“What are they going to do with it? What’s it going to be used for?”
Dale had no reason to lie, and no reason to dodge his companion’s questions. So he was truthful. “They need it to keep this place powered. Lieber may be gone, but that doesn’t stop this big building from being the repository of the digital information to which I earlier referred. It has been quite the task for me and the others to keep the generators in this place supplied with the diesel necessary to ensure that those machines never stop doing their jobs. Without the juice, Stanley would not have been able to complete his task. Without that power nothing I’ve been trying to do would have been possible. Now, the diesel is running low. I doubt there are more than ten thousand gallons of the stuff available within fifty miles of here. I told them we needed it to keep things going, and they sent it.”
Cutter turned and faced his counterpart. “And that leads me to the last question.”
Dale said nothing, knowing what was coming, but waiting just the same.
“Who, exactly, are the people who were able to send us a portable nuclear generator on board a working C5-A transport?”
And the Colonel smiled, showing about as much of his perfect teeth as was possible.
“They are,” he said, “the elite.”
“I’m not sure if I like the sound of that,” Cutter explained.
“You’ll probably like it even less after you’ve met them,” the Colonel promised. “And I’m going to let you meet them now, and then you’ll understand why all of this work has been so important, and why I had to keep Mr. Lieber safe until he’d finished.”
“Meet them? They’re here? With the soldiers at the airport?”
The Colonel chose then to stand, also. “Hardly. They don’t do anything as dangerous as blaze a new trail where they might actually get hurt.” Turning, he motioned for Ron to follow him, turning his back and heading into the hallway. “Come with me,” he said. “And you’ll hear what you need to hear.”
**
Ron had seen the room before and had even been in it. It had been a part of the tour of the building Ron and the others had enjoyed months before when they’d all been treated to that grand feast—all of them sampling foods and treats they’d thought long since extinct from their lives. Of course then he’d only seen it from the doorway and hadn’t gone inside. At the time, he hadn’t been invited into the space and somehow seemed to sense then that he wasn’t welcome there.
It was a large space. And it still gave him a sense of unease to see it packed with the kinds of technology that he’d taken for granted before the zombies had overrun the Earth. There were flat-screen monitors spaced all around the room, some of them quite large, that hummed almost silently along the walls and in corners. Lights blinked green and red from behind aluminum and carbon-composite containers that held hard drives and fans. Cutter knew what it all meant in only the most basic sense. Those satellite dishes on the roof the Trust Tower and the enormous banks of servers and drives in the building’s storage areas were some kind of treasure trove. He just didn’t know why this spot was so important and why it seemed to be the only such place remaining.
The Colonel glanced at the watch on his right wrist. His gaze was hard, piercing as his eyes met Ron’s.
“Conference call now,” he told Ron. “Things are going to start happening. I want you to stand over there, beside the door. Close it. Don’t say anything and don’t move. Just listen.” Dale’s index finger went to his lips in an unmistakable command. Cutter would utter no sound.
Going to one of the monitors at the largest desk in the room, Dale seated himself and typed on the ergonomic keyboard that was before him. All around them the room was quiet except for the occasional hum of the servers and the tapping of the Colonel’s fingers atop the keys. Ron could see the Brit’s face suddenly illuminated by the screen that had leaped suddenly to life. It flashed in a seeming series of codes.
And then there was a voice.
“Hello, Colonel,” it said. Ron couldn’t see the face that was being sent across who-knew-how-many-miles, but there was something about that voice that—even in those brief syllables—seemed familiar.
“Hello, my friend,” Colonel Dale responded. “I hope you are well. You look well.”
“Doing fine,” came the reply. “I trust things have proceeded smoothly on your end?”
“Everything is according to our plans,” Dale assured him. “I hope you and yours are prepared for the move?”
“Things could not be more perfect,” that familiar voice assured him. “The airlift will commence in two days’ time. We’ll arrive in one transport, as agreed.”
“I would have preferred two,” Dale interrupted. “But I know how we are fixed for parts and maintenance. You have to go to war with the army you have and all that sort of thing,” he smiled.
“Don’t you know it,” that familiar voice said, almost chuckling. “Well, I think things will be fine. My people on this end assure me that we’ll be in safe hands. Top-notch pilots, of course. We’ll be clearing completely out of this location, so there’ll be no coming back. Charlotte will be the base for the foreseeable future.”
“Indeed it shall be,” the Colonel said. “It’s been a long time coming, but the day has arrived.”
“Well, then.” There was a long pause and Ron could almost hear what seemed to be muttering from the other side. In his mind’s eye, he could imagine a vague picture of someone leaning in to whisper into the ear of the person to whom Colonel Dale was speaking. And for the first time, it occurred to Cutter that the Colonel wasn’t calling the shots, but was being fed the orders that he would have to follow. “My people tell me that we’ll be moving out on schedule. Expect us at the airport precisely at 0900 hours on Thursday. And our expectations are that the perimeters will be secured and for the lanes to be completely open and safe to the Tower.”
“Everything is already in place,” Dale assured him. The Colonel’s face bore a pleasant if somehow stoic expression. “You’ll be able to communicate constantly with the officers in charge of your transport from the airport to the tower. The power plant is also secure and ready to be moved in to place. Everything is in order.”
“We’ll be signing off, then,” came the reply. “I will see you on Thursday morning. Be safe.”
“And you,” said the Colonel. But the screen had already gone dark and Ron wasn’t sure if the other man had heard the soldier wish him luck.
In a bit, Colonel Dale rolled his chair back, stood up, and marched to where Ron was waiting by the door.
“Who was that?” Ron asked.
“Who do you think it was?”
“It sounded…it sounded like Ronald…Ronald—” but before he could finish, Dale cut him off.
“That is precisely who it was. He and a couple of hundred men and women just like him are safely housed on a military base about two thousand miles from here. But that place has been compromised. There’s no way they can remain there indefinitely, and so they’re making the move here.” Colonel Dale stood and waited while Ron considered what he was being told.
“But, this isn’t a military base. It’s no safer than anywhere else. Why Charlotte? I don’t understand any of this.”
“I told you before. It’s all because of an accident. They’re coming here because when everything shut down, this place was the one that ended up with the mother lode.” Dale waved his arm, encompassing the room.
“What? The computers? There must be tens of thousands of computers in other places. New York. Washington. Chicago. San Francisco…”
“No. You don’t understand, Ron.” The Colonel smiled. “The kind of information that they need—that they want—it’s all here, in this tower.”
“What?” Ron’s eyes broke from the gaze of the soldier’s. He peered around him, taking it all in. “This place: it’s nothing but a bank, right?”
And then he froze.
It was a bank.
“But…mone
y is worthless, now. We use it to start fires, if it’s not rotten. That’s all it’s good for. Money…”
“But it’s not the money, Ron. Not really. It’s something far more basic than that.”
Ron blinked, the facts coming to him. “It’s property.”
Colonel Dale nodded, a smile etching his face. “That’s right.”
“This place was one of the biggest banking centers on Earth. And somehow—”
Dale cut him off. “What happened was that the last recoverable and solid documents concerning the movement of wealth for the purchase of real estate ended up being here, in the Trust Tower in Charlotte, North Carolina. And nowhere else. They need it all to be legal.”
“Lawyers,” Cutter said.
“That’s part of it.” Colonel Dale continued to nod. “This is the way it’s going to be. Like any rulers, they need documentation. Or…not need, precisely. But want. They have to justify what they’re going to do. Hell…what they have already done.”
“They’ve bought the world,” Ron whispered.
“Every fucking square inch of it,” Colonel Dale said, his voice a rasp, as if it should be a secret between the two of them.
“These people…these old billionaires…they’re going to be our new rulers. Meet the new boss, same as the old.” Ron’s face became an impassive mask as he tried to hide his anger. “And you helped them. You’re one of them.”
“And that,” the Colonel said, “is where you are most definitely wrong.”
With those words said, he reached out and opened the door that Ron had closed and motioned for Ron to precede him out into the hallway.
“We need to talk,” he told Cutter. “I’m going to tell you what is about to happen. It’s not going to be pleasant, and there’s only one way to stop it. This will have to be done, and I have known for a long time that you and I are the only people who can do it.” Dale turned, looked out over the city, and met Ron’s eyes again. “I thought someone else might be able to help me get it done, but as time has passed, I know that you’re the only one. None of the rest will understand, and none of them are going to be willing to let go of a dream that’s only a bit lie.”
With that, the officer began to speak, and Cutter listened. He didn’t like it, but he listened.
NEXT
The following day, the three of them were on the rooftop. Ron did his best not to show it, but the fact was that he was in something like mild shock over what Dale had told him. He still didn’t know whether or not to believe the man who seemed to be in charge of everything, but what choice did he have? If what he had said was true, then they would all soon have to abandon the city. But if the things he said were going to happen, Ron had a duty to stay around just long enough to help the officer perform one more task.
He sighed.
“Something’s bothering you,” Jean said. She had crept up beside him, clasping his hand in hers before he even realized she was so close. Just a moment before, he’d watched her in laughing conversation with Oliver as the peered down at the streets and across the distance toward the now-safe angles of the Trust Tower, its mad inhabitant now dead and gone.
He knew better than to just lie to Jean, so he had decided to let the truth bleed out slowly, in tiny bits, until she knew the whole story. It was all too much to bear now that they seemed to be on the verge of reclaiming something like a safe life among this monster-infested world.
“Well, I just want to see if what the Colonel told me is going to happen.” He lifted his arm and looked at the watch on his wrist. It was a wind-up. He had two of them that he’d scrounged in various places around the city. True, you had to pay attention to keeping it wound, but it was better to have something like that if you needed to know how much time you had burned, or how much you still had, than to discover your electric timepiece had died on you with no way to power it up.
“How much longer?” she asked, looking into the clear sky. It was chilly again, the sky very clear with only some high cirrus clouds hanging still against the cobalt blue like afterthought brushstrokes.
“Two minutes,” he said. The Colonel had told him to watch the skies at precisely 9:00 am.
Jean looked toward the west, swiveling her head from side to side, trying to cover the horizon. “Seems like we’d at least hear something—” She was cut off in mid-thought. Because a low sound had come to her, just as it had to Ron and Oliver who turned, trying to pinpoint the growing noise.
At first it was like a gravelly scraping noise. As if something was sounding up low in the Earth and approaching quickly. They turned now due west, just as Dale had promised. The scraping grew into a kind of mutter and then a growl.
“They’re really coming,” Oliver said. He jumped up, as if it would help him get a better view. “Are they in sight, yet? Can you see them?”
Finally, the growl became a roar, mild at first, and then:
Two jets came at the city, not much above the tallest buildings. The vehicles were flying at what seemed to be a ridiculous speed, moving in tandem. First they were dots many miles away, then seconds later they were the size of thumbnails, and then you could make out the wings and belly tanks (Dale had said they needed the extra fuel for the long trip), and by the time they’d blinked twice, the fighters were screaming right over their heads, the noise so great and so intimidating that it seemed their ear drums might burst. All three of them clapped their hands over their ears.
Then the jets banked, veered to the south, and began a long, calculated controlled slide toward the airport where men and machines had taken up positions over the past few days, building up some kind of momentum out there at the edge of the city.
Quickly, the noise faded and died away and they all watched as the jets wound in low, then lower, and seemed to glide to a floating halt those miles away at Douglas International.
“Wow, Ron! That was great! What kind of jets were those?” Oliver was still excited, jumping up and down like the kid he was, like the child who had been hidden under years of oppressive horror.
It took him a second to answer. He had to swallow the lump in this throat. Dale seemed to be on the level, and that just was not going to be a good thing. Not good, at all.
“Mirages, Oliver. Mirage jets. They were French fighters. I think the Israeli Air Force used them, too. Pretty good weapons,” he added.
“Dang. As good as F-16s?” the boy asked.
“I’m not sure,” Cutter said. “I mean…from what I recall, they were fine fighters. NATO was still using them, I think. Before…before, you know.”
“I wonder if any more are coming,” Oliver said.
“Are there, Ron?” Jean had her arm in his, now. She was looking up at him, into his eyes, detecting truths he had not quite decided to reveal.
“Just listen,” Ron told her. He pointed the index finger of his left hand skyward, and tilted his head aside to listen.
And, again, from the west came a similar roar. Similar, but not quite the same.
“F-16 Falcons,” he told them, not even bothering to look at them, this time. “Four of them with drop tanks.” They were flying in from a temporary base and fueling site that had been set up in Warner Robins, Georgia. The following scream of engines as the fighters rumbled overhead drowned out everything but their thoughts.
“And in about an hour,” he added. “A pair of A-10 Thunderbolts.”
Later, in a few days, there would be other arrivals. Barring any last second glitches, all sorts of things would come into their world.
When the jets had passed over, he leaned down and whispered into Jean’s ear. “We have things to do,” he whispered. “We’ve got to get things ready.”
Her green eyes peered up into his, sharp and curious, but she kept her questions to herself for now. Ron would let her know the specifics when it mattered, and that was enough for her.
NEXT
One day later and Ron was back on the streets. But he wanted no more contact with the folk who had made the
mselves leaders in this effort to rebuild society. He would have to deal with the Colonel at some point—he’d promised the man as much. But for now he had a lot of work to do and a short time in which to get it done.
Instead of heading toward the hospital and the reinforced compound there, he and his family were venturing elsewhere, toward their own special place.
“So, we’re going to work on the Blazer today, huh?” Oliver was happy to be out of the confines of the blockhouse. He didn’t know why his foster parents had suddenly seemed to have forgotten about getting him to the classroom where he could mix with other kids his own age and pick up the almost forgotten habit of attending school. All he knew was that they had a good reason for it. He trusted them as much as he loved them—without reservation.
“That we are,” Ron said. “It’s been a while and I want to finish getting it ready and making sure it’s stocked up.”
“Are you gonna start taking it out on the streets?” Oliver’s face lit up at the thought.
“I don’t think so,” Jean replied in quick order. “We’re just going to make sure it’s running well and that we have the tank topped off and enough fuel to get us around in case we have to take it out on the road.”
“Your mom’s right. No road test today, but we’ll fire up the engine and do some more work on the body. We need to make sure the tires we picked up as spares are good and secure them to the frame. You can help me do that, can’t you?”
“Sure thing,” Oliver replied.
From the west a new sound came to them. Not another jet, this time, but one more old noise that had been absent from their lives for so long that the old familiarity of it coming now, so many months since they’d heard it, seemed weird and alien.
“Airplane,” Ron said. “Propeller. Piston engine. Man…haven’t heard that since I saw a Cessna four-seater crash-land trying to touch down on Tryon Street almost…damn…two years ago.”
The Coalition: Part III 2% Solution Of The Dead (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 3) Page 7