“We can’t, but I do know that trying to bust through here and then following that road…” He pointed to where the dirt track disappeared around a bend. “Well, it could take some time. Chances are there will be more obstacles farther in.”
“What do you think this place is?” Carter scuffed his foot against the mud. “You’re military. Is it like an Area 51 or something?”
“There are black ops projects,” Gabe admitted. “Of necessity, some work the government does isn’t shared on the morning news.”
“Of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Max murmured.
“I heard you, Max, and I even agree with you.” Gabe leaned against the fence. “You’ve probably heard about the Utah Data Center, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, even supposed UFO listening centers. The first two are examples of legitimate government facilities, though their actual purpose is far less exciting than the conspiracy theorists would want you to believe.”
“I guess the government isn’t listening anymore,” Patrick said. “As to Cheyenne Mountain, that may be where the feds are hiding.”
“Do we actually listen for UFOs?” Lanh asked. “Er, I guess the question is, did we listen for UFOs?”
“That one I can’t answer. If we did, it would be on the top of a mountain, or somewhere that you wouldn’t have other electronic clutter.”
“No clutter now,” Shelby pointed out.
“True. But as for this place? I don’t know what it is. Might be government. Might be government working with private business. Whatever it is, seems to me that it’s deserted. Why would anyone stay in there? How would they stay in there?”
“They’d have to come out for food,” Bianca said.
“Exactly. So maybe it was something our government started and never finished.”
“An incomplete black op.” Carter clamped his cowboy hat down on his head. The thing looked more ragged every day, but he liked the way it felt and even how it looked. “I’m starting to get hungry.”
“Everyone grab a granola bar and drink some water. It’s half past noon.” Gabe stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the ground. “If we go now, we can get back to the main road and stop to fill up the vehicles with the gas in our cans.
“Why not do it here?” Bianca asked.
“I don’t like the fact that we have little line of sight. Let’s get out in the open, fill up, and then proceed to the nearest fuel cache.”
They all nodded in agreement, disappointed but ready to move on.
“Did you quote the Gettysburg Address back there?” Shelby asked Max.
“I did.”
“This…” Her hand came out to encompass the gate, the cameras, the razor wire. “It bothers you.”
“Mysteries have always bugged me,” Max said as he and Shelby headed back toward the Dodge.
“Bugged you?”
“Like an itch you can’t reach.”
“You’ve never read mysteries or watched the television shows. Remember the time I tried to get you to sit through one episode of Sherlock?”
“I don’t like them. I want things to be laid out—”
“You want forensic evidence and testimony.”
“What I want is things laid out in an orderly, logical manner.”
“That’s exactly what Holmes would say. You’re more alike than you realize.”
“Take away all the mystery shows ever created, and the world would be a better place.”
“Wish granted, unfortunately, for those of us who enjoyed them.”
Gabe pulled out onto the road, followed by Patrick.
Max started the Dodge and was pulling away when he glanced into his side-view mirror. At first he thought he was imagining things, that he couldn’t actually be seeing a group of people running toward them, running toward the gate from the other side.
And then he heard them begin to scream.
FIFTY
Shelby was buckling her seat belt when Max slammed on his brakes, sending her sprawling into the dashboard.
“What?”
But Max had already thrown the Dodge into park, killed the engine, and leaped out.
She pulled out her handgun, thumbed off the safety, and jumped out after him.
And that was when she saw the five people on the other side of the fence.
She darted after Max, gun drawn, but if she was worried that he was being reckless, she wasn’t considering how he had changed over the last nine months. He might still think like a lawyer, but his instincts were those of a papa bear. His hand was on the butt of his holstered weapon, and he didn’t venture any farther than the back of the Dodge.
The five people stopped short of the gate, their hands raised as they stared at Max and Shelby as though they’d sprouted wings.
“Why are you pointing that gun at us?” This from a woman who was probably in her thirties. She was black, with a butchered haircut, and thin as a reed.
“Maybe you should tell us what you’re doing on that side of the fence,” Max said. “Tell us what this fence is even about.”
“Look.” The woman raised her hands higher in a sign of submission. “Don’t shoot us, okay? All we need is to use your cell phone.”
Shelby had been studying the rest of the group. Including the woman talking, they were an odd collection of two men and three women, ages ranging from twenties to thirties, she’d guess, and of different ethnic backgrounds. At the mention of a cell phone, she whipped her head around to stare at the leader.
“My name is Paige. Paige Wakefield.” She stepped closer to the gate. “All we want is to make a call. Our…” She motioned to the group behind her. “All of our phones are out, and we need to call someone to pick us up.”
At this point, the Mustang and the Hummer pulled back in behind them. Shelby didn’t have to turn around. She knew the sounds of their vehicles at this point. She heard the crunch of five folks walking toward them, and immediately her danger radar dropped a degree. They were solid. Whatever was happening with these people, they wouldn’t hurt anyone on her side of the fence. Her friends—her family—had her back.
Gabe walked past Max.
“What’s going on here?” he asked Paige.
“They want to borrow our cell phones.” Max said it quietly, flatly, as if they had asked for a ride to the moon.
Paige’s group was growing restless. How long had they been stuck inside the enclosure? How could they not know what had happened on June 10 last year? Was this a trick of some kind?
Gabe recovered more quickly than the rest of them, perhaps because he recognized a kindred spirit, a brother-in-arms.
“Name, service, and rank?”
Paige didn’t even hesitate. “Paige Wakefield. US Air Force. Major.”
“Air Force?”
“Yes. Currently I’m on assignment for…that is, we all work for NASA.”
FIFTY-ONE
Carter had thought things couldn’t get any weirder. These people worked for NASA? He wanted to laugh, but when he looked over at Lanh, he noticed his friend had a deadly serious look on his face. They stepped closer to one another.
Lanh was practically whispering. “Watch the guys in the back.”
“Do you think they’re going to try something?”
“Nah. But they’re like…irritated. Restless even.”
“Guess they were expecting someone else.”
“Yeah, like maybe the cavalry. One keeps fiddling with his phone like he expects it to suddenly work. And they’re surprised that we’re armed. Who would be surprised about that?”
“Someone who…”
“Doesn’t know.”
“How can they not know? Everybody knows. They’ve been on planet Earth, haven’t they?”
Gabe had backed up to confer with the rest of the group. “Thoughts?”
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on here.” Patrick’s eyes continued to scan the other side. “But there’s one thing I’m sure of, and that is they are
more confused than we are.”
No one else had anything to add, so Gabe stepped back to the fence and said, “I’m going to need to see your identification.”
Paige bristled, but she pulled off a chain with dog tags, walked up to the gate, reached through, and dropped them into Gabe’s hand. “That’s all they let us keep.”
Which Carter thought was a pretty strange thing to say.
Gabe glanced down at them and passed them to Patrick, who handed them back to Paige.
“I guess she is who she says she is,” Patrick muttered.
“Who else would I be? Can you tell me what’s going on here? Because I don’t understand why your weapons are still pointed at us or what the problem is. A single phone call. That’s all we need to make.”
“One minute.”
They all walked back to their vehicles.
“Those tags are legit,” Patrick said.
“She could have stolen them.” Max looked from Patrick to Gabe. “Can you make sense of what she’s saying? Why wouldn’t they know—”
“Because they’ve been inside there…whatever this place is…since before the flare.” Shelby holstered her weapon. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Which makes no sense at all,” Lanh said.
“So what do we do?” Bianca nodded toward the group. “They can’t get out if we can’t get in. Give me a scenario where this is dangerous to us.”
“Maybe they want our vehicles,” Carter said.
“Possibly, but they look kind of…anemic.” Patrick shrugged when they all stared at him. “Pale and soft. They’re not a physical threat, that’s for sure.”
“And they don’t appear to have any weapons.”
Carter could tell where this was leading, and he struggled with competing emotions. On the one hand, he was curious about what was on the other side of the fence. On the other hand, he wondered if they could have even one day where things went as planned. All they wanted was a bridge—a way out of Texas. Was that really too much to ask for?
“All right,” Gabe said. “If we’re agreed, then we hear their story and try to figure out what’s going on.”
“Are we going to stand here, talking through a gate?” Lanh switched his revolver to his left hand, clenched and unclenched his fist, which was when Carter realized that he had a death grip on his weapon as well.
“No, we’re not. Patrick, Lanh, and Bianca, you’re our best shots, so I want you standing left, right, and a little to the left of center and keeping a bead on our new friends. You see anything suspicious, you shoot. We didn’t come this far to fall into a trap now. On the other hand, the thought that folks are stuck inside an enclosure…well, it doesn’t sit well with me.”
Patrick, Lanh, and Bianca moved into position.
“Max and Shelby, I want you two at the road, making sure no one approaches from that direction. Carter, you’re with me.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Break down that fence.”
Once everyone was ready, Carter walked with Gabe up to the fence, where Paige Wakefield was still waiting.
“We’re going to crash the gate,” Gabe said.
“That’s a military vehicle, and you’re going to crash it through our gate?”
“Do you have another way for us to get you out of here?”
“No, but if you’ll let us make a call maybe we can clear this all up.” When Gabe shook his head, she added, “Who are you? And how did you get that Hummer?”
“Gabe Thompson, lieutenant colonel. I’m a doctor serving in the US Air Force.”
“Okay. So if you weren’t sent here to pick us up, why are you here?”
“That answer is complicated.”
Paige glanced over at Patrick, Lanh, and Bianca, who were now holding their rifles in the ready position.
“Then what…”
“Look. We’re a little vulnerable here.”
“Vulnerable?”
“We’ll answer all of your questions, but we need to do this now and then pull back to a more concealed location.”
Paige studied Gabe for less than ten seconds, glanced at Carter, and apparently made the decision to trust them.
She seemed to realize that the situation was much direr than she had thought. “What do you need us to do?”
“Move your group back away from the gate.”
“All right.”
“Once I’m through, my team will hold their position, and I’ll remain in the Hummer. Carter is going to check each of you for weapons.”
“We don’t have any weapons.”
“We need to check.”
Paige crossed her arms and nodded. Then she rejoined her group and directed them to move away.
Gabe turned to Carter. “We’ve gone over this. You know how to check someone.”
“Yeah.”
“And, hopefully, they’d be less likely to shoot you if they are up to something.”
“You sure about that?”
“Not entirely. Look, my gut tells me that they’re exactly what they appear to be. Folks who for some reason have no idea what has happened in the last year. But we need to be sure and do this carefully. We need to do it by the book.”
Carter looked at Patrick, Lanh, and Bianca. They would have his back. “All right. How are you going to get through the gate?”
“The Hummer can handle the job, but I’d like to do it with a minimal amount of damage to the vehicle. I want you to line me up so that the grill is against the gate, and let’s find something to put over the headlights so they won’t be crushed.”
“There’s the grill.”
“If one of the metal bars pop through, it could shatter a headlight. Let’s not take the chance.”
Carter ran to the cargo hold of the Hummer and pulled out two bedrolls.
“This good enough?”
“Better than nothing. Grab some bungee cords.”
Together they fastened them around the front grill.
Gabe climbed into the Hummer and nudged the front bumper right up against the gate. When Carter gave him the go-ahead signal, he slowly accelerated. The gate groaned. The tires on the Hummer dug into the dirt road. Gabe gave the vehicle more gas, and the gates began to bend. Metal screeched against metal as the hinges twisted, and then the gates bulged open and the Hummer shot forward.
Carter ran through the opening. Paige had instructed her group to spread out in a line, facing Carter, hands raised. Slowly and methodically, he began to check them one by one for weapons.
FIFTY-TWO
Shelby and Max didn’t move when they heard the gates cave in. Gabe had been clear that they were to hold their position until he whistled.
“This day keeps getting weirder and weirder,” she said.
“I have a feeling that trend isn’t going to change in the near future.”
They were standing back-to-back, facing opposite directions.
No one had come down the road, but then there had been several turns on their way to this location. Anyone coming back this far would be lucky to find their way out. Max hadn’t actually realized there were places in Texas still this remote—places all over the country, probably. Before the flare, those isolated locations had been connected via cell phones and computers if the people living there wanted to be. Now? Now secluded sections could easily be forgotten.
Gabe’s whistle pulled Max from his thoughts. He and Shelby turned and jogged back to the group. Max glanced at her and realized there was no one else he’d rather go through an apocalyptic world with than Shelby Sparks. Then they came into sight of their group, and all other thoughts fled.
The gates were hanging on their hinges, the barbed wire at the top popped and drooping.
Gabe was out of the Hummer.
Bianca and Patrick and Lanh had put their rifles back in their pack, and Carter was standing with Paige’s group.
“What now?” Max asked.
“We’re heading to their camp.�
�� Gabe turned to Paige. “Right?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“How far is it?”
“A mile and a half.”
Max and Shelby exchanged looks. “How big is this place?” he said, only loud enough for her to hear.
“Yeah, and why is it here?”
“Your group can fit in our vehicles,” Gabe said.
“Thanks.”
Everyone climbed in.
One of the group, a Caucasian man who looked way too young to be a doctor as he claimed, rode in the back of the Dodge, seated between Bianca and Carter.
“What were you all doing at the gate?” Shelby asked, turning toward the backseat to study him.
“Trying to get out. My name’s Otis, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Otis.” Shelby introduced herself, as did everyone else.
“We’d walked down before,” Otis continued. “Yesterday morning. We were hoping to get out, but the access pad wasn’t working. So we went back to camp and tried to assess the situation. It doesn’t make sense, though. Why weren’t we picked up? Where are the newspaper people? And why doesn’t our vehicle work?”
When no one answered, he added, “I was looking forward to going home, to seeing my wife again.”
“Where’s home?” Bianca asked.
“Katy, west of Houston.”
And then nobody spoke, because how do you explain to someone that home might not be there anymore?
They followed the dirt road through the trees, exactly one and a half miles as Paige had said. Max didn’t know what he was expecting, but when the road curved and they pulled into a clearing, all he could do was stare, his mouth open and his mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Otis leaned forward, staring with them at the two-story structure. “Welcome to the HAB.”
Max had a dozen questions, but everyone else in their two groups was already approaching the structure, so he cut the engine, and they hurried to catch up.
They arrived as Gabe was asking, “You want to do this in there or out here?”
“Out here.” Paige jabbed a thumb at the HAB. “We’ve been in that thing a year, and I personally don’t care if I never go in it again.”
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