by R. Chauncey
“Do as I say!” Derrick yelled at him.
Karl looked out at the desert where Dodge was hiding, and knew he could kill him if allowed. But Derrick was right, asshole that he was, Dodge could wait. Getting into the information center and killing Marlene and her accomplice were the immediate problem. If they succeeded in doing what they come to do it wouldn’t matter if Dodge was dead or alive, all would be exposed and they’d all be finished. And Dodge, too.
“Alright,” he said to Derrick. “But when this is over, Dodge is mine.”
“When we’ve killed that Marlene bitch and her fucking friend, you can kill him, cook him, and eat him for lunch for all I care,” Derrick replied.
*
Dorothy could hear every word they said though she was over a hundred feet away hidden from view. Derrick’s com-cell was in his left hand and operating. She knew that as soon as they got into the center and killed Marlene and her friend, Derrick would call her in to kill Karl, Lester, and Charlie. She knew that as a leader he wouldn’t want to get any more blood on his already bloody hands. She raised her binoculars to her eyes and scanned the area near the dry stream bed for Dodge. He had to be the man who was her accomplice. It was the only explanation for him killing Willow. She saw him lying prone in a dusty depression, his weapon ready to kill anyone who approached him. She smiled and thought, a man after my own heart.
*
As soon as the stone door closed, the florescence wall and ceiling lights came on.
Larson and Marajo got to their feet and looked around. They were standing in a carpeted twelve by twelve foot foyer with a desk and a chair to their left and a wooden door to their right with a sign on it that read bathroom. Before them was a solid stone banister the width of the foyer five feet high and at least a foot thick. On their right attached to the wall about five feet high were twelve wooden hooks for coats and a bench underneath it where a person could sit down and remove their boots or shoes if they wished. The placed looked like the foyer inside someone’s home, except it was carved out of solid rock.
“Sorry I ran into you, Marajo,” Larson said. “Hope I didn’t hurt you any.”
“Not even my pride,” she said with a big grin on her face. “This thick carpet cushioned my fall.”
He grinned at her and said, “We made it.”
She grinned back and replied, “Sure did.”
They walked silently to the banister and looked out at a large cave, forty feet wide by sixty feet long and at least fifty feet high. The ceiling and walls of the cave even with the florescence lights in them had the rough uneven rocky look of a natural cave. Only the floor had the smooth level touch of civilization on it. Next to the banister were rough stone steps six feet long and at least eighteen inches in width with grooves cut into them with thin strips of black rubber pressed into the grooves to prevent slipping that lead to the dark gray carpeted floor below.
On the floor below were six servers that looked like two foot metal and plastic boxes on two foot high stone pads in the middle of six ten foot in circumference cubicles with four foot circular stone walls surrounding each cubicle and a four foot wide entrance cut into each of the smooth cubicle walls. There were three cubicles on each side of a ten foot wide path that lead to a stone wall.
Marajo turned to Larson and said, “Unique isn’t it?”
“Yeah, unique,” he agreed. He remembered what Julian had written on the second flash drive and raised his com-cell and looked at it. A map of the center had appeared on the screen of his com-cell with a flashing blue light. He looked out at the open area then back at his com-cell screen. “There’s an office at the far end of this cave.”
“Those things in those cubicles don’t look like computers to me,” Marajo said.
“They’re not. They’re servers with hard drives in them, and that office at the far end of this cave must be where these servers are controlled from. Let’s go. We don’t have much time. They’ll probably be coming through that door any minute now.”
He walked over to the steps and started down them with Marajo following a foot behind him.
“This place must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to excavate,” she said.
“Less than pocket change for the Society, I bet,” he replied, walking carefully. He didn’t want to slip and fall. To come so far only to fall and break his legs or back seemed such a waste of time and energy. He looked around at the cave walls. “I’ll bet this was a natural cave created when part of the mountain broke off it centuries ago.”
“The Society just expanded it to suit their needs then added lighting, and probably heating, too,” she said as she looked at the vents along the floor and on the walls.
“I wonder who did the work,” Larson asked.
“Probably soldiers they later had killed to keep it secret,” Marajo said.
Larson nodded his agreement. “Whoever controls this place has a lot of power in the Society.”
“A board of directors I would imagine,” she said.
“No, the leaders, three of them, and the Council of Twenty,” he told her. He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“A Society of monsters with democratically elected leaders and a Council of Twenty,” he said. “Boy, the world is really going to be shocked when they find out about this.”
“Let’s hurry so we can make sure the world finds out,” she told him.
As they went down the steps, they looked up and saw four aluminum ducts along the walls near the ceiling.
“This place is temperature controlled,” Larson said.
“I thought it was rather cool in here,” Marajo said.
“Computers and servers work better in a cool environment,” he said.
“It’s amazingly clean,” she said as she looked around. “I wonder who cleans this place.”
“There’re probably robots in here to keep it clean. Julian said the place was protected by an automated defensive system. The chip I’ve got in my com-cell shut them down.”
“I don’t see anything that looks like a defensive system,” she said.
“Notice those four doors in the walls on each side of this cave,” he said as he looked at them.
“Yes,” she replied, looking at them.
“The cleaning robots are probably behind them,” he said. “Along with the equipment they use to keep this place dust free.”
“Robots with guns,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so. This place probably has lasers programmed to fire at body heat,” he said. “They’re easier to maintain than regular guns even electric guns according to an article I read some years ago in a science magazine.”
“Think we could stop them with our weapons?” she asked him.
“Not a chance.”
“I don’t see any laser guns,” Marajo said as she looked up at the walls.
He was looking up at the walls. “See those six round stone covers cut into the walls near the ceiling?” he asked her. “The ones that have two thick metal hinges under them.”
She looked up and saw them. “Yes. There are two on each of the walls and the wall in front of us. I wonder what’s behind them.”
“Probably the laser weapons,” he said. “And from their positions on the wall they probably cover every square inch of this place.” He turned around and looked at the wall behind them. “There are two of those stone covers on the wall behind us, too.”
Marajo turned around and looked high up on the wall behind them. “Break in here without a code and those things will reduce you to a piece of burnt greasy meat within seconds.”
“Whi
ch the robots will automatically clean up and dispose of it an environmentally safe manner in the desert at night when no one’s around to see anything.”
“Think there’s cemetery outside?”
“A hole in the desert ground anywhere will do just as well.”
“Food for the desert plants,” she added.
“Or they just dump the remains in the desert for the scavengers to eat,” he said.
They reached the bottom and ran toward the far end of the cave. They stopped when they reached the end of the cave and looked around.
“See anything that looks like a door?” he asked Marajo.
“No, I don’t,” she said, looking around. She saw an unusual rectangular groove cut in the wall a few feet to her right. “Maybe this is a door.” She walked over to and looked it over. “Looks like a door, but there’s no knob to open it.”
Larson walked over to her side and stopped and looked over the grooves that did look like a door. “I wonder,” he said, thoughtfully. He raised his com-cell and typed ‘open’ on the keypad.
The sound of moving metal parts came from behind the door.
“It’s opening,” Larson said with just the sound of relief in his voice.
“Thank God,” Marajo said. “To come all this way and be stopped by a stone door we can’t open would be terrible.”
*
“The security program should have validated the code by now,” Derrick said to Charlie.
“Try the code again,” Charlie told Lester with the hidden sound of a prayer in his voice.
He knew if it didn’t work, Derrick would kill them both without hesitating a second.
Lester carefully and nervously entered the code, thinking the same thing Charlie was thinking.
Two seconds passed and the door began to open.
As soon as the door was open, Derrick turned to Karl and said, “Go.”
Karl moved to the right side of the door and quickly glanced inside and then moved back.
“What?” Derrick asked him, standing to the right and a yard from the open door.
“Lights are on inside, but I didn’t see them,” he said.
“They’ve probably gone down the stairs heading for the office at the far end of the cave,” Lester said as he unplugged his com-cell from the USB port.
“Led the way, Karl,” Derrick ordered him.
“Does this place have a defense system?” Karl asked.
“Yes, but if you don’t see the bodies of that man and woman then the code they entered to get inside shut it down,” Charlie told him.
Karl nodded and moved inside with his weapon moving from side to side ready for anything that came at him. “Clear,” he said and moved toward the banister making sure to keep low to avoid being seen in case Marlene and her accomplice decided to fire a few shots in his direction.
“Wait,” Charlie said, following him with Lester behind him and Derrick standing to the right side of the door on the outside. He turned to Lester and said, “Check to see if the defensive system is shut down.”
“I thought you said it was shut down,” Karl yelled back at Charlie as he crouched down near the banister.
“It should have when that man and woman entered,” he said.
“What type of defensive system?” Derrick asked. He was standing outside to the right a yard from the door.
“Two lasers on each of the four walls. They cover the inside of the center making it impossible for someone to enter the center and hide. They’re hidden behind stone covered holes high up near the ceiling,” Lester said, checking his com-cell.
“Are there any robots in there with laser weapons?” Karl asked him. Damn fine time to tell me about the fucking lasers.
“No, only cleaning robots,” Charlie told him.
“Why didn’t the lasers kill them?” Derrick demanded.
“Julian would have been smart enough to tell them how to get pass those,” Karl said in a nasty voice. “One of those drives he gave the man with Marlene Done probably has a deactivating code in it.”
“It’s safe,” Lester said, looking at his com-cell. “The lasers are off deactivated by those two inside.”
Derrick rushed into the center and passed Karl and headed for the steps.
Karl looked at him and thought, Now that it’s safe, you’re a fucking hero, fearless Leader.
“I don’t want them dead,” Derrick said, running down the steps. “Not until after I’ve talked to them.”
“What if they prefer to fight to the death?” Karl asked, following him.
Derrick stopped after going down three steps and turned to Karl. “You’ve got a point, Karl,” he said. “You’re the soldier, you go first. Lester and Charlie follow him. I’ll cover all of you.”
Sure you will, Karl thought as he moved toward the stairs, but he didn’t run down the steps, he walked slowly looking to the left and right and looking for any sign that Larson and
Marajo might be hiding in one of the cubicles waiting for them.
*
Dodge saw the door open and the four of them enter the cave with Derrick bringing up the rear. He knew he had to get in that cave before the door closed, or things wouldn’t work out the way Julian had planned them. He jumped up from his prone position and ran as fast as he could for the door.
*
Dorothy saw him and smiled. She looked at the code her com-cell had picked up from
Lester’s com-cell and typed it into her keypad then looked up at the door. It was still open. She hoped Derrick and Karl would be more interested in killing the woman and her male friend than in checking to see if the door closed. She immediately started running toward the open door, but not too fast. She didn’t want to reach the open door before Dodge.
She stopped after she’d gone a hundred feet and looked through her binoculars. She saw the door slowly closing and Dodge was still at least a hundred feet away running as fast as he could. Remembering what Charlie had said about the entering the code a third time, she did nothing.
*
Dodge was sixty feet from the stone door when it closed without a sound. Not even the sound of compressed air being forced out.
“Fuck!” he screamed as he slid to a stop in front of the door.
“Wait for a few seconds,” someone yelled at him from his right.
Dodge immediately turned to his right and dropped to the ground in a prone position and turned his weapon in the direction of the yell.
Dorothy dropped to a prone position hoping he wouldn’t start shooting. She didn’t want to shoot back and kill him. She knew she’d need his help once they got into the cave. She pushed the key on the keypad of her com-cell that dialed his com-cell’s number.
Not available appeared on the small screen of her com-cell.
He had thrown his com-cell away before he reached the coordinates Betty had given him to stop Karl from tracking it to him using its battery. But he couldn’t understand why someone would yell at him to wait for a few seconds if they were working with Karl.
“Who are you?” he yelled in a worried voice as he aimed his weapon in the direction of the yell.
“I told you about the tracking chip,” Dorothy answered.
“You’re the other one Julian said would be working with me,” he asked, remembering what Julian had told him over ten years ago. You will not be alone.
“Yes. I can open the door but I have to plug my com-cell into a USB port next to the door. I’m coming forward so don’t shoot me, or we’re both finished,” she told him.
“I won’t shoot,” he said glad that he wouldn’t have to fight the men inside alone.
Dorothy stood up and walked forward holding her weapon pointing up in her right hand.
Dodge stood up keeping his weapon pointed toward the ground, but he stayed alert. “Who are you?”
“Dorothy,” she said as she walked over to the USB port and opened the stone slab and plugged her com-cell into the port.
Dodge nodded and said, “I’m Dodge. Karl chose me and two other soldiers to help find and kill whoever Julian gave the drivers to.”
“Yes,” she said as she entered the code and pushed enter on her com-cell. “Be alert when you enter Karl is no fool he may be watching the door. He now knows that you have turned against the Society. He’s determined to kill you for that. As for your killing of Willow, it means nothing to him. I’ve got your back.”
“Who’s got yours?” he asked in a surprised voice. Never in his life would he have thought Julian would recruit another soldier. Never in over a thousand years had a soldier turned against the Society. A few had tried to leave the Society, but he was the first to turn against it. Now there was another soldier working with him for freedom.
“We are all there is. If that woman and man fail, we are both finished. And that means your family, too. I have no family.”
“When they download the Society’s records on the Internet we’re finished anyway,” he said.
“Don’t underestimate Julian,” she advised him. She looked up and saw the door opening.
“Go. The door is opening.”
Dodge turned and looked over his left shoulder and saw the door was open. He ran for it, stopping to the right and quickly glancing inside. He saw no one, but he did pick up the faint echo of voices. He crouched low as he entered cautiously his weapon ready to defend himself.
The foyer was empty. He walked in a crouch position to the part of the banister close to the stairs and looked over it and saw two men on the ground floor following Karl with Derrick a few yards behind them.
Karl was going straight down the center isle between the server cubicles moving in a defensive manner from stone cubicle to stone cubicle never going around each cubicle from the same side twice.