by Mike Kraus
“Wait!” Rick shouted at the two men but they were gone around a corner in seconds. “What the hell is going on around here?” Rick shook his head and turned around in the empty hall. With no one else in sight and nothing else to do, Rick did as the man had instructed and continued down the hall, watching for a flight of stairs. A few minutes later the sound of boots on the hard floor alerted him to the presence of someone coming from a cross hallway and he stopped, waiting to see who it was.
While Rick expected to see someone from the Army or Air Force coming around the corner, he wasn’t expecting to see Colonel Leslie. Based on the expression on the Colonel’s face he wasn’t expecting to see Rick either.
“What are you still doing here?” The Colonel stopped in his tracks and looked Rick up and down. “I thought I had you released days ago!”
Rick took a step backward, almost ready to turn and run. “Days ago? What are you talking about? A couple of your goons just dragged me out of the cell a few minutes ago!”
“What?” The friendliness and charm that Leslie had been wearing like a cheap cologne the first time they had met was completely gone, replaced by a harsh look of frustration and lack of sleep. “No, that’s… dammit!” The Colonel started walking and Rick trailed behind him. “I’m sorry, Rick. You’re free to go now, though. The exit’s back the other way.”
“Yeah, the guards told me where it was.” Rick shook his head. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. What’s going on around here? Why was I just dumped in the middle of the hallway?”
Colonel Leslie stopped and turned to face Rick. “I don’t have time to stand here and figure out the minutiae of your incarceration. The situation around here has changed quite radically since you arrived.”
Rick had to close his eyes, take several deep breaths and clench his jaw to keep from taking a swing at the Colonel. “What, exactly, has changed?”
The Colonel checked his watch and shook his head, muttering to himself before replying. “Fine. I guess I owe you some sort of an explanation considering you’ve been locked up all this time. Though, really, that’s your own damned fault. Of all the people we picked up who were supposed to be sent off to Mount Weather, you were the only one who refused. I figured a couple days in holding would change your tune but that’s right about when the shit hit the fan.”
“A couple days?” Rick could feel the veins on his neck and head bulging. “Are you kidding me?”
“Calm down.” The Colonel shook his head. “You can act indignant about your own stupid decisions later, on your own time. The day you were supposed to be hauled back up here to reconsider your decision is, like I was saying, the day the shit hit the fan. One thing led to another and I guess nobody released you. Again, I’m sorry, but you’re out now so congratulations.”
Rick still didn’t know what the Colonel was talking about and he shook his head, confused by Leslie’s response. “I… what are you going on about? What shit hit the fan?”
“We’ve had… let’s call it staffing issues here since this whole mess started. Too many problems and too few men spread too thin. I assume you saw the crowds of people outside the base perimeter when they brought you in?”
“Yeah. Looked like a couple hundred, max.”
“Try a couple thousand. Which soon blossomed to many more than that. We couldn’t hold them here on the base so we told them to seek shelter in the city and started handing out emergency rations a couple times a day.
“The day after those ran out is the day some genius out there got a couple of bulldozers running and plowed through the side of the fence.” Leslie shook his head and sighed. “As much of an asshole as you think I am—and I am one, believe me—I’m not about to open fire on citizens of a country I’m supposed to protect.”
“The people just swarmed the base, then?”
“Yep. Not like I can blame them. We’ve got the only food, water and power in the area and it’s been hot as balls out here.”
“You’re a real humanitarian.”
Colonel Leslie ignored the jab and continued. “When you’ve got about ten thousand starving, hot and dehydrated people who are extremely pissed off, you can do one of two things. Let them wear themselves out and break all your toys while they scrounge for food and water or kill them all and live with being a mass murderer the rest of your life. I chose the former. Everyone pulled back inside the secure areas of the base and waited for the looting and rioting above to stop.”
Rick shook his head, suddenly confused. “Why is it you’re telling me all of this?”
“As of right now, Rick, you’re the only civilian left on this base. Everyone else—including that friend you came in with—evacuated days ago. In twenty-four hours we’re going to be evacuating the base and moving out to an undisclosed rendezvous location on the west coast.” The Colonel looked at his watch again and shook his head. “Look, I feel bad you’ve been locked up all this time. Your friend went out on a plane the day after you went in there, along with most of the rest of the civilians who were staying on the base. If you hadn’t been so stubborn then you’d be most of the way home by now.”
“Working in a think tank to fix whatever’s going on instead of being home with my family. No thanks.”
“Whatever. Look, you have two choices right now. In approximately… three hours we’re evacuating. The C130s are loaded and we’re abandoning the base and heading for the west coast. If you want to come with us I can spare a seat.”
“Head back towards California?” Rick shook his head. “No way. What’s the second choice?” A series of distant explosions far above Rick’s head punctuated the conversation and he looked up at the ceiling.
“Your second choice is up there.” Colonel Leslie pointed upward. “One of the largest street gangs in Las Vegas decided that the civilian takeover of the base would be the perfect time for them to try and steal some more military-grade hardware.” He shook his head. “Inbred idiots. Unlike firing on scared, hungry civilians I don’t have a problem killing gangsters. Unfortunately they’ve hidden themselves among the rest of the civilians quite well and I don’t have the manpower or time to go hunting for them.”
“You want me to… what? Join a gang?”
“Don’t be stupid, Rick. In the hangar directly above us there are several Humvees loaded with supplies, weapons and everything needed for a long patrol route. The Army grunts had them ready before everything went to hell and they’ve just been sitting there. If you’re lucky and nobody’s broken into the hangar then you can take one and get out of here and keep going east. If you’re unlucky then you won’t have to worry about traveling anymore.”
“You don’t have a plane or something?”
Leslie chortled and shook his head. “No. I realize that may come as a surprise given that this is an Air Force base, but we don’t typically have planes that an unlicensed civilian is capable of flying and landing just sitting around ready to go.”
Another explosion came from above, which was followed by the appearance of a group of airmen at the end of the hall. “Colonel Leslie!” One of them spotted the Colonel and shouted at him. “We have to go!”
“You want to go with option A, you come with me. Otherwise keep going down this hall, turn right and take the narrow stairs up to Hangar Delta. Your call, Rick. Good luck with whatever you choose.”
Colonel Leslie turned and ran down the hall towards the airmen, not bothering to look back in Rick’s direction. Rick stood in the hall for a long moment, trying to figure out what to do when another explosion shook the underground structure, flickering the lights and shaking the halls.
“Dammit!” Rick turned away from the direction the Colonel had run and continued down his original path, heading for the staircase leading up to the hangar. There was no way he was going to head back west and, while dealing with thousands of rioters and gang members sounded like a terrible choice, it was a choice that was accompanied by a slim chance to continue heading towards home.
That alone made the most difficult decision the easiest in the world.
Chapter 18
Nellis Air Force Base
Las Vegas, Nevada
As Rick took the steps up towards the hangar two at a time, the rumbles of heavy equipment, scattered gunfire and people shouting and screaming grew louder. At the top of the stairs sat a thick steel door that he unlatched and pushed open, revealing a hangar similar to the one he had been taken to when he first arrived at the base. The hangar had enough space for several jets to sit comfortably side by side and end to end with room to spare.
Light shone down from the ceiling of the hangar from long bulbs though several of them were flickering, casting eerie shadows across the hangar floor. The room was nearly empty aside from a group of six Humvees lined up near the far entrance to the building. They looked nearly identical to the group that Rick and Jane had been brought in on aside from a slightly different paint job.
Rick hurried across the hangar, wincing every time he heard a gunshot or an explosion outside, wondering if each one was going to be the end of him. As he ran closer to the vehicles, he heard a commotion from outside one of the smaller doors built into the main rolling doors. Three separate smaller doors were built into one another like Russian nesting dolls with the smallest large enough for people and small equipment to pass through, the next for small vehicles to pass through and the next size for large trucks.
A series of small windows were built into the vehicle-sized door at shoulder height, and outside Rick could see several faces peering inward at the interior of the hangar. One of the people swung a sledgehammer at the door, sending a boom echoing through the voluminous space. Rick picked up his pace as the sound came again. Each blow sounded slightly different, and after three or four more he realized that the people outside were succeeding in their attempts to break through the door.
Rick was close enough to the doors to hear what the people were saying and, apparently, for them to see him. One of them pointed at him and shouted at the others. “Hey! Who’s that guy?”
“He’s not military!”
“Let us in!”
Rick ignored their calls and continued towards the Humvees. When he arrived at the line of them he began opening their doors, looking through them to see which one he wanted to take. Rifles, backpacks and metal cans full of ammunition were loaded into the back of each vehicle, and after looking through the first three he couldn’t see any discernable difference between them.
As the noises outside the hangar grew louder, Rick glanced over to see cracks of light shining through the edges of the doors and realized that the crowd outside was close to breaking through. He ran back to the initial vehicle—one of two in the lineup with a gun mounted on the top—and opened the driver’s door. The interior was covered with dirt and all of the surfaces looked worn and faded. He slammed the door closed and reached for where he assumed a lock would be, but found nothing. A long metal rod ran the length of the door on the interior with a small indentation three-quarters of the way down. He pushed on the rod, rotating it in place and heard a thunk from the door as the rod locked it in place.
“Okay then.” Rick muttered to himself and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Where are the keys?” He grasped the side of the steering column, looking for a place where he could even insert a key, and found no sign of the ignition. More pounding and shouting came from the doors and he glanced up to see an arm reaching through a gap, grasping for a lock on the interior.
Rick continued searching for some way to start the vehicle until he finally noticed a large push-button switch sitting near the steering column. Rick jammed his thumb into the button and the engine roared to life, surprising him enough that he slammed his hand down on the small horn in the center of the steering wheel, startling himself with the timid “beep” from the vehicle.
“Crap!” Rick ran his hand over the levers to his right and wiped off a layer of dust that covered the labels for the shifter. “You’d better work, dammit!” Rick looked up to see the smallest door in the stack swing open and a crowd of people began pushing through. He pulled back on the shifter, putting it into drive, and the Humvee lurched forward. He spun the wheel to the right and felt himself push up against the door as the vehicle accelerated into the turn.
Rick looked around the hangar for any other exits, but as the shouting behind him increased in volume and gunfire started to ring out, he realized his only option for escape was in the opposite direction. He turned the wheel again, heading back towards the set of doors and the group of people who were pouring in through them. Rick leaned on the horn as he drove forward though his warning was met with three of the people raising handguns and opening fire.
Rick ducked down behind the dashboard, keeping his foot on the gas pedal, though the Humvee shrugged off the low-caliber shots as though they were confetti. Screams and shouts came from all directions as Rick plowed through the group of people. Some of them were quick enough on their feet to get out of the way while others were injured or killed under the thick treads and massive weight of the military vehicle.
While the hangar doors were reinforced and, under normal circumstances, could have stopped the Humvee in its tracks, the structural damage done by the people breaking in was enough that Rick was able to plow through the door with ease. Metal screamed as it slid together, scraping large gouges in the sides and top of the Humvee. The vehicle began turning as the rear end squeezed through the gap on the hangar door and Rick clung to the wheel, trying to keep the top-heavy piece of machinery from overturning. When he finally got it back under control he headed straight down the middle of the nearest road he saw, cutting across a series of walkways and small areas filled with artificial turf.
Rick hadn’t seen much of the massive air base when he and Jane had been brought in over a week prior and as he drove through it searching for a way out he was stunned by its enormity. Most of the fighters that had been cleared for takeoff in the days prior had been evacuated from the base before the looting began. Colonel Leslie, as altruistic and potentially foolhardy as he had been in ceding the base to the nearby civilian population in lieu of killing them, had taken steps to ensure that anything of value was locked away in the specially-built underground bunkers used to store the aircraft when they were being fitted with classified hardware.
The bunkers were a new and relatively unheard of feature of Nellis, as was the entire underground section, which the Colonel had managed to keep secure from the civilians. While the administrative offices would no doubt be overrun relatively quickly, the jets, explosive ordinance and literal tons of ammunition would be kept safe until—or if—the Air Force returned. Colonel Leslie’s decision to not fire upon the civilians hadn’t been made entirely in a vacuum. Orders to prepare the base for abandonment had come down from the top prior to the civilian overrun. After a brief—yet fierce—debate with others in his chain of command, his argument for leaving them (mostly) alone had won out.
The staggering amount of people running through the secured areas of the base were mind-blowing to Rick, and made him wonder how the base looked prior to being overrun. Another explosion came just off to Rick’s right and he turned sharply around a corner, catching a glimpse of a group of people lighting fuses stuck into makeshift explosives. The absence of law enforcement, food and the general panic and horror that the surviving population had been forced to endure was the root cause for the mass rioting and looting. A herd mentality had taken over and there was nothing anyone could do to negotiate with them.
After passing through several streets in the small town situated next to the airfield, Rick groaned as the Humvee bounced out into an open dirt field. Hills rolled upward away from him, stretching out for what seemed like eternity. The bumps and jolts from the rough terrain lanced through Rick’s legs and rear end, shooting up his back and jittering his teeth.
“I’d better find a road soon before my fillings rattle themselves loose.” Rick mumbled to himself
as he struggled with the vehicle, trying to keep it on course to head away from the base before turning east.
As he sat on a helicopter spinning up as it was lifted from a bunker to the surface, Colonel Leslie thought about the strange pair that had come into the base. After throwing Rick into a holding cell the Colonel had a long chat with Jane, finding out a great many details about the mysterious man in the meantime. Jane’s stories of Rick’s tenacity and compassion over their trip through the city forced the Colonel to consider Rick in a new light. Though Leslie was quickly overtaken by matters more urgent, he gave one last thought to Rick as the helicopter soared westward.
Good luck, you bastard. You’ll need it.
Author’s Notes
June 30, 2017
With that we reach the end of Episode 3 in the Surviving the Series saga. I hope you enjoyed this episode. It was particularly enjoyable to write for a whole host of reasons and I’m really excited about what’s going to happen in the next episode.
You probably noticed that this episode was very Rick-heavy with only a couple of chapters devoted to Dianne. The reason why has to do with where the story is going. I need some time to pass in the story (around a week to a week and a half) so that society can really degenerate further. Yikes… that really sounds brutal and morbid, doesn’t it?
So far in the story things have degenerated pretty badly. We’ve had gangs and other groups of people going around looting, but most “regular” people have been right on the edge or far enough back from it that they haven’t done anything terrible out of desperation. With another week going by, though, we’re not just going to have criminals to deal with. People who would ordinarily be kind and helpful will have turned to horrific acts and society will have broken down to the point of no return.
Now that we’re entering that phase of the story you can expect the heat to get turned up on Rick…and Dianne. In fact, Episode 4 will feature Dianne a LOT more as she moves from stockpiling and preparing the homestead to having to deal with active threats. We’ve seen hints of threats in the form of her neighbor’s house burning down and the guys who tried to steal her car at the grocery story. Now we’re going to see how she and her kids handle some true adversity. Buckle your seatbelts because it’s going to get crazy.