The Haven Series (Book 2): Haven

by Brian M. Switzer

  The beam from his Maglite cut a wide, bright swath through the darkness and he marveled at the sheer size of the shaft. It was a huge space cut out of solid rock, with ceilings forty feet high. The air felt chilly in the shaft now, but he bet the sixty-two-degree year-around temperature would seem heavenly in July. Old George didn’t do the place justice when he told them about it back at the army base.

  For a seventeen-year-old, Coy was preternaturally comfortable in his own skin. His upbringing had instilled uncommon values for teens of his generation. He was helpful, courteous, and kind, without being obsequious. He worked hard, didn’t smoke, and didn’t drink, and his peers liked and respected him. As a freshman he had won his weight class at the Kansas High School Wrestling Championship, then he moved up two weight classes as a sophomore and lost in the state finals.

  His friends like to refer to the ranch as ‘Leave it to Beaver Land’. His parents were warm and friendly people who shared a deep love for one another and made no effort to hide it. He adored his attentive, funny Mom and worshiped his Dad. When Danny joined them four years ago he quickly became the big brother he’d never had. He never felt threatened by his Dad’s close relationship with Danny. The way he saw it, in Danny his Dad got to live vicariously the hard-drinking, barroom brawling, womanizing lifestyle he had missed out on by marrying young. And Danny got the role model, teacher and stabilizing presence he missed by growing up without a father of his own.

  As he grew up, his Dad disciplined him by withholding his approval or being sadly disappointed in him. He seldom raised his voice, and he had never spanked or hit him- except for one time.

  The autumn he turned fourteen, they drove to the feed store in town and stopped at the Dairy Freeze for milkshakes afterward. Charlie King was two years ahead of him at school and had a mild mental disability. Glenn, the owner of the Dairy Freeze, gave Charlie a job keeping the tables clean, running out the trash, and washing the occasional dish. Charlie’s disability caused him to walk in a jerky manner and strike his chest with his left hand when he took a step. He spoke in a garbled syntax that was difficult to understand when he got excited, and he spent most of his waking moments excited. Bored teens imitated Charlie’s walk and speech at the high school during the week and in the Dairy Freeze parking lot on Friday and Saturday nights. Coy never participated in making fun of Charlie, and he tried to mimic his Dad’s look of sad disappointment when other kids did.

  This particular day Charlie jerked his way to the dumpster with a bag of trash while he and his Dad leaned against the truck drinking their milkshakes. For reasons he would never understand, Coy walked in a jerky circle, beating his arm against his chest in an exaggerated fashion and grunting. When he completed his circle he grinned up at his Dad. He never saw the man’s arm move, just a flash of color, and then his right cheek erupted in a bright flare of pain. Shocked, he dropped his milkshake; before it hit the ground — whap whap! — two more shots to his left. Neither landed hard enough to do damage, but his cheeks burned and knew they were a deep, angry red. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he said anything, there came three more- a right, a left, and a right again, blazing fast. Coy saw none of the blows, but they registered as stinging snaps to the side of his head. One more shot landed, on his left again, and Coy took the only suggestion his panicked mind offered; he fell to the ground and tucked his chin to his chest, covering his head with his arms.

  A long moment passed with no more blows and he looked up between his arms. His Dad stood over him with a hand extended to help him up. He grasped it and pulled himself to his feet. Will walked him to the truck with an arm draped over his shoulder and opened the passenger side door. Coy climbed in and Will shut the door behind him, neither saying a word.

  Coy sat in the cab and watched his Dad pick up the milkshake cup and throw it in the trash. He stuck his head in the Dairy Freeze and said something and the people inside laughed in response. He closed the door and strolled back to the truck.

  They’d driven half the twenty-minute trip back to the ranch in silence when Will fixed Coy with a somber expression. “Son, you have an advantage over about ninety-eight percent of the people in the world. Your Mom and I have raised you to look out for those that don’t have your advantages. You don’t ever want to make fun of someone like Charlie again, and you damn sure don’t want me to see you do it. Those were love taps I gave you today.”

  “Yes sir,” Coy said, looking straight ahead. They never spoke of it again, and his Dad hadn’t so much as raised his voice to him since.

  He realized with a start that he had been walking along oblivious, thinking about the Dairy Freeze and life lessons. He forced himself to focus. They’d walked far into the tunnel, and any ambient light was long gone. Sally pawed along beside him; she quit ranging on her own when they lost the light. He heard frequent noises off in the darkness, but they weren’t the loud, clumsy noises made by the dead. Sometimes when he shined his light toward the noise it would illuminate a small animal. He spotted two possums and a raccoon, along with several piles of deer scat.

  “I wonder if you could hunt in here,” he mumbled. He scratched the top of Sally’s head, between her ears. “What do you think, old girl? Can you think of any reason it would be dangerous to bag a deer in these tunnels?” Coy had hunted, trapped and fished since he stood tall enough to shoot a gun without help. Despite being a teenager he had developed a reputation as one of the best outdoorsmen in North Kansas before the outbreak, and he had killed and cleaned most of the fresh meat the group ate on the road.

  He shined his light in an arc in front of him, right to left, and almost missed it. It registered as a shadow out of place on the left wall of the quarry just as he moved the light back to his right. He jerked the Maglite back to his left. The light exposed what appeared to be a ditch that ran alongside the wall on that side. As he got closer he realized it wasn’t a ditch at all, but a road into another tunnel. It was enormous, at least a hundred feet across. He backtracked to where the road began and shined the light on it. It didn’t extend straight ahead like a ribbon across a floor, but declined at a steep angle. “Ho-ly shit,” he murmured. Where did it go? Did they dig one tunnel on top of another? That didn’t seem safe.

  He followed the new tunnel a short distance, and it opened into an enormous cavern. He walked through the cavern opening and sure enough, Coy realized he stood in another mine shaft dug underneath the one he’d been following. But where the top tunnel was in essence a huge underground tube, the bottom one was a mammoth-sized chamber, almost a second quarry unto itself.

  Coy shined his light out before him and was surprised when it reflected off the top of a body of water. He stepped back and few feet and broadcast the light from far left to far right and was stunned when he realized he stood on the shore of an enormous underground lake. It ran the width of the massive chamber and extended beyond the range of his light. Like the shaft above, gigantic columns of rock ran from floor to ceiling at regular intervals, left uncut to provide support. The difference was that these columns surged up out of crystal clear water about four feet deep. Sally raced forward into the lake, then stopped on a dime and hurried back to dry land. Once there, she turned and barked at the water, her tone ferocious.

  Coy bent a dipped a hand in the water, then jerked it back out with a hiss. It was numbingly cold- he thought it had to be near freezing. “Too cold for you, girl?” he teased the still-barking retriever. He cast the light around on the clear water and gaped when it illuminated a type of fish he’d never seen before, darting to and fro. Big, fat grass carp swam languidly near the bottom.

  “They’re not scared of the light because they’re blind,” he drawled to himself. “Who knows how long they’ve been in the dark. Might not even have eyes.”

  Sally’s barking took on a hysterical note and she added low, guttural growls in between.

  “It’s just fish, girl,” he said. He was about to shush her when his blood ran cold. He jumped backward a
nd pointed his light farther out onto the lake. Shaking, he raked the light from left to right and counted eight creepers looking back and him. The light reflected off their dead, flat eyes and they began to snarl.

  Return to the Lake

  * * *

  Coy returned to the underground lake with an army in tow- Will, Danny, Jiri, Cassandro, Tara and Becky from his group, plus The Judge, Mark, and a guy from The Originals whose name he couldn’t remember.

  Coy didn’t know why, but the creepers didn’t pursue him as he fled back aboveground. They growled half-heartedly at his back but stayed in the water as he ran out of the cavern and back up the road.

  He sprinted across the quarry and toward the tunnel his group used for shelter. On the way there, he saw Andro shuttling a soccer ball back and forth between his feet at a blinding speed and veered in his direction. Coy slowed long enough to motion the muscular Hispanic to follow. “Leave your ball,” he panted before taking off again.

  He found his parents and Danny in a semi-circle just inside the tunnel. He pulled his Dad aside and told him what he’d seen; Will had him repeat it to Danny and Becky and from there the story spread like a fire on a hot and windy day. Soon the whole group stood around him, asking questions and offering opinions.

  Will walked with him to inform The Originals. True to form, The Judge dismissed Coy’s find as old news.

  ”I’ve never seen it, but you can’t grow up in Carthage without hearing about the underground wonders. My Father used to tell me that an enormous lake rested under the entirety of the town, like a sheet hidden under a comforter. I have no idea if that is factual or not, but when I was a boy there were six different places in or around town where you could go below ground, and two of them led to water. I lived on Grand Avenue. Growing up, there was a cave off of Grand up near the town square, a few blocks from my house. A heavy metal grate blocked the entrance, but an enterprising boy could find a way around it. If you went down far enough, the passageway grew quite narrow; you had to be a skinny lad or you wouldn’t make it through. The walls squeezed to their narrowest point, then suddenly opened into a place like you describe, young man- an enormous cavern flooded with beautiful, crystal-clear water. The city has long since blocked off that access, of course.”

  The Judge’s expression grew wistful. “I shudder to think what my Father would have done had he found out I’d gone down there.” He coughed and gave a brisk shake of his head. “Anyway! Certainly, if the biters are in the mines, we’d best go take a look.”

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “We’d best go put them down, Jody.”

  “Of course, of course.” The Judge raised his hands in surrender. “Allow me to gather a few of my men. I believe we have a tool we can take down with us that will be most helpful.”

  Coy guided the crowd back to the lake; Mark walked next to him, guiding a heavy-looking piece of equipment. It was a four-by-four-foot wooden frame, affixed with two rows of three 1500 watt stadium lights. Hand trucks on each side made for easy rolling and the lights ran off a car battery that sat on a platform underneath the frame. When the tunnel grew dark, Mark switched the apparatus on and it illuminated the shaft for a hundred yards.

  Coy caught Mark’s eye and nodded at the light structure. ”That’s pretty sweet.”

  “Yeah, it’s one of Cyrus’s inventions.”

  “Is he handy like that?” Cyrus had piqued Coy’s curiosity since he’d seen the obese man at the get-together the night before. He was an enigma. An obese, bloated man who walked with difficulty on bad knees had no business living in the new world. Common sense said he should have been a Sunday dinner feast for a group of creepers during the first few days of the outbreak. Coy didn’t mean to be callous or rude, but that was the way of things now; you just didn’t see many fat people or folks with bad wheels anymore. Natural selection at its best, he thought.

  “Cyrus?” The Judge had been listening to Coy and Mark. “Cyrus is an incredibly gifted engineer.

  “After I lost my wonderful wife to those… things, I thought of this place.” He gestured at the surrounding tunnel. “Cyrus is the only person I brought with me. His people skills may be a little lacking, but he’s more than made up for that in the ways he’s made it livable down here. He’s restored a few of the conveniences of modern living.”

  “Modern living is fighting creepers and finding supper,” Will said in a dour voice. “It ain’t air conditioning and T.V. anymore.”

  The Judge pursed his lips. “I’m sure it’s difficult beyond measure out there for most people. Fortunately, once we rid the quarry of the ‘creepers’ that existed when we arrived, we haven’t had to deal with many more. And of course, food has never been a problem here. That’s allowed us to concentrate our energies on getting a foothold on the restoration of civilization, so that once the authorities retain control, we’ll have a leg-up on rebuilding.”

  Will stopped walking and peered at the Judge. “Authorities.”

  “Yes. The military, state and national leaders, and what have you.”

  “Jody, once we get back up top will you take a drive with me? We’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  Mark took a determined step in his boss’s direction. “I’d have to insist that if you take The Judge out of the quarry, a team of our guys go with you.”

  Will agreed with a nod. “Absolutely. The more the merrier. I’d take the bunch of you if we had enough transport.”

  The Judge adjusted his glasses. “Where is it you would like to take me, Will?”

  “Not far. Over by the river, where Highway 96 comes into town. There’s something there I’d like to show you.”

  “Then yes, I guess that would be fine.”

  “Good. It’s a date. Let’s see Coy’s lake, then we’ll head back and take a short trip.”

  They reached the spot where the road started. Coy guided them along the wide, steep path that led to the cavern entrance. “Let’s turn the stadium lights off for now,” he said. “I want us to approach with just one flashlight, the way I did earlier. If they react the same as before, then we can turn the bright lights back on them.” They followed him to the lake’s shore, right at the same spot he had been in earlier, as best he could tell. He shined his light out over the lake again, side to side. When he finished, he held the attention of eight creepers in various states of decay. The familiar cacophony rang out, the sounds of pistols being pulled from holsters and their slides being jacked, rifles coming off of shoulders and bullets being chambered, and, on his far left, the distinctive cha-choo of a double-barrel shotgun. The creepers responded with snarls, and a few of them turned toward each new sound. But none of them moved toward the shore.

  “Weird,” Will muttered. He rubbed his chin and looked at Coy, who shrugged his shoulders. Will’s eyes moved to Danny; Danny shook his head and flapped one arm. “Any ideas?” Will stage-whispered to Jiri.

  The big Czech was rubbing his thumb and index finger over his top lip. “I don’t know. Right now I don’t have a friggin’ clue.”

  Will gestured at the wooden frame. “Hit them with the big lights and let’s see what happens. Get ready for anything.”

  Mark reactivated the rack of lights. The creepers stirred more under the glare of the stadium lights, and two of them shuffled forward a step or two, but that was all.

  Coy got a better look than he did on his first trip. Two of them had been soldiers. One wore the remnants of a fire fighter’s overcoat. Another one, a teenage girl when she turned, bore horrific injuries. The dead had chewed it open from chest to navel. A sac that was probably part of a lung hung from a string of tissue; other than that and a few strips of muscle, its chest and stomach were hollowed out. The remaining creepers were so far into decomposition that it was impossible to tell how they lived.

  Some stood in water up to their waists, others to their chest. One sat crouched the bottom of the lake like the catcher in a baseball game. Sometimes ripples hit it at mid-nose, putting its nostrils underwater.
When that happened the creature didn’t react at all.

  There was no telling how long they had been there, but the water had caused noticeable changes in their appearance. Their swollen bodies reminded Coy of sausage in casing. They had huge wrinkles, and between the water and the lack of sunlight their skin had taken on a pale and waxy sheen, similar to the underside of a fish.

  Coy realized that the light illuminated the worst horror he had seen in eight months of seeing horrible things. The parts of their bodies underwater were almost skeletal- the various fish gliding about had picked them almost clean. He stood with a hand pressed over his mouth as a crappie glided close to one of the dead. It darted forward, then swam away languidly with a small chunk of black meat in its mouth. Coy turned and tottered a couple of feet away, his hands on his hips. He paused, bent over, and for the first time since the outbreak began, threw up.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spit again and again until the taste of vomit receded. Eyes watering, he pulled a bottle of water from his pack and drank half of it in three big gulps. He spit a few more times, returned the water bottle and walked back to everyone else. Thankfully, he wasn’t the only person who had a difficult time handling the grisly spectacle. The guy whose name Coy couldn’t remember was off in the other direction throwing up as well, and several other people had a green cast to them.

  Danny called out to him. He looked up as his friend lumbered toward him, his jeans wet up to the middle of his shins. His boots made a wet, squishing sound with each step. “Did you check the water temperature when you were down here earlier?”

  “Cold, isn’t it?”

  “That shit is freezing! It’s colder than a dead nun’s nipples in there.” He shivered dramatically and turned to Jiri. “Hey professor, could the cold be why they aren’t aggressive?”