Bunker 12 begins three years after that event, known as the Flense. It tells the story of a young man and his friends as they emerge into a new world. They have been told that the secret to the disease — and a means to cure it — may be found within a mythical shelter known as Bunker 12.
While “Lockdown” is essentially a horror story with a dark ending, it is optimistic at its core, as it tells the tale of an ordinary person rising against extraordinary challenges. It is the story of you or me. I hope you find it intriguing enough to want to investigate further the circumstances leading up to, and following, the day of doom it describes.
To learn more about my writings, upcoming events, and releases, please visit my website (http://www.tanpepperwrites.com). But if you really want to pester me, swing by my Facebook page (http://facebook.com/saul.tanpepper) and tell me to stop wasting time writing limericks about zombies.
At Depth’s Door
by James Knapp
HENRY COTTER HAD WORKED THE BAR at the Arms Tavern for the past ten years of his life, and still not a day passed when he didn’t wish he had the guts to burn it down to ashes.
It wouldn’t blaze, not at that depth, but with moonshine to start it and coal to feed it, it would smolder. It might smolder for years, even, long enough to turn every wretched splinter of the place to charcoal and kill every last man and every last chogg in the mine. He could make it happen. Every day he had the opportunity to make it happen, but each day passed by like the one before it, and he never did.
He followed the overlapping spots of dried blood and black tar down the tunnel, limping past electric bulbs chained together with sagging black cable until the tavern entrance appeared from out of the gloom ahead. The door had been reused many times, removed from abandoned tunnels as the workers moved on, and then finally installed here. The word TAVERN had been stenciled in fading white paint over the faded word SUPPLIES. Before that it had been STORAGE, and there at the top, barely readable through the grime and rust, were the oldest words, whose meaning had been lost, at least to Henry: ESEARCH FACILITY BR.
When Henry reached the door, he rested on his cane while he took the jingling key from his belt. He used the crude split-hook prosthetic strapped to the nub of his right forearm to hold the heavy padlock while he slotted the key and opened it. He turned the handle, but with his one good hand on the worn metal door, he hesitated.
He told himself that it could be worse. After all, he had a purpose, and that wasn't always the case for men who could no longer work in the mines. He’d just turned fifteen when the collapse took his arm and left him with a permanent limp. He’d seen folks a lot more functional than him disappear a lot quicker. Hating his lot in life would do him no good, not when there were plenty of men who would gladly trade places with him. He reminded himself of these things, turning them over and over in his mind until the moment passed.
He pushed open the door and the smell of the place greeted him in a way that had, over the years, become an odd comfort to him. The musty stink of stale cigar smoke, the ever-present brew of cooped-up human sweat and the heady chogg musk beneath it had all become so familiar to him that it felt like coming home.
The door squealed behind him, easing back against the rusted hydraulic arm before settling closed. He crossed toward the bar and its row of rust-brown stools, reaching over to pull the electrical switch. With an angry snap, a series of lights flickered on from above to light the room, throwing long shadows of dangling fingers across the bar's dull metal surface.
He looked up at the tavern’s namesakes mounted up above the length of the bar, but they no longer had the power to horrify him, or even interest him. The row of impossibly bulky human arms—eleven of them now—had each been torn loose at the shoulder. They'd been preserved, giving the skin of each a shiny, waxy look. Each one bulged with bands of stiffened muscle, like the skin struggled just to contain them, the striations standing out even now, long after any electrical impulses had ceased. They barely looked human.
"Evening, gents," he rasped.
He turned and made his way to the board of chalk-covered shale—the list of match-ups for the evening fights. The names had reached a little more than halfway down the board, with all but six of them crossed off. Only six matches scheduled for the night, then, which suited Henry fine. He lingered for a moment as one name in particular jumped out at him.
ERIC
He sighed, feeling the rattle of old coal dust in his lungs, and tried not to think about it as he turned to tend to The Grinder.
There were many tables in Arms but they’d all been arranged around The Grinder, a squat round table maybe three feet across and fashioned from iron. Two chairs faced one another across the stained surface, with a pair of metal restraints fixed between them. Henry used a rag to wipe around them. The pitted metal would never come clean, but he did his best to at least keep it from starting to smell. He wiped it with a rag as dirty as the table, polishing haphazard patterns of blood and bug juice to a waxy shine.
The thought of his Mary intruded, as it sometimes did in times of quiet, and he pushed it away before it could take root. The thought of their two sons crept in on her heels, and he banished them as well, knowing that there was nothing he could do about them, about any of it, and that all he, or any of them, could hope for was some form of predictable, pain-free peace. He had it better than most. There were so many ways to die in the mines, each more terrible than the last, and he'd managed to survive them all. He'd survived the cave-ins and gas pockets and even the chogg, who dwelled in tunnels deeper than any man had ever gone. He still had his life, and he still had one son. Things could be worse.
The echo of the steam whistle, which marked the end of the mining shift, rolled through the tunnels like the moan of some sad, dying beast, which roused Henry from his thoughts. Beneath the wail, he could already hear the tromping of boots and jingle of equipment. He limped back toward the bar as fast as he could as the sounds of the approaching miners grew louder. He set up racks of cloudy glasses and three bottles of black mushroom moonshine. They would be thirsty. They always were.
The door swung open with a crash and he started, nearly dropping one of the glasses. Lowry had stepped through, his leathery, grease-slicked face looking more eager than usual. Rock dust fell from his uniform with each step as the doors swung back and forth behind him.
"Evening, Lowry," Henry said.
Lowry lowered his head so that the black chogg shell mounted atop it reflected the overhead lights. From beneath the shell, clusters of onyx marble eyes stared back at him while hundreds of spindly legs dug deep into Lowry's thick, greasy hair.
Lowry didn't answer, but his eyes, bloodshot and murky gray, stared back at Henry as well. Henry looked, as he sometimes did, for any spark of recognition, but as always, none came. Lowry had been a friend to him once, but if anything of that friendship remained, the chogg had buried it somewhere deep. After a moment, Henry just nodded and looked down at the bar.
“What’ll it be?” he asked.
* * *
That night turned out to be especially bloody, and Henry felt tired as he watched the last fight of the evening from beneath the dangling hands and fingers of fighters past. He'd seen it before, more times than he could count, but it always sent a chill down his spine whenever that chogg juiced up poor Eric. It didn't matter that the boy would probably outlast them all, that he’d live and even thrive, such as it was. His genes would be carried below, had no doubt already been carried down below, and so he’d live on in some fashion or another. His life could have been much, much worse, but Henry still couldn’t stomach it. Eric had deserved better.
The mob started out about half human, but the clock now read six past one, and by that hour almost anyone with any choice in the matter had paid their tab and left. Henry had heard the first bone snap an hour before from The Grinder, and by now the crowd was primed like a pump. Faces slick with sweat and shale grease stared through the haze of cigar smoke, l
ips peeled back in zombie grins. The last match of the night was about to end, and they all meant to wring the most from it.
Eric faced Bill Flannery’s boy, their elbows locked in the metal restraints and their meaty hands joined in a knot of sinew and bones. Eric was the favorite, like he had been for months running. His chogg clung to the back of his skull like a shiny black helmet, rows of spindly legs nestled through his hair and its stinger thrust deep into his spine. That thing had found itself a winner when it grabbed him. The growth it had managed in Eric’s right arm and its supporting musculature was nothing short of incredible, to the point where the sleeve of his uniform had to be cut away.
As he struggled to get Flannery’s arm down, the thick bands of his shoulder jumped with a life of their own. His bicep bulged like a bubble of hot slag, half as big as his head and ready to puke its molten contents across the table. His forearm had become a hard mass of muscle around cable-taut tendons, and his hand looked like it could crush tungsten. From under the edge of its carapace, one of the chogg’s black marble eyes rolled to focus on the prize basket that waited on the table’s edge. The dirty towel that covered it squirmed, and Henry caught a glimpse of tiny, white-gray fingers that pawed underneath.
A low, sinister rattle caught Henry's attention away for a second. A swollen, free-standing chogg had scuttled up the edge of the bar and parked itself by the cash box no more than a foot away. It nibbled on what looked like a finger, feeding the digit into its mouthparts while some of its eyes scanned the crowd, looking for a free head to call home. A few turned toward Henry, and its shell rattled again. Henry froze, fear bleeding down into his legs until the chogg looked away again, even though he knew that it didn’t want him. None of them did, not since the accident that broke him. All they seemed to ever want was to fight, smoke, eat, and drink...or to make men do those things, anyway. Henry was no good for any of that. He hadn’t been for a long time.
Flannery barked out a scream, spraying a rope of spit across The Grinder. The crowd surged in response, pushing in closer with their nostrils flared. He was going to lose, and they all knew it. Flannery’s chogg knew it too because the black bladder underneath its shell clenched and oily juice leaked from the spot where its stinger was buried. A double dose of chemical primer dumped into Flannery's bloodstream and immediately the veins in his arm fattened and turned dark purple. The chogg riding Eric responded in kind. Eric’s eyes got wider as his wrestling arm went blotchy. He’d begun to make a high-pitched crying sound that made Henry think of Mary for some reason…pretty Mary and the smell of warming milk. Tiny fingers like the ones that pawed beneath the prize basket’s towel, tiny fingers that used to clutch his own before the chogg came to…
He took a deep breath through his nose until the chogg musk rose from out of the rank mix of sweat and smoke. The smell seemed to make a beeline for his brain, and eased the chill running down his spine, just like it always did. None of it mattered. Mary was gone now, down in their holes with the rest of them.
Henry imagined her face staring into the pitch blackness, scared and alone. She would be alive, with the rest, down in a hole too deep and narrow to ever find. They would carry her food and water and the seed they took from men with stabbing barbs in the dead of night to make more, always more. She…
He heard the bone break. Eric rolled his wrist, the splintering sound swallowed by Flannery's howl of pain as meat slammed down onto the table in a splash of sweat and blood.
Cheers filled the bar, and feet stomped until Henry heard the stacks of shot glasses rattle behind him and the hanging limbs swaying above. Eric had won again. His chogg crunched Flannery's limp fingers as money and merchandise began to change hands, a watch here and an old shoe there. Meaningless things they’d trade to Henry for moonshine they could just as easily take. They just liked to win.
Eric leaned back in his chair, eyes bulging as the crowd began to lumber toward the bar. Cigar cherry heads flared in front of brown teeth as the leering faces came closer as one. Henry racked up shot glasses as greasy bills and odd items were pushed his way, trying to peek past them to The Grinder. It looked like they meant to leave Flannery’s arm on its body rather than pickle it for hanging, but either way it would never work again. His chogg could try and go southpaw but Henry thought that was unlikely. It would abandon him and show up the next day to watch, to scout a new fighter. Honestly, losing was a blessing as long as it didn’t kill you. And maybe it still was, Henry thought, even if it did.
The chogg that sat by the cash box fed the last bit of finger into its mouth, and then its fat body shivered. Its shell began to rattle, the sound rising in pitch until it culminated in a low crunching sound as the carapace split down the length of its back. It sprang apart, and two heavy black balls emerged. One uncurled right there on the bar, its spindly legs working in the air until it could right itself. The other fell to the floor with a heavy thud and rolled into a table leg before the new chogg opened and scuttled away. Henry grabbed the empty shell, goop sloshing in the base of it, and dropped it in a metal bin behind the bar.
Back behind the queue of bodies, Henry saw Turgeon throw a punch, and Flannery Sr. went down hard in a spray of spit and blood. Two other men whose faces he couldn’t see moved in and stomped down where he’d fallen. What started as a shoving match turned ugly, and the crowd began to push around them, some wanting to get by and others wanting to join in.
Fists pounded glasses in front of Henry and he started pouring shots of pure, brain-rotting moonshine. Past the filthy, greedy faces he caught a glimpse of Eric holding one hand to his forehead so that the chogg could lick Flannery’s blood from his fingers. Henry looked away and took another deep breath through his nose, letting the musk smell relax the tightness that threatened to knot in his chest. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was getting them liquored up enough to get them out of the bar so that he could clean up and go home in one piece.
Turgeon would kill Flannery Sr. for sure, and before Henry could shut it out, Cole’s face jumped out at him from the jumble of zombie stares, enjoying the show. Henry recalled that Cole had carried Flannery back to base once, after the others had freed his pinned leg, but now he saw no recognition in Cole's eyes. He saw Pell, too, and Jenkins. He'd grown up with them, worked alongside them in the dark, pressure, and heat. None of them would look at him.
“Hey,” he called. Then again, louder, when the ruckus didn’t stop. “Hey!”
Heart pounding, he reached under the bar and fumbled with a cardboard box. He reached in and grabbed the first things that his hand found — a laminated clip-on badge, nearly worn to nothing, and a playing card with a bent corner — before slipping out from behind the bar to wade into the fray. He didn’t know why he bothered. Maybe some part of him still thought he might get his friends back one day. Maybe he just didn’t like the thought of Flannery having his face caved in, even if he never did get to be Flannery again.
“Boys,” he said, holding an arm out between them. Flannery lay bleeding on the floor, one hand pawing the air as Turgeon faced Henry instead. The chogg riding him rattled, legs digging in as the man’s muscles hardened. For a second Henry feared Turgeon would go for him instead, but he held up the badge and card in one shaking hand so that Turgeon could see. When he had his attention, he moved it back and forth.
A second passed, then another as Turgeon’s bloodshot eyes followed the loot. The chogg rattled again, but less angry, like an engine spooling down.
“We’re all friends here,” Henry said. “We’re all—”
Turgeon snatched the badge and card away, then turned and shoved his way through the crowd as someone else helped Flannery up. Henry let out a pent-up breath, feeling dizzy, and moved back toward the bar. Behind him, Flannery shoved the man away and lurched after him. As he retreated back to relative safety, he grabbed two shot glasses in his good hand to try and appease the crowd.
“Who’s up?” he asked as Flannery stumbled to a stop
, knocking over a stool. His dirty hands gripped the edge of the bar and spots of blood spattered its surface. He leaned over, putting his face near Henry’s. The broken jaw worked, a few teeth missing and a few more about to be, but nothing came out. The chogg crept up over his hairline, eyes boring into Henry’s.
One of the glasses slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor by his feet. Henry closed his eyes and breathed deep, trying to make the memories go away, but they wouldn’t. He backed away from the crowd in front of him until he hit the wall. When he opened his eyes again Cole, Pell, Jenkins, Gavin…they were all watching him.
“What do you want?” he heard himself whisper. There was no way anyone could hear him over the roar, but Gavin, the closest, leaned in closer. He leaned in until Henry felt the heat from his cigar end on his face. He tried to breathe slow and deep, but he couldn’t manage it.
“What do you want from us?” he stammered. He couldn’t even hear himself. Gavin bowed just enough so that the chogg on top of him could peer at Henry through his tangled mass of hair. Its eyes, empty holes in shiny coal, fixed on Henry as a bead of sweat trickled down his back.
Aaron passed by behind Gavin, and that snapped Henry out of it. It might have been the only thing that could have. Aaron never came into Arms. Not ever.
Aaron didn’t have a chogg. For some reason they hadn't taken him, at least not yet. If Henry had seen him sooner he might have been able to stop him but as it stood Aaron had already reached the blackboard. Before Henry could do anything, the boy had chalked his name in at the bottom of the roster, in the first open slot.
Henry stumbled away from Gavin and hustled over to grab Aaron by one arm. The kid looked at him real serious, but Henry couldn’t read what it was he might be up to.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 12