A Girl Called Badger (Valley of the Sleeping Birds)

by Colegrove, Stephen

  He stared at the red smear on the wall. “What on God’s green earth is there to eat down here?”

  “There’s always something crawling in the dark. I bet they eat other spiders. Or they heard you were coming and wanted to throw a party.”

  “Let’s not talk about it.”

  Most of the narrow beige cabinets in the room were shut. Dusty white clothing and papers covered the floor. As Wilson looked closer he noticed a nameplate on the face of each cabinet.

  The first held a pair of women’s shoes, a long white coat, and dark, folded clothing. A box and a framed photo were on a shelf sticky with cobwebs. The subjects in the photo had completely faded to gray blobs. Inside the box were tarnished earrings and a necklace made of tiny white spheres. A yellowed card slipped into view from under the necklace.

  “What’s wrong, Will?”

  “It’s my mother’s name––Mary Abrikosov. This belonged to her name-giver.”

  Wilson put the small box in his pack. He lifted up the clothing and sneezed at the dust. A few crumpled sheets of paper and a book lay underneath. Only a handwritten note was legible.

  Mary,

  Please come and talk with me about the situation. Many of us have been affected by the fighting and I can try to help. In case you haven’t heard, my new office is B102.

  Zhang Ming

  The book in Mary’s locker was titled “Applications in Bioengineered Capacitance,” and she was listed as one of the authors. Wilson placed it in his pack.

  “We need to find room B102,” he said.

  “Fine,” said Badger. “But do you have to read everything?”

  “Just give me another minute.”

  Most but not all of the nameplates on the lockers were from the registry of founders. Lee Wilson––his name-giver––didn’t have a locker, and neither did Zhang Ming or Bryant Chen.

  Wilson found a locker for “Michael Wong.” He smashed the lock with his hammer and a few pictures floated to the ground, the subjects faded to white. Apart from gray dust, all that was left inside the locker was a wooden box.

  Wilson opened it and sniffed the contents. “Some kind of rolled herb.”

  “You mean ‘herb’ herb?” asked Badger.

  The brown cylinders crumbled to dust as Wilson touched them.

  “It’s definitely not that,” he said.

  On the side of the box he found a stained card with an elegant black script––”Sgt. Michael Wong, A158.”

  “What room is this?”

  Badger sneezed. “One-four-zero, I think … stop!”

  She held up her palm. Wilson waited quietly until she relaxed.

  “Sorry. Thought I heard something.”

  They walked through the dusty hallway to A158. The door was labeled “Survival Tactics.” Badger opened it with slow-moving fingers as Wilson held the lantern.

  The room was filled with overturned desks and display screens. None activated on touch. On a desk at the back lay a metal sign with the text “Sgt. Michael Wong” along with scattered, framed pictures. Wilson opened the drawers with a squeal of rusted metal.

  “I changed my mind,” said Badger, looking back at the door. “This was a bad idea.”

  “Found something.”

  Wilson placed a flat wooden box on the desk and opened the lid. The material inside was soft and red, and held the deep outline of a handgun. The box also contained a small leather pouch and a paper box filled with firearm rounds.

  “Nice!”

  Wilson pulled the pistol from his belt and opened the cylinder. The rounds slid easily into the empty chambers.

  “Loaded for bear!”

  “Oh really,” said Badger. “Just don’t shoot me with that thing.”

  “Baby, if I shoot you it’s on purpose.”

  “Heard that before. Seen it happen too.”

  Wilson put the extra rounds in his pocket along with the cleaning tools. A rectangle of paper lay at the bottom of the box. He read the simple handwriting out loud.

  “To Mike from JG.”

  He thumbed through a pile of books on another desk. All were on microbiology and pathogens.

  Wilson sighed. “Let’s go.”

  Outside the room they turned right, then right again.

  “Are we heading back?” he asked.

  Badger nodded. “There’s another tunnel up ahead.”

  Further along, rock and white material from the ceiling blocked the passage. In the flickering light Wilson saw an opening to the left. Text on the wall read “USAF SPC Facility B” and a black arrow pointed into the shadows.

  “I guess we go that way,” he said.

  “What does the magic box say?”

  Wilson wound the handle. “Nothing.”

  Walking became less safe and avoiding twisted ankles a priority. Earth and concrete had spilled through the crumbled ceiling and the floor had cracked in waves.

  There were no doors. Wilson had a feeling they were stumbling down the throat of a giant, dead beast. In places, the wall was in good condition and he saw a painted eagle or a stylized circle, all symbols from the founder’s temple. After stumbling over hundreds of meters of broken rock, their path ended in a pile of gray slabs and tumbled granite.

  Wilson sneezed. “Dead end.”

  Badger raised a hand. A sound came from behind them––a whispering scrape, a leaf across pebbles.

  “No going back.” Badger jerked a finger at the rubble. “That way. The hole.”

  “But it’s too–”

  “Just do it!”

  Wilson shoved the sledgehammer through a gap in the rocks and crawled through with the lantern in one hand. He squeezed between the corridor wall and a granite boulder by turning sideways, but in the flickering light could see the gap narrow ahead of him.

  “MOVE!” Badger yelled. She pushed on his feet.

  Wilson twisted out of the straps of his rucksack and slid forward. He gasped as the stone scraped off the skin on his chest and pelvis. Badger squeezed through behind him.

  The crevice twisted down, to the right, and after ten meters Wilson crawled into the open air. He scrambled to his feet and helped Badger from the rock pile. Her backpack was missing and her jacket and trousers were ripped. Stone dust and grit covered her from head to toe.

  “Stop staring,” she said.

  They crouched behind a large rock a few meters from the hole.

  “What’s back there?” he asked.

  Badger pulled out her knives. “Don’t talk, just get ready.”

  Wilson put the lantern on the concrete floor of the corridor. He squatted behind the rock close enough to rub shoulders with Badger.

  He’d dry-fired the pistol weeks ago. If it didn’t work now, it wasn’t going to work ever. He thumbed the lever for the firing pin backwards until it locked and held the grip with both hands.

  Time passed and the lantern burned steadily. The silence began to bore Wilson. He wondered about the last owner of the pistol.

  Badger touched his arm. Her eyes were shut and the scars stood white on her face. She slumped to the ground and began to shake.

  “Don’t do this, Kira!”

  Wilson laid his pistol on the rock and held Badger’s head off the ground. He tried to remember the code. Short short long long long, yelled Reed’s voice in his head. Under Badger’s left sleeve he found the center of the scar. After he pressed the sequence twice she stopped shaking. Wilson wiped his forehead and glanced back at the gap in the rubble.

  The eyes of a massive reptile shone in the lantern-light. The monster was at least three meters in length and brown with a yellow stripe down the body. The broad head was over a foot long with a wide, closed mouth. The four clawed limbs were splayed apart on the rocks like a desperate climber.

  His right hand was pinned under Badger so Wilson grabbed the pistol with his left. He aimed down the barrel and pulled the trigger. A click. The lizard flicked a tongue and moved toward him with fast, jerking steps. Wilson pulled the tr
igger again. Another click. Sweat stung his eyes and he breathed out a ragged sigh.

  In the next instant a deafening gout of flame erupted from the barrel and the pistol kicked hard. The lizard scrabbled for the hole in a spray of grit and pebbles. Wilson aimed for the body and fired again.

  The first shot had dulled his hearing and the second wasn’t as loud. The monster was nowhere to be seen.Wilson held Badger with one hand and kept the pistol aimed at the hole in the rocks with the other.

  After a minute her muscles stirred and lips moved, but Wilson heard nothing but a ringing in his ears.

  “What?”

  She grabbed his neck and he felt warm breath on his cheek.

  “I said, you could wake the dead!”

  “Are you okay?”

  Badger shook her head. “Can’t hear you.”

  Wilson helped her to stand. He searched his belt for the reload pouch and replaced the misfires and two empty casings. The lantern still guttered on the corridor floor, and he wiped drops of blood from the glass. The walls and floor were splashed with blood and a trail of drops led to the hole in the rubble pile. Wilson would have looked for the lizard––the pistol gave him a strange confidence––but Badger pulled at his arm.

  They stumbled over the uneven floor and squeezed past crumbled walls to a pair of doors labeled “USAF Space Command Facility B Authorized Personnel Only.” Badger pushed against the door but it didn’t move. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply for a few seconds, and strained against the metal. With a scrape the door opened part-way. Badger squirmed through the gap and Wilson followed. On the other side a pile of dirt and stone pressed against the door. Badger pushed the door back into place with a screech of metal on stone.

  Wilson touched the scratched steel of the door. “How did you do that?”

  Badger wiped a hand across her forehead. “That’s my secret.”

  “Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “Just my ears,” she said. “That stupid cannon … wait, you’ve got a nasty cut on your face.”

  “Kiss it better?”

  She groaned. “Are you serious?”

  “Always. We’ve made it to Facility B, whatever that is.”

  The tunnel looked in better shape than before, but in places the ceiling had partially collapsed. A tumble of granite rock came from offices on the right. A few doors appeared undamaged. The first was labeled “Wellness Evaluation B175.”

  Inside, Wilson’s lantern threw light on a few desks and oddly shaped machines. White squares and debris from the ceiling covered everything. Against the opposite wall stood a few gray cabinets.

  “If this is a ‘wellness’ room maybe there are ‘wellness’ supplies,” Wilson said, stepping around chairs and desks. The cabinets were labeled “VO2” and held nothing but strange masks and tubing.

  “Found something.” Badger stood beside a white metal box fixed to the wall. A red cross marked the front.

  “That’s a priest’s sign,” said Wilson.

  Inside the box were instructions for treatment and a few medical items. A “Sterilizer” packet tumbled out but was filled with a hard, useless square. Badger ripped a cloth from a white paper envelope and held it to Wilson’s cut. He secured it by winding a long bandage around his head and tying a priest’s knot.

  “The rest of the supplies are too old.” Wilson poured white powder from a yellow “Aspirin” packet into his hand. He touched it with the tip of his tongue then spit on the floor. “Let’s go.”

  Badger pointed at papers stacked on a desk. “What about those?”

  Wilson leafed through a number of folders. “Logs of physical activity. Look, here are vital signs and other measurements.” He stuffed a few of the sheets inside his coat. “I wish I hadn’t lost that backpack.”

  “The lizards might give it back if you ask nicely.”

  The pair walked out of the room. Scratching and scrapes came from the other side of the jammed metal doors at the end of the corridor. Farther down, a door with the sign Kinesiology B173 had become wedged in a crooked frame. Even Badger couldn’t move it. They passed other rooms, one labeled Biochemistry B171 and others Endocrinology B178 through B168.

  At an intersection in the corridor, an arrow under the text “USAF Hyperion” pointed to the left, while an arrow labeled “Virology” pointed ahead. The passageway on the right side was blocked with concrete and fallen rock.

  “Which way?” asked Badger.

  “Straight for now. Tell me if you see a floor plan.”

  Wilson felt his pockets for the hand-cranked air tester, but realized it was in his pack under the rubble.

  “What do you think they eat?” he asked.

  “Does what eat?”

  “The range lizards.”

  Badger pointed at a tail sticking from a crack in the wall. “That.”

  “Mother of–!”

  Badger sighed. “Please tell me we’ll find one living thing in these tunnels that doesn’t scare you.”

  “Are there rabbits?” asked Wilson. “I’m not scared of rabbits.”

  “Ha!”

  “I just really hate rats.”

  “You get used to them. Add some hot peppers and they taste fine.”

  “That’s it. I’m going to be sick.”

  Wilson took her hand and she didn’t pull away. They continued down the corridor and passed a collapsed cafeteria. Wilson saw an intact door on the right, with Virology B148 printed on a metal sign.

  Badger shoved the door open with a grunt and shadows scattered. She reached to the floor and held up a dusty green rucksack.

  “How about this?”

  “Kira, you’re the best.”

  In the room were metal desks and several file cabinets. Many of the drawers yawned open, empty and toothless. On the walls were large diagrams of chemical structures. Next to faded pictures on a desk a nameplate read “Dr. Gregory Allen.” Wilson opened all the desks and felt inside each cabinet drawer.

  Badger held up a few papers. “Take a look at these.”

  The images had only faded slightly and had a medical theme. One showed a man’s arm next to a thin white cylinder. In another, blue-gowned men bent over an operating table.

  Wilson tapped the photo. “They’re cutting into his arm.”

  “A name-giving ceremony? With all these people around?”

  “This is from the old days. Everyone got their real names when they were born. No, it’s probably to put in or take out that implant.”

  Wilson flipped through the sheets of paper. He found unfamiliar diagrams of the human body, line charts, and pictures of men in a forest connected to boxy, silver machines. Men ran through fields and climbed a mountain ridge. A group of men in swimming briefs stood beside a lake. Wilson held his fingers over a few wooden buildings and it looked like the lake on the other side of Old Man.

  Badger scraped the point of her knife across a desk and yawned.

  Wilson rapped his knuckles on a locked metal cabinet, without looking up. “If you need something to do, open this drawer.”

  Badger yanked it off with an explosion of dust and paper. The passage of time had left only a ghost of text on the pages.

  … of the President, all military bases including Altmann have been on lockdown since … H1N2 betavirus cases in Denver and Boulder … family members not already … for 8 hours, the incubation … Continuity of Operations …

  Another sheet was filled with lines. Wilson recognized addresses––the old way to organize and locate places. Everything went into the rucksack.

  They moved back into the corridor, Wilson with the lantern and Badger holding a table leg as a makeshift club. After what seemed like hours of stumbling over the uneven floor of the tunnel, Wilson spotted the rusted sign of a floor plan on the wall.

  “Over here!”

  Bits of rust fell to the ground as he moved his finger along the sign. “We’re probably here.” He traced a right angle. “The main entrance is back the way we came.”


  Badger kept her back to him and watched the corridor. “Not a good idea.”

  “Okay––this symbol is a stairway. We could go down a level, double back, and use another set of stairs to go up.”

  Wilson held the pistol as he opened a door marked “Stairwell Access.” It opened easily and they moved carefully down the dusty steps to the Level Two door. Badger kicked it open and brown rats scrambled for cover.

  She held her nose. “More of your lizard food.”

  “And I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

  He used a white handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose from the stench of ammonia. Rats scrambled into the dark and spun tails into holes as Wilson and Badger followed signs along the tunnel to “Hyperion.” After a long walk and a half-dozen squashed rodents they came to an intersection.

  “What’s that read?” asked Badger.

  “Engineering and Test Platforms. It means lots of machines.”

  They turned right toward “Test Platforms” and met another jumble of earth and rock. Badger scrambled through a gap at the top and helped Wilson down the other side. Soon, however, a solid mass of stone halted their progress. In this small section of the tunnel a few metal doors reflected light from the lantern. Badger pushed her shoulder into the first and it scraped open.

  The pair stepped into a cavern so large the lantern’s light failed to reach the far corners. Brown paper boxes were piled in the middle, many crushed by fallen rock or covered by white ceiling tiles. A series of numbers lined the right-hand wall and extended into the dark. The sets of three digits began with “001” and increased by five each time. On the wall below each three-digit number was a strange pattern of connectors and plugs.

  Wilson had a feeling something was missing and walked deeper into the cavern. His feet left gentle billows of dust in the air. On the left wall he spotted two horizontal black slabs covered with gray powder and rock.

  “A casket!”

  Badger sneezed. “A what?”

  “A casket. Don’t you remember your name-giving?”

  “No, just what you and Reed have told me about it.”

  A red label had been pasted across the top of each black slab. Wilson wiped the powder away. The label read “OUT OF SERVICE.” Cables webbed from the sides of the two slabs to ports on the wall.