Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  “Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” said Jon as he dug into a can.

  They laughed, but they set aside another can for him. Next out of the backpacks was a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and everyone grabbed for the plastic cups. A little shot would go a long way to lift their spirits even though they were already picked up by the surprise return of Sim.

  “What are these?” asked Anne.

  She held up some single sheets of advertising that was printed on fliers like the junk mail everyone used to sort out and throw away without a second glance.

  “I found those when I stayed in a hotel in downtown Columbus. I thought you guys might be interested in them.”

  “You stayed in a hotel?” asked Garrett. “How in the world did you get reservations?”

  Jon said, “I’m going to put my money on Sim having a story about how he got a room.”

  “Let’s just say, I didn’t check in by conventional means, and the practice I got climbing ropes in this place came in handy. Room service wasn’t so hot, I had noisy neighbors, but that place really believed in stocking their minibars.”

  Sim spent about an hour describing what life was like outside the airport terminal. Susan pushed him into telling them about the raccoon, and they all had a good time hearing about it.

  The conversation got much more somber in tone as Sim described the close calls and the long cold nights when he had to settle for sleeping in cars or under cardboard boxes.

  One of his best nights had been when he came to a train that was sitting on some tracks he needed to cross. Sim had climbed to the top of one of the cars with the idea that he could simply use it to survey his surroundings, but he found something even better. One of the cars was stacked with SUV’s, and Sim was able to get some sleep inside one of them without the usual wake-up call from the infected.

  That night it had snowed like he had never seen before, and Sim couldn’t imagine being colder, but at least he was out of the wind. On a whim he reached up and pressed a button that said IGNITION, and he was surprised when the engine started. He was worried about the noise of the engine, but the heater felt too good for him to turn it off. He lowered a window a few inches to vent the fumes and turned the heater up as high as it could go.

  Just before sunrise Sim felt a chill. He wasn’t surprised that the gas had run out. He was just grateful for the few hours of warmth the SUV had given him. The problem was the crowd that had gathered around the train on both sides.

  It was still too dark to really see how bad things were, but judging by the moaning, it was really bad. Sim turned off the indoor light switch and opened the door just far enough to stick his head outside. From what he could tell, the infected were getting buried in the snow drifts on both sides of the railroad tracks, but on the side where the wind was pushing the snow straight at the train, the infected were disappearing several yards away.

  Sim planned to go that way, so he was very interested in why they were disappearing over their heads so soon. He kept watching as the sun peeked over the horizon, and it seemed like the infected were still disappearing. Then he saw why. The train was sitting at the top of a hill.

  He climbed further forward, and he saw there were no infected at all. He thought he was the luckiest man in the world when he figured out that the train wasn’t sitting on a hill. It was an overpass above an interstate.

  Sim carefully climbed out of the SUV and began working his way forward. The climbing was easy, but the cold wind made his eyes water. As the sun came up, he saw that some of the infected were trying to follow him, but they were falling over the edge of the embankment and rolling away into drifts that were at least twenty feet deep.

  The flight crew of Executive One sipped at their drinks and listened quietly as Sim described his attempt to go home. Any of them could have said, “I told you so,” but the truth was they had each hoped he would make it. They may have been safe and warm, but a close friend was risking his life.

  After his night on the train Sim was closer to the tall buildings of the city, but he kept trying to go south. He spent days trying to keep from being pushed into the city, but everywhere he went he ran into barriers. More and more of the infected were frozen solid, but it seemed like whole gangs of them found ways to accidentally stay warm. Sim had crawled through the window of a house only to jump from another window on the second floor of the same house. He had been chased up the stairs by at least a dozen of the infected that had been warm enough not to freeze. When he landed outside in the snowbank at the side of the house, the street was full of them, and it just happened to be the direction he needed to go.

  Eventually Sim got around to telling them about the hotel. The infected had won the battle when it came to preventing him from going south, but if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to get some rest, warm his bones, and recharge his batteries for the trip back to the airport.

  He explained how he got into the hotel using the handlebars from a motorcycle, and it was obvious that everyone was cheered up just a bit by his ingenuity. Picturing him throwing the handlebars combined with the Johnny Walker Red made it funnier than it had been at the time.

  When Sim finally got around to telling them about his discovery in the hotel room and his theory about the elevator under Air Force One, his friends sat in stunned silence. Cups weren’t moving, and no one spoke.

  He told them that he remembered the odd pattern of body parts on the floor of the hangar, but he didn’t connect the dots until he read the literature in the suitcases. It made sense that a city with a hidden tunnel already in place would be perfect for a shelter.

  Garrett asked, “Are you trying to tell us the President has been under that hangar this entire time?”

  Sim shook his head.

  “No, I’m just saying that’s where he went underground. Remember, the military was waiting in there with armored vehicles. They had the plane taxi partially into the hangar, and then they fought off the infected while the plane unloaded.”

  “But what’s this thing about the bodies being cut in half?” asked Anne.

  “They had this thing planned ahead of time, and they spared no expense. They knew which airport to land at, and they even suggested that we should go check out Rickenbacker. I think they were trying to get rid of us. The military led them into the hangar, and an elevator came out of the floor. When it was in the air, the infected fell into the elevator shaft, but when it came back down, it caught the ones that were extended over the edge. Whatever got caught was cut off.”

  “You saw some that were cut in half?” asked Garrett.

  “All around it, on all four sides, and even though I didn’t make anything of it at the time, there were some that were mashed in half instead of clean cuts.”

  Sim made a motion with his hands like he was trying to recreate the effect, but it was Anne who came up with the best way to visualize it.

  “It would be something like this,” she said, as she held a beer bottle above a rubber Ohio State coozie.

  She lowered the bottle slowly into place, but she kept one finger extended over the opening. Since it was rubber, the bottle stretched the coozie and squeezed her finger against the side of the beer bottle.

  “Right,” said Sim excitedly, “but since the elevator is heavy and the floor is hard, the downward force would probably smash the bodies into the gap before the inevitable happened.”

  They all exchanged nods with each other as if they were confirming what they were each thinking. There were silent nods of agreement that Sim had stumbled upon how the President had made it to safety.

  “How many bodies would you guess you saw?” asked Garrett.

  “Hard to tell,” said Sim. “When I climbed up into the wheel well, my only thought was getting into a safe place. When it became obvious that I had made a mistake, my goal changed to just staying out of sight. Those things were everywhere around the wheels. I couldn’t even take a chance that they would see me up there.”

  Jon said
, “Regardless of how many there were, it’s the only way to explain why they were cut in half at the waist, why the upper halves of the bodies were gone, why they were all spread out around a perimeter, and why they were oriented as if they were facing the center of that perimeter.”

  “So, what are we going to do about it?” asked Susan.

  Sometimes the youngest member of any group doesn’t get the respect they deserve because the others feel like they have to protect the kids. It’s natural for older people to be paternal toward the young, but sometimes the young come up with the simplest, most logical approaches to problems.

  Addison said, “Every elevator has an up button. We just have to figure out where it is.”

  If Addison had suddenly materialized where she was sitting, it couldn’t have surprised everyone more.

  The debate started after everyone got over the surprising answer. Jon said he would have used a remote to operate the elevator. Garrett disagreed because the planners wouldn’t have wanted to rely on the survival of the remote operator, and they couldn’t give everyone remote control because that wouldn’t ensure the safety of the President.

  Jon argued that the President could be the remote operator, but no one agreed the planners would leave the President’s safety in his own hands.

  “I think it had to be the pilot,” said Garrett. “He has to get the plane to the elevator to start with.”

  “No,” said Susan. “I don’t think the pilot even knew he was supposed to stick the nose of Air Force One into the hangar, and remember, they scramble more than one plane during an emergency, and they drafted us to be Executive One. What would have happened if they weren’t able to switch back to the President’s plane?”

  They eventually abandoned the idea of the remote control and started hammering on ideas about where to put the physical button. Anne suggested that they had some of the same problems with a physical button and a remote control. Who would be in charge of pressing it? Who would know where it was? What if they couldn’t get to the button in a time of crisis?

  Sim snapped his fingers, and everyone glued their eyes to him hopefully.

  “Oh, man. It’s so obvious I can’t believe it.”

  “Enlighten us,” laughed Garrett.

  “How many planes are standing by in the event of a national crisis?” asked Sim.

  One at a time, they all shrugged. They answered more or less at the same time that there were several planes, and they were at more than one airport.

  Sim was ready to give more examples of backup plans, but everyone else saw where he was going immediately.

  Anne said, “There could be an up button and there could be a remote control, but at least two people would have known where either was located.”

  “Right,” said Garrett, “and my guess would have been the Secret Service detail and the cockpit crew. Probably a sealed package with a cross check of code cards.”

  The military and federal agencies had all kinds of validation procedures that had to be verified by more than one person. They would both break the seals on their packages and read their codes. If the codes were given correctly, the people would do their jobs.

  “No, they weren’t both on Air Force One with each other. It had to be someone on the plane and someone on the ground,” said Jon.

  “Someone in the control tower?” asked Addison.

  “I would have the pilot talking with someone in a safer place than the control tower,” said Garrett. “If it was a terrorist attack, the control tower would be one of the first places they would hit with a rocket launcher. Besides, the same people aren’t in the tower all the time.”

  As he said it, Garrett knew he had hit on something. The Secret Service detail had primary people under their protection, and the detail members would all know the plan. They would have the pilot talk with someone to get them to open the elevator, and the most likely person had to be someone who had the same vested interest as the Secret Service.

  “TSA,” said Garrett. “It makes sense. The Secret Service knows there’s a shelter for the President in the event of a national crisis, and they don’t want just anybody knowing where it is, so they put a TSA crew in the airport that coordinates in advance with the Secret Service.”

  Sim said, “Are you trying to tell us the elevator power is located in the airport security office?”

  When they had gotten into the security office the first time, they were mainly interested in the weapons, the key cabinet, and the electrical circuit breakers. It was no surprise when the power went out in the airport, but the power to the elevator had to be on a backup system. Since then they had made several trips back to security for medical supplies and maps of the airport.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Jon.

  Before he could ask where they were, Anne was dragging a long box out of a supply closet. Maps of John Glenn International Airport were divided into electrical, plumbing, and dimensional.

  “Which maps do you want?” she asked.

  Sim, Garrett, and Jon all said, “Electrical.”

  Jon added, “One of the electrical drawings has to show a power switch and a line that goes from security all the way to the hangar, and on the other side of the switch will be the symbol for a power supply.”

  Three hours later Jon grumbled because he needed to relieve Mike on watch before they found it.

  As he bundled up and got his gun, he asked them to do him a favor and let him know if they found it.

  Mike showed up a bit later and told the others Jon had brought him up to speed. They had the maps spread out on tables and counters, and he joined in on the search.

  “What if it’s a remote control?” asked Anne. “There might be a switch with a power supply, but there wouldn’t be a power line that goes to the hangar.”

  “That would be a long way for a remote to send a signal,” said Sim.

  “Could they have just left the line off of the drawings?” asked Mike.

  “No,” said Sim. “The airport repair crews would need to know where the line is so they wouldn’t cut it by accident if they have to dig or bust up pavement.”

  Addison was busy working on something, and he saw that she was using a plastic menu as a straight edge to draw a line on a map. Her blonde hair was hanging down over it as she concentrated. When she was done she saw Sim was watching her.

  “We don’t need to prove the power line is there, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add it to the map. When I got to the building I drew it to the same place where other lines come in. Is that okay?”

  “Better than okay, Addison. That’s how they most likely installed it.”

  Sim reached for her drawing and said, “Wait a minute. They could have left it off the maps as long as they required approval by TSA and airport security before doing maintenance.”

  “So, we’re back where we started,” said Garrett. “Well, we have some time on our hands. Might as well keep searching.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THEY HAD BEEN so sure of themselves when Sim had arrived back at the airport. It seemed so logical that he was right about the elevator, and they felt like their deductive reasoning was sound when it came to the location of the controls for the elevator.

  Days went by with everyone pouring over the maps, trying to discover a hidden clue or some kind of code. They even talked about invisible ink and whether or not there was some big conspiracy like the movie National Treasure.

  Garrett felt like he was going crazy when he started experimenting with different colored lights and glasses as he returned to the drawings more times than he could count. Now he knew why everyone thought Nicholas Cage was crazy when he was carrying on about rubbing vinegar on the Declaration of Independence. Garrett wasn’t sure if it was vinegar because he only saw the movie once, but the problem was that he was wondering if this hadn’t all been blown out of proportion.

  They had eventually carried tools to the security office and began tearing out the walls one
at a time. Garrett told them all that he wouldn’t have to believe what was on the drawings if he could see the wires with his own two eyes.

  After a week of ripping holes in sheetrock, the security office was like a big room that was never finished. They were stepping through walls as shortcuts to where they had left off the day before, but no one was finding any wiring that went anywhere other than an outlet or a light switch.

  Sim started standing watch when it was his turn, and he found himself so fixated on the hangar that he would forget to walk the perimeter of the roof. He studied the big building with the tail of Air Force One poking out in their general direction, and he used his binoculars to study every detail so many times that he thought he could take the building apart and rebuild it.

  They weren’t exactly sure of the date, but the snow was melting away, and the infected were wandering around again. They were slower and less coordinated than they had been before, and there were definitely fewer. There were no groups out on the runways, and it seemed that there were more unmoving bodies than moving.

  The wide expanse where the survivors had set fire to the exposed heads of the infected resembled a Halloween display. Dead bodies with charred, blackened heads were spaced in that odd pattern that could pass for Sim’s aunt’s ham, and he couldn’t shake the thought. Without the snow covering the bodies he could still see the pattern.

  Garrett walked up beside Sim and waited for him to lower the binoculars before speaking.

  “Anything new?”

  “Naw, snow’s melting, and I haven’t seen anything wander into or out of the hangar since I came on watch. Any idea what the date is?”

  “I lost track,” said Garrett. “When does it usually stop snowing in this part of the country?”

  “April, I think, but I wouldn’t know firsthand. We should get together and decide what day everyone wants it to be and then start keeping track again. When it starts snowing next winter we could call it the middle of November. Maybe we could do Thanksgiving a week or so after the first snow. We could do up a ham the way my aunt used to.”