Wasteland

by Noah Mann

  Then there were answers. From Neil.

  We’re alone. We were going down there to look for food.

  My friend was hiding my presence from whoever was up there. Protecting me.

  “Is that so?”

  I was close enough to the shaft to make out the voice clearly now. A man. With a rasping, raging impatience in his voice.

  “We’ll just make sure of that.”

  The gritty words preceded by just a few seconds the rope in the shaft ahead jerking upward, then falling, coiling fast downward until its severed end slapped the dirt floor.

  “Yeah, we’ll make real sure of that.”

  I was close enough to where the cavern connected to the shaft that a few steps would allow me to peer upward. To, maybe, see something of what was happening through the half open access cover.

  But I never made it any closer. A light, distant click sounded above, followed by a sizzling hiss, then something small and solid and smoking thudded onto the shaft’s floor just ahead.

  A stick of dynamite, its fuse sizzling.

  My choice was simple. Dive into the space of the shaft, exposed to any view and fire from above, in the hope that I could rip the fuse from the explosive, or put as much distance between me and the smoldering stick before it went off.

  I spun and ran, making my choice, losing my balance in the haste of my retreat and bouncing off the cavern wall. I sprinted toward the first bend in the tunnel, knowing I had to make it that far. That corner, once I was around it, would provide cover. That was my target. My goal.

  I didn’t make it.

  Twenty Five

  There was no Hollywood leap to safety as a fireball chased me down the tunnel. There was just a horrifically loud CRACK behind me, and a concussion that slammed into my back like the gigantic fist of some mutant, mammoth boxer. I was hurled forward, face first into the tunnel wall, waves of dirt and rock washing past, choking grit in my lungs, stinging my eyes. A shrill scream rang in my ears, fading slowly, like a wailing creature being dragged off. When it was gone all that remained was near silence, broken by a soft timpani of rock and dirt drizzling down from the tunnel ceiling.

  I managed to roll over and caught my breath in the dusty fog, suppressing the sound of my coughs against the arm of my jacket. The world around me was grey brown, dim and dirty, with an acrid belch of spent explosive hanging in the air. I wasn’t hurt. Not badly, at least. Everything moved, the only obvious sign of injury a swollen cheek where it had been planted again the rocky wall. No blood spilled, or none of any consequence. I’d been lucky. Damn lucky.

  I doubted the same could be said of my friends.

  Slowly I rose in the dusty muck and looked behind. Light still spilled into the shaft. They hadn’t closed it. I crept toward the vaguely yellow light, swatting at the thick air before me with my free hand, AR in the other. On the ground I notice the weapon light Neil had given me, smashed. Above, a more worrisome sight resolved, the earthen ceiling bulging down, horizontal supports cracked, vertical beams along each wall bowed in.

  It was a collapse waiting to happen.

  I reached the end of the tunnel where it opened to the bottom of the shaft. For a moment I stood there, just shy of the vertical rise. I listened, but I heard nothing from above. No voices. No Neil. No Elaine. No threatening strangers. All there was to hear was the groaning and cracking cavern behind me.

  My AR at the ready I stepped into the shaft, taking aim at the semi-circle slice of sky visible past the open hatch. No silhouettes blocked the light. No faces gazed down toward me. I was alone. Trapped.

  Every fiber of my being wanted to rush. To get out of there now. To get to Elaine, and to Neil. But I had to calm myself. I had to take stock of the situation’s totality.

  A few second’s worth of thought offered no cheery appraisal.

  The rope that had been cut and tossed to the bottom of the shaft had been obliterated by the blast. Just bits of it remained, scattered about before me around the scorched center of the explosion. No handholds existed on the walls. Free climbing out was out of the question.

  CRACK!

  The snapping of a timber support somewhere behind reverberated like a cannon shot. I looked toward the sound. But I was also looking where I had to go.

  There were tables in the laboratory. Long wooden tables. Cables. And lengths of wood. All things I would need to fashion a way out of the place that would otherwise become my tomb.

  And I would have to do so nearly blind. Not fully blind, I knew, despite the destruction of the only working flashlight I had. I reached into the right cargo pocket of my pants and retrieved a lighter. Used to start fires on the occasions we’d needed one, I flicked it now. A flame sprouted, giving me a few feet of weak illumination. I lifted it higher and saw clearly the state of the tunnel supports, if they could be called that anymore. Splintered squares of lumber sagged just over my head, the earth above, thousands of tons of rock and soil, pressing down.

  I could be seconds from being buried alive. Or hours. Or days. Regardless of that timeline, I had no choice but to chance a quick and violent death if I wanted to avoid a slow, agonizing one, cold and starving, alone at the bottom of the hole we’d found.

  I took my first steps, keeping quiet, avoiding contact with the compromised walls, no idea if an errant sound or an innocent bump might be all it would take to bring about the collapse I feared. A minute later I was back in the lab, the supports here still sound, and, with my AR slung across my back now, I began manhandling the tables out of the space and down the tunnel, maneuvering them around each corner as gingerly as possible. When I’d collected them in the shaft, along with the other items I’d identified as useful, I shed my pack and put my AR aside and began to assemble what I’d envisioned moments ago.

  First I placed a single table against the shaft beneath the opening, short edge on the floor, legs jutting out into the open space. Next I wedged another against it, upside down, gouging one end into the ground to keep the first table pressed firmly against the shaft wall. At its top it was maybe eight feet off the floor. Which meant it was a good twenty below the opening above.

  But that was eight feet closer than I would be standing where I was. Next, I broke one of the remaining table legs off and wrenched the angled metal support from it. I looped a length of cable through a bolt hole and coiled the remainder at my feet, hooking the twisted metal at the end loosely to my belt.

  Then I began to climb. Using the upturned table legs as a child might use protruding limbs from a tree, or handholds on some jungle gym, I pulled and crawled my way upward, balancing carefully on the riser I’d constructed. With the structure wobbling slightly beneath me, I made it to the top of the vertical table and planted one foot on its uppermost legs, and the other on its highest edge. Looking up to the light from that spot, I knew my target.

  Where the two halves of the lid came together there was not much of a space. But one did exist. Just a narrow slit between the two half-circles of heavy steel, exposed now with one side open. I had to get the length of cable between those two halves if I had any chance of anchoring it. The bracket tied to one end was no grappling hook. If it worked as I hoped, it would act as a sort of chockstone, locking the cable in place. The line that would give me a chance at getting out of the shaft would be set.

  I took the metal support from my belt and dragged a length of cable up with it, gripping the line two feet short of my would-be anchor. With one hand planted against the shaft wall to steady my precarious footing, I began to swing the cable with the other, testing its feel, getting a sense of the heft at its end. Then I swung it harder, letting it windmill in my grip, swirling past my right shoulder, the metal anchor swooshing through the air with each revolution. It spun faster. And faster. I looked from it to the opening above, letting visual and tactile connect in my brain, adjusting the speed of my swing until force and aim intersected and I released the cable.

  It shot upward, arcing slightly as the metal brace pa
ssed the lip of the shaft opening and disappeared, line going slack as my anchor landed on the unseen ground above. Still, it was not where I needed it to be. I knew the first throw would not place it correctly. None could, or ever would. From where the anchor now lay I needed to shift it. Gently at first I began to whip the cable toward the slot between the cover’s halves, attempting to ‘skip’ the anchor toward that space. I moved the cable harder and harder. It began to slip back into the shaft, whatever length had been cast out with the anchor now sliding. If I didn’t get the bit of metal set soon, another throw would be in the offing. And possibly another. And another.

  But I had no time to waste. Every failure I had down here would delay getting to my friends.

  I let some slack play out in the cable and readied for a try at setting the anchor with one forceful whip of the line. My hand drew back, reaching toward the center of the shaft like a pitcher extending his windup.

  That was when the upended table began to shift.

  It creaked and slid to the left, chunks of rock falling away where it was planted against the shaft’s curved surface. If it collapsed, an eight foot fall awaited me. And the possibility of injury. Down here, being hurt would mean eventual death.

  I was running out of time.

  Focusing on where I needed the end of the cable to be, I drew a breath and jerked the line toward the space between the lid halves. A wave moved through the length of rubber-coated wire, its length leaping from the edge of the opening above and seeming to hover in the air as it rolled gently to the right, nearing the point where the anchor might catch, almost there, the cable finally settling once again, falling, the last few feet of it wedging perfectly in the narrow space I’d aimed for.

  CRAAAAAAACK!

  Below and behind, a timber snapped completely somewhere in the tunnel, a small burst of dust pulsing into the shaft, signaling the beginning of a collapse. I wasted no time worrying about it as I pulled on the cable, drawing the metal brace against the heavy lid. It came to a stop, filling its role as anchor just as I’d planned—and hoped. A few tugs on the line assured me that it was set and sturdy.

  Then I descended, using the cable to steady myself as I walked backward down the teetering array of tables I’d placed against the shaft wall. I slipped into my pack and slung my AR across my back.

  CRAAAAAAAAACK! CRAAAAAACK!

  I chanced just a quick glance toward the tunnel entrance, enough to see two of the roof supports buckle and fall, tons of dirt and rock falling. Without hesitation I turned away and gripped the cable, pulling my body upward, feet leaping from table leg to edge, climbing higher, and higher. Within seconds I was past the tables, just bare earth of the shaft wall to plant my feet against as I summoned every bit of strength in my arms and upper body to grip the cable, and haul myself upward, the opening twenty feet away.

  Fifteen feet.

  CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKK!

  Ten feet.

  A mist of dirt and rock blew past me from below. I did not look back. Above was the only thing that mattered.

  Five feet.

  CRACK! CRACK! CRACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKK!

  The last of the tunnel supports gave way. The shaft wall shuddered, cracks spreading across it, the whole landscape undermined by the spreading collapse. But I was almost there.

  Two feet.

  I was there! I reached for the metal lip surrounding the shaft entrance, one foot slipping into a fissure opening in the dirt wall. My gloved hand gripped the solid handhold. Then the other as I let go of the cable. I pulled with both hand and clawed with my boots, pulling, climbing, willing my way out of the shaft as it began to crumble beneath me.

  I scrambled out of the hole with dust billowing up around me, fouling the air and filling my lungs. My arms pulled at the dusty earth, dragging me away from the crumbling opening, clouds of pulverized soil chasing me, the fine, gritty remnants of the tunnel below raining down upon me as the lid and its circular supports fell into the spreading pit. For a moment all I could do was crawl on my belly, searching for clear air. My strength was sapped by the effort in extricating myself from what the professor had created, coughing, gagging, fingers clawing at the ground.

  Then, with a gust of warm, pure breeze, the air cleared, dust dragged off into the fields beyond. I lifted my head, sucking deep breaths, gulping air, and realizing as I did so that I was completely exposed between what remained of the shaft entrance and the greenhouse structures. I grabbed my AR and swung it around as I came to one knee, scanning for threats. For anyone.

  For my friends.

  But I was alone. Just the trailing whisper of the breeze now silenced filled the emptiness around me. There were no cries, no shouts. No call of my name. No ‘Eric’, no ‘Fletch’.

  They were gone, and I was alone.

  Twenty Six

  I had no idea where to look. Then I heard the gunshots.

  They came from the north, sharp echoes dulled by distance. One, then a long pause. Then another, followed again by silence. Each single shot was spaced precisely, as if someone was engaged in target practice. Firing, evaluating, correcting.

  Or executing.

  I ran, in the direction of the fire, alternately sprinting and jogging, the weight of my pack and weapon slowing me. What little strength I still retained was dwindling rapidly.

  A half mile I ran. Then a mile. Then half that again. The hope that I would find my friends where the sound still echoed drove me.

  More shots sounded. Close ahead now. Beyond a low rise in the terrain. I raced toward it and planted myself against the cover it provided as a volley of shots and shouts erupted from the far side.

  “You wanna tell us now, soldier boy?”

  Soldier boy...

  The speaker was older, but what he uttered was tinged with an angry childishness. A taunting offered by a reprobate. That was what it sounded like to me.

  Another was with the speaker on the opposite side of the berm, a laughing man who added nothing to what the other spoke.

  BANG!

  A single shot split the quiet. I flipped the safety on my AR to fire and planted my back hard against the sloped earthen mound, my pack with its precious cargo nearly crushed. Destroying the vials I’d almost died retrieving could make all we’d gone through a waste. The value of the notebook, though promising, could end up being nonexistent. Just an indecipherable collection of technicalities none of us would ever understand.

  The seeds, though, they were tangible. They could provide for us, and for those we’d left behind.

  I slipped my pack off and crept slowly toward the top of the rise.

  “We’re getting’ tired of this, soldier boy,” the angry man shouted just before I heard a soft smack and a guttural groan. “We can start shooting again, and maybe one of these times we get a little to close and hit you instead of a bottle.”

  My head crested the rise, just barely, enough so that my eyes peeked over, taking in the sight, a collection of people and objects my mind catalogued with haste. Two men, armed, and another, stripped to the waist, tied to an old fencepost, his head hanging. At his feet and to either side were an arrangement of shattered glass containers. Behind the armed men sat a pair of motorcycles, one of them odd looking, wide and long, with what appeared to be several car batteries wired together within the stretched frame. A sled of some sort was tied to the back of it. From all these pieces my mind was crafting a scenario of what I was now witness to.

  The armed men had ridden out here, bringing their captive with them on the sled. They’d tied him up, done some target practice in close proximity to terrify him, and were, for whatever reason, trying to extract some kind of information from him.

  Thwack!

  The angry man jabbed the butt of his rifle into the side of the captive’s head. The bleeding man reacted, lifting his face to look at his accuser.

  As he did, he saw me.

  He didn’t stare. He glimpsed. Then he looked away. But I knew he’d seen me. I knew
there’d been a connection. I also knew he didn’t want to give away my presence by fixating to the point that his tormentors would take notice.

  He knew I was his only chance at ending his misery.

  I had no idea who he was. Vague branding of him as ‘soldier boy’ by his captors told me little. Was he a veteran? Was he wearing a uniform when captured? Was it green, or was it the solid black of the French speakers who had, somehow, made their way to the country of my birth? These were questions that would only be answered if I acted.

  “Talk!” the angry man shouted, and unleashed a volley of automatic fire at the man’s feet. “Talk!”

  I could have left. Could have retreated and gone to look for my friends. But, considering the proximity, and knowing that there had been signs of life in Cheyenne, the thugs I was watching now could very well be aligned with those who’d taken Neil and Elaine. Getting at least one of them to talk might lead me to my friends, and that was a better proposition than wandering blindly, hoping to stumble upon some trace of them.

  “Talk!”

  Another volley, closer now, dirt and rock kicked up against the man’s soiled grey pants and bare feet. I scooted a bit higher and brought my AR up, sighting past the suppressor at the one firing at the captive. My choice was to try to take them both alive by ordering them to drop their weapons. Or I could drop the first one, and hope the second man made the decision to not resist.

  I chose option two and squeezed the trigger.

  My shot, barely thirty yards in distance, found its mark in the center of the man’s back. He tumbled forward, weapon dropping. Immediately his partner turned toward the softened sound of my shot and began to fire as he moved.

  Rounds chewed at the dirt wide of my position. I tracked him through my sight, firing as he slid to the ground behind the motorcycles, out of view. The AR recoiled four times against my shoulder as I sent rounds into the two wheeled vehicles. A tire popped. Sparks showered outward from a perforated battery.