The decision made, Frank got up from the table, and found the box of slugs for the shotgun in the bedroom. With the slugs slipped securely into his pocket, he locked up the house, and drove Black's car into the woods to conceal it. He then made the circuitous trip through the woods to the house across the road, where he now waited patiently for dusk to arrive.
After he was sure that the children were okay, he had begun to worry about making the phone call. While it was true that they hadn't done anything to the children, that didn't, Frank knew, mean they wouldn't. If they did go after the children, he was sure they would have one hell-of-a-fight on their hands from Maggie, and somehow, Frank told himself, he would find them, and kill them, no matter who they worked for, if they hurt the kids.
The other thing that may not have been smart about the phone call, he realized, was that if they had traced it, it would lead them directly to him, so it probably wouldn't be smart to hang around for long, Frank had decided.
Black had also told Frank, with some urging from the shotgun that he had kept tucked under his chin, about Jimmy.
They had killed him. Black had made no bones about it at all. They had taken him out, the same way they had intended to take Frank out. A couple of guys they kept around just for work like that. Weston had ordered it: Of course Weston never spoke for himself, his secretary, Alice Tetto did that for him. Tetto was a hired killer, nothing better, and she protected the Major right along with the nations best interests. Army non-com, and, Black had said, Frank did not want to mess with her.
Apparently Jimmy had gotten far to close, and they had waited for him to return to his apartment one night. Before he had really known what was going on, they had killed him by garroting him with a thin steel line.
"Quick and easy," Black had said, "and no mess just in case somebody came nosing around to see where he was." He had sounded proud, Frank thought, as he waited for darkness deep within the shadows at the edge of the woods.
They hadn't bothered to question him, Black had said, as they knew that he knew too much.
"That questioning shit," Black had told Frank, "only takes place in the movies."
The worries he'd had about the kids, and the knowledge of what they had done to Jimmy already, kept him indecisive for a few seconds, and he had hovered at the door to the basement, wondering if he should go back down and put a slug right between the old man’s eyes. If he somehow managed to escape, and get out of the basement, he would be able to tip off his cohorts about Frank, and what he intended to do.
Instead he had descended the cellar steps once more; checked the ropes to make absolutely sure they were tight enough, and then before he could change his mind and shoot him, he had left without saying a word to Black.
Darkness descended on the woods where Frank stood waiting, and he crouched low as he ran the few yards to the garage; fished the keys from his pocket and inserted one into the lock on the old wooden door. The door itself was still intact, and since he hadn't seen anyone approach the old house as he had sat watching it yesterday, he supposed that was a good sign: Still he was cautious as he raised the door, keeping the shotgun pointed into the interior of the shadowy old garage.
It was empty, except for the small car he had left inside.
"Guess they figured I wouldn't need it," Frank said aloud, in the small space.
The sound of his own voice startled him for a second, causing his finger to tighten on the trigger of the shotgun. He quickly released it and let the gun swing down to his side.
No sense shooting the car, he thought.
He moved quietly to the car and after first peering cautiously inside, opened the driver’s door, and climbed behind the wheel.
He had been positive, while waiting in the woods, that somehow the car would not be there, but when it was, he had become equally sure that the car would not start. So sure, in fact, that he had to fight an urge to exit the car and open the hood, to see for himself whether the new wires were still attached to the distributor and battery. In the end he simply inserted the key, turned it, and it started with no problem.
He toyed briefly with the idea of trying to follow the old man’s directions to an alternate entrance to the caves. The problem was, he could not be sure if the old man had been telling the truth, and if he had been, he could not be sure that someone would not be there waiting for him.
He made up his mind to take the direct route. He had his press pass, so he could at least flash it, and try to get in that way. If it worked he would have to wing it from that point. There was no one he could trust to call to help him, and he had not thought the plan out any farther than that.
Frank pulled the small car out onto the highway and headed towards Watertown and the secret base. He would find this Major Weston and confront him with what Black had told him. Maybe Alice Tetto too, if he had to go through her to reach him.
Seattle, Washington
Maggie Edison
In the kitchen of the old Edison farm, in Washington State, Maggie picked up the dishes from dinner and took them to the sink. She washed them and stacked them neatly in the cupboard where they had always rested. She didn't know if she would need them at the new place Jeremiah had told her he would find for them, but if she did she wanted them to be clean and waiting for her.
When she finished putting them away, she called the children into the kitchen from the living room, where they had been watching television, and they followed her into the basement willingly.
"Tim," she said, "give yer old Gramma a hand with this."
Together they lifted the heavy concrete and steel door, which led to the sub cellar.
"You 'fraid of the dark?" she asked the children who were peering down into the darkness.
"Hope not," she said, answering her own question.
"Com'on let’s get going," she said, as she herded the frightened children down into the musty smelling sub cellar.
"How come we hav'ta go down here, Gramma Maggie?" Patty asked, as she descended the steps into the darkness.
"Don't fret honey, it ain't for long," Maggie replied. "Jess pretend it's a game, honey, 'kay? It'll only be for a short time."
As they cleared the top, the old woman gave a sharp tug on the steel chain that held the door, and it fell with a loud clump, cutting off the sparse light that had spilled into the sub cellar from the basement.
She found the children in the dark, held them, and began to pray.
Joe Miller
Just outside of Fort Drum; in Jefferson County New York, on the old Jeffery's farm; buried under four feet of loose earth in a freshly dug grave. Joe Miller suddenly awoke, and began to claw his way out towards the surface. He no longer needed to breathe, he realized, as he clawed at the loose earth to free himself, and he really didn't seem to care.
Frank Morgan
In a long tunnel, under the city of Watertown New York, hemmed in by large military trucks, Frank Morgan wondered over the luck he'd had at getting himself into the Army facility.
He had flashed his press pass, half afraid they would open fire or something, and instead the young guard at the booth had just waved him in.
He could not have known that just that day an open, though somewhat restricted, invitation had been given to a reporter who was on good terms with the facility's commander.
The plan, cooked up by the reporter and the base commander, was to write a carefully worded article about the storage facilities, to dispel the rumors that were circulating.
The young guard had simply waved Frank through at the entrance, when he had seen the press pass, not knowing he had allowed the wrong man into the tunnel. They had only told him to expect a reporter. If he had looked at Franks pass closely, he might have noticed that he was not from the Watertown paper, and might not have allowed him to enter.
Los Angels
6:00 P.M.
Willie Lefray sat slumped against a wall in another alley off Beechwood Avenue; L.A.'s red light district. He had been dead
for over six hours. The money from the wallet had allowed him to indulge in his habit for over forty-six hours with no sleep. The last injection had killed him.
The Cocaine he had purchased to mix with the heroin had been cut with rat poison, among other things, so that the kid who had sold it to him could stretch it a little further.
The constant hours of indulging in his habit would have killed him anyway, but the addition of the rat poison was all his overworked heart could stand, and it had simply stopped beating in protest.
The alleyway seemed to dip and then rise sharply as a sudden, strong vibration shook the area. The shaking lasted for mere seconds. Dust raftered down from the sky, shaken from buildings. In the silence alarms brayed and glass shattered, falling to the streets below. Gunshots punctuated the silences in between the screams and yells.
Deeper in the alleyway, Billy Jingo found himself rolling across the alley and nearly slamming into the opposite wall. He held himself steady, fingertips outstretched, until the shaking stopped: Unsure where he was or why he was there.
As his mind began to awaken he remembered Jon punching him earlier. Nothing specific besides that, but it was enough to draw some conclusions as to where he was. It didn't explain the shaking that had awakened him. He looked off down the alley where a bum, or maybe a hype was resting against the wall, slumped over. Maybe, Billy thought, the bum had tried to awaken him. He made his feet and staggered past the bum to the mouth of the alley, looking out at the street. The bum was still sleeping when he looked back. The more he looked at the bum the more he thought he might be a crack head, maybe even a heroin addict. Those fuckers could crash out anywhere, oblivious to their surroundings, he reminded himself. He stepped onto the sidewalk, and then glanced back once more, wondering if he should repay the favor and wake up the now sleeping bum, hype, whatever he was.
No, he decided. He focused his eyes, stretched his arms and legs, flexed his fingers and decided he was pretty much okay. As he started back down the street, he suddenly found himself thrown to the sidewalk as the earth began to shake and heave violently once more.
Behind him the street began to shake harder, cracks appeared in the alleyway where Willie's body lay and threaded their way out into the street. Far off in the distance the earthquake shook harder at the epicenter, small booms coming over the sound of destruction as the time wore on. Nearby a building succumbed to the vibration and toppled over into the street clogging it from side to side. Cars rocked on their tires, shifting violently from side to side, sometimes bouncing off in one direction or another, or slamming into a nearby car or building.
This time when the silence came the sounds that it carried were different. Weeping from the piled remains in the street. The zap and crackle of power lines as they danced in the street like charmed snakes without their handlers.
A harder jolt hit and the cracks opened wider, some swallowing whole sections of rubble as they did. Willie's body slumped over and then tumbled into a chasm that had opened next to him. Almost as quickly the chasm closed as though it had never really been there at all. The shaking slowed and then stopped, the silence fell once more.
Billy managed to get to his feet, staggering at first, pulling deep lungfuls of air, but getting his feet under him. Blood ran into his eye from a cut on his forehead, but he was otherwise okay. He waited for his panic to abate, his breathing to slow, and then he moved off at a fast run along the Avenue: Heading for home.
Back in the alleyway, the fresh dirt that covered the chasm that Willie's body had slipped into suddenly moved, a dimple appearing in the middle, the dirt running into itself, creating a small funnel of dirt as it seemed to be sucked down into the ground itself. A single finger appeared, blue-white in the sparse light, then a second, and they began to work in concert as they dug at the fresh earth, causing more and more of it to slip past them, falling away to voids far below in the chasm. Soon a hand was free, then another, and Willie Lefray began to dig himself free.
Jeremiah Edison
Jeremiah paused, and slowly set the checker that had been in his hand, to one side.
"It's time, ain't it," he stated.
"Yes, I'm afraid it is," the older man replied, getting up from the small table.
"Come on then," the older man continued, "we have a lot to accomplish."
Jeremiah blinked and everything changed...
Jeremiah tried to stand as far away from the foul smelling creature, which stood, restrained by two of the largest men he had ever seen, before him and the older man.
They had been standing by the small table one second, and the next they were standing on the edge of an active volcano. Jeremiah was not sure where it was located, or how they came to be standing or floating at the edge of it.
He had not at first been able to feel the ground beneath him. Molten rock had been flowing over his feet and down the side of the volcano, as blistering steam; and more molten rock; had spewed up into the night air. The ground beneath his feet had been trembling.
It had seemed as though the molten rock simply ceased its forward movement, and had been suddenly sucked backwards into the mountainous cavern below his feet. As it had drained, an old iron-hinged wooden door had slowly emerged from the bubbling, draining surface below.
The scarred wooden door had been crossed and bound securely by black iron strapping, and a huge forged lock had been set securely into its face. As Jeremiah had watched, the lock seemed to explode from some unseen force. The iron strapping had burst apart, and spun viciously down into the still draining molten rock, hissing as it touched the surface.
The two men who now stood before them, had dragged the foul smelling man-like creature out of the darkness the door had revealed, and the level of the hot liquid below had suddenly risen, and had begun to cascade down into the now open doorway, enveloping whatever lay within.
The man-creature struggled to free itself.
"Stop!" the older man commanded. "There is no longer any reason."
The man-creature opened its mouth and pursed its lips as if to spit, and Jeremiah turned his head from the squirming mass of snakes that tried to push through the small opening.
Greenish bile flew from the creature’s mouth as it spoke, and, although the language was unfamiliar to Jeremiah, the intent was clear.
The older man’s face clouded over, and he raised his hand toward the screaming thing that was still being restrained.
The flesh of the man-creatures face seemed to boil as new pinkish-looking skin formed, appearing from nowhere, and sealed its mouth completely shut. Jeremiah could still see the snakes behind this newly formed tissue, twisting and turning, as they tested the strength of the enclosure.
The green eyes of the man-creatures face burned momentarily, as if with fire, and the muscles in its body bunched, in an effort to loose itself from the two formidable men who held it.
The older man stood calmly beside Jeremiah, and waited for the struggles to subside. When they had, he spoke.
"You will listen," he said, and then paused before continuing.
"But of course I have forgotten myself; you do have a choice..."
"...Do you choose not to listen?"
The man-creature slowly shook its head back and forth from side to side.
"Bring him here and release him," the older man commanded the two men, who were still holding the man-creature they had dragged from the pit behind the old door.
Jeremiah blinked his eyes, and when he opened them, they were standing in a vast desert area.
Jeremiah blinked again and looked around him, marveling at how he seemed to be able to shift from one place to another with no perception of the change other than what his eyes told him.
The foul smelling man-creature was dragged towards them, once again struggling. It did not seem to be afraid, Jeremiah perceived, but angry at being held. The two men released their grip, once the man-creature stood before them, and vanished.
The horrible thing stood freed before
them, rubbing its wrists in quick vicious movements.
"Where is your power now?" the older man asked, in a hushed tone of voice, as he leaned toward the man-creature.
His fingers brushed its lips, and the newly formed flesh ripped apart revealing sharp rows of teeth. Greenish fluid from its torn flesh flowed across the yellowed teeth and dripped to the ground where it sizzled its way into the sand.
"Would you, that you could kill me?" the older man asked. "Here," he exclaimed, pointing towards the hulking and gnarled creature. As he pointed, a forged fire-blackened sword appeared in the things left hand.
"Come then," the older man invited, "do what you will."
The man-creature seemed to consider only briefly, and then threw the sword to the sandy ground, which, Jeremiah noticed, swallowed it from sight as soon as it touched it.
"As I assumed," the older man said, "now, have you anything to say?"
Once again the strange language, that Jeremiah could not understand, began to issue forth from the man-creature, but after only a few seconds the thing turned its green eye's on Jeremiah, and started to speak a word in English.
"Fuuu," the thing began, before its lips were suddenly sealed once more.
"Do not tempt me!" the older man warned. "I would just as soon summon your friends, and have them take you back to the pit." The older man paused momentarily, as if he were in deep thought.
"Since I cannot trust you to speak on your own behalf, shall I call forward the Defender?"
The creature’s green eyes flew open wide, as it violently tossed its misshapen head from side to side.
"But you have left me no choice, my old enemy," the older man said softly, "you have in fact never been able to speak without obscenities fouling your lips, have you?"
The man-creature did not reply. It simply stood, and glared at the older man standing before it.
"Bring forth the Defender, and the Protector," the older man called out, in a strong loud voice, as he gazed out into the desert.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 173