by James Cook
TWENTY-FOUR
Romero called the highway we traveled on ‘the 97’. After a half day of driving, I began to wonder if 97 was the highway’s designation, or if it represented the number of fallen trees blocking the road. It seemed we could not travel more than a few miles before having to stop and clear the highway.
“If the roads are this bad after just five years,” I said to Gabe as we worked, “imagine what they’ll be like in ten more.”
“Won’t hardly be any roads by then,” Gabe replied.
We continued on a slow trajectory to the Oregon border. I was somewhat startled by the shift in scenery when we left northern California and crossed into the southern reaches of the Klamath Basin. The landscape abruptly shifted from brown and dusty to green and verdant. I leaned my head in the open back window of the truck and asked the driver what caused the difference. He shrugged and said it had something to do with irrigation and volcanic soil and he wasn’t a goddamn farmer so maybe just shut up and let him drive.
It was a rough trip of just over forty miles. Once we crossed into Oregon, the drivers changed course westward such that we paralleled the border for a long stretch. We kept on in that direction for another twenty miles or so until we reached a small dirt side road and turned onto it.
At this point, Romero’s men, who had been relaxing in their trucks, suddenly became alert and manned their weapons. I took a cue from them and checked my SCAR to make sure it was ready to go. One of the Resistance fighters gave my rifle a long look and leaned over to speak to me.
“You know how to use that thing?” he asked.
I replied with a flat, contemptuous glare. The man grinned broadly and went back to staring up the road.
The forest around us grew denser the farther we proceeded. After fifteen minutes of driving through the thick greenery we emerged into a clearing with a small white building in the center. The building was roughly sixty feet square with a metal roof and aluminum siding on the outer walls. The entrance was a garage door, currently closed, big enough to drive a truck through. There was a smaller security door next to it for foot traffic.
The dense trees around the building were so green they almost hurt my eyes. Their limbs hung over the roof, and the walls of the building were streaked with rust stains and mildew. Tall grass and ferns grew everywhere except the narrow drive where our short convoy traveled. The air was warm and damp and I felt wet just from being there. Looking up through the hazy grayness of the place, I could not see the sky through the boughs of fir trees and broad leafed hardwoods overhead. The thickness of the tree trunks and profusion of undergrowth made the landscape feel primordial, a place so ancient it took no notice of men invading its grounds. To this realm, our existence was fleeting and inconsequential.
We pulled in front of the building and I saw Romero speaking into his radio. A few moments later, the garage door opened and several armed men stood in the entrance. One of them walked along our line of trucks, gave Grabovsky, Tyrel, Gabe, and me a slit-eyed examination, and then changed channels on his radio and spoke into it out of earshot. He got a reply in short order, turned around, and waved at the guards to let us inside.
Romero’s truck led the way, tires crunching over gravel and black dirt. There were several parking spaces marked off with spray paint on the far end of the building. The four drivers parked the trucks and indicated for all passengers to follow Romero.
I hopped out of the truck’s bed, put on my rucksack, and looked around. The building was mostly empty, the floor unmarred except where the trucks’ tires had left muddy tracks. There was a small office just past the garage door, a few crates and barrels on one wall, and a table and chairs near the office. The floor was bare concrete. Someone closed the garage door and locked it shut. Narrow banks of windows on two of the walls provided the only light in the room. The air was close and stale, and I felt sweat break out under my shirt.
I followed Romero to where the table and chairs sat on a large Afghan rug. Two of Romero’s men moved the table and chairs and flipped over the rug. Beneath it was a seamed, rectangular section of floor. Romero said something into his radio, and beneath my feet, I heard a rumbling, grinding sound. The seamed section of floor slowly raised up on one side and stopped, a few inches of gap separating it from the surrounding concrete. Romero’s men lifted it the rest of the way, revealing a narrow set of steps leading down a dimly lit stairwell.
Grabovsky turned in my direction. “You know all those questions you been asking me?”
I glanced at him. “Yeah.”
“You’re about to get your answers.”
*****
“What is this place?” I said to Tyrel, speaking in a low voice. My old friend shook his head, eyes wide.
“No idea.”
“Ever seen anything like it before?”
“Sort of. Did a mission briefing at Area 51 once, back when I was with JSOC. Building they put us up in looked kinda like this place.”
We proceeded down a dimly lit corridor. The stairwell we had entered took us three stories underground in a narrow concrete shaft. At the bottom, Romero unlocked a door, let everyone stream past, then locked it behind him. Above us, I heard grinding and rumbling again as the entrance shut on its own.
The corridor was painted white with a smooth, dusty floor. What little light there was came from LEDs mounted in recessed fixtures in the ceiling. There was a space for a light every ten feet, but I would have been amazed if even half of them were on.
The hallway ended at a large double door. Romero paused at the entrance, one hand on a doorknob.
“I probably don’t have to tell you this,” he said, taking time to look at Gabe, Tyrel, and me in turn. “But everything we’re doing is as classified as it gets. Nothing said or seen today is to be spoken of outside this facility, not even amongst yourselves. That includes anything regarding this building, its location, and any of the people and things in it. Is that clear?”
“In other words,” Gabe said. “This place doesn’t exist and we were never here.”
“You got it.”
Tyrel and I both gave a word of agreement. Romero turned and opened the door. I felt my eyes go wide and Tyrel and I spoke simultaneously.
“Holy shit.”
Romero laughed quietly and walked through the door. I followed on numb feet.
The room we entered was huge. After a moment’s consideration I decided ‘room’ was not a fitting descriptor. It was more like an underground warehouse. The ceiling was twenty feet above our heads, exposed wiring, air ducts, and metal rafters visible despite the dim illumination. A faint hum of machinery sounded from somewhere, and I felt a slight breeze as I walked beneath one of the vents in the overhead ventilation ducts. The air was cool, but did not have the crisp bite of air conditioning. I guessed there was a fan unit active somewhere keeping the air in the facility from going stale.
As I walked inside, I followed the others down a broad central lane with the two halves of the long rectangular warehouse on either side. There were shelves on both sides stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, crates, and barrels of innumerable goods. Each shelf had a metal placard at the end detailing what was kept on the shelves in that particular section. The shelving sections were numbered, and each individual shelf utilized an alpha-numeric system corresponding to the items stored there. One of the sections I passed near the entrance had only one item listed. It read: Ammunition Cartridges, 5.56x45 NATO M855.
I examined the shelves as I passed. The ammo was in green fiberglass crates roughly three feet square and four feet tall. I did the math in my head, operating on the assumption the ammo in the crates was stored in standard green metal cans of 840 cartridges each, the cans being roughly five inches wide, twelve inches long, and ten inches high. Which put each can’s volume at 600 square inches. The dimensions of the crates were 36 by 36 by 48, which put each one’s capacity at around 62,000 square inches. Not an exact figure, but close enough. Dividing 62,000 by 600 I
came up with 103 and some change. Since my measurements were estimates and not precise, I rounded that down to one hundred. From there, the math was simple. 100 cans multiplied by 840 rounds each.
There were approximately 84,000 rounds per crate.
This place is a gold mine.
I kept reading placards as I passed them. There were six sections of shelves full of ammo crates. Each section had crates in the hundreds. I realized I was looking at somewhere north of one hundred million rounds of ammunition, an enormous amount of wealth. The thought was a little dizzying.
The ammunition section also included shelves of 7.62x51, 9mm, and a few other cartridges primarily used in sniper weapon systems. There were racks stacked ceiling high with M-4 rifles, most of them brand new looking, as well as bolt action sniper rifles, M-110s, SAWs, grenade launchers, M-240s, fifty-caliber heavy machine guns, portable miniguns, and the equipment necessary to mount the heavy ordnance to vehicles. Beyond that were artillery shells, mortars, large caliber machine gun cartridges, grenades, LAW rockets, mines, plastic explosives, detonation cord, and even shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. I noticed quite a few of the missile and explosives crates had been opened and the contents removed.
The rest of the warehouse was dedicated to food, medical supplies, repair parts for a variety of machinery, printed manuals on a broad range of topics, radio equipment, fuel, and the list went on. After a while, I stopped trying to keep track of it all.
When we reached the opposite end of the warehouse we came upon a large room with a bank of windows reinforced with wire mesh. The space beyond looked like a large conference room complete with a chalkboard, drop-down screen, chairs arranged in rows, and an electronic projector. Two men were waiting inside. I almost stopped when I saw who they were.
Romero opened the door and he and his entourage filed in. Grabovsky followed them with Gabe and Tyrel close behind. I went in last.
“Welcome to Oregon, gentlemen,” General Phillip Jacobs said from the front of the room. He looked at me directly, eyes alight with amusement. “Bet you weren’t expecting to see me here, were you?”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak, so I simply shook my head. The general’s presence was enough to give me pause, but it wasn’t him who had taken my ability to vocalize. It was the man next to him.
He was tall, about my height. His hair was long and tied back, and a thick beard covered his face. When I had last seen him, he was clean-shaven and the hair was dark brown with a few scattered flecks of gray. Now it was all gray, even the eyebrows. He had lost at least forty pounds. It had only been a couple of years, but he looked to have aged by about a decade. I looked at Tyrel. He was staring at the same man, a pained expression on his face.
“Hey there, Mike,” Tyrel said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Mike Holden, leader of the Resistance and one of the men who raised me, walked forward until he was standing in front of us. His face was tanned and leathery, the lines in his skin deep and sharply refined. His gaze went back and forth between us a few times. Slowly, he broke a smile and embraced Tyrel. The two men slapped each other on the back a few times and then stood apart. Mike turned to me and the smile faded.
“I was starting to think I’d never see you again, son.”
I still couldn’t talk. There was a knot in my throat and my vision had gone somewhat blurry. The old man put his arms around my shoulders and pulled me in. I squeezed back and wondered exactly what the hell I was supposed to say to him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Heinrich,
The Wastelands
The first challenge Heinrich faced after seizing the smugglers goods was trading them for wagons, livestock, and supplies. If the seed grain they had stolen had been their only commodity, this would not have been a problem. He could just make the long trek to the nearest trading post and cut deals with passing caravans. But he’d seized more than just seed grain; he had stolen a king’s ransom in opium. A few of his men used a hanging scale to weigh the stuff in batches, and the weight came out to over thirty kilograms.
According to Ferguson, this was a huge shipment, valuable enough to outfit his tribe with everything they needed and have quite a few kilos to spare. Heinrich had never trafficked in the stuff before, being that it was a fairly new commodity, so he was willing to take his gigantic henchman’s word for it. The problem he faced now was offloading the narcotics at a decent price.
As he thought about this, Heinrich sat around a fire with Ferguson and Maru and waited while his men loaded the boats in preparation to debark the island. The three of them were eating a breakfast of dried meat with roasted cattails when they heard footsteps and saw two men approaching. One of them was Locke, a surviving member of the original tribe, and the other was a recently acquired troop named Horton.
“Found someone who can help you,” Locke said, nodding to Horton.
Heinrich regarded his tribesman. He was a light-skinned black man with a ring of bushy hair surrounding a bald crown set off by a thick beard. While not very tall, he had a lean, powerful build and gave off the vibe of a dangerous man. His face was broad with strong features, a heavy brow, and the blank, dead eyes of a prowling shark. Heinrich saw potential there.
“Locke tell you what I need?” Heinrich asked.
“Yes sir. Said you lookin’ to sell that dream we took.”
“Dream?”
“Slang for opium,” Ferguson explained.
“Good to know.” Heinrich looked back at Horton. “So?”
“You heard ‘bout a place called The Holdout, right?”
Heinrich thought a moment. “Up near I-44 towards Missouri. ‘Bout fifty miles from here.”
“That be the one.”
Heinrich looked away, his face pensive. Horton remained quiet. Like most of the Storm Road Tribe, he knew better than to interrupt his chief when he was ruminating.
“That might work,” Heinrich said finally.
He had heard of The Holdout, and knew its reputation and history. It had originally been an Army FOB, but most of the troops there had been reassigned after Operation Relentless Force cleared the majority of infected from the area. Only a small contingent remained, less than two hundred troops total. The Union would have preferred to leave a larger force—The Holdout was near a major caravan route—but the people living there had never signed an official treaty with the Union. They tolerated Union troops living among them because they helped keep ghouls and marauders at bay, but it was an uneasy truce. The Army did not interfere with the doings of the general public, and in turn, the public let the troops enjoy the safety of the walls.
The town had a mayor, sheriff’s department, and city council to handle civic affairs, and did not need the military to help them run things. But they didn’t mind taking the soldiers’ trade. Army garrisons, even small ones, were a good source of income for local businesses. Especially bars, restaurants, brothels, and, surprisingly, performing arts venues.
The most attractive aspect of The Holdout was the local vice trade. The Army garrison stationed there knew about the town’s criminal element, but had neither the authority nor the inclination to stop it. Local law enforcement were also aware, but as long as they got their cut of the profits and the culprits left the town’s decent folks alone, they allowed an acceptable level of corruption to persist. But as far as Heinrich knew, that only applied to things like prostitution, gambling, and dealing in smuggled goods. Crimes like extortion, kidnapping, rape, forced labor, human trafficking, fraud, and livestock rustling were treated with zero tolerance.
“How are the locals about drug trafficking?” Heinrich asked. “Cops gonna hassle us?”
“Not as long as we deal with somebody who pass it down the line,” Horton said. “Pigs don’t mind a dealer takes shit out of town, but we best not put that shit on the street. Bring the heat down real fuckin’ quick. They see somebody using, they find out where that shit come from the hard way. Like brass knuckles and pipes and shit.”
“Yeah, I know some people. Ain’t gonna give us street prices, though. Strictly wholesale. Dream be illegal pretty much everywhere. Expensive shit to move.”
A sigh. “Guess that’s to be expected. Cops take a cut if they find out?”
Horton laughed. “Come on, Chief. They cops, ain’t they?”
Heinrich nodded. “Right. We’ll have to keep the cops out of it. So tell me, Mr. Horton. What’s your plan? How do we do this?”
Horton held out his hands, shrugged, and tilted his head. “Might need some time to think on that. Give me till tomorrow?”
“I want a report first thing in the morning.”
“I can do that.”
Maru ladled rehydrated meat from the pot into a wooden bowl and handed it to Heinrich. The raider chief picked up a spoon and took a bite.
“Very well, Mr. Horton. Dismissed.”
“Yes sir,” Horton said and began walking away.
Heinrich let him take five steps, then called, “Hey Horton.”
The man stopped and half turned. “Yeah, Chief?”
“You make this happen, I’ll see to it you’re well rewarded.”
Horton grinned. “Oh, don’t worry ‘bout that Chief. I always come through with the goods.”
You better, Heinrich thought as his henchman walked away. You fuck this up and it’ll be the last mistake of your life.
*****
A week’s hard travel brought the Storm Road Tribe to the gates of The Holdout.
The gates were shut, but there was a small access door allowing pedestrians and small carts in and out. People passed through the small portal, farmers, scavengers, and Travelers for the most part. Most of them looked haggard, underfed, and shabby. Heinrich suspected a few of the leaner, harder, and better armed people were Runners, members of a loose organization of professional couriers.