Years After Series | Book 1 | Nine Years After

by Clary, LeRoy

  A large bird circled in the air. Moss covered most of the rocks and trunks of the trees. There were no artificial sounds at all, none made by men. And nothing made by men in sight except for the steel door.

  A sudden crack of sound off to our right. Instantly, we both pointed our pistols in the direction, where a rattling of sound continued. A dead branch high up on the trunk of a tree had fallen, taking out a few more on the way to the ground. Perhaps another of the chitter-animals had climbed the tree and knocked the first branch loose.

  We took another step away from the door as we holstered our weapons. That made three steps. If needed, we could leap back into the safety of the lobby and slam the door shut. However, the peacefulness and serenity of the forest said that it wouldn’t be required.

  The entrance to Deep Hole was set high up on the side of a hill so steep it was almost a cliff. As we moved from the door and entered the shelter of the nearest trees, we came to a clearing. From there, the side of the mountain fell below to a valley where the sparkle of a river flowed. Beyond the river rose more mountains, each covered in a sea of green.

  Mayfield tore a small branch free and used her thumbnail to skin it. She sniffed, held it out for me to do the same before storing it inside one of the baggy pockets on her uniform blouse. The smell sent my mind roiling. I’d smelled it hundreds of times, mostly in the winter when my dead parents had brought a tree inside the house in winter and decorated it.

  The memories swamped my thinking in their rush to recall and bring forth times when we opened presents, ate huge meals, and everyone laughed a special kind of family-laughter that I hadn’t heard since going into the sanctuary tunnels.

  That laughter was not borne of humor, but love. It was not the presents but the joy we brought to each other. Family. Not as a unit in a warren of tunnels, but as people with the freedom to do and choose as they wanted—and they chose to be with me.

  Mayfield was crying again. Since we met at age seven, we’d fought, competed, and tested each other. She had never shed a tear, win or lose.

  As I stood and looked out over the valley, it came to me that there were no houses, roads, structures, or any indication that a person had ever set foot where we stood. It appeared a virgin wilderness. Yet, the construction of Deep Hole must have taken hundreds, if not thousands of men, machines, housing, roads, and more to build. How had they managed to hide it from the general public after?

  It didn’t make sense.

  We ventured out a little more and my feet found a flat area, too flat to be natural. I kicked aside the moss and found a hard, flat surface an inch under it. My eyes picked out a regularity where a line of moss, vines, and small shrubs grew, but no trees taller than my waist.

  It was once a road. Overgrown, but a road. Or it had been.

  “What now?” Mayfield asked.

  “The sun is going down. We should go back inside.”

  We stood and watched the sun sinking lower. We stayed like that, without speaking a word, for a long time. Neither of us wanted to go inside. So, we didn’t.

  She finally took my hand in hers. “I have a deal for you.”

  “A deal?”

  “You’re always making deals, right? Well, how is this one? We go back to the entrance hall and spend the night. Inventory our things and make a few plans now that we have some idea of what’s out there beyond the door. But tomorrow, early, we leave that damned hole in the ground and sleep outside from then on and never return. I’d say we do it tonight, but it’s too soon. We need to be mature and reasonable.”

  “Do you remember the moon?” My question came unbidden—from nowhere.

  She nodded.

  “And the stars?”

  Another nod.

  “Do you think they give off enough light to set up a tent?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But?”

  “It may be dangerous out here, Danner. We should take a day to scout around and be sure we’re safe. I’d hate to have some crazed people or mutated animals burst into our tent in the middle of the night. Besides, we have other plans to execute before leaving.”

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  “We are going to go inside near that speaker and tell the biggest lies about what is out here, so big they’re payback for them below and for what they did to us.” Her laugh was genuine and oddly tinged with a hint of anger when the two normally don’t go together.

  “Wood,” I said. “We have time to gather wood and make a fire. Remember campfires? Warmth and light? We can make the lobby warm for the night.”

  “No, I don’t remember, but I’m game.” She started picking up sticks and small branches. “Just don’t mention the fire while we’re inside or whoever is listening will know something is wrong because there shouldn’t be any firewood out here.

  We quietly carried several loads into the center of the lobby, always careful of what we said while in there, so we didn’t ruin our vindictive plans.

  After we had a pile of branches in the middle of the stone floor, she said in a loud voice that verged on a screech as if we had just raced inside, “Shut the door before they get inside! Hurry!”

  Then she calmly pulled the door shut behind herself. It shut with a satisfying bang of steel on steel.

  Catching on to her act, I said, “Were there more than three?”

  “Three? You only saw three? There were at least ten, but some were smaller. You might have missed them because you were running away so fast. I bravely stayed back to guard our rear and put up a good fight.”

  The smile on her face and the humor in her eyes was the first time I’d ever seen her truly happy in a very long time. The dullness of everyday life in the warren of concrete tunnels had leached the joy from her life. Our lives. Despite the circumstances, no matter if we died tomorrow, we were happy for now. Perhaps only for a few minutes. If only we could be certain there were ears below listening to us. I glanced at the little green light and knew there were. At least one of them would be there at all times for the three days . . . or until we were dead.

  Whoever was listening had probably already called the others of the four leaders to join them at our wild hysterics. They wouldn’t want the rest of the population to know what they had banished us to find, or that it was a banishment to die. I suspected it was only the four of them that were involved, and they wanted to know everything about what we found on the surface. After all, they had paid for that information with our innocent lives.

  How could they have done this to us? I repeatedly asked that question to myself. An answer finally came. They were getting older. Only the administrator was younger at nearly forty. They all vividly remembered the attacks that started the war, the bombers, the missiles, as well as the panic of the general population. There were stories about shutting the iron doors of Deep Hole to keep the masses out because the facility could only support so many—the chosen few.

  Those stories said that people outside pounded on the steel door with fists, rocks, and even trees used as battering rams. The shouts could be heard day and night.

  Then, they ceased. One day there were no more. Never again.

  Our leaders must wake up in the middle of the night to the fear of what had happened out there nine years ago, and as they aged, the fears probably increased. On one level I could understand but not forgive.

  Another aspect of their fear told me they had to remain in power to protect themselves. I’d heard rumors of a few dissidents and the changes they wanted, more rumors lately now that I took the time to think about it. People down there were becoming restless, especially the younger ones. Some talked of exploration or contacting the other eighteen shelters. To those in power, change was never good.

  In sacrificing us, they were saving themselves.

  Mayfield knelt on the stone floor and stacked small, dry sticks together and used her fire-starter to ignite those on the bottom. The flames caught quickly, and we added more and larger sticks on top. She said loudly, f
or the benefit of those below, “Maybe the fire will keep them away.”

  “The nasty bears in the pack, maybe. What about the giant sloth-thing with those fangs?”

  She said wickedly, “That might have been a lion. Or what some lions look like now.”

  “I remember bears and they didn’t look like that. Bears were only six or seven feet tall when they stood up on their hind legs.”

  Mayfield emitted a giggle despite trying to stifle it. She tossed more wood on the fire, including some green branches we’d cut from the trunks of a tree, along with the green ends with all the leaves. They snapped and crackled as they burned, and the flames took hold and rose higher, reaching almost to the ceiling.

  My eyes stung.

  I looked up and found the ceiling obscured by smoke. There was nowhere for it to go. Mayfield coughed. It was suddenly hard to breathe and soon we both coughed and were wiping our eyes.

  “Outside,” she managed.

  We lumbered to the door and worked the door-code, then pushed. We went out with the first puff of the smoke. The air outside was cool and clean. We gasped huge lungs-full of air and then another. The stinging eyes and coughing decreased.

  Mayfield flashed a sardonic smile. “Lesson one of our new lives. Never build a fire in a confined space.”

  “Lesson two: When you have enemies on the run, keep them running.” I went to the doorway where smoke billowed out from the still-burning fire and shouted, “Is that one of them at the door trying to get inside?” I used one of the rocks that had braced the door open and pounded on the steel door. The sound echoed and reverberated against the stone walls, ceiling, and floor.

  Back at her side, she shared a secret smile as she pointed in the distance at the white peaks of the mountains. The moon was rising above them. We watched in quiet reflection, me remembering my childhood and the same moon that always fascinated me; tonight, it was a half-moon behind a few billowy clouds.

  My left hand slapped my right forearm. A sting of pain made itself known, and a dark spot revealed blood left by a mosquito. I hadn’t thought of them in years, but it seemed they remembered humans.

  Mayfield slapped her neck. Instead of being upset, she giggled and said, “Isn’t it funny that the largest creature that has attacked us so far is this tiny?”

  Later, I moved to the door of the sanctuary and realized we had rushed outside without our weapons. That was stupid. The good news was that the fire had mostly burned itself out and the smoke was almost gone—and nothing larger than a mosquito had come in our direction. I went back to where Mayfield had been standing and found her lying on her back in the soft moss, her eyes on the moon and stars. She had her tunic pulled high to protect her neck and face from the insects.

  I got down beside her and said, “It’s stupid to be out here without weapons.”

  “Shut up and let’s be stupid, for once.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  If it hadn’t gotten so cold, we might have spent the night out there, lying beside each other and looking up at the night sky while occasionally slapping mosquitoes and barely speaking.

  “Time to go inside,” I prompted later, the first words we’d spoken in a long, long while.

  She climbed to her feet and led the way. We unrolled sleeping bags and climbed inside, again placing them right beside each other. We only had each other to depend on and that seemed natural.

  “Good night,” I whispered so the speaker couldn’t hear me.

  “The moss outside was softer,” she whispered back.

  The next thing I heard was a contented soft snore. After listening to a few of them, I drifted off, too. But her last words were true. The moss had been softer.

  In the morning, when I woke, stiff and sore, Mayfield was sitting, and she placed her finger to her lips to keep me from talking. She silently stood and carried one of the large bags of our supplies outside. Not understanding, I did the same with another bag and soon all five were out in the early morning sunshine.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” she said with a wicked grin. She went to the door and screamed so loud and long I was frightened. No words, just a piercing scream that those below may not have needed the speaker to hear. She sauntered back to me and said with a gleeful tone, “That should wake them up, Danner. Give them time to gather all four down there to listen for more, and we’ll give them something to hear.”

  While I enjoyed observing her pleasure, I said, “Do you think it’s right for us to do this? I mean, we may have benefited from what they did, when you think about it.”

  “What if it was a barren wasteland out here when we opened that door? Radiation so high it blisters skin before hair falls out? What if ten-foot-tall evil things were attacking us right now? That’s what they sent us out here to face and die from. With no hope of ever returning.”

  “There are friends of ours down there. Sure, you and I no longer have family, but there are good people below.”

  She shook her head. Pay attention. “Only the four leaders are going to hear us. They wouldn’t dare let others. After this, they will be too scared to send others up here to die like us. We’re saving lives. If we manage to get to another sanctuary and communicate with them, they can come here and rescue those below.”

  “If we tell them the truth right now, maybe everyone can come up,” I said.

  She turned on me, her face contorted. “Don’t think me evil, but the truth is that we still may die before the end of this day. Those mutated creatures can still be out here, along with all the other things we learned about. Imagine if we convince them to all come up here and they are attacked by a pack of wild mutated dogs and killed. Is that their fault or ours?”

  We sorted through each bag and managed to get the majority either inside the backpacks or stuffed inside our bulging pockets. In the end, we sacrificed the water pouches, all but two. They were bulky and heavy, and we had the purification pills to treat what water we found, but with the river at the bottom of the valley, locating water shouldn’t be a problem. We left all the extra clothes. There was no room for more.

  We carried all the ammo. It couldn’t be replaced and held value. We also carried all the food, evenly split between us. The sleeping bags were rolled and tied to the tops of our backpacks, and I carried the tent tied within the bag it came in. The large binoculars went into her pack.

  The utility belts were around our waists, the short M-17s carried by straps on our shoulders. We placed everything on the ground near the door and went inside. Mayfield carried a small log she’d found. She went near the speaker and smashed the log against the wall repeatedly, grunting and making angry ‘animal’ growls with each strike.

  She mouthed, “You could help.”

  I stomped my new boots on the floor loud enough to echo and wailed as if I were being tied into knots. My act was superior to hers, in my opinion.

  Not be bested, she moved closer to the speaker, cupped her hands, and shouted as loud as she could, “No! Don’t eat Danner! Nooo!”

  Again, she won the competition. I couldn’t top that.

  We said no more. Outside we struggled into our backpacks and walked away after carefully and silently closing the door. That part of our lives was officially over.

  The morning was still despite the weak sun trying to wake the world. Everything was damp as we followed the remnants of the road down the side of the mountain.

  Looking behind, Mayfield said, “They concealed the entrance. You can hardly tell where it is, so, if the others are concealed similarly, we’ll have a hard time finding them.”

  I glanced back at the hillside towering over the entrance I knew to be there. The gray granite was shrouded in vines hanging from above, and the shrubbery in front of the door hid the bottom portion. We were less than a hundred steps from it, and it took a second look hard to be sure it was still there.

  The morning was cold. Not freezing, but we had only our army jackets or whatever the
correct name was for the heavy shirts. Under them, we wore two of the thin green shirts for warmth. The sun didn’t seem to be the same warm object we remembered, almost as if it had also been struck by missiles and bombs and put out only a portion of the previous heat.

  “It smells like morning,” Mayfield said.

  “You remember what mornings smelled like?”

  She rolled her eyes as she stepped carefully along the overgrown road. “No, silly. I remember what I think it smelled like. Maybe what I want it to smell like.”

  For me, it had been the rising moon and watching the patterns of the stars last night that had tugged at my feelings. It was a small thing, perhaps a nothing to others, but for me, it had brought back memories of my mother and father when we had camped in the Cascade Mountains and fished for trout so small six or eight barely filled the bottom of the pan.

  But we caught them, fried them with potatoes with onions over the fire, and ate like kings under the stars. My mother had named a few constellations and shown me the one for the month I was born. I don’t remember which it was, or where it was in the sky, but no matter. It was up there somewhere. The stars had reached out to me last night.

  The morning air was doing the same to Mayfield. I wouldn’t tease her about something so personal and important.

  “Hey,” she said, as a large brown animal directly ahead of us leaped into the air and almost floated across the road before it bounded into thicker undergrowth. We could still hear it crashing through for a time.

  “That could have been a bear instead of a deer,” I said as I pulled my military-grade pistol and made certain I had a round in the chamber, something I should have done earlier.”

  The road had a section that was broken, with huge slabs of concrete tilted up at angles. I assumed the ground had shifted until while walking past, Mayfield pointed. I looked.

  There was a center where taller trees grew, almost a circle. Around it, were the slabs of broken pavement, like an opening in the road. A bomb of some sort had exploded there.