by Ryan King
He had arrived at the reporting location on Fort Carson, Colorado with about a dozen other junior army officers. They all signed threatening non-disclosure agreements and were forced to give up their phones and cameras before being bused north.
The Cheyenne Mountain complex had been impressive, and Simon was fascinated with everything about the facility. Its huge blast doors designed to withstand a direct nuclear strike. Its football field-sized rooms sitting on concrete slabs supported by giant springs to withstand earthquakes. Its underground geothermal and hydroelectric systems. Everything about it had been designed to last...well, forever. But the point of the course wasn’t to see this massive facility; it was to prepare them for the day when it would be needed.
No one knew when or if any such end would come along, but the U.S. Government believed in being prepared. Part of that meant having contingency plans should the United States suffer a series of debilitating nuclear strikes that decimated the national leadership. In such an occurrence, the remnants of the military were expected to get to one of dozens of giant secret bunkers spread across the country filled with weapons, supplies, vehicles, and everything else needed to carry on the good fight against terrorism, communist, or Martian aggression.
The problem was those remnants would not know where the bunkers were. No one could, other than a select few, otherwise those bunkers would also be targeted with nuclear strikes. So, in theory, every combat unit had at least one officer who could lead his unit to one of these locations.
When Simon and his new conspiratorial buddies left Cheyenne Mountain after several weeks, they hadn’t known where the bunkers were either...but they knew how to find them and get into them. After his discharge from the army, he had promptly forgotten about the crazy contingency plan and gone about the business of making his dying mother’s last days as comfortable as possible.
After she died, he had felt lonely for the first time he could remember. Simon floated around the family house, fiddling with electronics, and worked at a local Radio Shack to earn food and gas money, but he recognized that in essence he had become unmoored and was adrift in a world where he did not fit in. He supposed he would have gone on like this until he died, through natural or self-inflicted causes, if N-Day hadn’t have happened. Those catastrophic events had seemed to clear the fog from his mind. Simon had rushed home, barricaded their house, collected supplies...and waited.
After N-Day, Simon had laid low for a week and then started looking for what he knew was out there. He rode his bicycle along packed highways, doing his best to avoid the throngs of panicked survivors. He gazed at the roadside light reflectors longingly. If he had the right type of encrypted radio from a combat unit, it would be easy to vector into one of the secret sites since those reflectors were actually tiny radio relay transmitters, but as a civilian, he no longer had access to such things. Simon was forced to look for the hidden signs.
He rode for several days along the left-hand side of the road instead of the right. Whoever had designed the Continuity Plan for National Continue the Fight had thought it made sense for the military to travel along the left side of the road instead of the right. Simon now realized that neither side would have worked very well since masses of survivors had taken to the roads after N-Day to get anywhere but where they were.
He had nearly fallen off his bike when he had seen the first sticker on the back of a road sign. It told him there would be another one nearby. A different color one told him to turn right, another to turn left. Soon he was off the highway and making his path down smaller and smaller roads until he found himself at the end of a dirt lane at the foot of a small mountain. An unassuming gate with a “No Trespassing” sign barred his way.
Simon had felt a moment of doubt then. Maybe there really wasn’t anything here. Maybe it had all been a farce or budget cuts had cancelled the massively expensive doomsday bunkers. But then he had looked down and seen deep imprints of many wide tires. Recent imprints.
Why would semi trucks be coming down this road? he wondered and climbed over the locked gate.
Within a hundred yards, the path had become paved again and led to a concrete pad with several large pipes sticking up. Pipes for giant fuel tanks below ground.
He knew he was in the right spot.
It took him nearly an hour to find the entrance behind a tall hedge. There, a gray steel door without a handle greeted him. Nearby was a spin dial like on a bank vault under a metal plate that said, “Site Conway.”
Simon chuckled. He had heard during the course that the man who established the sites had been a big fan of country music. He imagined there was likely a Site Waylon, Site Willie, and Site Johnny out there, along with many other first names of country music legends. As long as their name had exactly six letters.
He imagined an old telephone keypad with the letters on them. Conway corresponded to 26-69-29 which one might figure out was the combination if one were exceptionally clever. But the designers of the facilities had foreseen this and liked to change the combos regularly, monthly in fact. Since N-Day had been in the middle of August that meant that he would need to subtract 8—the number of the month—from each digit, making the combination 18-61-21.
Of course this would only work if whoever ran the facility had changed the combo as they were supposed to. If this combo didn’t work, he could start working back by months, but after three wrong tries, he would be locked out for an hour before he could try again.
“It’s not like I’m in a hurry to get anywhere else,” he had told himself and began to spin the combination dial. He was surprised when the combo stopped showing numbers and instead said OP, and the door clicked electrically, opening the heavy door a fraction of an inch. Simon had slipped his fingers in the opening and pulled the door open. Inside was a small sterile room lit by an emergency light. There was another door on the opposite wall and this time an electric punch keypad.
He knew from the training course that this was mantrap and that the opposite door could not be opened unless the door he had just pulled wide was secured. The danger was that if someone inside did not want him to enter, they could prevent it. Actually, they could seal both doors, locking him inside until he died of dehydration or lack of oxygen.
Simon looked up towards the ceiling and saw a camera there. He almost waved but did not know if anyone was watching or even if those potential watchers were receptive to friendly waves.
What if I lock the vault door and am then trapped in here? He examined the inside of the door and saw a handle to pull it shut behind him, but no mechanism for opening the vault door. Going out must be controlled from inside, he realized.
After a few minutes of deliberation, he pulled the massive vault door shut behind him, flinching at the heavy boom sealing him inside the small room. Simon walked over to the keypad. He knew this one would only open with five numbers which were randomly assigned to the digital buttons when he pressed the square marked start. Unlike the outer door, this combination was specific to him alone.
Simon thought back to the course. They had been instructed to pick a five-digit combination that they were unlikely to forget. Supposedly, those numbers had then been entered into a secret database that controlled entry and exit from these facilities. Someone, somewhere was likely supposed to delete Simon’s combination once he left the military. In fact, they might have done so. Or forgot to upload it to begin with.
Just try it, he told himself. Simon hit the start button, and a standard ten-digit keypad appeared, but with the numbers scrambled. He had punched in the five-digit code from years before without effort: 38676. It was Tunica’s zip code.
The keypad beeped, and the door in front of him clicked. Simon pushed open the door and stepped inside. Heavy springs on the door pulled it shut automatically behind him.
The first thing he noticed was how cool it was inside. Either the facility went deep underground and cooler air drifted up, or they had the air conditioning working overtime. The next thing h
e noticed was a heavy, not unpleasant smell of machine oil and grease. Dim light drifted towards him from down a narrow hallway.
“Thank the Lord that stopped,” an unseen voice said from the other end of the hallway. “I don’t know what was causing that confounded alarm, but I’m glad it finally stopped.”
Simon walked carefully down the hallway past closets and small rooms on either side.
“It must have meant something though,” said another voice. “Alarms don’t go off in this place for no reason.”
Simon peeked around a corner into a small control room from the hallway. Three men in nearly identical gray coveralls stared at a control panel with what looked like millions of lights, dials, and switches.
“It went off because you had someone coming inside from the outer door,” Simon said as he stepped into a larger room with the three surprised men.
They all spun in his direction and stared at him. One of the men that Simon soon came to know as Derek reached down frantically to his hip. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he looked down and began to pad himself.
“Goddammit!” Derek yelled. “I took my pistol off when I went to take a shit.”
The other two men looked at him and then at each other before turning back to Simon, who held out his hands in front of him.
“You’re not going to need a gun. Not for me.”
“Good, get the hell out,” said the Derek, with obvious trust issues.
Simon shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’m here as part of the Continuity of Operations Plan. I’m supposed to be here.”
“See, I told you,” said the man Simon would soon learn was named Lewis. “Eventually, someone would show up.”
“You got more with you outside?” asked Derek, his eyes narrow.
Simon shook his head. “It’s just me.”
The first man stared at him silently, his jaw working. “You aren’t supposed to be here, are you?” he finally said.
There was a squeal of small girl several rooms away.
“Damnit, Austin, tell your woman to keep those kids out of sight. We’re dealing with a situation here.”
Austin left the other men and walked past Simon further down the hallway. Sounds of other children playing could be heard.
Derek turned back to Simon. “Tell us the truth. You’d be here with more people if you were official.”
“No,” answered Simon. “I’m no more supposed to be here than they are.” He pointed in the direction of the children.
It had taken some convincing, but eventually, they had allowed him to stay. It had helped that he could get most of their electronic surveillance cameras to work as well as re-establishing the communications links. Although they had never really become close, over many months, Simon had gotten to the point he felt comfortable around his fellow Site Conway inhabitants.
And now they’ve voted you the one to pursue a dangerous, possibly suicidal mission, alone.
Simon pushed down the sense of sadness this thought brought forth. He continued to trudge along abandoned highways, sleeping in abandoned cars, eating MREs, and drinking water using the pump filter from the bunker. He also carried an assault rifle, which he knew how to use from his time in the army, but he couldn’t imagine himself actually firing at anyone.
He began to see vast lakes of shallow water being worked by a multitude of thin figures bending down into the ankle-deep water. Here and there, men on horseback with rifles watched over them. Simon instinctually made sure to avoid these people as much as he could. After a week, he was walking through the burned-out neighborhoods where he had once lived.
Simon stopped on the sooty street and stared up at the only home he could ever remember. It had been a modest Tudor home his dad had bought before dying in an accident at the electric company. He and his mother had taken care of each other there. This had been their refuge from the world and its people.
Now it was nothing but a burned-out husk.
Turning away, Simon continued walking towards what had once been the center of town. He saw more and more people, but his rifle seemed to give them a reason to keep their distance. Almost suddenly, he found himself on a busy and dirty street. Laughter and music wafted out of open windows and doorways. Small tables lined much of the street, selling everything from half-rotten potatoes to compact music disks. Abandoned cars sat where they had obviously sat since running out of fuel shortly after N-Day.
He remembered this street as being wide, straight, and stately. The town’s courthouse sat at the end of the lane, and as a youngster, Simon had thought it as grand as the Lincoln Memorial. Now it looked like a tacky garish prop against all the filth, discord, and bustling humanity.
Simon stopped and fought the urge to go back to Site Conway. He could do it, he realized. Despite sending him out, they would let him back in, even if they did think him weird. But what would happen when the fuel all went bad?
“What you looking for?” asked a voice nearby.
Simon turned to find a small man in a dirty apron leaning heavily on one crutch. “Excuse me?”
The man shrugged. “What you looking for, young fella? You obvious want something. Ain’t seen you here before, so what brings you to Tunica? You want to buy rice or salt?” His eyes got a mischievous look. “Or maybe it’s something else. Young man like you is looking for a nice piece of ass I bet? Maybe some booze or weed to go along with it?”
“No,” answered Simon, taken aback. “I’m trying to get to the JP.”
The man laughed. “Hell, ain’t we all. That’s the promised land. They got electricity; still comes out of the walls, they say. Trouble is, you need a guide to get you there, and even if you make it without losing you balls or your scalp, they won’t let you in.”
“Why not?”
“Because you ain’t a JP citizen, are ya’?”
Simon shook his head.
“There you have it. Might as well enjoy yourself while you’re here. Everybody does.” The man looked him up and down. “You just tell Ole Jonesy what you need, and I’ll make sure you get it. Best deals for my new friend.”
“Where would I find a guide to the JP?”
The man smiled again and couldn’t stop looking at Simon’s rifle. Finally, he pointed up the street. “Go into Miller’s Hardware. It’s not a hardware store anymore.”
“What is it now?”
“You’ll find out. Just go in there and ask for Tiny and Coon. They don’t look like much, but those boys are the best guides you’re likely to find, mark my words.”
Simon nodded. “Thank you kindly. I appreciate it.” He reached into his pack and handed the man an MRE. “For you help.”
The man’s face had become slack. He reached out and snatched the MRE away and hid it under his baggy shirt so fast it looked to Simon like a magic trick. He then looked around to see if anyone had seen before turning back to Simon. “Where’d you get that?”
“Just found it, that’s all.”
“Got any more of them?”
Simon shrugged. “Thanks again. Tiny and Coon, you say?”
Ole Jonesy nodded and gave him the biggest friendliest smile Simon could remember seeing.
Simon turned and began walking down the street.
The smile vanished off the man’s face and was replaced by a look that would have given Simon pause if he had seen it. Jonesy lifted the crutch from under his arm and ran around to an alley that bordered the rear of all the shops on the street.
He reckoned he needed to talk to Tiny and Coon before that rube did. He wanted to make sure he got his fair cut.
Chapter 5 – Vision in the Flames
Susan hesitantly approached the old camper sitting by the river like a giant abandoned toy. Billy Fox stood outside smoking a home-rolled cigarette. He looked as nervous as she felt, but he nodded to her agreeably enough as she approached.
“He’s been asking for you,” Billy said.
“I’m sorry, one of the pregnant mares was breech. Sta
yed to help.”
“Healthy foal?”
Susan nodded. “Our herds are growing. This place agrees with them.”
“I like how you say ‘our herds.’ You wouldn’t have done that when we started this journey.”
She stared at him levelly. “Jasper and I have been accepted into the tribe. We’re Creek now. I took that at face value. This is our home now too, isn’t it?”
Billy Fox nodded and tossed his cigarette into the river. “It is, but it’s good to hear you say it.”
“How’s Chicoca?”
He tilted his head toward the camper. “Dying...still. Taking his sweet time about it, but doesn’t seem to be in much pain. Sleeps more and more as the end gets near.”
“That’s good at least.”
Billy put his hand on her arm. “He’s dying at peace. None of us ever thought we would make it back here, especially after World War Three. We gave that to him. You gave that to him.”
Susan started to reply, but a young brave stepped out of the camper and looked at them with a look that was both murderous and calm. A look Susan had learned to associate with the Creek when they were trying to be respectful or polite. “He’s awake.”
“Come on,” said Billy. “Not sure how much more awake time he has left.”
Hesitating, Susan followed him inside, stepping up the thin stairs. She was not a stranger to death, but didn’t like it all the same. Expecting the worst, and picturing her parents’ last days in an intensive care ward, she was pleasantly surprised.
The windows and curtains were open so a gentle breeze ruffled the wildflowers arranged in glass jars around the old man. Warm sunlight rested on his parchment skin, and thin ribbons of incense smoke drifted lazily through the air.
“Come,” whispered Chicoca to Susan, and his eyes indicated the chair beside him.
She moved forward carefully and slid down into the seat beside him, being careful not to touch anything. Chicoca looked so fragile that she was afraid any impact on her part would scatter the remaining life force within him like a house of cards. Even a floorboard creak might make one of the old man’s body parts fall off.