrol of four Russian soldiers walked up to a business across the street. The door wasn’t locked and three of them made entry while the fourth remained on guard at the door. Five minutes later they came back out, secured the door with a chain and padlock, painted a big red X with a spray can and moved to the next business.

  That one was locked up tight and they spent a few minutes checking the exterior. Satisfied it hadn’t been entered, they still secured it in the same fashion and left the same red X to indicate it had been checked. They were on the last business on the far side of the street and turned to inspect the building over my head.

  “Hey. Russians outside,” I called out through the open door.

  “No worries,” he shouted back. “They won’t get through that security door without blasting, and even if they do there’s four feet of reinforced concrete all around us and you saw the vault door.”

  I nodded, still nervous to have them poking around so close to where I was hiding. They circled the perimeter of the store quickly, finding it as apparently impenetrable as I had. The leader of the squad reached out and banged on the steel security shutter, then satisfied, painted the mark and waved his men on to the next building. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.

  Turning, I was momentarily startled to see the man standing in the doorway. He was watching me, not the monitors.

  “Titus Bull,” he introduced himself, stepping forward with his hand extended.

  30

  We stood there and watched the Russian patrol check two more buildings on the same side of the street as the sporting goods store, then they moved out of range of Titus’ cameras. He stepped forward and leaned over a keyboard and hit a series of keys. On the monitors the view changed as he put the system into scan mode. A few minutes later he set it back to stationary when we didn’t see any other movement.

  “Quite the setup,” I commented.

  “My dad dug the hole in 1962 when the fucking commies were trying to put missiles in Cuba. Weren’t nothing much here then but the air base and a bunch of dirt poor farmers. Well, the crisis with the Russkies was over quick, but the cold war was in full swing so he decided to expand it and finish it.

  “We lived a few miles away in town, but he owned all this land and his father had owned the land the government took to build the base. Mom, well she was the smart one. Her dad was with a big, fancy law firm in Sacramento and she got him to look at the paperwork. Turns out them government fellas screwed up, so he sued on their behalf. Wound up getting millions out of Uncle Sam as compensation for the land they took.

  “That took years, and it was the mid 70s by the time the money showed up. He sunk a bunch of it into finishing this shelter off, then started putting up commercial buildings on top of it. Pretty soon businesses were leasing his buildings and this part of town just grew up.

  “Mom passed away in ’85 and dad moved down here. Went kind of off the deep end without her. He went in ’87. After that I didn’t even think about this place for years, then 9/11 happens and after talking to my daughter and son-in-law my missus says it’s time for us to make sure we got a hidey hole. I spent a bunch of Dad’s money cleaning the place up and making it modern, and damned if we didn’t need it after all.”

  Titus had pulled another beer out of the fridge, drinking while he told me the story. Can empty he went back to the fridge and cursed to find all the beer was gone. Opening another of the doors he disappeared through it and I could hear him cursing and rummaging around. Stepping to the doorway I just stood there amazed.

  The room was a pantry and it was massive. Floor to ceiling shelves stretched to the back wall which was easily fifty feet away from where I stood, and the room was probably thirty feet wide. The shelves were stocked full of canned and freeze dried food. Probably enough to have fed Titus and his family for years to come.

  He emerged from a row towards the back, a six pack of Bud swinging from each hand.

  “Get the lights and door, would ya?” He asked as I stepped aside to let him exit the room.

  “Where’s your power coming from?” I asked as I turned the light switch off and pulled the door closed.

  “Solar panels on the roof of all the stores above us and a big bank of batteries down another tunnel.” He clanked the two six packs into the fridge, pulling a beer out for himself even though it was warm. “Want another?”

  I shook my head.

  “So what you going to do, son?” He asked as he lowered himself back into his recliner and lit another cigarette. “You going to Seattle?”

  “Yes sir, I am,” I answered, not at all sure just exactly how I was going to accomplish that. “But I’ve got to figure out how to get past these Russians, first.”

  “That ain’t no big deal,” he said and I noticed he was starting to slur his words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Funnels. I mean tunnels. Lots of ‘em for storms. I’ll show you tomorrow,” he said and promptly passed out.

  His head fell forward, chin resting on his chest. His cigarette was still burning, held between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. After a moment I stepped over and took the smoke and crushed it out in the ashtray. Titus was already snoring and I suspected this was how he went to sleep every night. Hell, after what he’d been through it was probably the only way he would ever sleep again.

  Still too keyed up to think about sleeping I began poking around and opening doors. I found Titus’ bedroom, the bed unmade and there was something about the feel of the room that confirmed for me he was drinking himself to sleep in his chair every night.

  The next door I opened must have been his daughter’s room. Blood was everywhere and it stank of death and decomposition. Neither the woman’s nor the child’s bodies were in the room and I imagined the heartbreak he must have endured while disposing of them. I closed the door in a hurry and moved on.

  I found a large bathroom, complete with walk-in shower. Set in the back wall of the pantry was another of the enormous vault doors and I wondered if this led to the storm tunnels he had mentioned. Then a small room that was an armory. Half a dozen rifles, pistols and a good supply of ammo were neatly stacked. Several large cabinets were bolted to the back wall, securely locked. I wondered what was in them, but wasn’t curious enough to invade my host’s privacy any more than I already was.

  The final room housed the equipment that recirculated and filtered the air and treated the water. I nosed around, surprised to find that the water supply was actually a well. The pump
was apparently powered by the solar panels he’d mentioned earlier.

  A large tank rested in the back of the room that held water that had been pumped to the surface and treated. A booster pump supplied water pressure and another pipe disappeared into the floor, marked as “septic”. Shaking my head at the elaborate shelter, I shut off the lights and headed for the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, freshly showered, and bandages changed, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I’d checked the monitors before lying down, seeing a Hummer full of Russian soldiers drive by. The town above must have been crawling with them. Pistol resting on my stomach I struggled to sleep, imaging I was hearing the screams of Titus’ family after they turned.

  31

  Colonel Grushkin looked down from the co-pilot’s seat of the Hind. The helicopter was orbiting over the town of Mountain Home, flying above the helos that were part of the search for the missing US Soldier. The Colonel’s aircraft wasn’t equipped with FLIR, but he was wearing a set of the American’s latest generation night vision goggles his aide had liberated from Mountain Home Air Force Base. He reluctantly admitted to himself that they were far superior to anything the Russian military currently had in inventory.

  Over his headset he listened to the AWACS operator coordinating the air search. Fuming in frustration, he snapped over to the ground controller’s channel and listened in as the young Captain directed the building to building search. His head ached from the fight with the Major and only soured his already nasty disposition.

  He wanted to get involved in the search, but was finding very little that his personnel were doing differently than he would have. In fact, they were doing a good job. A textbook perfect job he grudgingly admitted. But if that was the case, why wasn’t the target already in their custody?

  He turned his head when the pilot tapped him on the arm. Looking at the man he adjusted his headset in response.

  “Yes?”

  “Comrade Colonel, the AWACS operator is asking to speak with you to give a report,” the pilot said in a clipped, professional voice.

  Finding the correct frequency, Grushkin identified himself.

  “Comrade Colonel, I have a report from the helicopter sent to retrieve the target’s wife. They have been unable to locate her, but did find the vehicle she was driving. It was abandoned in a ditch next to the road she was traveling on when you intercepted the American.”

  “Where did she go, then? A woman on foot can’t have gone far,” he barked into the radio.

  “They believe she was picked up by a helicopter, sir.”

  Grushkin sat in stunned silence for a moment. How the hell were the Americans operating an aircraft in Russian controlled airspace?

  “Explain,” he commanded in a dangerous tone. If the Americans had slipped a helo in, then it was the fault of the AWACS if it hadn’t been identified.

  “There was brass from an American caliber rifle on the road near where the vehicle was found. I don’t have an exact count, but at least a full magazine was expended. Beyond that are imprints in the road. It is not paved. Comrade Colonel, the imprints match the tire tread pattern and landing gear configuration of an Mi-24.”

  “Repeat that,” Grushkin ordered, caught completely unprepared for what he’d just heard.

  The man repeated the information before going quiet.

  “Have you accounted for all of our aircraft?” Grushkin finally asked.

  “Yes, sir. All of our aircraft are accounted for. That doesn’t mean the Americans didn’t steal a Hind from one of our Forward Operating Bases.”

  “You would have seen an extra helicopter. Correct?” Grushkin asked, his anger threatening to boil over.

  “Not necessarily, Comrade Colonel. If they flew low, and disabled the transponder, the aircraft would have been lost in ground clutter on radar. They could have gotten in and out without being detected.” The terror in giving the news to Grushkin was clear in the man’s voice.

  The Colonel’s initial reaction was to scream at the man, then call the commander of the AWACS plane and tell him to throw the incompetent fool out of a door. But, somehow, he tempered his impulse and after a moment nodded to himself when he admitted the man was actually helping by being honest with him.

  “Are there any options to try and identify this mystery aircraft and find out where it went?”

  “No, sir. There are not. But I have put an alert out to all commands that we appear to have an enemy in control of one of our aircraft. Transponder and verbal challenge codes are being changed across all of North America as we speak.” The man sounded slightly more confident after not being dressed down for delivering bad news.

  Grushkin cut the connection without saying anything further. Turning his attention back to the small town below, he thought about what he’d just learned. Somehow an American pilot had gotten his hands on one of their helicopters, and was apparently helping the Major. But that didn’t explain the brass lying in the road which would indicate a fight had occurred.

  As he was thinking he watched one of the foot patrols engage a small group of infected. With his bird’s eye view, he could see the larger group of females racing around the side of a building, about to come out on the soldier’s blind side. He reached for the radio to switch to the ground command channel and shout a warning, but the females were moving fast and slammed into the group of Russian soldiers before he could begin speaking.

  With terrifying swiftness, the men were taken to the ground and ripped apart. Aborting his call to the ground troops, Grushkin switched to the air control frequency and ordered one of the Hinds beneath him to take out the infected. The helo was only one block away from the scene of the massacre and was on target in moments, shredding infected and Russian corpses with canon fire.

  Grushkin had found an outlet for his frustration. With a terse command he ordered the pilot to take him to the command post where the Captain was overseeing the search. He had resisted as long as he could. It was time to take personal command.

  32

  I woke to the smell of bacon frying. Exhausted, I had been in a deep sleep, and for a moment was completely confused. My mind was somewhere else, battling an unending and unstoppable herd of infected. I was covered in a sheen of sweat, sitting bolt upright when a pan banged loudly on a cast iron burner grate.

  Looking around, barely under control, I saw Titus working at the propane fueled cooktop in the kitchen. He didn’t seem concerned with keeping the noise down for my benefit and I suspected he had decided it was time for my ass to wake up.

  “What time is it?” I asked, failing to see a clock.

  “Don’t much matter down here, does it?” He didn’t bother to turn around.

  “Humor me,” I grumbled, swinging my feet onto the floor and standing up.

  “It’s eleven AM up top,” he said after glancing at a large watch on his left wrist. “You been sleeping about six hours.”

  He shoveled some bacon out of a skillet and added some more. It didn’t look like normal, uncooked bacon and I guessed it was cured or freeze dried or something to preserve it. It still smelled wonderful. I walked over to see what else he was preparing.

  A plainly labeled container of powdered eggs sat on the counter next to a bowl full of water. An amount had already been measured out and he poured the contents into the water and quickly stirred until it resembled a real, freshly cracked egg. As soon as it was ready he poured it into another skillet and began scrambling it.

  “Sleep well?” He asked, concentrating on his work.

  “Unnn,” I answered with a non-committal grunt.

  He finished up what he was doing and portioned out steaming eggs and mounds of bacon and biscuits onto two plates. Handing one of them to me he gestured at a small table. A carafe of fresh coffee rested on a hot-pad and I didn’t waste any time pouring a cup and digging in. Everything may have been preserved for long term storage, but it tasted wonderful and I realized I was famished.

  “As you
were falling asleep last night you said something about tunnels,” I said once I’d eaten enough to be able to slow myself down.

  “Yeah, what about ‘em?” He asked around a mouthful of biscuit and eggs.

  “What kind of tunnels? How do we get to them and where do they go?”

  “Storm tunnels,” he said, chewing and swallowing. “This whole area used to flood every time it rained more’n five minutes. Town’s built in a small depression between a couple of low hills and water just rushes right through. Back in the late ‘70s the city cut some kind of deal with the Army Corp of Engineers and they came in and built a whole shitload of ‘em.”

  “Under the whole town?” I asked.

  “Yep, and extending way out of town to drain the water. Actually, they just kind of funnel it into a big tunnel to the south that disappears into the ground. Rumor has it there used to be a big underground bunker at the air base, you know in case of atomic war, and the run off was being stored in a huge underground reservoir that would supply the bunker once the water was treated.

  “Don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not, but I can tell you the Army came in and built one hell of a tunnel system. And they did it fast. Took them less than a year to cover the whole town and a big part of the valley.”

  “Can I get to those tunnels without having to go back up top?” I asked, finished with my breakfast.

  “Yeah. There’s another vault door I had put in the back wall of the pantry that opens into one of them. Had to pay the goddamn contractor a fuckin’ boatload of cash to do it. He was afraid the government was going to find out he was breaking a hole in the tunnel wall and come take him away.” Titus said, pushing his plate away and lighting a cigarette.

  “And those tunnels can get me anywhere in town?”

  “Oh yeah, that they can do. What you thinking, son?”