Trader sighed. “Pretty much. Total damned mess. The cities took the brunt of it, but they hit most areas.”
“Just seems pointless. It guaranteed their own destruction.”
“It was their last roll of the dice. They were losing. Desperate people do desperate things.”
Jake still couldn’t wrap his head around it. They must have known the consequences. The crew in the Orbital Bomber always dared each other to open the instructions safe, but they never did. It didn’t take a genius to work out what they would be required to do. He wondered who was on watch in January 2077 and if they let rip with their missiles.
All of the fencing around this facility had fallen. The only signs of its former existence were a few of the steel supports spaced at irregular intervals around the perimeter.
Their SUV rattled over the previously flattened gate and stopped a few yards short of the topside building. The rest of the convoy arrived two minutes later, at quarter to nine in the morning.
The group surrounded Trader by the hood of his SUV. “Same as before. Jake is gonna get us in there and lead the clearance work. Stay on guard until we open up the loading doors. Tess and John, you two come with us.”
The red-haired man organized the team again in a defensive formation around the building. Trader passed Jake a spotlight.
“Getting a sense of déjà vu?” Jake said.
“Let’s hope we don’t find another frazzled soul in here. We can’t take them back.”
Jake clicked on the light. Excitement built inside him again. These stasis pods might still be intact. System failures were bound to happen, but lightning striking twice in such close proximity seemed unlikely. If people were to be brought out of stasis, the time was now, when they were needed to rebuild and properly organize.
“Can’t take our time either,” Trader said. “Kappa’s three hours’ drive from here. We’ll load the weapons and lock the place up for later.”
Jake nodded, headed into the entrance, and made straight for the corridor. The gloomy interior had the same design as the previous building. Mold covered the formerly white plastered walls, and the fetid odor of damp rotting floorboards hung in the air. He reached the end room on the left and shone in his spotlight. The tiles were removed around the open hatch.
He turned back to Trader and his two team members. “Did you leave it open?”
Trader nudged past him and drew his gun. “No, we didn’t.”
Jake joined him at the edge of the hatch, shone his light down the shaft, and felt a cool draft against his face. “Either the structure’s compromised or the loading doors are open.”
“Let’s go with option B first. I don’t want to get caught climbing the stairs if someone’s down there.”
“Any idea who it might be?”
“Out here?” Trader said and looked down the shaft. “Doubt it’s wastelanders or a stronghold team. We might have a third player.”
“Seems unlikely,” Jake said.
Trader ignored him and headed back out. Jake followed and climbed into the passenger side of the SUV. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He gave Jake a lingering glare. “I’ve got no idea who or what opened that hatch. Let’s hope for both of our sakes that it was a curious wastelander who has long gone. Because if it isn’t, we might have a new group in town with plenty of weapons.”
“Or the people inside decided to make a break for it?”
“Come on, Jake. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence?”
Jake shrugged. “I woke up, didn’t I? If this place was still operational, they’d have somebody on shift. Maybe they saw you visit and decided to move?”
“I’ve visited here five times in the last year.”
Jake thought for a moment. If somebody opened this place up from the outside, it had to be a captain or above that knew the code, meaning a person from his generation. He could find out who by accessing the mainframe inside the bunker, but decided to keep the idea to himself until they established more facts.
Trader twisted the key, slammed the SUV in gear, and punched the accelerator. The wheels screeched against the corroding asphalt, and they shot forward, away from the old parking lot. He plowed through the long dew-soaked grass, bumping over small pieces of debris, straight for the green mound that shielded the ramp leading to the loading doors. Jake always thought the design pretty pointless. Before the war, people from the road would still see vehicles heading behind it.
He swept around the edge of the mound and drove ten yards down the ramp. Both chunky black doors at the bottom of the hundred-yard-long, thirty-degree slope were wide open with the locking mechanism disabled. Lights were on inside. Somebody with knowledge of the management system must have done it.
Jake jumped out and aimed down the ramp with his clunky gun. Trader seemed to take most things in his stride, including the nervy cryptic message from his scout a few hours ago, but the latest development had him on edge. He moved with urgency to the back of the SUV and waved his team around him.
“Follow Jake and me in staggered groups of two. If you hear gunfire, get your asses down the ramp. Make sure two of you stay here to guard our rear.”
“Mind if I get a weapon from the truck?” Jake said.
Trader gestured his Epsilon-manufactured rifle toward the closest. “Nothing wrong with what you’ve got, but if it makes you feel better, they’re in that one.”
Jake holstered his gun, weaved his way through the cluster of SUVs around the entrance, and climbed into the back of the truck. He grabbed a rifle from a portable rack, checked the working parts, loaded a magazine, and clicked it into the housing. He felt a lot more comfortable handling a familiar weapon. A rifle also gave him extended range, to take out any threat from a distance.
He jumped back out and rejoined Trader. The team of eighteen split to either side of the ramp and spread against the walls at five-yard intervals. Jake shouldered his rifle and walked down the ramp toward the bunker’s entrance.
A patch of grain spread across the surface halfway down. Food supplies had been removed recently; otherwise the rain would’ve washed them into the metal drain at the bottom. Trader moved to the left-hand loading door and waved him forward. He continued inside and surveyed the warehouse. The shelves were mostly empty, apart from cleaning materials and utensils like plates and cutlery.
A hollow pop came from Jake’s right. He crouched and aimed at the elevated control room. Sparks spat against its window. If somebody trashed the console, it was only a matter of time before the system went into emergency lockdown.
“Trader, we need to move fast; otherwise we’ll end up sealed in here.”
“How long have we got?”
“No idea. It could close at any moment. What are our priorities?”
“Weapons first. Your call after that.”
Jake crossed the warehouse floor. More electrical snaps came from the control room. The lights flickered overhead. He headed straight for the door on the other side that led to the armory, food chambers and living quarters.
The window of the fresh food preservation chamber still felt cool to touch. Inside, condensation dripped from the open doors of the twenty silver storage units. A thin coating of water covered the red vinyl floor. Somebody emptied this recently, perhaps in the last twelve hours.
Jake pressed his thumb on the armory access panel. Oxygen hissed from the vents inside. The solid black door punched open. Trader squeezed past Jake, entered the room, and placed his hand on his forehead. All racks were empty. A couple of green synthetic slings lay on the floor.
“Who the hell …” Trader said.
“A captain or above,” Jake said. “There’s no other explanation. This door wasn’t forced, and it explains why the loading doors are open too. If I can access the system in the control room, I can find out from the access logs.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“They might be registered to this facility.
If not, I can get you a photo. You might recognize them from one of the strongholds.”
“It’s impossible. I’d know about it.”
“Would you? I think we at least need an idea who it is.” Jake thought it could be a team from another bunker, maybe now all awake and gathering arms to protect themselves. “Let’s check the stasis pods, find out if we’ve still got people here or not. That’s an easy one to rule out first.”
Jake jogged back along the corridor, turned left up the stairs, and passed through the living quarters. All beds were neatly made and showed no signs of recent activity. He grabbed the rails and jumped down the metal spiral staircase to the stasis chamber.
A red light winked above all sixty open pods. Jake wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t. Some of the bodies were still in position with stab wounds in their coveralls. Others slumped on the ground in front of their pods; most had visible injuries. A man lay in the middle by the console with a snapped spear in his chest.
None were in an advanced state of decomposition. Trader moved alongside Jake as he surveyed the scene. “Wastelanders. How did they get in here?”
Jake shook his head. There was more to it than that. He rolled the pointer on the console, and the screen lit up. Officer C3431 activated a waking procedure on pod one at 21:37 yesterday evening, and the rest every thirty seconds after. He shuddered when thinking of how events must have played out. A systematic murder. Every half a minute, a drowsy inhabitant waking and receiving a knife or spear to the chest.
A growing anger bubbled inside. One of his own instigated the slaughter. He pointed to the screen. “I need to get to the mainframe and get an ID on this murdering scumbag.”
Trader crouched and inspected the spear. “Are you sure there’s no other way this could’ve been done? The spear’s definitely wastelander.”
“Maybe stasis sent C3431 crazy? I don’t know, but if we have a trained officer working with the wastelanders and he has armed them, we’ve got a serious fight on our hands.”
Jake vowed to get justice for the men and women lying in front of him. He didn’t check the names to see if he recognized any; that wouldn’t help. Whoever did this had already made it personal.
Trader stood and placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Do what you need to find out—”
The lights flickered overhead. Half didn’t come back on. An electronic beep pulsed through the facility-wide address system.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Jake said.
They had sixty seconds to reach the loading doors before the bunker automatically closed. Without any technical skills to repair the system and a lack of supplies, it meant a quick death.
Jake ran back through the living quarters, along the corridor, and threw open the door to the warehouse. Trader lagged behind, wheezing after him.
He waited and grabbed Trader’s arm. He provided Jake’s safety and a chance to change things in his new environment. If Trader didn’t make it out, all that was gone.
“Get your ass moving,” Jake said.
“I’m seventy years old, goddammit.”
Jake dragged him across the warehouse toward the ramp. The doors began to close, creaking and screaming on their steel winding mechanism. Team members peered through the gap and encouraged them forward. They made it through with twenty seconds to spare.
Trader rested his hands on his knees and slumped against the exterior wall. Jake watched as the doors rumbled inward and locked together with a hollow thud.
“Do we need to go all the way back to the other bunker to access their system?” Trader said.
“Is Kappa close?”
“It’s south, closest places are Omega and Epsilon.”
“I think we need to find out as soon as possible,” Jake said. “If I can log in to my ship’s comms console, I have captain’s access and can look up the officer ID. Can you get me in and out of Epsilon without them turning me into a tourist attraction?”
“Yes, but we need to go to Kappa first. I’ve got a horrible feeling what Carlos has to say might be linked to this.”
Trader trudged up the ramp. Jake followed and found it hard to disagree. The cold-blooded killings and wastelander weapons were enough evidence that something coordinated was being planned against them. They were facing a well-armed, unknown enemy who recruited the very people who wanted to destroy their society.
Chapter Fifteen
Skye kept low and clambered over rocks. She paused behind each one and looked back up the hill. At least five wastelanders were searching for her. They spread through the trees and headed down in an extended line, springing around trunks and leaping over obstacles. She had to time her movements when the closest turned in another direction.
A gunshot cracked from the plateau. Skye hugged a pine and peered around it. The wastelanders stopped and looked back up the hill. Two approached each other. One pointed up, the other down. A third joined the debate.
She edged back and felt her boot sink into loose scree. The trees thinned from here, providing less cover, but the gunshot gave her a chance to put some more distance between herself and the hunters. Any closer on this ground and they would hear her every move.
Skye kept her rifle trained on the figures and weaved backward. A stream gushed through the forest to her right. She remembered it being on her left when she first tracked her way toward the camp.
The wastelanders continued to argue amongst themselves. She adjusted her course to the most direct route to her SUV. It was parked behind a semi-collapsed wooden barn, covered in a moldy piece of blue tarpaulin she found inside, next to a rusty egg-sorting machine.
A bird burst from a tree between her and the wastelanders. Its harsh caw carried through the forest. This ended the wastelanders' debate; they fanned out again and continued down. Skye didn’t want them an inch closer. In a couple of minutes she would be on open ground with half a mile to travel to the barn.
She moved back with more urgency, keeping focused on the descending shapes. They would see her soon, but every second she moved faster, the distance became greater. She needed every yard possible for a sprint to the SUV. Her boots skidded against the scree, and she reached the edge of the forest.
The options for cover turned to rocks and shrubs for the next thirty yards. After that, she only had a knee-high field of gently swaying grass.
A wastelander made the decision for her. He let out a guttural roar and bounded in her direction. This alerted the others, and they immediately followed.
Five of them and five rounds. One or two missed shots in the dark and it would be hand-to-hand fighting. Without her knife, her only weapon against their axes and spears would be using the rifle as a club, like Phillips did outside the walls of Omega.
Skye decided to sprint for her vehicle. If any got close, they would be the ones to receive the contents of her magazine.
She focused on the ground as she pounded over the last of the thinning scree. Bright moonlight flooded the area, and she forcefully raised her feet to avoid them being snagged in the long grass.
Wastelanders snarled and shouted behind her. The distant barn didn’t seem to be getting any closer. She glanced over her shoulder. Three of them dashed out of the forest, two hundred yards behind her.
Her thighs burned and she pumped her arms. Her lungs felt at the bursting point, but adrenaline kept her going. The ground became uneven and she tried to look for obstacles in the grass.
Skye’s ankle twisted after she stepped on a rock. She staggered to her left, reached forward, and just managed to maintain her balance. A sharp pain shot down the side of her foot every time it connected with the ground. Her only option was to clench her teeth and try to ignore the pain.
She wondered how so many wastelanders managed to converge on the outlaws' camp. Either hundreds or even thousands were swamping the area, or this was another assault organized by Sky Man. If it was, it can’t have been a coincidence that she’d been in all three locations. If she escaped h
er pursuers, Rhodes had questions to answer.
The wastelanders sounded closer as she approached the SUV. Skye didn’t look back and felt for the keys in her pocket. Thankfully Ryder’s men didn’t take them. As soon as she reached the side of the barn, she dropped to one knee, twisted and aimed. Two were fifty yards away. She could hear their feet swishing through the grass.
Skye fired at the first. The round stopped him in his tracks, and he crumpled to the ground. The second wastelander dived in the grass. Three others following did the same. She reached over and dragged the tarpaulin off the SUV.
Four areas of grass twitched in front of her. The wastelanders were crawling forward. These were probably northern ones. Less suicidal but still deadly.
Skye fumbled with the keys in the SUV door. The internal lock popped up. She didn’t bother to check on her attackers’ progress, just jumped into the vehicle, slammed the door, and punched down the lock.
Her hands trembled through fear and exertion as she tried to put the key in the ignition. She took a deep breath and told herself to switch on. The engine roared into life, and she flicked on the headlights.
The four wastelanders stood, probably sensing she was about to get away. They collectively darted straight for the front of the vehicle. Skye slammed the SUV in gear and thrust her foot against the accelerator.
She jerked in her seat and gripped the steering wheel as the SUV shot forward.
Two wastelanders dived out of the way. One stood like a rabbit caught in her headlights. The bull-bar crashed against him, and his screaming body disappeared underneath her vehicle.
The only wastelander left standing smashed her axe against Skye’s window as she sped past. The window splintered, and she felt tiny pieces of glass shower her face, but it held. The SUV plowed through the field, and she turned right toward the road.
The luminous arms on the analogue clock told her it was half past four in the morning. Omega and Zeta had to act. Rhodes needed to give her some answers.
* * *
After driving an hour along a bumpy dirty track, Skye hit an old highway. Zeta was only five minutes from here. She blinked and rubbed her dry, tired eyes. The drop in danger level had given her a chance to think. She considered if she’d trusted Ryder too easily. He seemed genuine, but his claims were hard to believe. After a few minutes of arguing with herself, she put it down to his cynical view of her world and the way it operated.
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