by Hunt, Jack
Harvey updated the Colonel over the radio on what I had just told them.
“Bring ’em in.”
“Roger.”
“Seems it’s your lucky day.”
“Any of you got a cigarette?”
“Don’t push it,” he replied.
He came around me and tied my wrists with a zip tie.
“Is this necessary?” I asked.
“For now. Yeah. You got a problem?”
He got up close to my face like a drill instructor at a boot camp. For a moment he reminded me of a counselor from the juvenile reform facility. The guy was always up in my face shouting. He had once made me run in the rain for ten miles while he drove behind me in a jeep. I collapsed and he beat my legs with bamboo until I got up. You could say I learned about the will to live from that place. It didn’t just shape your character, it shaped your mind. You had to be tough to survive in there. The moment they saw a chink in your armor, they would break it open and expose it. Most kids had an attitude when they arrived. Within a week they would have bent over and taken it up the ass rather than endure the mental torture that was inflicted on them.
The key was to not let on that they were breaking you. There were some days, I thought of taking my own life when I was in there. Any kid who said they hadn’t thought about it, was a liar.
“No. No problem,” I replied.
“Good.” His steely eyes remained fixed on mine before he pushed me towards a dark blue truck they had parked outside. They threw us in the back and two of them sat with their weapons pointed at us while the other one turned over the ignition and rolled out of there. I glanced up briefly hoping to see the guys on the roof. But they weren’t there. In many ways we were on our own now. Specs would be in the process of rolling out a fuse cord from the old dynamite to a remote detonator.
I had no idea how he was going to do it, I just had to hope it was done right. Baja would be at Specs’s house waiting by the ham radio for the signal to blow it. I had them swear, that no matter what, they were to blow it on the hour even if I didn’t get out. Dax planned to follow us out to the shelter in a truck. He would park a safe distance away. Once he saw us go in, he would set his watch. I would activate mine, it was already set up for an hour. Then we had to hope to God that we could find a way to get those girls out. I would be a fool to say that I was confident about it, I wasn’t. There was a lot that was out of our control. We would have to rely on rapport, skill, and a helluva lot of luck if we were going to make it out of there alive.
On the ride out to the shelter, the men stared at Jess and Izzy. I could tell they saw them as nothing but meat. You don’t ever think what people will become when they are faced with an end of the world situation. Whatever men hide deep inside their psyche is brought to the surface. When there are no rules, no one to govern right from wrong, and no one watching. What would people do, if they knew they could get away with it?
The truck bumped its way down the dusty roads. The same road Specs and I had come out on many a time growing up together. I remembered when his father built the place. Back then it seemed insane. He’d always imagined it as a safe haven. Now it was being used as prison.
Having my wrists tied reminded me of the night I was taken to the juvenile reform facility. The fight I had put up before two hulking men threw me to the ground and cuffed my wrists and then tossed me in the back of a van. I had pleaded with my father to not do it. All he could do was look on, nodding his head. Like a political leader approving of some atrocity.
The reform facility might as well have been Guantánamo Bay. It was run by an ex-military guy who had a serious problem with anyone who spoke back to him. I learned fast to keep my mouth shut. When I arrived at Tagon in Utah, we were lined up. I and four others were made to wait outside in the blistering heat for four hours until one ex-military asshole showed up. He walked up and down the line, eyeballing us as if he had received a new influx of men for military boot camp.
He brought each and every one of us to our knees in tears before we were shown to our housing. He used shouting for one kid. That was all it took. The kid pissed his pants. For another he made the kid lick his boot. Literally, clean his dirty boot with his tongue. Another he beat with a stick. Me? By the time he got to me, I think he just expected me to roll over and cry. Instead, I just spat in his face and told him that I hoped he liked the taste. I was beaten black and blue. Forced into a room and sprayed with freezing cold water, and then went without food for a day.
The way I saw it, I’d rather have taken everything they could throw at me on day one, as that way all the days after that would be easy. In many ways they were. But you know what? At least I never gave that motherfucker the satisfaction of seeing me cry. It’s not that I wanted to be some macho asshole. I just wanted him to work for his pay.
* * *
When we arrived at the shelter, they pulled us from the back of the truck like bags of potatoes. Two of them tossed the girls over their shoulders, and carried them into the RV. The third man, Harvey, shoved me forward.
“Nice setup.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I turned my head to see if Dax had been following. I was hoping a plume of dust above a hill would at least give me some indication. Instead I saw nothing. Not exactly comforting, but what could I do? Inside the RV, I spotted the ham radio. Harvey cut the zip tie around my wrist and gestured for me to head down into the hole. That’s what it was. A big hole in the ground. The steel ladder disappeared down. It was all lit up inside, running off a generator. When we reached the first of the five levels, the Colonel was sitting in a chair smoking. What I saw beside him, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. A girl. The same one I’d seen on the video. She wore nothing but underwear. He had a chain around her neck, she was sitting beside him. I didn’t even want to think about what he had done to her. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years of age. Her face looked familiar. She had a short dark bob and dark eyes. A really slender figure, like the kind a cheerleader has. It took me a short while before it clicked.
She was the daughter of Steven Bommer.
He ran a car dealership in the town. We went to the same school. She would have graduated the same day I would have. Her eye was bruised, she had a cut on a lip, no doubt from resisting.
“The prodigal son returns.”
He opened his arms wide. Harvey shoved me forward. I turned back to see where they were taking Jess, as I looked back I felt the full force of his fist hit me in the face. I fell to the ground, immediately feeling my eyes water up, and my nose burn.
“That’s for killing one of my men.”
He then helped me up and brushed me off.
“Don’t ever do it again.”
I nodded. His serious face turned into a smile.
“Ah, I see you come bearing gifts.” He pointed at me. “Nice.”
He walked around Jess and Izzy, his eyes darting between them as if he was comparing two cows at a farmers’ market. “I like it. Where did you find them?”
“Hiding in an apartment. Above the music store.”
The Colonel turned to Harvey. “Didn’t I ask you to clear that store?”
“Sir, we did. We didn’t come across them.”
“They were hiding.”
His eyes narrowed. I was beginning to wonder if he believed me. Thankfully Jess spoke up.
“Yeah, you fucking bastard. We would have been there now if it wasn’t for you.”
She spit in my direction. I wanted to smile, kiss her even. She just saved our asses.
“Oh, must be the time of the month.” He let out a laugh and took a hold of her and planted his lips on hers. As he did he turned as if he wanted me to see him kissing her.
“Oh you taste sweet, honey.”
He gestured to the fat guy to take them away.
“Well. Let me show you around.”
This was it. We were now in the lion’s den.
TICK, TOCK
Colonel Burrows gave me the guided tour as if I hadn’t seen the place. He took his time. Which only made me more anxious. With each level I tried to gauge how many men we were up against. I glanced at my watch. I knew that the clock was ticking down. We had less than one hour to get the girls, grab some ammo, and get out. There was no way we were going to be able to haul out bags of weapons. We’d be lucky if we managed to grab even one.
The first level he had assigned to his office and anything related to business, though I recalled this was one of the apartments. The second floor was full of hydroponics. There was even a small pond where fish were kept. It was aquaculture at its finest. Of course none of this had been created by the Colonel. It was all the work of Specs’s father, a way to become self-sufficient and live off the grid, a smart way to stay alive if people didn’t come and rob you. The third floor was where they were storing all the weapons and ammo. It also doubled as housing for the some of the men. I counted four more. That made eight of them including the Colonel. When we made it to the fourth, that’s when I saw the two girls, plus Izzy and Jess. A few mattresses had been thrown on the ground. I knew these weren’t just for sleeping. Another man was watching over them. That was nine. I had already seen the final floor. The Colonel knew it too as he never bothered to show it to me.
“Now I’ll leave with you Harvey. He’ll go over the rules. Everyone gets a job. No exceptions. If you want to schedule in some time with the women, you speak to Pete, he’ll get you booked in.”
The fat guy now had a name.
“Other than that, you will earn the right to stay with us. As it stands, consider this a sort of probation period. You pass, you stay. You give us even the slightest reason to doubt your intentions here, you die. Understand?”
I nodded. “Good.” He gripped my shoulder. “Harvey.”
Harvey came over and I watched as the Colonel disappeared back up the winding staircase.
“Your job.” He smiled. “Clean the shitter.”
I eyed Jess and he must have caught me.
“Got your eye set on that one, have you?” He studied my face.
“Maybe.”
“Well, you can be sure of sloppy seconds, maybe even thirds by the time we are done.”
His macho bullshit was nothing compared to the asshole I had dealt with in the juvenile reform facility. Every day we had to work. Cleaning shitters was not new to me. I didn’t like it. But then again I didn’t plan to be staying here much longer.
“Now which one of you lucky ladies is going to be first?” Pete said.
A look of worry was now on their faces as Harvey led me out to where the toilets were. Specs’s old man used composting toilets. All the waste was broken down into compost with the help of peat moss. You only had to empty them once or twice a year as they didn’t rely on water. They all had a turbine fan, which was meant to help with evaporation and the smell. But I can assure you it didn’t help. When I walked into the room where four of these toilets were I wanted to gag. There was dark yellow piss all over the floor around the toilets, and I was pretty sure what the brown smudges were all over the stalls.
“You toss out the shit down a small mineshaft a couple of feet from the door on the ground floor. But I’m guessing you already knew that existed, being as it was your group that killed Ronny.”
He cast a glance at me. I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, we know. He was a good kid, and he didn’t deserve to die.”
“Neither did the family you took this silo from,” I replied.
He squared up to me. “Do we have a problem?”
I pulled a face. “No.”
He studied my face to see if was lying. “Then get to it.”
There was an industrial metal bucket with a mop, and some cleaning solution. As he walked out he kicked it over and water went all over the floor. “Whoops.”
I waited a minute or two, before I took a hold of the mop. I unscrewed the wooden handle and then snapped it in half. I now had two extremely sharp stakes. I grabbed two bottles of bleach and unscrewed the tops. I refilled the bucket full of water. I placed the bottles back in place. I pushed the two parts of the wooden handle back into place and wrapped my hand around where the break was, to keep it hidden. I glanced at my watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed since I had entered the silo. We had exactly thirty-five minutes to get the hell out of here.
I heard a girl scream. Was it Jess? When I stepped outside the door, Harvey was speaking with another man who he addressed as Tom. Both of them were carrying a sidearm.
“What the fuck are you doing? Get on with the work.”
“But I heard a scream.”
He let out a short laugh. “That’s just Pete having some fun. You’ll get used to it.”
I watched as Harvey walked off, and Tom gestured for me to head back on in.
“Right.” I nodded. I turned to head back in. My stomach was turning. I knew this was it. There was no time to sit around analyzing a plan of action. There was no plan. I was going to have to wing it as this place was going to disappear into the ground, and I damn well wasn’t going with it.
“Oh by the way, I think I’m going to need a scrubber,” I yelled out.
“What are you on about? It’s all there.”
I readied myself close to the door, gripping half of the broken handle. The moment I saw him step foot inside, I brought up my arm to stick him in the throat but he was too fast. He caught my wrist, knocked it out of my hand, and threw me back.
“Big mistake. Now I’m going scrub the floor with your face.” I was still gripping the other half close to my body. Beneath my arm I saw him coming at me. I twisted sharply and stuck the broken end into his inner thigh. He let out a cry, and fell on top of me. I reached for the other half of the stick and slammed it into the side of Tom’s neck. Blood began spewing from his jugular. Harvey rushed in, pulled his sidearm, but didn’t have a clear shot because Tom was on top. Harvey’s face went pale. Dax was right, these guys weren’t military, they were ordinary men. I pulled at Tom’s sidearm and with Tom still on top of me, I swung my arm up and shot twice into Harvey. He collapsed to the floor. I rolled Tom off. He was still choking on his own blood. I fired another round into Harvey who was still alive and then took his sidearm. I could already hear men coming. As I raced into the section where the girls were, Pete had his pants around his ankles and he was in the process of trying to have sex with Izzy when I put a bullet in his skull. His brain splattered all over Izzy, who screamed even louder. I took Pete’s knife and cut the girls’ ties. Jess took the second gun from me.
I glanced at my watch. We now had twenty-five minutes to get out. Now it’s strange the kind of adrenaline that takes over in moments of stress. Some might say it’s courage, but it isn’t. It’s the will to survive. Jess and I ran up the stairs to the next level, two men were coming down to see what all the commotion was. They didn’t have a second to comprehend, before we had put a bullet in each of them. I scooped up one of their assault rifles while I was still moving. I hoped Jess did the same. I didn’t look, I just kept moving fast around the staircase. There were five of them left including the Colonel. When we made it out onto the third floor all hell broke loose. The other two men unleashed a torrent of bullets our way. It was like a game of pinball. Except instead of a ball bouncing off bumpers, bullets were ricocheting off the steel walls. One, maybe two hit me in the leg and I hit the ground. But I didn’t have time to roll around in agony. The will to survive was overriding any pain that was coursing through my body. I didn’t even look, I kept my finger on the trigger, firing wildly in a sweeping manner until they both dropped.
Three men left to go, I thought.
Jess dropped down beside me. “You’ve been hit.”
“Don’t worry about me, grab the grenades.”
She hurried over to a green metal box and flipped the lid. I gestured towards the stairs as we heard the sound of boots hitting them. Jess tugged on the pin and tossed it just as one of
them appeared. The noise was deafening. I could hear ringing in my ears long after the cloud of smoke cleared. This was followed by a rumble from the mine around us. Nuclear proof my ass, I thought, struggling to get to my feet and head towards the stairs.
“Maybe that wasn’t a good idea.”
“You think?”
Jess had to go up first. As she did she was moving faster than I was and disappeared around the bend. I heard gunfire. When I got around another guy was dead and she was standing there looking pleased with herself.
I had only turned for a few seconds to check that Izzy and the other two girls were still coming up behind us, when I heard Jess scream. I spun around and the Colonel had a hold of her from behind. I raised my gun, but he wagged his finger at me. He had this insane look in his eyes.
“Put your weapons down, or I snap the girl’s neck.”
He pulled her neck to the side to make it clear that he wasn’t joking. Jess let out a muffled cry. I could hear the sound of the mine around us rattling. That grenade had been a bad idea. Steel and concrete didn’t matter. This place wasn’t soundproof.
“Don’t be stupid. Put it down,” he repeated.
In those few seconds as he stared me down, I thought about a world without Jess.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, kid, you’ve got balls. I could have used a guy like you.”
I kept my gun fixed on him. He moved his head behind Jess’s, only showing enough to see me.
“Just let her go,” I said.
He chuckled. “You still don’t get it, do you? What I’m offering here is sanctuary from what’s out there.”
“Sanctuary? Imprisoning girls? Keeping them as your sex slaves?”
“A man needs to blow off some steam. You withhold that right from them, and they will take it anyway.”
“Maybe. But that’s not for you to decide.”