by Nick Cole
“What about Karl?” Kay asked, her eyes low, holding the vision of the dead boy. “What do we do?”
Shooter clenched his jaw, then ran his sleeve across his brow. “You and Renny are going to have to get him to the barn. Wrap him in some blankets, but get him moved.” Shooter turned to the twelve year old who still clasped his knees as he sat against the wall. “You gonna be alright, Renny?”
Renny looked up with his tear-streaked face. He blinked long and paused. But when his eyes opened again there was something hard in them. “Yes. I’ll be alright.”
Chapter 27
The long, exposed walk down to the bridge was a solemn, almost funereal march for Patrick and Shooter. Neither of them talked until they got close to Fontana’s Bridge.
“I wonder who Fontana was,” Patrick said.
“No tellin’,” Shooter replied.
Patrick held his rifle across his body, barrel pointed downward and away from Shooter. His finger forward, like he’d been taught. But now his finger tapped a little, and Shooter knew the boy was nervous.
Shooter sighed. “Listen, this was bad. I mean… losing Karl…”
“I know,” Patrick said.
“But it could have been much worse. You know that too?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“If they’d made it across the bridge,” Shooter said as he readjusted the heavy pack across his back. Once he had the pack corrected, he pulled the rifle—the M1A he wore across the other shoulder—forward and carried it with the barrel pointed toward the bridge.
Patrick nodded at the motorcycle laying in a heap on the bridge up ahead. “Looks like that biker guy is the only one who got close.”
“That’s thanks to the stranger down here. The guy we’re going to meet.”
“You did your part too,” Patrick said.
“Yeah, I hit a few.”
“From where I was, looks like you hit most of ‘em. How do… how do you feel?”
“After seeing what they did to Karl?”
“Yeah,” Patrick said.
A breeze crossed the river and passed the rushes along the banks. The slender grass bent and whispered.
“Satisfied.”
On the bridge, past the crippled Hog and the dead biker, Shooter’s hand came up in a signal that told Patrick to slow down and be aware. “If any of ‘em are still alive, they’re dangerous.”
“Got it,” Patrick said.
At the mouth of the bridge, they heard a loud crashing sound, and too late, they spun and saw a wounded biker clambering toward them through the brush and weeds, up from the Solekeep. Apparently he’d been wounded and landed down by the river, down but not out. Now, he had a sawed off shotgun in his right hand and his face was twisted into a horrifying visage of murder and hell and vengeance. He raised the shotgun and pointed it at Patrick.
Time slowed for both of them. Patrick didn’t freeze, but his surprise put him behind. Too slow to make a difference. Just as Shooter knew that his friend was going to take a full barrel of shot to the chest, the biker’s head exploded right in front of them and the gangbanger’s body dropped and fell back into the water and the mud.
Patrick finally had his rifle up and ready, and he was staring down the barrel at the dead biker, his chest heaving from the fear and surprise. “Holy…,” was all he could manage.
“Damn,” Shooter said as he scanned the opposite direction with his rifle.
That’s when they heard the voice. Off in the distance and down the hill, scratchy and deep, aged with time and experience and pain.
“You boys shouldn’t be down here. Nothin’ but death down here.”
It was Walker, and when he saw Shooter he knew this was his long-distance friend. A boy who’d saved his life. Walker almost smiled.
Almost.
Shooter turned to Patrick. “I know this guy. You go back up the hill. Halfway up. The big rock there. Get behind it and make anything dead that needs bein’ made dead.”
“What about you?” Patrick said.
“I’m gonna go meet Mister Sniper, see what he needs.”
Chapter 28
Down below.
When Ellis heard Chuck’s shout, he’d dived down to the bottom of the pond again. The cold had finally mastered him, and at the bottom, he felt a strange warmth begin to grip him like a good coat. The tension left, and he’d felt himself giving up, passing out, and letting go of everything that had made his last five years a constant struggle.
With a last look upward through the dark water, he thought he saw a face—Delores—smiling down at him, and then the darkness crept in on his vision, and the warmth permeated him like new blood by an ancient fire.
He knew he was going to die…
…and that wasn’t so bad.
Just before the lights went out, he felt a force grab him and shake him, and then everything was dark and his thoughts ran off, he assumed, for the last time.
***
When Delores, and then Chuck right behind her, surfaced on the far side of the tunnel wall, they almost couldn’t believe what they saw. A man, Asian and ancient, wet but draped in a dry woolen shawl, was pulling off Ellis’s pants.
Delores, shivering from the bitter cold, didn’t even think before she pulled herself out of the water and assaulted the man.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Let. Him. Go!”
The man didn’t even slow what he was doing, but reached out with one hand and met her assault with a straight-arm, pushing her to the ground.
“Shut up and make fire hotter,” the man said with complete calm.
Chuck was climbing out of the water, pushing himself up and forward, but before he could attack, he heard the old man’s words and stopped himself. “What’s going on?” Chuck said.
“I’m saving your friend. He die if we don’t get his body temperature up very quickly,” the old man said.
Delores, seeing that the man seemed to be trying to help, crawled to her feet and moved toward the small fire burning near a tunnel wall. She noticed the smoke climbed the wall and then was sucked into an open vent hole that kept the tunnel from filling with smoke.
Chuck helped the man finish undressing Ellis, then the two of them carried the unconscious Ellis closer to the fire. The old man pulled the woolen shawl off his shoulders—he was naked underneath—and lay down with Ellis, embracing him and then pulling the shawl around both of them.
Delores moved to protest again, but the old man silenced her with a hand pointing at her face.
“He needs much body heat, and unless you are proposing to strip down naked right now and provide it, then I need you to build that fire up.”
The man now pointed to Chuck, “You, there are more blankets under that cot. Pull them out and throw them over us.”
“You’re the one that did this to him,” Chuck said as he reached under the cot.
“True,” the old man said, “or partly true. He jumped into my waters of his own accord. But I am the one who trapped him there. For that I am sorry. I was asleep when he surfaced on this side. I reacted from years of experience, but…”
“But what?” Chuck asked.
“I’d told myself I wasn’t going to fight any more. I was giving up. If one more enemy came into my tunnels, I would no longer resist the evil.”
“Your tunnels?” Chuck said. “So what happened?”
The old man shrugged, “Hurry with the blankets. I wasn’t fully awake. I triggered the trap by instinct.”
“And then you decided to save him?” Delores asked. “After your trap nearly killed him?”
“Yes,” the old man replied. “And, when I heard the explosion from the other side, I figured it was all over, that invaders would be coming through here.”
“Maybe they are coming,” Delores said.
“I don’t care. Not anymore” the old man said. “Once this one is out of danger, if invaders do not come, I will disappear, and no one will find me ever again.”
Chuck turned to Delores, his mouth clenched in anguish. “I need to go back, D. There was an attack. The bikers were coming.”
Delores shook her head. “No. You’re staying right here, Chuck. Shooter and the others can take care of themselves. You said that to me. We’re not going anywhere until we know Ellis is out of trouble.”
Chuck chewed on his cheek, his breath finally stabilizing from the swim and the fear. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. If he left, he’d be leaving both Ellis and Delores to this stranger. If he stayed… who knew what was going on up-top?
“Trust them,” Delores said. “That’s what you told me.”
“Turn on that radio,” the old man said. “My name is Mr. Vo. These tunnels are my home. It is time to hear the news, so please turn on the radio there on the table.”
“Radio?” Chuck asked. He looked over to the table and saw the old radio set sitting on it. “How do…”
The old man barked at him, “Just turn it on, it’s almost time. You’ll have to crank it one hundred cranks first. Oh, and I’d have you two strip down too, but as soon as you’re a little warmer, you need to go get your friends.”
“How does this smoke leave the tunnel?” Chuck asked. “And how do you pick up a signal down here? He saw that a bare wire ran up the wall, then followed the smoke tunnel off into the distance. He was shivering, but his curiosity was making it hard to concentrate on staying by the fire.
“You’re wasting time,” Mr. Vo said. “That smoke shaft is the size of a man. It runs a half mile at an upward slope and surfaces in a copse of trees on the far side of the river. It’s how we did it in my country, long ago. It took us six months to dig that shaft. Now please… crank radio. Warm yourselves.”
“Us?” Delores asked.
“Please. The radio.”
Chuck cranked the handle and counted until he’d turned the gyro one hundred times.
“Please now, turn it on. It is already tuned. Mister Doctor Midnite should be on any moment now.”
Chuck flipped the on switch, and there was buzzing and an otherworldly hiss.
“It’s just interference and solar noise,” Chuck said. “There’s nothing there.”
“Wait,” Vo answered.
And then they heard it, cutting through the static, a voice coming through from a distance. A radio show of some sort. And they listened to the voice and all its madness.
“Strange memories and original thoughts today as I talk amongst you all, the last holdouts, the last true fighters and the last real damn Americans fighting it out for survival in a whirlwind of destruction. Welcome to The Midnite Special, on 88.1 FM, my channel. Check with the FCC if you don’t believe me. You’ll find them either six feet under or a hundred feet down in a concrete bunker. Not sure which. They’ll explain it all to you once you find them which I’m sure you will if you care that much about it.”
“This is your old friend, Dr. Midnite, the one who warned you, the poor man’s prophet from Pahrump telling you what’s up for all you fine folk catching this frequency that’s bounced through a relay from the high desert in Nye County to the fine folks over the now non-existing border in Acuña. Muy bueno, Acuña, muy bueno. Thanks for taking up the message and boosting the signal with that nice one-hundred-thousand watt blowtorch.”
“Emilio and Donny, watch your backsides as always and keep your beer cool and the ammo stocked. There’s strange folk abroad and even stranger things ringing bells of doom all over the land. Case of beer for you all when this blows over (and remember friends, things like this always do, if the wheel turns to Doomsday it’ll turn back to good, just like Mother Midnite always says now when she isn’t sedated).”
“I’m sitting in the Blue Velvet Bunker, sixty feet under the desert floor, thinking over the last, well what has it been since the levee broke? Five years? Five years, when the levee broke. That’s right. Zekes and dragons playing with their food in Southern Cal. Hurricanes and bigfoots, monsters and maniacs in diverse places, coming down the mountain when he comes. The Hindenberg reborn, the Black Hand smashing and crashing to a win in Argentina. Five years since the levee broke. And just like Led Zeppelin says when the levee breaks, ‘crying won’t help you’”
“Five years my friends. If you survived the last five years, hats off to you all. You just won the best and toughest damn lottery in the history of the world, surviving all this mayhem. If you know what I mean. I count myself fortunate. I’m in a steel cave with six close friends and my mother. I don’t know about you. When the levee broke I did what I had to do and got my people down with a minimum of gunfire and drama. Five years ago it was. We even got cats down here, breeding just as fast as the rabbits we got down here. The females are named after Addams Family characters, the males after Knights of the Round Table. This was decided by a split decision-boxing match between myself and Professor Sunset, and guess who whooped that paraplegic? Professor Sunset don’t give me no Manson eyes anymore does he? Just watch the keyboards, friendo. Don’t care if you carry a pool stick around like a jousting stick, I’ll flip that shopping cart when you least expect.”
“Lucky seven we are, just a small tribe of the strong and the weird in a steel cave beneath Pahrump playing pinochle and watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers over and over and the entire works of Andrew Lloyd Weber over and over. Yes, friends, pharmaceuticals are at work here and I personally have three thousand gallons of the tastiest gin I have ever had, and yes it was gained by armed hijack in the early days of this whole carnival. Gin this good… you gotta steal. Well…”
“Five years of hellfire and garbage and we all crawled through every gruesome bit of it.”
“We made it this far and we’re gonna make it to the end. You should try to make it too. Easier said than done? Well that’s sissy spineless talk. You gotta roll with these demonic punches. You gotta get beaten back to the ropes, then spin out a damned Chinese fireball right back into their faces. Get mean, get nuts and go for the cheap shots. You deserve it. You’re human. You’re still alive. Remember that. That’s something.”
“Now, important announcement before we get to the full diatribe. The long discourse. This is important… so listen up, friends and kitties.”
“We keep in touch with a lot of people out there. The great and burning white light of our Network, going from here to Acuña to the East Coast. And we’re hearing things. We pass things along. Here’s some bits—got a contact on the Ham, let’s call him Mister Outside, and he’s telling us there’s something stinking in what’s left of the Land of Enchantment. I’m talking some odd, scary, weird stuff… and I don’t have enough actual details here to share because Mister Outside doesn’t either, but all those nukes rumored to be out there? Gone. Completely gone. Because guess what? Turns out they were doing genetics out in the desert. And that freaky flu that was supposedly turning people into zombies? Who knows, may have even come from a lab. But apparently even that part of the world is gone now, except who knows what kind of genetically modified stuff is left roaming around in the nothing. Crazy, right? All I know… all I can say is… Keep yourself secret and safe and think about that real hard. If you’re in the area, stay away!”
“And here’s a really important headline for our friends in ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’—horde warning kiddies. The waters of the levee are coming your way, Central Texas. Somebody rang the dinner bell….
Now for tonight’s numbers...”
Then a little girl’s voice began to read out a series of numbers.
“3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3”
Or, just one number. Over and over.
Chapter 29
The kid Walker would come to know as Shooter came down the small dirt road that
led to the bridge. His young friend left him at the bridge and hightailed it back up into the valley. Probably to keep watch. Trust was a rare commodity post—end of the world. The sniper boy came walking down alone, his rifle resting atop one shoulder. Walker could tell the rifle had become an extension, an appendage of the boy.
That’s why he’s so good with it, Walker heard himself think. Then as if the fatigue of the days since the destruction of the convoy had suddenly caused him to become forgetful, he repeated the last part again and out loud. “That’s why,” he mumbled to no one.
The kid had killed most of the bikers and saved Walker’s life when Walker had been completely willing to throw it away for the sake of mere revenge. Now, the madness, the revenge, it felt a distant thing from him, like a country he’d once visited and hadn’t understood. Ever since the collapse, he’d wanted to go on living no matter what. He’d done everything to keep on doing that just one more day at a time. Organized, led, killed, ran, starved, stolen and watched friends die... all of it just to go on living.
Just one more day.
That, thought Walker, is what I do.
“You were fixed fer sure, mister,” said the kid with a broad easy smile that was the opposite of all the faces and smiles Walker had seen in the last five years. In fact, as he thought about it now, he hadn’t seen too many smiles in the last five years. Too few, and almost no laughter… or real joy.
The thought made him feel old.
The boy swung a bag off his shoulder and dropped it at Walker’s feet.
“Ammo and food,” the boy said. “We guessed at the ammo, but whatever you need, it’s in there.”
“I…” and Walker stopped. Stopped the way you might when your heart skips a beat. The sudden awareness that something isn’t right. The dust beneath his boots, the earth underneath, it suddenly felt hollow. Like it was imperceptibly jumping. Vibrating. Being beaten by a hundred thousand feet. And in that heart-stop second, the feeling and tremors and vibrations were confirmed and growing.