Tomorrow We Rise

by Daniel P. Wilde

  Finally, after a two and a half hour trek of nearly 300 miles, northeastward—back the way from which we had approached the roadblock—we turned north. Although our destination was to the south, in Mexico, we couldn’t let the Skins follow us. We travelled north for about three hours, then turned west, stopping only once to relieve our bladders.

  As we traveled through southern Colorado, so close to my former home, memories of my sister and her children flooded my mind. Their deaths, at the hands of AE, could have been avoided for a while, if the three men who accosted them in the cabin had stayed away. But they would not have lived long. I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach them in time to protect them from AE or the Skins. Tears formed in my eyes. I wished, in a way, that I could join them on the other side, but I knew I had an obligation to both my friends and the human race to survive.

  This day had turned out to be very emotional. Even Street looked beat up. I couldn’t see any tears, but his face had a look of deep grief and sorrow. We all needed sleep, but where would we be safe?

  July 7, 2093, 9:55 PM—Shift

  “Well, this looks like a good enough spot,” Street said. He had pulled up in front of a large resort hotel in some mountainous, touristy town somewhere in southern Colorado. I hadn’t even paid attention to where we were. Maybe Durango or Cortez.

  “We haven’t seen Skins for five hours,” Angel said. “Maybe we’re safe here. I need to pee, and eat.”

  “Okay, but let’s comb the town first, just to be safe,” I said. “Plus, maybe there are survivors here.”

  I had tried to reach the bunker several times over the past four or five hours, to no avail. We didn’t know whether there were any survivors in this town or any of the others we had passed through in our hasty retreat. I was feeling a bit guilty about not stopping in every town to search for survivors, but Angel had convinced me that our deaths would ultimately be worse in the long run. We should make sure we live to see another day in order to vaccinate others, she argued. I still felt guilt. I wanted to check this town out.

  So, we drove up and down the streets. It was dark, and we were afraid to use the megaphones. We looked for lights and listened for the sounds of human activity. There was nothing.

  Finally, after two hours, we retired to the hotel, parked the hover next to the rear exit of the underground garage, and took the stairs to the top floor, thirty-seven stories in the air. Although the climb was brutal, we reasoned that we were safer up high than down low. We hoped the Skins would have a more difficult time finding us here if we were 37 stories in the air.

  Like nearly every other building in most of the other towns we had gone into, the electricity worked, but was sporadic—intermittently switching on and off. We’d been stuck in an elevator once before, and didn’t relish the idea of that happening again.

  At the top of the hotel, we found a large, beautifully-decorated suite with no bodies. The room was slightly dusty, but otherwise, it was in a condition ready to accommodate high-paying guests like us. As usual, we spent some time preparing an escape route up and over the roof. Of course, this high in the air, the climb down fire escape ladders would be unpleasant, and maybe impossible.

  After eating three cheese sandwiches and a bag of Doritos from the wall unit, in an attempt to allay some of the guilt I felt having not searched all the towns we passed through today, I determined to, at least, check out this hotel. There were no signs of Skins, and I felt safe enough.

  “I’m going to check out the hotel,” I said. “There are hundreds of rooms and maybe someone is alive somewhere.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Anta said. She had come out of her funk slowly over the last few hours. She seemed herself again, so I consented.

  Anta and I left the room, guns ready. Anta closed the door behind us and we heard the soft click of the manual lock from the inside. We had learned, days ago, to not use the electronic locks on the doors to hotel rooms, just in case the power shut off. Just then, the lights flickered off. I was glad I had eaten before the wall unit shut off.

  We started on the 37th floor where we were camped and worked our way down, lighting the way with our flashlights. The 37th and 36th floors were empty. We knocked on each door and received no response. Stepping out of the stairwell onto the 35th floor, Anta stopped abruptly. I ran into her back and almost knocked her over.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, nervously. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look,” she replied, shining the flashlight onto the floor at her feet.

  I peeked around her shoulder into the hallway, placing my hand on the door frame. My little finger slipped into a small hole, about the size of a pea. Dried blood stained the floor immediately at our feet, and the walls on both sides of the hall. Anta and I each took a small step backward away from it. Several seconds later, having gathered my nerves, I quietly stepped around Anta and entered the hallway.

  A short way down the hall to the right I came upon the shadowy remains of conflict. Two long streaks of dark, dry blood ran parallel to each other along the hallway floor for several meters. At the end of the left-most streak sat a lone Adidas tennis shoe. Just beyond the shoe, a silver Smith & Wesson handgun lay on the floor in what was once, surely, a large puddle of blood. It looked as though a body had been dragged down the hallway.

  “What do you think happened here?” Anta asked, quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “It looks like it was a while ago though. Should we keep searching?”

  “I really don’t want to, Shift,” Anta said. “I’m very scared.”

  “Me too. Let’s go back. We could both use some rest.”

  “Thank you,” Anta said, and she kissed my cheek.

  July 9, 6:30 PM—Cabo Rojo, Mexico—Shift

  Our speedy route over the past 34 hours took us northwest to the Utah border near Moab, west through central Utah, then south to Las Vegas on I-15. From there, we continued south through the hot, barren Mojave Desert and on to the California coast, near Los Angeles, where we spent the night in another room high atop an expensive hotel. Unlike the last hotel, we didn’t bother to search for survivors. We were running for our lives and needed to regroup in Cabo Rojo.

  From Los Angeles, we traveled south toward Baja Mexico, passing through Tijuana. Our route continued southeast into central Mexico before finally turning east toward Cabo Rojo. If the Skins had followed us, they never got close to us again. Nor did we see a single living soul; but our searches were hasty.

  We finally arrived at a location a few miles south of Cabo Rojo, Mexico. Only Dr. Steve Porter and his son Jon were at the bunker when we arrived. It was difficult to find the place. We hadn’t had any communication with the Boston bunker in three days, but finally located Dr. Porter’s signal early this morning. He directed us to the bunker, south of town, right on the beach.

  Upon opening the door of the large concrete and metal structure, which was locked, redundantly, from the inside, a wave of sickening stench engulfed us—the smell of death. Steve and Jon stood in the opening with masked faces, gloved hands and what appeared to be kitchen aprons on over their clothes. Jon had a box in his hands, which he handed to me when his dad nodded to him.

  “You’ll want to put these on first thing or you won’t be able to smell anything in a few hours.” The box contained more cloth masks, which we donned quickly. As we walked inside, Steve told their tale.

  Over the past five weeks or so, Steve and Jon had removed the bodies of over 750 people. They told us that there are hundreds more, with which they could really use our help. They haven’t been burying the dead, and they expressed great sadness at the fact, but insisted that they felt obligated to remove the bodies first, and then to humanely dispose of them, if possible. To that end, they had located a hollow in the earth about a quarter mile from the bunker, where they had placed all the bodies they were able to extricate.

  “How are you getting the bodies to the hollow?” I asked. “It seems like that would wear you out quickl
y, but you don’t look like you’ve spent the last several weeks carrying hundreds of bodies on your backs.”

  Steve smiled and said that was part of tomorrow’s tour.

  “And I’ve been helping a lot,” added Jon.

  “You sure have,” Steve replied with a chuckle as he ruffled Jon’s hair affectionately.

  “How are you avoiding catching some disease?” Angel questioned through the cloth mask over her mouth and nose, which reduced the stench to a tolerable level.

  “We’ve been using a lot of disinfectant on any surface we need to touch. The facility is well stocked for medical emergencies and we’re taking advantage of that. You’re lucky, the smell is lessening as we get rid of the bodies.”

  “Wow!” Angel said. “I can’t imagine a worse smell than this.”

  Steve believes that the bunker has sufficient resources to support the hundreds of people who were here, seemingly safe, almost indefinitely. We have yet to see how and why he believes that. But our first order of business is to rest.

  While the smell of death and decay here is staggering, we at least feel that we’re safe. The Skins don’t know where we are. Steve and Jon haven’t heard or seen anything of them. It seems improbable, even with their exaggerated capacity to smell or see, or whatever it is that drives their ability to locate the living, that they will be able to find us here, underground, surrounded on three sides by sea water and, as Steve described it, some kind of impermeable retaining wall to keep the water out of the bunker.

  While it seems impossible that I will sleep well, I’m certain I will sleep long. As for the others, I’m sure that lying in the comfortable, clean beds here, without the threat of death, or worse, they will also sleep for a long time.

  July 10, 2093—Cabo Rojo, Mexico—Anta

  “Jon, this place is remarkable!” I said.

  “I know,” Jon Porter replied. “Wait ‘til I show you the gardens. And the tunnel. And the docks!”

  “The docks?” Shift asked.

  “Yeah, the docks. Boats, scuba gear, a submarine.”

  “You serious bro?” Street asked. “A sub?”

  “Yup,” Jon replied, a smile playing on his lips as if he were locked in a giant candy store.

  We arrived in Jon Porter’s bunker yesterday. This massive, underground station in Cabo Rojo, Mexico is amazing, but reeks of death. When we first got here, Dr. Steven Porter and his son Jon welcomed us with open arms and bleeding hearts.

  This bunker, according to documents left by the now-deceased occupants and Steve’s online research, was originally an antiquated, but functional military installation of some kind. It doesn’t have all of the modern life-support systems that have been in use for at least the last two or three decades. It doesn’t have food or drink wall units—the food is either canned or freeze-dried. Nor does it have modern waste management systems, but instead, utilizes a septic tank for human waste and a trash compacter and natural gas-fired incinerator for garbage. Nevertheless, it appears to have everything we may need to sustain life here indefinitely. It even has its own submersible power generators, located offshore, that generate power using the flow of salt water. Steve and Jon promised to tell us more about the bunker on our tour.

  Over the past few weeks, with help from Mike Petrovsky in Boston, Steve had been able to access remote, hidden files on this station’s hard drives and off-location servers. These files, Steve said, detail the purpose for the creation of this installation and its systems, its history, and the functions and uses to which we may put those systems. There are also systems maps and booklets covering most of the operations.

  Steve and Jon led us down into the earth through a series of concrete tunnels and metal staircases.

  As we descended from ground level, Steve pointed out two levels full of sleeping, eating and sanitation facilities. He showed us the environmental control center on the first level below ground and assured us that the air quality was not harmful. I was wondering why he felt the need to explain about the air quality, when he led us down a hallway to a recreation room and kitchen. They were nice, but there were still dead bodies on these two levels. And the accompanying smell was nauseating, even with the cloth masks Jon had given us. When I pulled out my shirt-tail to cover my face and turned to look at Steve, he was smiling through a handkerchief he held to his mouth and nose.

  “That’s why I explained about the air quality and why we’ve been staying up on ground level in a couple of the security apartments,” explained Steve.

  “I don’t blame you,” Shift replied.

  On the third level down, we stopped again and entered through a large set of double doors.

  “Here’s the farm!” Steve said. “Jon has been trying to keep the corn alive. Been doing pretty well, haven’t you?” Steve looked at Jon with both admiration and love. The father and son may be the only such combo still alive on Earth, and they seem to know how fortunate they are.

  “Wow,” I said. “Corn? What else is there?”

  “Beets, potatoes, watermelon, tomatoes, lots of green stuff,” Jon replied, beaming. He had pulled a neckerchief that he wore around his neck, up over his cloth mask. “And way over there against the back wall, you can see the orchard. It’s got apples and peaches. There’s some raspberry and grape plants too, but they don’t look too good.”

  “That’s amazing Jon! You may keep the whole human race alive yourself!” Shift said through the shirt-tail he had pulled out of his pants to cover his mask, exposing a lean and sexy six-pack. He’s good at that. I mean—he’s good at making people feel appreciated and useful, not at looking lean and sexy—although he’s good at that, too. Jon looked proud as can be.

  “What other surprises do you have for us Steve,” Angel asked. She was clearly impressed, just like the rest of us. A farm, underground, was simply amazing!

  “Well, let’s keep going down,” Steve replied.

  We had walked down another long flight of stairs when my nose began to smell the tell-tale signs of animal dung, which was refreshing given what we had been smelling for the past several hours.

  “Is that cow crap I smell?” Street asked, wrinkling his nose.

  “Yup,” Jon replied. “But no cows. They’re all dead. But there’s chickens, turkeys and a fish pond!”

  “It looks like most of the cows died from Anthrax E,” Steve said, sadly. “We cut up what’s left of the bodies and took them outside with the human bodies. There were a few sheep and pigs too. The cows’ ‘crap’ as Street so eloquently put it, is still around a bit. We’ve been trying to clean it up too. I don’t know whether AE is in the feces, and if so, what it would do to plants, so we’ve tried to clean it up.”

  “So, the birds and the fish are alive?” Shift asked.

  “Not a single dead one among them, that we can see,” Steve answered. “It seems like they might be immune.”

  “That’s kind of what we thought, right?” Street asked.

  “Yeah, seems to fit our old hypothesis,” Shift replied. “The mammals—cows, sheep, pigs—couldn’t escape the disease any more than the humans could.”

  “Anyway,” Steve said, “there are chicken coops with hundreds of birds laying tons of eggs every day! The turkeys just run around as they please, and we’re not stopping them. The pond is stocked and there’s a little fish hatchery over next to the pond. Thousands of eggs and fish in various stages of life. We don’t know anything about raising fish, but there are some manuals. Jon’s been reading them, trying to figure it out.”

  “This just keeps getting better,” I said, “if you can get past the smell of human rot.”

  “Luckily, down here on the lower floors, the smell of death is greatly reduced,” Steve replied. “Let’s keep going.”

  We followed him down one more level to some mechanical rooms on the fifth floor. A short walk through a maze of huge, old computer systems and other machines took us to another set of large double doors.

  “Here’s the thing that will impr
ess you most,” Steve said.

  He opened the doors and flipped a switch on the wall. Within seconds, a string of fluorescent ceiling lights came on, one after another in sequence, leading down a large and very long circular concrete tunnel with a flat, horizontal concrete floor. Several ATVs—All Terrain Vehicles—sat in rows along the right side wall. They were all identical, red, with seating for two, a large wire basket on the back and a spotlight on the front.

  “I guess that explains why hauling bodies hasn’t worn you out,” Shift said. “But how did you get these things up all of those stairs?”

  “Ah, that’s the trick,” Steve replied with a wink.

  “We just used the ramps over there behind that big door,” Jon added, pointing behind him to the wall. “They go in circles all the way up, with doors on every floor.”

  “Get on folks,” Steve said with a broad smile.

  I had never ridden an ATV and was nervous. Shift, likely seeing or sensing my anxiety, pulled me over and helped me sit down behind him. Then he turned it on. The others did likewise, with a little guidance from Jon. I wrapped my arms around Shift’s waist. His torso stiffened as I let my hands drop a little lower toward his belt line.

  We traveled down the long tunnel, in single file, for about 40 minutes. It was loud. At various intervals, green boxes, likely holding electronic equipment, sat next to the tunnel wall. The whole tunnel, as far as I could tell, was in great condition. I couldn’t even see dust or spider webs.

  Over time, the floor of the tunnel began to rise. We had started several stories below ground, but were obviously moving back up toward the surface. Finally, the tunnel opened up into a small natural cavern rich with the smell of the sea. We passed through a very large set of thick metal doors connecting the tunnel with the small cave, which Steve opened remotely.

  The cave was long and wide, with a ceiling approximately eight or nine meters above our heads. Concrete pillars were staggered here and there, probably to help stabilize the ceiling. Steve directed us over to a small area where a couple of other ATVs sat. He motioned for us to turn ours off and get down.