Wasteland

by Noah Mann

  “This is...” Elaine couldn’t finish what she wanted to say, whatever choice of words she’d hoped would rise lost to churning, bitter emotions.

  “Insane,” Neil completed the statement for her.

  “The definition of it,” Elaine said. “You’re going to do exactly what Burke did and get the same result.”

  I heard her finish, but my thoughts were already speeding somewhere else. To what I had to do.

  I picked the shovel up and began clearing the dirt away from the remainder of the lid, exposing its four edges. The same simple pull handle was set into the top. All I would have to do was grasp it and lift.

  But if I was going to salvage anything from the locker before it exploded, I needed to do so smartly, and quickly, without exposing myself unnecessarily. That meant being as small a target as possible. Burke had positioned himself over the locker. I lowered my body to the flat earth next to it and began scooping a trench that would slope down toward the handle. A few minutes later I’d gouged what resembled a ramp leading down from ground level to where the top edge of the locker rested.

  That was when I noticed something.

  “Elaine...”

  She eased forward at my calling.

  “What?”

  “Do you see that? At the edge, right in the center?”

  She turned on her flashlight and lit up what I was speaking of, the beam revealing a small slab of metal, slender and square, that rose parallel to the edge of the lid.

  “Did you notice that on the one Burke opened?” she asked.

  “None of us were close enough to see anything,” I said.

  “It wasn’t on any of the red ones,” she said.

  “What if it’s part of the trigger mechanism?” I suggested.

  She thought for a moment, adjusting her view, studying the simple, seemingly innocuous square of metal.

  “Can you expose it further down?”

  I began doing that. Digging out the space below the piece of metal, clearing enough soil to create a pocket around what lay beneath.

  “What the hell is that?” I wondered.

  It was a small box, green like the surrounding metal, though it appeared not connected to the rest of the locker. It looked, actually, to be covering something.

  I eased the shovel’s blade toward it.

  “Be careful,” Elaine said.

  The tip of the tool slid under the box and bumped it. A breathe caught in my throat as it moved, shifting enough to make me think that it was not actually connected to anything. That it was, as we’d thought, a cover.

  “I’m going to remove it,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” Neil asked from near the pump house.

  Elaine looked back to him and motioned for him to stay where he was.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said as I reached to the box and gripped it, a gentle tug releasing it. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  That was my reaction as the cover slid free and the light Elaine held made plain what it had concealed. Four notched and numbered wheels were set into the side of the locker just below the lowest edge of the lid. Wheels virtually identical to those I’d manipulated on the contact transmitter that allowed us access to the LCC.

  “Who the hell thinks this up?” Elaine asked.

  “The people you used to work for,” I reminded her.

  She’d been a government employee, though the acronym she served was likely unrelated to the one that had dreamed this up.

  “This isn’t a lock,” I said, stating what we already knew. “Burke had no trouble opening the other one.”

  “So it’s only to disarm,” she said, still puzzled by the why of it all. “What’s the point?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her, remembering the internal exchange I’d had with myself some time ago.

  Another mystery...

  It was an unsatisfying admission, but coming to some understanding as to the usefulness of an unlocked and booby-trapped food locker had to remain secondary in importance for the moment. Number one was getting inside.

  “I can still just open it,” I said. “Try to get some out before it detonates.”

  Elaine still hadn’t warmed to that approach.

  “Bad idea number one,” she said.

  But another possibility percolated to the surface of my thoughts. A possible impossibility. A swing for the fences chance that just might be crazy enough to actually work.

  “I could enter the code,” I told her.

  “You don’t know the code.”

  “Maybe I do,” I said.

  She gave me a look, and then shook her head.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “Did you read about the nuclear codes that were set to eight zeroes for twenty years?”

  I could see by her reaction that she had. For purposes of expediting any retaliatory strike, the codes required to actually launch nuclear missiles at an enemy were, for two decades, a simple string of zeroes.

  0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

  What if the codes shared across this lockset, identical to that on the lock transmitter, had been similarly configured for ease of use? How would it be possible to ensure that someone finding one of these green lockers would know a code specific to it? Would it not have been safer, and more expedient, to make all the codes the same? To make them memorable? To make them common?

  Maybe common to the very lock device itself.

  “Four-eight-four-two,” I recalled.

  “If you’re wrong it will blow immediately,” Elaine said. “Isn’t that what Ben said? Two seconds on a wrong number and it detonates.”

  Eight seconds and I would know. The same time to be scored as riding a bull. Well, I’d certainly get the horns if I was wrong about this.

  “Get back with Neil,” I told Elaine.

  She hesitated, looking to me. Fixing her gaze with mine.

  “I want to say it,” she said. “But not just because of what you’re about to do.”

  Her oblique avoidance warmed me. Touched me.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  She smiled and handed me her flashlight, then backed away. I held it with one hand and reached to the numbered rollers with the other.

  Four...

  I counted to two and was still there.

  Eight...

  Two breaths, two loooong breaths, and I hadn’t been obliterated.

  Four...

  Another two seconds, and nothing. I set my finger on the final roller and spun it carefully to the indicated number.

  Two...

  I finished. I waited. And waited. Then I looked back to Elaine and Neil.

  “Fingers crossed,” I said.

  Any luck would be welcome. There was the hope that I’d disarmed any explosive charge, but no promise. I could open the lid and suffer the same fate as Burke Stovich.

  But now, at least, there seemed a chance, maybe even a belief, that that might not be so.

  The recessed handle tilted up as I gripped it. Kneeling close to the locker I pulled and the lid titled upward. I leaned back, instinctively, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did.

  “It didn’t go off until Burke took an MRE out,” Elaine said.

  That was the next step. The true test, I knew. Actually getting my hands on what lay within, the flashlight beam revealing that it was what we all wanted it to be. Supplies. Food. Batteries. Medicine.

  I reached into the locker and took a pair of MREs in hand and lifted them out, almost falling backward as I did, an expectant grimace tightening my face as I waited. And waited. And waited.

  Ten seconds later I backed away and handed the MREs to my friends.

  “I’m going to grab and throw,” I told them. “I’m going to get as much out of there in case something does happen. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Neil affirmed, his hands already tearing at one of the MRE pouches.

  Elaine, though, said nothing. Nothing audible, that is, her lips forming a very clear
, and very perfect ‘I love you’.

  With a smile warming my cheeks I returned to the locker and removed supplies from within. I pulled and tossed. Pulled and tossed. For fifteen minutes I repeated the process, until the locker was empty and our hopes were restored.

  Fifty One

  We were within five miles of Bandon. Five miles of what we had come to call home. Two hours walking, maybe three if our strength ebbed, and we would be there.

  But we wouldn’t have to wait that long. The town had working vehicles when we’d departed, and a small plant to process fuel from a well outside of town. We’d paid our dues on this mission, the last four hundred miles carrying full packs and dragging a cart made of old bicycle tires and a section of counter scrounged from a restaurant. The people of Bandon, our friends, our neighbors, had wished us well on our journey. Now that we were within radio range, they could hop in a damn truck and come get us.

  “Go ahead,” I said to Neil.

  I sat on the metal guard rail alongside the stretch of the coast highway north of town, Elaine at my side, ocean breeze washing over us from the west. Waves crashed beyond the nearby dunes. I could neither hear nor see the curling, foaming waters, but I remembered them. And I would see them again. I would wade into them and feel the cool Pacific hurl itself at me.

  “I can’t wait to see her,” Neil said as he retrieved the radio from his pack. “Both of them.”

  Grace and Krista. How joyous that reunion would be.

  “I’m happy for you,” I told my friend.

  “I’m happy for you, too,” he said, smiling. “For both of you.”

  What had we been through? Was it something transformative? Were we different people after all we’d faced? All we’d overcome?

  Or were we just better examples of the very same individuals who’d left town together?

  I wasn’t sure. I was just happy I’d have time, lots of time, to think on that and come to some conclusion. Or to discard the philosophy of it altogether.

  “Call us a cab,” I said.

  Neil brought the radio up to his face. It had been intended to alert the perimeter guards that we were approaching so there would be no chance of friendly fire bringing our mission to a terrible end. He turned the radio on and twisted the volume knob.

  As the sound came up, our hearts sank.

  Fifty Two

  “White. White. White.”

  The voice, unmistakably familiar from similar past broadcasts, repeated the word again and again. Nearly two years ago it had been Red Red Red. Now, for whatever reason, it was this, spat out across dead airwaves on a faint, distant signal.

  “Eagle One, come in!” Neil called out, pressing the transmit button.

  “White. White. White.”

  The maddening reply repeated, filling the space between his transmission attempts.

  “What can that mean?” Elaine wondered aloud.

  Neil, though, had no desire to muse on what we were hearing. He handed the radio to me and geared up, moving fast down the road.

  “Neil!”

  He ignored my shout and sped up. Elaine and I threw on our packs and took off after my friend, weapons in hand.

  * * *

  The gate across the northern bridge was flattened, high fencing to either side of it yanked from its moorings as if some beast had rolled over the barrier. Beyond the lazily flowing water of the Coquille River below, Checkpoint Chuck lay in ruins, rubbled and black, bits of the structure scattered about the roadway that ran past it. That ran straight into the heart of Bandon.

  “Grace!”

  Neil screamed her name as he sprinted across the span, fifty yards ahead of Elaine and me.

  “Krista!”

  He was crying out not to them, but to some hope that all, despite what we were witnessing, was right. That all was as it had been when we departed. That there would be waves, and smiles, and open arms to embrace us. Very specific arms to hold him.

  “Grace!”

  He ran faster, no tiredness, no illness holding him back. No poundage of gear weighing on him, slowing him. Nothing would stop him until he reached their house. Until he reached her.

  I ran, Elaine alongside me, our pace no match for his. We held our weapons ready, hoping there would be no trouble. In a way, I feared that we were about to find a situation worse than any conflict.

  “What do you think happened?” Elaine asked between jogging breaths.

  “I wish I knew,” I said.

  By the time she and I reached solid earth on the south side of the span, Neil was far ahead, past the ruins of Checkpoint Chuck, racing his way into town.

  * * *

  My friend was completely out of sight when Elaine and I entered Bandon.

  “Jesus...”

  Her quiet exclamation summed up my reaction as well. The town was silent. There was no sign of life. But none of death, either. No bodies littered the street. Windows were still intact. Structures hadn’t burned. Everyone, it seemed, had simply disappeared.

  “Something big broke through that gate,” Elaine said. “Why wasn’t there any sign of a fight except at the checkpoint? They would have defended the perimeter.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t,” I suggested. “The Horde snuck people in before.”

  “Infiltrators,” she said.

  That was only a guess. I could imagine other possibilities, but voicing those would be no less precise. What we needed was information. A starting point to understand what had happened here.

  I knew where one piece of that answer could be found.

  “Eric,” Elaine said, looking to me as I peeled away, crossing the street. “Where are you going?”

  “Just come with me.”

  “We have to find Neil,” she reminded me.

  “There’s only one place he’ll go,” I said. “We need to find out what happened here.”

  I continued up the street, turning onto Franklin. Elaine realized then where I was heading. She’d spent time in the front rooms of the house up ahead near the intersection with Cross. Getting her ricochet wound stitched and bandaged. Maybe visits for other maladies before I’d arrived in Bandon.

  “Doc Allen,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  The front door was unlocked. If it had ever been locked while occupied by the elderly physician, I didn’t know. But I suspected not. He was that kind of man. That kind of doctor. Always available. A healer.

  Another thing he was was fastidious about records.

  He had files on all his patients, tan folders containing handwritten notes and diagnostic information that echoed procedures in the days before everything was electronic and interconnected. It was a behavior lost to time, but he’d resurrected it for this town, his adopted home, after the blight had nudged the world out of the technological era.

  But he kept more than patient records. He maintained an appointment book, on the high counter he’d installed in the foyer of his combination office and home, the former occupying most of the downstairs, save the kitchen. That book lay where I’d expected it would be, like a hotelier’s register.

  “When was the last appointment?” Elaine asked, already zeroed in on the specific ‘why’ of my reason for this visit.

  I turned the book to face me and opened it. Names of the town’s residents, almost all familiar to me, were listed in the left column of the ledger-like book. Reason for visit was next. Then date and time in the rightmost columns. I turned through the pages until reaching one with just a few names. The last entries. The final names.

  One very familiar.

  “Ten days ago,” I said, the answer we’d sought mostly breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  When I didn’t answer, Elaine slid the appointment book to face her and read what had stopped me cold.

  “Grace,” she said, reading the name of the last appointment.

  “Grace Moore,” I added, turning away.

  Elaine looked to the book again and then
closed it slowly.

  “We don’t tell him,” I said, facing away from her.

  “It just says she was here for testing.”

  I looked to Elaine, worried. Despite her words that attempted to deflect me from concern, it was plain on her face that she harbored the same.

  “He doesn’t need to know,” I told her. “All we needed to know was when people were here last. We have that. There was nothing else of consequence. Understood?”

  After just an instant of contemplation, she nodded.

  “Ten days,” she said, looking around the undisturbed space. “Did everyone just walk away?”

  I had no answer. If I had, I didn’t know if I could have voiced it right then. Thoughts of Grace were filling my head. Wonderings of what could be wrong. And prayers that nothing truly was.

  “Let’s check the southern perimeter then get to Neil,” I said. “He’ll be at their house.”

  “You go,” Elaine said. “I want to check the rest of downtown.”

  “On your own is not a great idea.”

  “There’s no one here, Eric.”

  “We’ve been places that looked empty before,” I reminded her. “Then they weren’t.”

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, putting her hand to my cheek and kissing me. “And Grace will be okay, too. You’ll see.”

  She turned and walked through the front door, down the walk, then back toward the main part of town. When she was gone I opened the appointment book again and turned to the last page that had fixated me. I stared at Grace’s name for a moment, a long moment, then I took it in hand and peeled it carefully out of the book, crumpling it in my fist. As I left Doc Allen’s house and crossed the park on my way south I dropped the ball of torn paper into one of the trash cans that sat upon the faux lawn, a skim of dust dulling the false greenery beneath my feet. The blighted world was already trying to consume the town of Bandon less than two weeks after it had been deserted.

  Fifty Three

  Neil sat on the porch of his empty house, the summer sun racing west, night chasing it from the east. I reached him after my scouting trip to the south, coming up his walkway to find him silent. His pack lay on the porch floor next to him, M4 leaning against the railing.