by T. K. Malone
The man led Connor down innumerable identical corridors, as though following some kind of trail, and soon opened a seemingly random chosen door among the many.
“Here we are,” he said as he marched in. “It’s a strange fact that even though we’ve no emotional attachment to any of the rooms down here, the first we’re dumped in tends to be the one we consider our own.”
The room was identical to Connor’s, with the exception of the kitchenette, whose work surface here had a pack of water bottles sitting on it. “Help yourself. It’s all I’ve found so far,” and he dumped himself on the bed. “You smell of cigarettes—you’ve been smoking—got a spare one?”
Connor helped himself to a bottle and sat at Tuttle’s table. He lit a cigarette and threw the packet at the strange man. “How long have you been looking?”
Byron regarded him through a curtain of rising smoke. “Best guess? I’d say around fourteen hours. There’s a fully functional hospital…well, operating theatre, a few dorms, what look like consulting rooms, and then there’s the hangar. Definitely a hangar—looks a bit like a loading bay, but it’s not.”
“Charm said this was just level 3 and not needed.”
“Josiah Charm is always economical with the truth, Connor. How can this be level 3 if the hangar has more than one level? You must have seen the balconies? No, I get the feeling this is a whole different section.”
“Then how come there’s no one here?”
“You don’t know him well, do you? Ask yourself this—‘what could Charm possibly gain by keeping us both down here?’.”
Thinking on it, Connor had assumed that Charm was isolating him until he’d decided to comply, until he was willing to spread the doctor’s words. If that were the case, he could have been just as easily served by leaving Connor in the cell. So, it could only mean one thing. “He wanted me to see this place,” Connor whispered.
“And?”
Connor stared at him. “He wanted me to see this place with you.”
Byron Tuttle took a drag on his smoke and settled back. “Indeed, though rarely does he do something so transparent. No, Connor, we’ll have to dig deeper than that.”
Connor made to speculate, but Byron held his hand up. “Forgive me, but if we’re being truthful, I’m down here for my brains, but you? Who knows? Possibly that VPA of yours. No, there’s something we must discover and which I must interoperate for you.”
“Where do we start?”
Byron rubbed his balding head. “From my expeditions so far, there’s only one place of any real interest, and that’s the hangar. The rest is just a series of dorms and service rooms. Military, undoubtedly military, but if so, where’s the army?”
“The guards?”
“Not army—making a damn good impression of it, mind, but def’ not army. City stiffs? Possibly, but I’d guess at some militia Charm had on standby.”
Connor drank a huge gulp of his water. Byron Tuttle, he thought, could be just one of Charm’s men. Charm had called him a traitor, but not with derision. In fact, he’d seemed truly in awe of the man. He was certainly a strange man, of that Connor had no doubt, for even trapped in this underground labyrinth Byron was still searching for knowledge.
“So, what are we waiting for?” Connor asked.
Byron nodded and jumped up from the bed. Without comment, he led the way down the corridor, seeming to know exactly which way to go. Connor was about to ask him about this when he remembered Tuttle had a photographic memory.
“What’s your VPA’s name?” Tuttle asked after a while.
“Sable.”
“Am I right in thinking she’s been less than vocal in your mind?”
“Next to nonexistent.”
Even from behind, Connor could see Tuttle nodding. “A limited interface,” he said. “ I think her interface has been limited.” His head swiveled around. “I think Charm wants you to work this out on your own—present company excepted,” and his head snapped back. “Though there’s a more sinister explanation,” and at that, Tuttle speeded up, surprisingly flighty for such an old person.
Connor picked up his own pace, trying to keep up. “What would that be, then?” but Tuttle didn’t reply. He burst straight through a set of double doors and out onto the hangar’s floor.
“You see, Connor, this is so much more than just an abandoned floor. It’s almost… See, up there, it’s like a killing zone. See? Those balconies, they all point at those,” and he swung his arms to point at what Connor had assumed were gates. “Those things, Connor. What do you reckon they are?”
“They look like gates to me, but…” then it dawned on him that he’d never seen gates like them.”
Byron Tuttle approached them, Connor behind him, and craned his neck up their height.
“Difficult to imagine,” Tuttle said, “how anything so vast could have been made and brought here, but look,” and he brushed his hand over their surface. “See the stippling, the lines, and when you get real close, the grain.” Tuttle turned and stared at Connor, his eyes alive. “These, Connor, were made here, in situ. Pressurized concrete pumped into a timber mold, their great hinges already embedded. It’s almost Trojan, or Greek, some kind of work of the gods, Connor. Too vast for man to have had a hand in, eh?”
“But they did,” Connor muttered. “They made them to withstand a nuclear blast.”
Tuttle grinned. “Indeed, and I’ve read about it. It’s documented in a theoretical paper on how to survive an almost direct meteor strike. ‘Hell’s Gates’, that’s what these are.”
“Hell’s Gates?”
“Imagine a snail shell lying on its side, and we’re at its center. This gate is the last at the end of a spiral tunnel. Nine pairs of gates, Connor, nine pairs. Do you know, I think this was our way in.”
“And that’s what Charm wanted us to find out, eh? That’s why he put us together?”
Tuttle pulled his hand away and leaned his shoulder against them.
“I don’t think so, no. I don’t think it’s that. What have we got here? Some gates, a kill zone, and killing balconies. Why, Connor, why do you need a kill zone when you’ve got these gates?”
Connor scanned the hangar’s tarmac floor, its green walls and balconies, then up to the hewn rock of its ceiling and its array of floodlights. Nothing made sense. Nine gates and no way to break in. If a nuke couldn’t blow them, then what could? And why the killing zone—unless they’d gotten that wrong.
He came to the only conclusion that fitted.
“To let your enemy flee the devastation outside, only to slaughter them within.”
Byron Tuttle nodded. “Indeed,” he then muttered, and a slow clap rang out, echoing around the empty hangar.
“Very good, Mr. Clay. Very good indeed, but not quite right.”
Connor looked up to see Josiah Charm standing on one of the balconies.
15
Connor’s story
Strike time: plus 36 hours
Location: Project Firebird
“What kind of world do you think is left, Connor?” Charm asked, and looked at his watch. “What is thirty-six hours on since…” and he mouthed the word “boom”.
Connor was sitting at a table, a round, metal, green-enameled table which was standing on one of the balconies, as though they were on some restaurant terrace. Charm was sitting directly opposite him, Tuttle shying from the balcony’s edge by taking the chair farthest in. A man stood a few feet away having already brought them drinks. He stood perfectly still, unobtrusive, yet his mere presence niggled Connor. There was something about him that instilled fear, a kind of menacing, chill aura, and though he was waiting the table, he was still dressed and armed as if ready for combat. Connor ran his finger down his glass of cold beer, tracing a line in the condensation.
What indeed, he thought. Now they were on the balcony, machine gun nests, lookout stations and sniper points were plain to see, but with the absence of an army, let alone an enemy, they all looked strange
ly redundant. A metallic smell pervaded everywhere, a ghost of an odor that lingered: the smell of welding and riveting, of drilling and forming, of the toil that had gone into building this place. Connor couldn’t help but liken it to the deck of a battleship, imagining himself looking out over a sea of tarmac as they headed for the sheer face of a wave of concrete.
Outside was a world without the city to guide it, to police it. 'Lawless' was the first thing that sprang to mind. A land plunged back in time to a place ruled by guns, where children died of disease, malformed, and where fire—for some reason he couldn’t quite shake the idea of the jagged outlines of tongues of all-consuming orange flames raging across the lands—left lush green vegetation on one side, an utterly black, charred land on the other.
“Like hell,” he finally muttered.
Charm smiled, “Ever one for an expansive vocabulary is our Connor, Byron. Sometimes I think he has a little difficulty stringing a whole sentence together.” Charm took a swig of his beer, his eyes never leaving Connor. Smacking his lips together, he placed the glass back down and looked out over the hangar. “But you are correct. It isn’t that far away, but not too close, either. Byron, here, is a learned man; he’ll know the answer. Maybe you peaked early, Connor, what with knowing all about the two-week thing. Byron, please explain all to our young student, but be careful, he absorbs knowledge like a sponge. Let’s see if we can’t get some of it to stick. I feel much has previously drained down the plughole of his life.”
Connor chose to keep his mouth shut, realizing now how reliant he was on Sable for his knowledge. He began to wonder how much of him had been taken over by his VPA. Surely he should at least be able to keep up with Charm and not flounder like a schoolboy?
“My best guess,” said Tuttle, having considered Charm’s question during several puffs on his cigarette, “is that very little will change in the immediate aftermath.”
Charm nodded. “Go on.”
“Economically, those left in the countryside benefit only marginally from the city dwellers. Farmers, miners, power plant workers, basically any who supplied raw materials that were consumed would, in theory, suffer. But take the farmer—all of a sudden he has no debts—no mortgage, no overdraft, no taxes to pay—so what does he need to produce all that food or dairy for? No, I reckon that on a micro level a barter system will soon fill the gap left by the destruction of the monetary system. If a carpenter needs food, he’ll fix the farmer’s roof—that sort of thing. That is…until the fuel runs out, until their batteries run dry, and if any power stations still survive it will only be a matter of time before they implode, explode or just fizzle to a stop, then things will change. Power will be the eventual game changer.”
Charm clapped. “Hear that, Connor. No hell, not to start with.”
“Of course,” Tuttle went on to say, “those in the city were highly misinformed about those outside. The preppers, for instance, will be ready, their sun cells deployed. Limited power will be available to them until the batteries perish with age, but by then, who knows what will happen? What kind of a timespan are we interested in, Doctor Charm?”
Pinching his chin, Charm looked up at the ceiling, appearing to be deep in thought. “Say, six months. Yes, six months.”
“Six months…” Tuttle considered as he twirled his glass around. “I’d guess we’d easily be seeing the start of conflict. Let’s say a couple of months for communities to huddle together and come up with some utopian ideal to cling to, and all the while a few badasses will have been plotting dominion from day one. My guess is three to four factions per locale—army being one; criminal figures who already operated in the area would possibly make up the other parties. By six months…ammunition spent, two warring factions left, civilian population down to zero. Sides, Doctor Charm, it will all come down to sides. Oh, gasoline and bullets, that’s what they’ll fight over in the end.”
Charm’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “Sounds like a paradise. So, technically, we just sit here for six months and then come out, all guns blazing. Sound like a plan, Connor?”
Everything sounded horrific to Connor. Hiding away certainly appeared the best option, but he already had a suspicion that the question was no more than a trick. “Except…” he said.
Charm darted a look at Byron Tuttle. “By God, I think he’s learning. I think he’s stepping up to the plate and actually thinking for himself. That’s the trouble with relying on a VPA all the time; it dulls the mind. I swear it was a challenge finding thirty folk, let alone three hundred, who could think for themselves, but find them I did. Three hundred, Connor. Can you imagine it, out of a city of nine million only three hundred freethinkers? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there were more, but I am only one man.” He hunched forward, leaning across the table and wagging his finger at Connor. “‘Except’ indeed. Except what? Byron, can you enlighten our student on except what?”
“Except,” Byron said, his voice now soft. “Except people talk, and a month is a long time to be cooped up down here. Two months would see a measure of discontent begin to foment away, and outright rebellion would happen shortly after the population has splintered into factions.”
Charm swung an arm at Tuttle, molding his fingers into the semblance of a gun and pointing it straight at him. “That, Connor, that there is a brilliant mind. That there is a freethinker. Did I tell you he was a traitor? Technically, of course, I doubt there’s a government left to be a traitor to, but that’s by the by. So, we have a problem.” Charm drummed his fingers on his lips. “We have a large group of freethinkers who are pressed together inside a mountainside hideaway and who will start talking among themselves, and, Connor, come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful conspiracy theories, unless…” He rolled his eyes and then took a swig of his beer. “Unless we can keep them informed. Now, if only we had someone here who could do that and so prevent all the bloodshed associated with revolution.” He looked Connor in the eye and smiled. “Wouldn’t that be just dandy?”
While Connor knew he’d just been backed into a corner, he couldn’t fault Charm’s logic. Yet somehow just hiding away seemed wrong. “Where’s the army? This place?” and Connor stood, resting his arms on the balcony. “Shouldn’t this place be filled with troops? Shouldn’t they be our protectors?”
Charm snapped his fingers. “Goddammit, Tuttle, if he carries on evolving like this we could have a fully sentient human being within a few months. The army, Connor, you caught me—I was skirting around that one. Why isn’t the army here? Byron?”
Byron Tuttle shook his head. Charm huffed and got up. “The reason the army isn’t here is obvious, Connor. I haven’t let them in yet.”
Connor swung around at Charm. “You haven’t?”
“Calm down. As long as Ivan The Bastard doesn’t drop a nuke on their heads, they’re fine. I haven’t let them in yet as they have work to do. We have to secure our little piece of land—our valley—before we can…” He slumped back into his seat and leaned toward Tuttle. “He was so close— so close.” Straightening, Charm intertwined his fingers and stretched out his arms, a great yawn following on. “How can we let them in when we’re so weak, so fractured? Their commander would take one look at us and think ‘Damn liberal city folk’ then point his guns at us and take over. My fearsome little militia wouldn’t stand a chance, and our ability to form a nice, stable society would be out of the window.”
“But…”
Charm held his hand up. “That and we had an agreement, Commander Croft and I. They would remain outside, in their camp, provided the winds looked favorable. Stake a claim, Clay, that’s what we’re doing. We might be soft, us city folk, but we’re not to be trampled over.”
Connor doubted anyone would trample over Doctor Josiah Charm in a hurry. “And were they?” he said.
“Were they what?”
“Were the winds favorable?”
A wry smile creased Charm’s face. He wagged his finger again. “He’s got me, Tuttle, got me wel
l and good. I haven’t the foggiest. I didn’t hear him knock on the door.”
“But—”
Charm burst out laughing. “Knock on the door. Classic. I think he fell for it, Byron,” but Byron Tuttle looked like he was miles away. Composing himself, Charm cleared his throat. “The gates aren’t the only way into the compound, Connor; there’s another way. It takes quite an effort and can only be opened from the inside, but it’s how we’ll initiate first contact.” He chuckled again. “First contact? A bit spacey? Of course, there is an emergency channel and Croft hasn’t used it, so either everything is going swimmingly or they’re all dead. Shall we eat?”
Without waiting for an answer, Charm turned to the man still hovering patiently beside them. “Kirk, you may serve, and pull a chair up for yourself when you’re done. More beers, everyone?”
Kirk disappeared through a doorway at the back of the balcony.
“Now, Connor, when he gets back I’d like to introduce you to Kirk. A man of few words, but I want you to get to know him.” Charm hesitated, his expression turning to one of utmost glee. “You’ll get on like a house on fire—the pair of you. I can imagine the conversation now: ‘Connor?’, ‘Yes, Kirk’, ‘Hungry’, ‘Yes, Kirk.’. Tell me, Byron, is it possible to have a complete conversation in two words or less?”
Byron grunted.
“I think not,” Charm continued. “Ah. Food is served. Do you like steak, Connor? I believe you have a penchant for guacamole, so Kirk has brought you a little pot.”
Connor was too bemused to reply, but guessed Charm was happy enough hearing the sound of his own voice ringing out.
Kirk put full plates in front of them each, spread out some bottles of beer and sat. “Hi,” he said, looking firstly at Byron and then at Connor.