by Mark Tufo
“I know what beer is. Now, I want to be REAL clear on this part. Are you asking if I like it in the abstract, or because you quite possibly have some?”
Mathieu smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
“You are really going to leave me hanging here without answering the question? What kind of cruel man are you?” I flipped him the finger.
He flipped it back. “I do not know what it means, but by your tone, I will take it to mean something similar to this.” He showed me the entire palm of his left hand as if he were stopping traffic.
“That’s bad?” I asked.
“Could get you killed in most communities.”
“Might have to keep that in mind.”
The ten minutes he was gone took forever. I felt like a kid whose mom promised him a trip to the toy store if he behaved while she did her regular errands at the grocery store, shoe store, and worst of all, the yarn store. Ever been a six-year-old boy and have to wander around the fucking aisles of a yarn store? Not too much more could be done to a youngster to create more boredom than that. It’s not my fault all those rolls of yarn came undone. How did I know by pulling them all behind me they would unravel? Never did get that GI Joe action figure with the Kung-Fu grip she’d promised. It was only eight rolls of yarn, Mom!
I heard a sound that was much like if a giant rat had got his toe stuck in a closing door. The squealing was approaching, at first I laughed off my errant assumption, but the closer it got the more my imagination began to take off. It wasn’t like this world couldn’t yield that type of monster. What would rodent teeth look like on a six-foot rat? I think I’d rather face a Lycan.
I craned my neck so I could see a bit down the hallway, seeing nothing at first. Then, the edge of a metal table, a gurney actually, appeared. Sitting atop of it was a barrel; a glorious oaken cask, and pushing the loudly protesting rolling table was a grinning Mathieu.
“What’s in the barrel, Mathieu?” I was grinning as well. It was infectious.
“This one just became ready a few days ago.”
“This one? How many do you have, and how many gallons does this thing hold?” It was roughly the size of a quarter keg (or what we used to call pony kegs when I was kid).
“Five gallons.”
“You…” I almost choked out a sob. “You have five gallons of beer in there?” Right now I wouldn’t have cared if it came out the dark coffee color of a stout.
“I call this Titanee Amber Ale. Hand me your mug.”
I tossed my fish fecal water on the ground and happily handed it to him as he poured an almost clear, reddish liquid into my cup. I could only stare at it in disbelief as he handed the nearly brimming mug back.
“Aren’t you going to try it?” he asked excitedly.
“You need to pour yourself some. There’s a custom I need to show you.”
He looked slightly perplexed, but that didn’t stop him from doing as I said.
“Okay, we lightly touch our glasses together like this.” There was a clinking noise as I gently brought our mugs together. I wanted to make sure none of the precious liquid fell to the floor. “Then we say, ‘Cheers’ and drink.”
“Cheers and drink!” he repeated enthusiastically as he tipped his mug up.
“Well, you don’t say, ‘and drink’, but whatever.” I tipped my mug up as well.
There was a hint of the residual fish water for just a moment before the effervescent bubbling of carbonated beer ran across my palate. The taste was, by leaps and bounds, better than anything I’d tasted in this day and age, and would have easily stacked up to anything when beer was more readily available. Nice initial clean taste with just a hint of after-bite—crisp might have been a good word.
“How?” I finally asked after coming up for air. I was now working on my third mug full.
“Never much liked the taste of mead. There are these small booklets down here. They used to call them magazines, you know those?”
“I know those.”
“Well, I noticed they had all these pages devoted to this beer beverage, none for mead by the way. So I did more investigating. Some talked about how they were made from the finest wheat, barleys, and hops. I just started experimenting. Had a bunch of time on my hands. Took me five years to get this one right.”
“Worth every fucking second,” I assured him.
He went into detail about the fermenting process, I listened because he was so passionate about it, and it was hard not to share in it with him. I berated myself in the background. I’d had over a century and done nothing to reinvent my old beverage. In five years, he’d produced a taste that breweries would have clamored for.
As we polished that small keg off that night, I told him all about when and where I’d come from. He’d had to stop me on numerous occasions for clarification and to express his disbelief. I’d assured him it was all true, even the part about jet packs. My story, I’d tell it my way, plus I was drunker than a skunk that had found a barrel of fermented apples. We’d become friends that night. We’d both let our guards down and let the other in behind the walls we’d both been building for years. Not sure which of us needed it more.
“What happened that brought us back to this?” Mathieu had not looked up from his glass as he swept his hand back and forth.
I’m sure he meant the outside world as it was now and not the building we found ourselves in. “The pursuit of power, I guess. Man’s seemingly innate need to dominate over others. Weird…from as small a group as three or as large as three billion, someone needs to show that they are in charge. Why is that? Beer me.” I held out my cup.
“Without a hierarchy, there is anarchy,” he burped out.
“You just make that shit up?”
He smiled right before falling off his chair. He did pull off an amazing display of athleticism when he didn’t spill a drop of beer. We laughed more that night than both of us had in fair number of our accumulated lifetimes; which, when you really kind of think about it, is not all that surprising. Not many people who still have a semblance of sanity laugh like loons when they are by themselves. That is strictly an emotion reserved for crowds—or at least two people, in this case.
When the cask came up dry, Mathieu excused himself to get another one. Came out something like, and I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t know which one of him said it, “More beer, be back.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to see him again that night when he bounced off the wall next to the opening.
“Excuse me,” he told the structure.
It was a good thing he passed out somewhere. I was having a hard enough time holding on to my improvised bed as it was. I was still grinning when I awoke, then I realized I had a hangover that rivaled anything I’d previously encountered in my extended years, so I laid there until the worst of it passed. My true moment of panic came when I realized the press of some, err, necessities came to the fore. I had to piss like a racehorse—any horse I suppose, as I don’t think racehorses cornered that market. I debated about using my mug, but it would soon be overflowing. Then I thought of the chamber pot Mathieu had given me. That wasn’t going to work either. Two more drops of condensation, and it would be spilling out. In fact, moving it was going to put someone in a precarious situation.
“Now or never, I suppose.” The press of my bladder overcame my fear of the pain I was about to inflict on myself. I looked over to the cask gurney, wondering if I could ride it like a gondola. I didn’t have a paddle, though. I had the bittersweet memory of BT in his hospital bed back at Camp Custer moving his over to me in an attempt to strike me for some offending remark I’d made about him.
“Miss you, brother,” I said just as I touched the tip of my feet down onto the cool concrete.
A tingle of pain shot out from my thigh. This was only going to get exponentially worse as I put more weight on it. I was right, up to a point, as the pain capped off at somewhere between a bee sting and someone smashing a whiffle ball bat against my leg, and every variation
in between. It hurt, but it certainly wasn’t debilitating. My next problem became ‘where the fuck do I go?’ I was hunched over, because, to stand up would put more pressure on an already bloated organ. I couldn’t even look around properly as I shuffled out the doorway.
I had been completely unprepared for how big this place was. The corridor I found myself in curved off to the left. There wasn’t much in it save a couch that looked like Nixon may have sat in it and one passed out Mathieu. I thought about waking him up so he could point me in the right direction, but if I could spare him even ten minutes of this dreadful feeling of excessive drink pay back, I would do it. I came around the first bend in the hallway to realize there was another one.
“It’s a damn circle. I’m going to end up back where I came from.” I was a half a second away from opening a doorway that lined the corner and doing what needed to be done, hoping that my guilt would dry up before Mathieu would notice I’d debased his building. My needs were immediately forgotten when I saw a sign. This wasn’t Titani as my drinking buddy called it. It was Titan I, Missile Silo 246.
I was in a nuclear missile silo facility.
“Are you kidding me?” I placed my hand against the sign, flecks of paint came off. I was in a place that, at one time, could have wiped out any city and its population on the entire planet. Was the missile still here? And if it was, was radiation even now leaking out? Did it matter? If it was a heavy enough dose Mathieu would show effects, at least up until he changed over once a month and would be cured of any cancer causing agents present in his body.
“Do you feel as bad as I do?”
I jumped when I heard Mathieu speak. Okay, jump is a bit of an exaggeration. Hopped? Pulsed up, perhaps? I turned to look at him, his eyes glowing like candles and as red as Bing cherries. He had one hand on his head and one on his stomach.
“This is about the only time I wished I was turning tonight,” he said. We both knew because he would be “cured.”
“Mathieu, this place isn’t called Titani.”
“I know that.”
“Maybe you could have told me this place was a missile silo.”
“Michael.”
“Call me Mike.”
“Mike, I don’t even know what a missile silo is.”
I told him, he somehow seemed even more green than when he’d previously come out behind me.
“Can we talk about this after…” He didn’t need to elaborate.
“Lead on.”
It wasn’t much further to a restroom that looked as clean as the day it had been built. Except for the brown sludge-like water, it was completely functional.
“Gravity fed,” he said as he flushed the toilet. “Pipes are all rusted, though, won’t be long until they burst. Some of the ones in other sections you can poke your fingers through. How’s your leg?” he asked as we exited.
“Surprisingly good.” I couldn’t get the fact that we were possibly sitting next to a mega ton warhead off my mind, and I let him know. “Is there a rocket here?”
“Rocket?”
“Big, long, tubey, cylinder-looking thing.” And yes, I used the word tubey to describe a weapon of mass destruction.
“How big?”
“Not really sure, but you’d have a hard time missing it. Seventy-five to a hundred feet, I guess.”
“There’s nothing like that in here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Like you said, I’d of had a hard time missing it.”
“You’re positive?”
“Mike, I’ve been living here for fifteen years. I think I would have remembered stumbling upon it.”
“Sorry, you just have no idea how devastating those things could be.”
“Come on. I’ll show you where it probably was.”
My stomach was gurgling something fierce. Tough to say if it was nerves, beer residue, or a caustic brew stew of both. We came out onto a small walkway platform that ringed a large, vertical tunnel.
“Don’t touch that railing,” he warned. As a demonstration, he placed his foot against it and a portion clattered to the floor some fifty feet below.
“Damn,” I said, looking over the edge, getting as close as I dared, which really wasn’t all that close. I looked up, seeing that about the same distance as the floor below the roof was high. At the top were two huge steel doors that opened when the missile was called upon to perform its death-dealing task. “There any other chambers like this?”
“None that I’ve found, and yes, before you ask, I’ve explored this place inside and out.”
“Got to admit, it is a relief to see it’s not here, but I kind of wouldn’t mind seeing one either though. Can we go topside?”
“Depends on your leg. How you feeling?”
“Like I can deal with the discomfort if I can get some sunlight on my body.”
Five levels wouldn’t normally take fifteen minutes to climb, but I was taking my time.
“I still can’t believe you’re walking this soon.”
“Because of my Lycan wound or all the beer I drank?”
“I drank more than you.”
And there it was, a comfortable easy camaraderie had been formed the previous evening. I hoped we’d have the chance to develop it even further. Although I surely wasn’t going to tell him that, that’s just not how guys work.
We came out a side door that was concealed within a decent-sized earthen mound. Vines and other growth made the door almost impossible to see from anyone but the most prying of eyes and it wasn’t like this was on a highway of any sort.
“Man, this feels good,” I said as I leaned against a tree. “Something about being underground kind of sinks into your bones or something.”
“You smell that?”
“Come on, Mathieu, I drank more than I have in decades, there’s bound to be some repercussions.”
He turned to look back at me. “Are you truly referring to your bodily functions?”
I grinned.
“Was that common practice during your time?”
“Not really.” Somewhat embarrassed now that he wasn’t seeing the humor; although I had felt better for releasing some pressure.
He shook his head. “That wasn’t what I was talking about. However, I was going to say something to you about it soon.”
“You were ahead of me on the stairs.”
He pointed to his nose. “Since the change, I have a heightened sense of smell.”
I paused. “Aw, man, I am sorry.”
“You are easier to embarrass than I would have thought possible.”
“You’re messing with me?”
“If by ‘messing with’ you mean having fun at your expense, then I most certainly am. And while you do smell like something a Bison might leave behind, that is not what I am referring to as the odor I am detecting.”
He had my interest piqued. I had food on the brain, like an aforementioned Bison Burger, or maybe steak. A baking loaf of bread would be perfect as well. He crashed all of my chow fantasies with one word.
“Lycan.” He was testing the air with his nose, the disdain he said the word with could have dripped to the ground.
“Here? We should go back in. Neither of us are any match for one of them.”
“They’re close.”
“Even more of a reason.” A thought of dread hit me full force. “Have they ever been around here?”
When he shook his head in the negative I knew why they were here now. He must have seen the look of concern on my face because he spoke.
“I knew this possibility was an outcome if I stepped into that clearing. I thought I’d done enough to cover my tracks and my scent. I guess not.”
“I’m sorry, Mathieu. They’re here for me.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s mostly right, but once they picked up the smell of a wayward werewolf I’m sure that gave them a little more incentive as well.”
“Is this the only way into the silo?”
“No.” He was of
f looking into the surrounding woods. “There’s at least six that I’ve found.”
“Can they be locked or barricaded?”
He thought about it for a second. “Two can be locked, two could be acceptably barricaded. This door, if discovered, can be opened, and it cannot be fortified easily. The other is a cave system; a wall of this structure was removed and it opens directly out to the cave.
“Removed?”
“It almost appears as if people were trapped down there and needed to find another way out. I found all manner of tools and implements at the opening to get that particular job done.”
“Strange. Question for another day I suppose. Should we leave this place?”
“Leave this place?” The look of torture on Mathieu’s face was difficult to look upon. I had to remember this was his home. This was the only place he’d known for the last fifteen years. “Where would I go that the people around me would be safe?”
“There’s still a chance they came sniffing around and did not find us.”
“Possible,” he said without much conviction.
I did not offer up my thoughts, which revolved around the point that they may have already found a way in and were even now walking the corridors looking for us. I found that somehow more terrifying that such an alien creature would be walking through something so thoroughly human as a concrete hallway. The sun no longer felt quite as warm on my skin, and we were far too exposed if they were around. And who friggin’ knew how far my gaseous emissions could be detected? On second thought, that might give them reason not to come looking for us, would probably think one or both of us were already dead.
Mathieu took one more long, sweeping glance. “Are you alright enough to go back?”
“Ready when you are. If at any point we have to run, Mathieu, you just need to go. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Are you going to run if that’s the case?”
“Of course.”
He was lying; I didn’t call him out on it though. I was honored he liked me enough to potentially risk his life. He did, at this point, have a lot vested in me. He had saved me in that clearing, he had nursed me back to health and now he might need me if we were to leave this place. Whether he was thinking that far ahead was not for me to know, at least not at this point.