Seattle Washington
Harvey Pearlson
In Seattle Washington, Harvey Pearlson sat at his wide mahogany desk and talked quietly into the phone.
The extravagantly appointed office was located on the top floor of one of Seattle's most highly regarded newspapers. Pearlson had worked his way up from the bottom, after starting as a carrier in 1955, sixteen floors below.
"No," Pearlson said quietly, "I don't want to know. I just thought that maybe it could be handled in some other way." He listened for a few minutes nodding his head as he did.
"Yes, yes I see, but?" He rubbed his eyes as he listened. "No, I don't," he said emphatically, "I happen to like him a great deal, and if you give me the time..." The voice on the other end of the line cut him off, and he once again listened quietly.
"I see," he said, once the voice had finished speaking. "No, I do understand. I won't. Do you think I'm that stupid? Give me a little credit here, will you. You wouldn't even be aware of it if I hadn't called you in the first place, for Christ's sake." He listened for a few seconds longer, then hung up the phone.
There was no reasoning with Weston, he told himself, he was going to do what he was going to do. For Frank's sake, he wished he had never called him at all. Too late now though, he told himself, far too late. After all, he had done his best to swing Frank away from the story, but Frank Morgan was not a man who could be easily swayed, and, he told himself, unless he wanted to find himself in the same circumstances, he had better just shut up and let it go. He reached over and thumbed the intercom button.
"Cindy?"
"Yes Sir?"
"I'm going to be out the rest of the day, Cindy, and if Frank Morgan calls looking for me, you don't know where I am, correct?"
"Yes Sir."
"Anything important comes up you can reach me on my mobile, Cindy."
"Yes Sir, Mister Pearlson."
Harvey Pearlson picked up his briefcase and left the office. Whatever Weston had in mind, he wanted nothing to do with it, and he didn't want to be available for any sort of questions that might arise either. It was unfortunate enough that he had started the whole ball rolling; he had no intention of sticking around to see where it ended up stopping. No, he told himself, the lake was the best place to be. The only place to be, and he intended to stay there until the whole thing blew over just as he had been told to.
He took his private elevator down to the garage area, walked across to his Lincoln, and drove out of the parking garage, turning right on Longwood. He passed a hooker standing at the corner of the building, and thought just how bad Longwood Avenue had gotten as of late. He would have to speak to the security people when he got back from the lake. Putting up with the hookers that had taken over the avenue at night was one thing, but broad daylight? Standing right in front of the frigging building? No, something would have to be done, and if the security people couldn't take care of it, maybe he'd speak to Weston. After all, he owed him one now, didn't he? He pushed the thought away, signaled, and pulled out onto the loop. In an hour he'd be at the lake, and then he could forget about the whole mess, for today at least. He eased the car up to sixty, and leaned back into the leather upholstery to enjoy the drive.
Arlene Best
Arlene watched the Lincoln drive away. It was cold, far too cold to deal with anything that wasted time. The avenue may still be a respectable area during the daylight, but at night it was a completely different place. It had been in decline for a few decades. Most of the older nearby buildings had been turned into low income housing ten years back. The junkies, prostitutes and runaways had come on the heels of that, and they had never left.
Arlene had been hanging around the garage entrance hoping to catch Frank Morgan. He worked as a reporter for the paper, and more than once when she needed some help with the runaways, he had helped. Today he was nowhere to be found, and if she stayed around the front of the building much longer hoping to catch him she would probably find herself in jail for the night. She pulled her collar a little closer, turned her face into the stiff wind that had sprung up and headed back to her apartment just down the avenue.
Jessie Stone
Fort Drum, New York
Doctor Jessie Stone moved through the clinic quickly, her eyes falling on the many faces: Mothers, children, all waiting. She passed the desk, nodded at Vera who held her eyes for a moment.
“Give me five minutes, Vera, then start sending them...” She caught the concern in Vera's eyes. “One in particular?” She asked.
“Little girl... Infection, maybe pneumonia,” she shrugged. “Sounded bad to me.”
Jessie nodded. “Then send her in first, Vera.” She pushed her way through the doors that lead to the back area and shrugged into a gown before grabbing the first chart off the board and beginning to read.
Los Angeles
Willie Lefray
The wind kicked up along Beechwood Avenue in L.A.'s red light district. A paper bag went rolling along the cracked sidewalk: Skipping over Willie Lefray's feet where he stood watching the traffic... thinking. One trick... The right trick... Somebody with money and he could call the night good. Just enough to get a good high... Or enough to get enough shit to get a good high tonight and maybe a good high tomorrow when it all wore off and the jingle jangles set in? … Maybe, he decided. Maybe. Willie stood watching the cars as the paper bag bounded over his feet and tumbled along the avenue.
Watertown, New York
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan flipped the map back onto the passenger seat of the small red Toyota Prius and glanced at his watch.
He had figured the trip from Syracuse to Fort Drum would take about an hour and a quarter. He hadn't, however, counted on the traffic. The whole day can't be great, he thought. The trip into Syracuse International had gone well. One short connection in route and other than that the whole trip had been uneventful. But now he had to deal with this. Something up ahead was slowing the traffic down, and he was pretty sure he knew what the problem was. Still, if he lost much more time, it would probably be close to dark when he arrived in Fort Drum, and the possibility of arriving after dark, and trying to find the house didn't appeal to him.
Frank eased the Prius out into the passing lane, and slowly coaxed the car up to speed again. He had been right; the problem was the same as it had been coming off the thruway from the airport to get on route 81. Army convoys, and if you didn't get around them quickly, you could spend forever in the left hand lane. He had learned that lesson the hard way coming off the thruway. Not only couldn't he get around them, at first, but when he did eventually get around them he hadn't been able to get back in for the exit to Route 81 north. He had ended up heading south instead, and had wasted twenty minutes getting turned around and back to the northern exit.
What the hell kind of military base needs that many trucks, he had wondered. It was a question that actually didn't need to be answered, but he answered it anyway. The base doesn't, the caves do. They may unload at the base, but I bet they just drop the load and ship it into the city at night, he told himself.
He stared out the window of the car, and looked over the traffic as he passed it. Jeeps, dump trucks, and tractor-trailer combos carrying who knew what. All of them heading to northern New York, he knew. He also knew that the airfield, at the base outside of Watertown, had been quite busy as well, the convoys of trucks weren't their only supply source.
Frank reached towards the dashboard and fished a cigarette out of the pack that rested there, lighting it just as he passed the last olive-green truck on his right. He tossed the lighter into the plastic console, and it landed with a hollow plastic bong. At the same time, he pulled back into the right hand lane, and leaned back into the seat as he took a long pull on the cigarette.
From what he had been able to determine from the map, and what he already knew from his investigation, the military base was about twenty miles north from Fort Drum. Jimmy, his reporter friend, was right, it didn't see
m as though any of the trucks would be passing through Fort Drum on their way to the base. Watertown was only about nine miles away from the base though, and that was where the loads would end up. Not in the city actually, he reminded himself, but under the city, and he hadn't found that little piece of information on the map. The map said exactly nothing about the caves.
When he had first started to seriously investigate the base, he had gotten the first hint of the caves from one of his informers. The informer was an ex-private turned junky, who had been stationed at the base when the project had started. The rest he had gotten from the articles he carefully culled from the Watertown Daily Press, and Jimmy, an old friend who worked at a Syracuse paper. Some things could be hidden, but there was always a clue if you knew where to look.
The first article he had read had seemed harmless enough, but coupled with the information he'd already had, it had been intriguing. The United States Army had purchased some abandoned property from the city to use as a storage depot. The story had gone on to say that the land was close to the old train depot, and the base would benefit from the purchase as they would no longer need to truck shipments from the base to the depot every time they used the rail yards. The ex-private had tipped him off about the caves, which also happened to be located on the same piece of property.
Even then, it still hadn't made a lot of sense to Frank. What would they save? They would still have to ship whatever came in there, to the base. Wouldn't they?
In other articles, most of which had been written years before in the Watertown paper, he had learned what the property actually consisted of, and at first it had seemed like an unlikely purchase. It hadn't been all that hard to dig up the old articles, especially with the help of his friend in Syracuse. Although Watertown had its own local paper, the Times Reporter in Syracuse, which was only seventy miles away, often reported on the events that took place there.
It had been an easy matter of looking through the archived data files, pulling the stories that pertained, and with the help of an internet connection, the reporter friend sent the stories to Frank in Washington via e-mail. He had learned most of what he knew about the actual property from those stories, some of which dated from the early thirties.
The property was located on the river bank in the heart of the down-town section of Watertown. It consisted of a stretch of road that began in the center of the city, and then extended out of the city along an old set of rail road tracks. An old defunct coal company and some run down out-buildings were also included. Perhaps the most important of all, an abandoned series of caves that ran under the city. The city had bricked up the caves decades before in response to the community.
In June of 1935, a large group of school children, along with two adults who supposedly were well acquainted with the caves and their various twists and turns, had set out on a field trip to explore them. They had never returned. A subsequent search had turned up no trace of them at all. Three weeks later the city had sent a Public Works crew to brick up the entrance, and it had been closed since.
When the Army had bought the property it was considered unsafe, and had pretty much been allowed to go to seed. The road leading out of it had likewise been closed off some years before, and the area had become a hangout for young kids and vagrants. On any given night the police ended up being called to the area several times, and the city had debated for years about what they should do with the property.
When the Army had offered to purchase the property, the City Council had considered it a Godsend, and had been more than happy to sign over the deed and accept the check they offered. It had seemed to be the end of it. Frank had read later articles, however, that seemed to indirectly touch on the property. There was an increase in traffic after the sale, and an unusual amount of security that surrounded the site.
The local paper had down-played it to normal, or as close to normal as they could. Watertown had always been a military town, and so most of the complaints of increased traffic, were actually seen in a good light. Increased activity at the property might eventually mean more jobs, and in a depressed economy, which depended heavily on the nearby base, anything the Army did was always reported in a positive light. As far as the local paper was concerned, there was nothing negative to report.
So the real clues had come from the Syracuse paper. Franks' friend, Jimmy Patrick, kept in touch, and had contacted Frank whenever he came across anything that was related to the smaller northern city. Syracuse itself had had tremendous problems, initially, with the traffic.
When Frank had called Jimmy, he had only wanted to know what he knew about the place. But after Jimmy had told him about the traffic problem, he had asked him to keep in touch, and he had. He had also filled him in on everything else he knew about Watertown. As he drove along, Frank mentally ticked off what he knew about the northern New York City.
The Black River split the city in two, and there were four bridges that spanned it. Three of the four also spanned the property that the military had purchased, and those three bridges were new. When they had been replaced, the road that ran to the old abandoned coal mine had been blocked off and abandoned. Ironically, or maybe not, Frank thought, the Army Corps of Engineers had done all the work.
The result was a small discarded piece of property, with its own road leading in and out, in the heart of the city. It was bound on the south side by the Black River and the north by a sixty foot rock ledge that rose just behind the old historic downtown district. That was, besides the caves, what Frank knew about the city itself. Jimmy had seemed to have caught Frank’s enthusiasm for the mystery, and had also sent him other articles he found as well.
Some of them, although at first glance seemingly innocent, were quite revealing about what was actually going on in Watertown.
The first one Jimmy had dug up and sent him, was from the Public Notices section of the Syracuse paper.
"I thought it was kind of strange," Jimmy had said, "that they didn't print the notice in the Watertown paper."
Frank had read the long notice carefully. It boiled down to a statement of facts concerning the property in Watertown, and the governments intended use of it.
The whole notice hadn't made a lot of sense. It seemed to be saying that they intended to invoke the privilege to the mineral rights that had been deeded to them along with the property. It also stated that the Army Corps of Engineers had decided that the closed caves would need to be reopened for a feasibility study, to determine whether they could be used as a storage facility. It had been the first direct mention of the caves at all.
The notice went on to say that since this would involve transportation of, as well as disposition of, excess material from within the caves, the Corps had asked for, and via the printing of the notice, been given permission to begin the process without the necessary permits. They were also granted permission to transport radioactive materials to and from the site, the notice stated, and had like-wise been granted a waiver of the Clean Water Discharge Act, to allow undisclosed drainage into the Black River.
Subsequent notices and articles had detailed contract awards for "unspecified" electrical and plumbing work, along with contracts for per-piece orders of drywall and lumber. Another notice Frank had read, contained contract awards for concrete and asphalt to a Texas corporation. The amounts were unspecified, and were listed as needed for road repair, and sub-wall replacement. Jimmy had thought some of it was unusual, and probably even illegal, and although Frank had agreed, there was not much that either of them could do without further proof.
Jimmy had also told Frank that the Army had been building up the area for some time and that from what he'd been able to determine, they had begun work on the caves even before they had completed the purchase of the land.
They both suspected that the notices were only a cover for some larger project the Army was carrying out, and the radioactive permits bothered him a great deal. Jimmy had promised to stay in touch, and he had, up until last we
ek.
Last week he had sent Frank two stories that had made no sense to Frank then, and still didn't.
The first had been a story clipped from Military Times concerning a Major Richard Weston. Major Weston had been appointed special liaison to Fort Drum three years before: Since then he had dropped off the radar. No mention of him in any further announcements until last week when he had been named director of Special Projects and some obscure military think tank: Project SS.
Jimmy had been unable to dig up anything at all on Project SS. What it was: Where it resided; who belonged to it or even what they were discussing. He had dug up a few more articles on Richard Weston. One named him as Director of Special Projects in the Airborne Germ Warfare Division of the Army's special services wing. That was a little known outfit that seemed to have its roots somewhere back in the Vietnam era... Cambodia. Some airborne chemicals that were sprayed on U.S. Troops who were in a country they were not supposed to be in, in the first place: Sprayed from cargo planes that may have been Chinese, or may have been American. Hushed up. Nothing but rumors, but Weston had been appointed to a committee to look into it. A committee that, as far as Jimmy had been able to find, had never issued a single ruling or finding of any kind at all.
The second article Jimmy had sent seemed to have no correlation at all. It was a translated article from Ecuador. The gist of which were numerous incidents of villagers near the small town of Esmeraldas, seeming to come back to life and then becoming violent: Also hushed up after just a few mentions in local and international papers. Nothing more. No explanation, something that Frank knew Jimmy hated.
Frank had tried to contact him at work several times, but to no avail, and the messages he left were not returned. He had tried calling Jimmy at home and his cell as well, and had only been rewarded with his voice-mail. That had seemed strange to Frank as well. Jimmy was a damn good reporter who knew the value of answering his phone whenever it rang. At work, at home, in the middle of the night, it made no difference. Jimmy always answered the phone. Jimmy wasn’t answering and now instead of four rings before voice-mail, the phone was directing to voice-mail after the first ring.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 168