by David Achord
I pointed at the Strykers. “Those are awesome, aren’t they?”
Sammy nodded. “I want to learn how to operate them.”
I smiled. “Me too, buddy. Maybe we can get Seth to train us.”
I could see two men manning the post. One was reading a book, the other one had his chin propped on his chest, snoring heavily.
“Good morning,” I said as we walked up.
The one reading the book jerked and looked up, startled. “Don’t do that, man,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I gave an apologetic shrug. So much for diligent guarding of the compound. I hoped it wasn’t this lax all of the time.
He closed his book, stood, and stepped out of the guard post. “You’re the new people, right?” he asked. He was in his mid-twenties, lean, sandy-brown hair, scruffy face. I noticed he was wearing Marine combat utilities.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “My name’s Zach, and this is my partner, Sammy.” I then pointed. “Those are our dogs, Zoe and Callahan. Callahan never met a human who wasn’t a friend; Zoe is mostly the same. Mostly.”
“Good to know,” he said. “Oh, I’m Conway, Bret Conway, and Sleeping Beauty here is called Joker,” he said as he slapped the side of the shack. Joker went from a deep snore to instantly coming awake. His eyes darted around and settled on us. He was also wearing Marine combat utilities, but he had maybe a weeks’ worth of beard growth and long hair.
“These are the new people,” Bret informed him and introduced us.
Joker stood and stretched. “Yeah, good to meet you,” he said rather indifferently as he scratched his crotch.
“What are you guys up to?” Bret asked.
“We woke up early and had to let the dogs out, so we thought we’d look around.” I glanced around. “Are you two the only guards on duty?”
Bret hooked a thumb behind him. “There’s another four guard shacks posted around the perimeter of the compound, and when we have the manpower, we have roving guards. It’s probably not enough, but it’s worked so far.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, it’s time to call in and let the OD know we’re still alive.”
“OD?” Sammy asked.
“Officer of the Day,” Bret replied and gave Sammy a grin. “When you’re in the military, you use acronyms whenever possible.”
“Oh.”
I pointed out their clothing. “Those look like Marine combat utilities.”
“Yep, we’re Marines,” Joker said with a scoff. “But it’s not too much to brag about these days.”
They certainly didn’t look like Marines. Both men were in their twenties with scruffy faces, long hair, and sloppy-looking uniforms. No, they certainly didn’t have the military bearing like Justin, Ruth, and Seth had. Even Grant shaved every day.
Joker continued. “Yeah, nowadays we sit in guard shacks, mop floors, clean toilets, and haul trash.”
I frowned in puzzlement. “I would have thought there’d be no lack of combat work for you soldiers.”
“If you mean action in the way of zeds or other hostiles, the answer is no,” Bret answered after he got off of the field phone. “When we first set this place up, we had a kickass captain. We’d go out on regular patrols and hunt down zeds.”
“We did a good job too,” Joker added.
“Yeah, we did such a good job, we’ve been relegated to bullshit work,” Bret finished.
“Every once in a while, we’ll get a few zeds wandering in,” Joker said. “But, we’ve killed most of them off around here.”
“What about hostiles?” I asked.
Bret shook his head. “Back in the beginning, we had some attempted incursions, but we had superior firepower on our side. There were more than a few idiots who thought they were Rambo and tried to attack us. They died needlessly. To be honest, I don’t think anyone within a hundred miles lives around here anymore.”
“There definitely ain’t any women,” Joker lamented. “None worth having.”
“Do you do any patrolling?” I asked, hoping I could get in on the action.
Conway shook his head. “Maybe one a month. They decided the fuel could best be used for other things. Like the delegations.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Who’s your CO?”
Both men gave a look like I asked them if they had pierced nipples and liked to dress up in drag on Saturday nights.
“We used to have a squared-away captain by the name of Jones,” Bret said. “He wasn’t big on formalities, everyone called him Jonesy. He was a good man, but he got sick and died. The docs said it was dysentery.”
“He shit himself to death,” Joker said. “Now we have this Navy ensign.” He scoffed and spit on the ground. I guess that meant Joker didn’t like him too much. He scratched himself again, and snapped his fingers.
“Hey, somebody said you guys had a couple of Marines with you.”
“Yep,” I replied. “Major Grant Parsons, Lieutenant Justin Smithson, and Corporal Ruth Bullington.” I was surprised they hadn’t introduced themselves to the Marines already. Maybe that was planned for today.
“Bullington is a girl?” Joker asked. “How’s she look?”
“She looks pregnant with Justin’s child,” I said.
Bret chuckled in understanding.
“Aren’t there any single women?” Joker asked.
“A couple, but don’t count on me to play matchmaker.” I looked around. “I’ve never been in the military, but it seems to me this place can’t be too easy to guard.”
Bret frowned. “You got that right. Let me tell you about this place.”
Joker groaned. “Here we go.”
Bret ignored him. “It started out as a weather station, which is the reason for the name, I guess. During World War Two, it was set up for conscientious objectors to do some kind of work rather than going to war, but at some point, they decided this would be a good place to hide Congress if DC was attacked. At that time, there were only two buildings: the dormitory and a lab. In the fifties, they built the underground bunker. You know, the Cold War and all of that shit. Since then, they’ve added all kinds of buildings, and any idiot could see there was no strategic planning done when they were laying shit out. We got buildings scattered everywhere, making it a tactical nightmare to defend. The whole place is about four hundred and thirty acres, and we only have thirteen Marines.”
“How many soldiers in total?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see, if you include all of the officers, nineteen.”
I furrowed my brow. “Doesn’t seem like very many to protect this place.”
Joker grunted in agreement. “And most of these civilians don’t know squat about soldiering. If a large number of marauders raid this place, we’d be in trouble.”
Bret glanced over at him. “I’m not so sure about that, but a well-trained recon team could easily infiltrate this place.” He pointed around. “Don’t get me wrong, we’ve made improvements.” He pointed at the guard post. “Like this, for instance,” he said. “And we’ve reinforced the perimeter with wire and additional guard posts, but it isn’t enough.”
“Hey, where did they put you guys up?” Joker asked.
“A suite of rooms on the habitation level.”
Joker cussed. “They still have us living in the dormitory, even though there are spare rooms, sitting empty.”
“Have you looked around in the bunker?” Bret asked. I shook my head.
“Well now, the bunker is what sets this place apart from any other place. There’s a hospital down there, dining and recreation areas, a water reservoir, an emergency power plant, and a television studio which has been wired in to communicate with all of those satellites up there,” he said, pointing skyward.
Yeah, Seth told me about the satellite feeds. The nation’s leaders sat in the comfort and safety of their bunker watching their country implode, and being impotent to do anything about it.
“There’s even a crematorium down there,” Joker said, interr
upting my thoughts.
Bret nodded, and then gestured around in the growing dawn at all of the buildings.
“All of them are interconnected by a tunnel system, it’s all pretty complex. But, unless you have a special access card, you won’t be able to get in them tunnels.”
“How about sewage?” I asked.
“There’s an on-site sewage treatment plant, but we still have to haul off the trash. Food scraps go to a nearby hog farm and all other trash is burnt and dumped in a nearby landfill, along with any zombies we kill.”
“It’s a big place,” I remarked.
Bret nodded. “When it was at full capacity, this place had around nine hundred personnel, give or take.”
“And now?” I asked.
Bret’s brow furrowed. “Oh, about a hundred and thirty, give or take. When it went bad, the place went on lockdown. A lot of folks didn’t make it inside before they sealed up the bunker. Did you see the entry door?”
“That big blast door at the entrance?” I asked. “It’s hard to miss.”
“Yeah,” Brett replied. “That thing weighs thirty-four tons. It takes ten minutes to shut and secure it.”
“So, you’ve been here since the beginning?” I asked.
Bret nodded. “Yeah, both of us. We were at DC and escorted a group of senators here.”
“We stayed in lockdown for thirty days,” Joker said. “Someone finally got the idea to send us Marines outside to check things out.” He shook his head at the memory and spit.
“I’d sure like to hear about it,” I prompted.
“It was about what you’d expect,” Bret said. “Utter chaos. We lost a lot of people during that fiasco.”
“It took us weeks to clean up the bodies,” Joker added. “They insisted on shutting that big blast door every evening. Finally, I guess about the second year, a decision was made to leave it open and only close in the event of an emergency.”
“This place was specifically designed for Armageddon, but even so, it took everyone by surprise. Even with the FEMA gurus, it took a while before we got it sorted out,” Bret said. “The biggest problem was all of the politicians think they know everything and they’d debate every little decision. It took three full months to convince all of them to let us outside and do what we were trained for.”
“We must have killed thousands,” Joker said. He offhandedly pointed toward the north and east. “The zeds came wandering out of the big cities.”
“The first year we had a mild December, so they were active. A cold snap rolled in the first week of January.” He frowned at the memory. “Man it was cold, and it snowed like crazy. The good thing is, the zeds froze, and it gave us time to work on hardening this place up. We were also able to go into towns and load up with supplies. But the first year was the roughest.” He looked over at his friend. “I’d say we lost fifty percent the first year, right?”
“Yeah,” Joker answered. “Sounds about right. A lot of them know-it-all government pukes did stupid stuff. They got themselves killed and other people who were trying to protect them killed.” He grinned suddenly and chuckled at a memory.
“There was this one senator. Where was he from, Vermont?” he asked. Bret nodded. “Yeah, Vermont. Old white-headed dude. He and his entourage of butt sniffers went into DC one day, when was that, May?”
“Yeah,” Bret said. “May of the first year. They got it in their heads it was safe to go into their offices and retrieve all of their important paperwork or something. They never came back.” He made a sour face and shook his head.
“We lost our only two MRAPs and the four Marines who were ordered to go with them.”
“What are MRAPs?” Sammy asked.
“They’re military vehicles,” Joker said. “They’re designed to protect soldiers from roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, but they also turned out to be exceptionally good anti-zed vehicles.”
“Oh,” Sammy said.
Bret continued. “The president sent us on a recon a couple of days later. We got into the outskirts of DC and saw thousands and thousands of Zeds. Jonesy ordered us to abort and we headed back.”
Joker then gave me a look. “Hey, why don’t you give us the four-one-one on those Marines?”
“The three of them were with the CIBRF,” I answered.
“What the hell is that?” Joker asked. Conway glanced at him.
“The Chemical Biological Incident Response Force,” he said.
“Oh,” Joker replied.
“Yeah, Major Parsons is a pathologist. He’s more of a doctor than anything else. Justin and Ruth are squared-away Marines. They’re good people.”
“Well, we certainly need the people,” Joker muttered.
We talked some more before putting the dogs up in one of the kennels and making our way to the cafeteria. There were some lights on, but the main dining area was still empty. I heard movement in the back, on the other side of some double doors, which I assumed was the kitchen and walked back there. As we were about to walk through the doors, we were almost run over by a man pushing a cart bearing one of those large stainless steel coffee urns and a stack of cups.
“Good morning,” he greeted with a pleasant smile. “I’m Jim Hassburg.”
“I’m Zach Gunderson, and this is Sammy.”
He gave us both fist bumps, and then motioned for us to follow him as he pushed the cart.
“Yeah, everyone knows who you people are. When Seth sent the message all of you were coming, it’s all we’ve been talking about.” He maneuvered the cart into a spot between buffet servers and locked the wheels.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I replied. Sammy wanted to fit in, so he nodded. Jim poured two cups.
“I hope you like it black, cream and sugar are somewhat of a rare luxury, but we have enough freeze dried coffee to last for the next hundred years,” he said with a chuckle. “Breakfast won’t be ready for about an hour, but you’re welcome to hang out.”
“Not a problem,” I said agreeably. “Are you the designated chef?”
Jim laughed. “We rotate duty assignments. This week it’s my crew. Monotony is a mind killer, so we swap things up, unless you have a specialized skill.”
“Sounds interesting,” I said, as I sipped the coffee that could best be described as one grade lower than truck stop quality.
“Yeah, get ready for that. I imagine Lydia already has some kind of work detail lined up for all of you. My advice, don’t tell her anything will do. Think of something you’ll enjoy doing and insist on it.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said.
He then cleared his throat. “Um, the seating arrangements around here are kind of funny.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“Certain groups of people have staked claims to certain tables,” he said with an apologetic smile and pointed. “Those four tables over there are unclaimed.”
“Sounds like grade school,” I replied. “Or prison.”
“Yeah, people can be peculiar about trivial things,” he said. “Anyway, I have to get back to work. Welcome to Mount Weather.” He smiled and hustled back into the kitchen.
“I guess we need to stake out a table,” I said to Sammy, who nodded uncertainly. We picked one Jim had declared available and sat quietly as people started filtering in. Some said hello, some either had their mind on other things or they were simply rude.
The first of our group to walk in was Josue Garcia. He never told anyone his true age, but I suspected he was in his late fifties. He was maybe five-eight, wiry but fit, and a jack-of-all-trades. He wasn’t a talkative guy, but he always seemed to be in a good mood and had a dry sense of humor. He gave me a nod, Sammy a wink, and made a beeline to the coffee urn.
His adult children, Jorge and Maria, were close behind him. They greeted us quietly and sat. Maria, a naturally shy woman, had been melancholy since she lost her son back in March. Both Josue and Jorge worried over her constantly.
&nbs
p; Major Sarah Fowkes and her girlfriend, Sergeant Rachel Benoit, soon came through the door, along with Grant Parsons, Ruth, and Justin. All of them were wearing freshly cleaned uniforms.
“Big day today,” Grant said with his own grin. “We get to have a sit-down with the Secretary of Defense.”
“Hello, newcomers,” a voice said behind me. I looked around to see a man who could have been forty-five or sixty-five. He had a smooth, tanned face, pearly white teeth, and his brown hair was perfectly groomed. Not a single gray strand. He was freshly showered and clean-shaven, and it was impossible to look at him and believe the world had gone to shit.
“I’m Conrad Nelson, may I join you for a minute?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Raymond had been kind enough to show me a file on his laptop during the trip up here. It had a brief biography of everyone at Mount Weather. I made a point of reading and rereading everyone’s biography until I had it memorized.
Conrad Nelson was a senator from Florida, a position he’d held for two consecutive terms. Before that, he was the mayor of Pensacola. A graduate of Florida State University, he’d started his career as a lawyer before the lure of politics took hold. On the ride up, Raymond had mentioned the good senator was suggesting a presidential election needed to be held and he was going to run.
I gave him a friendly smile and introduced him to everyone who was present. His pleasantries actually seemed genuine, but he was a career politician, so it came naturally to him. He looked up as the cafeteria door opened and his grin grew in size. I looked over to see Kelly and Janet walking in, my two kids in tow.
Kelly’s long dark hair was still wet, and it glistened in the fluorescent lighting. Conrad’s quartz green eyes sparkled as I introduced him to my wife and monster-in-law.
“If I had known the women in Tennessee were so beautiful, I would have abandoned my constituency and moved,” he said with a friendly chuckle at his own coquetry.
Kelly smiled politely and then ignored him as she kissed me and set Macie on my lap before sitting on the opposite side of the table away from the senator. Janet did the same, but I could still see her making lingering eye contact. Suddenly, he grabbed me by the shoulder.