by Dirk Patton
Even at the lower speed, the Hunter bounced hard on another hidden pothole. None of them were wearing seatbelts, all being thrown into the air to strike their heads against the roof before slamming back onto the seats. Strickland, wakened by the hard impact, snorted and sat forward.
“Christ, Ivan! Trying to kill us all?”
“Be fucking off,” Igor growled in English as another hole tried to twist the wheel out of his hands.
“You know it is really rude to call him Ivan, do you not?” Irina asked, turning in her seat and holding on for dear life.
“That’s what your uncle said,” Strickland answered, shrugging. “He’d best get used to it. I fight beside a man, I give him shit. It’s a guy thing.”
“You mean an American thing,” Shevchenko said.
“Not my fault you damn Russkies don’t have a sense of humor,” the SEAL grumbled, then spied the hunk of cheese in the old man’s hand. “Hey! You’ve got food!”
“Very observant,” the Admiral said, slowly taking a bite.
Strickland watched him closely as he chewed.
“Well, you gonna share, or what?”
“Apparently, as a Russian, I not only lack a sense of humor, but also a sense of kindness and willingness to share,” Shevchenko said, deadpan.
Strickland stared at him for a moment, then looked to Irina for help. She was facing front, ignoring him. Glancing at the mirror, he met Igor’s eyes and could see the smile on his big face.
Grumbling, he opened his pack and dug through, pulling out his last MRE. Looking at the label, he groaned loudly.
“Fuck me. Cheese and vegetable omelet.”
He sat there, staring at the unopened package.
“What is so bad about that?” Shevchenko asked as he ate the last bite of cheese.
Strickland looked sideways at him, then ripped the outer package open. Finding the entrée packet, he tore the top off and fanned his hand over the opening in the direction of the older Russian.
Shevchenko’s nose crinkled as he squinted and tried to move away from the offending odor. Irina looked over her shoulder, flapping her hand in front of her face. Igor cranked his window down, reached into the back and grabbed for the MRE, intending to throw it out of the vehicle, but Strickland pulled it away with an evil grin spread across his face.
“Too late, Ivan,” he said, thrusting two fingers into the packet. “I’m gonna eat it and it’s gonna be ten times worse in here in about an hour.”
Shoving the contents into his mouth, he chewed with a grimace on his face.
17
Entering the tunnel, I shoved the Russian-made night vision goggles off my face and turned on the light mounted to the rifle. NVGs rely on some amount of available light, amplifying it to provide the user with an image of their surroundings. There are units that have supplemental infrared lights to overcome this, but if the set I was wearing did, I couldn’t figure out how to activate them.
“This way,” Mavis said, not waiting to see if I was going to follow.
As we moved along the tunnel, I had time to get a good look at it. Carved out of the dirt, it seemed to have been dug by hand with shovels. Every ten feet or so, roughhewn timbers had been put in place to brace the ceiling, which was only about five feet high. I was walking in a very uncomfortable position.
“Who made this?” I asked, envying Mavis her child’s stature.
“Dunno,” she said without turning around. “Girl that showed it to me said someone told her it was dug by convicts a couple hundred years ago.”
I thought about that for a second, taking a closer look at one of the beams that supported the ceiling. What Mavis had said could well be true. I knew that Australia had originally been a penal colony for the British Empire and that convicts had been the labor that built the first settlements. So, had this been an escape tunnel?
Following Mavis around a sharp bend, we reached a broad chamber with the tunnel continuing on from the far side. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any more headroom. She came to a stop and I turned a slow circle, not thrilled with being in an underground passage that might be two centuries old. What were the odds the thousands of tons of dirt over my head might suddenly decide to come crashing down?
“We’re safe here,” Mavis said, striking a match.
I watched her hold the flame to an oil lamp’s wick, then clicked off my light to save the batteries.
“This where you live?”
She nodded, dropping onto a filthy blanket spread across the floor of the chamber.
“Where does that go?” I asked, pointing at the opening in the far wall.
“The harbor,” she said.
I frowned, not liking the sound of that.
“Any other entrances?”
“Just the two. Where we came in, then at the harbor.”
“Show me,” I said.
“What are you worried about?” she asked as if I were being ridiculous.
“If there’s an opening, the infected might find it. If they do, we’ll be in big trouble.”
She thought about that for a moment, then got to her feet and led the way.
It wasn’t far before the floor of the tunnel started to descend and I began to pick up the smell of the ocean. A few more yards and an occasional breeze from the winds slithered across my face, then we reached the end and I looked out at the storm-tossed waters of Sydney Harbour.
Poking my head out into the night, I breathed easier when I saw the tunnel entrance was cut into the side of a bluff. Without rappelling gear, or swimming, there was no way for the infected to come inside. Thick bushes grew in the red soil, shielding the opening from view, so even if someone in a boat were to cruise by, they wouldn’t know there was a tunnel here.
The wind seemed even stronger than it had outside, but I wasn’t sure that was the case. There had been a degree of protection from trees and buildings before we’d entered the car park. Standing here, the full fury of the storm was able to roar across the surface of the water. Frequent waves broke against the base of the bluff, the wind driving spray into our faces.
“Okay,” I said, raising my voice to be heard.
There wasn’t room for Mavis to slip past me, so I led the way back to the chamber. She returned to her blanket and after a long moment, I eased myself down and leaned against the wall.
“What were you doing out there, Mavis?” I asked after a long silence.
“It’s night,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“So?”
“That’s when I go out to find food,” she said, shrugging. “Couple of restaurants not too far away. Abos working in the kitchens will usually have something for me.”
I looked at the kid, trying to reconcile her circumstances with the way she talked. To listen to her, she sounded like a well-educated young lady. To look at her, though, there was no denying she was living on the streets. Stick thin, dirty and I hadn’t failed to notice the way she watched me with no small degree of wariness.
“So, you didn’t know the nerve gas had been released,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Not until they started chasing me. Good thing I’m fast.”
“Damn good,” I agreed. “I’ve never seen anyone that can outrun them. We get tired long before they do, then they’ll run us to ground.”
“You’ve seen them before?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m from America,” I said, watching her eyes go wide.
“You survived? I heard no one did.”
“Not many,” I said.
“Is the rest of the world really dead?”
I looked at her for a beat, debating how to answer a twelve-year-old, but decided she deserved the unvarnished truth.
“Mostly,” I said. “Still some people in Hawaii and there’re some left in Russia. As far as I know, that’s about it.”
I wasn’t about to go into details on the coming blight that would finish off the planet.
“What are y
ou doing here if you’re a Yank?”
“Trying to settle a debt, but it didn’t work out the way I hoped.”
She looked at me and I could tell she wasn’t satisfied with my answer. To my surprise, she didn’t press.
“So, what do we do?” she asked after a long silence.
“They’ll be dead in a couple of days,” I said. “The storm should have already washed away the nerve gas. Now all we’ve gotta do is wait for the infected to die.”
“But I thought they didn’t die,” she said, her face wrinkled in confusion.
“Only the ones that got the virus. It keeps them alive. This was just the chemical and they’ll burn out and die. When they do, we can just walk out.”
She nodded and I was again struck by how mature she seemed. I’d encountered a lot of adults that couldn’t have handled what had happened as well as she was. I guess that’s what living on the streets will do for you.
“Well, thanks for saving me,” she said.
I smiled at her.
“And thanks for not taking me to Baralku.”
Here this was again! At least she didn’t seem terrified of me.
“You see my soul.” I said.
She nodded.
“What does it look like?” was the first thing I thought to ask.
She hesitated, trying to come up with the words.
“It’s around you. Like there’s two of you in the same place. It’s weird. I’ve heard about it from other Abos on the street, but never seen it before. The nuns at the orphanage would be freaked out if they could see it.”
“And you’re not afraid of me?”
She shrugged.
“A little, I guess. It’s creepy. But I figure you can’t do anything worse to me than what the nuns did or what’s happened since I left.”
Part of me wanted to ask, but I held my tongue. She was watching me closely as I decided to keep my questions to myself.
“One of the nuns would beat me because I refused to say I believed in her God,” she said with a sigh. “That’s why I left. Didn’t think it could be worse on my own. I was wrong.”
She shrugged, staring at the ground between her feet for a few seconds before looking up, directly into my eye.
“So why is your soul out of your body?”
I blinked at the question and frankly, despite my lack of faith, the thought sent creeping gooseflesh up my spine.
“I was supposed to die,” I said. “Someone saved me. Changed what was supposed to happen. I guess that’s it.”
Her large, dark eyes studied me without blinking.
18
I jerked awake, momentarily confused when I found myself in total darkness. After a couple of seconds, I remembered where I was and realized Mavis had extinguished the lamp to save oil. With a groan of joints stiff from sleeping on the hard-packed dirt, I sat up and ran my hand down the rifle.
Clicking on the light, I blinked in the sudden brilliance, looking around and cursing when I saw I was alone. Where the hell was Mavis? After a bad thought, I checked myself over, but all of my weapons were right where they should be. So where was the girl?
Listening hard, I could hear nothing. There was simply the absolute silence of a subterranean world. Shining the light across the floor, there was a jumble of tracks leading in and out of each tunnel. Too many to even begin making a guess which way she’d gone, but it didn’t make sense for her to have gone to the harbor.
Starting to climb to my feet, I glanced in the direction of the tunnel that led to the car park and paused. A dull, orange glow was approaching. Clicking off the light, I quickly moved to the other tunnel, rifle ready to go if needed.
A few moments later, Mavis, oil lamp held above her head and a small bundle clamped beneath her right arm, entered the chamber. She froze when she realized I wasn’t where she’d last seen me, quickly whirling around to check the entire chamber.
“Over here,” I said, lowering the rifle and stepping forward. “Wasn’t sure who was coming.”
“Can’t be too careful,” she said, nodding in agreement. “Got us some food.”
She placed the oil lamp in a notch carved into the dirt wall. Sitting, she began unwrapping the package.
“You didn’t go outside…”
“No,” she said. “I hide food when I have extra. If it’ll keep. Had this stashed behind one of the ceiling supports.”
She held up a fistful of jerky sticks like you find at the register in convenience stores, still in their original plastic wrappers. Grinning, she separated several of them from the group and held them out.
It wasn’t really all that long since I’d dined well in Barinov’s building, but I didn’t refuse her offer. Soon, I’d be having to move and maybe fight. Staying fueled was part of being prepared, so I took four of them and sat down across from the girl.
“Who’s Katie?” she asked after biting into her first stick.
“What?” I asked, feeling the color drain out of my face. “How do you know her name?”
“You talk in your sleep,” she said, shrugging and taking another bite.
After all the seeing my soul talk, her question had freaked me out. It took a few moments to regain my composure.
“I do not talk in my sleep,” I said.
“If you’re asleep, how do you know? And yes, you do.”
I looked at her, peeled open one of the sticks and took a big bite.
“So, who is she?” Mavis asked, pinning me with those eyes.
I took a deep breath. Didn’t want to talk about this. Don’t know why I answered her.
“My wife,” I said. “She’s dead.”
Mavis went still and quiet, then slowly took another bite.
“That sucks.”
“Yes. Yes, it does,” I said.
She sat there, chewing the tough, dried meat. After what seemed a long time, she swallowed and took another bite.
“How’d she die?”
I’d lost my appetite and slowly re-wrapped the one piece of jerky I’d opened.
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” I said.
Mavis nodded, finishing one stick and opening a second. She just watched me, not saying anything else.
“Why not?” she finally asked.
“Why not what?”
I squirmed around until my back was against the wall and I could stretch my legs out.
“Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
I stared at her, but despite pressing me to answer, I wasn’t getting mad. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I started talking. Told the inquisitive little twelve-year-old everything that had happened to me since that fateful night in Atlanta. She listened with rapt attention, her facial expression never changing.
When I was through talking, I was wrung out. Emotionally exhausted. And hungry. Picking up the jerky I’d set aside, I devoured it as fast as I could chew.
“You love her, don’t you,” Mavis said after a long stretch of silence.
“Rachel?”
She nodded.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
As soon as the acknowledgement came out of my mouth, I realized it was the first time I’d ever truly admitted my feelings for Rachel without being nearly overwhelmed with feelings of guilt. I sat there, unsure what the hell had just happened. Thought about her. Admitted to myself that I was in love with her. And it didn’t feel like the world was crashing down on me. Taking a deep breath, I felt the weight of Katie’s death leave my shoulders.
“Thank you, Mavis!” I said with a big smile and a lot of feeling.
“For what?” she asked, confused.
I hesitated a beat. “For the jerky. Thank you!”
She looked at me some more, turning her head and giving that sideways look that said she knew she was being bullshitted.
“You’re welcome,” she finally said, still giving me the look.
19
Titus Bull sat in his chair, impatiently waiting for the woman to wake
up. Finding her wandering through the ghost town of Mountain Home, Idaho, he’d brought her into his bunker and treated the bullet wound in her leg. He’d had a ton of questions, but had held off for the moment. She was obviously exhausted, in addition to being injured, so he’d done his best to not press for answers.
With a clean bandage on her leg, he’d gone into the kitchen and set about preparing a meal. She sat at the small kitchen table, watching him work with glassy eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked, startling him.
“Mountain Home,” he answered, stirring water into a bowl of powdered eggs.
“Idaho?” Martinez asked, familiar with the Air Force Base of the same name.
“Ya don’t know what state you’re in?” Titus asked in surprise.
She sat there in thought, slowly shaking her head.
“What’s the last thing you kin remember?”
Martinez frowned in thought, raising her hands to massage her throbbing temples. Slowly she ran her fingers through her hair, then looked in confusion at the dirt and grease that coated her palms. Titus was watching her as two skillets of food sizzled on the stove top.
“Looks like you been outside a while.”
She nodded, slowly wiping her hands on her blood- and mud-stained pants.
“I was in Washington. Just outside Seattle. Captured by the Russians. After that, it’s just a fog.”
Titus watched her, still bothered by a sense that he’d seen her somewhere before. But the harder he tried to remember, the more the fleeting memory slipped away from his grasp. With a grunt, he loaded a plate with hot food and put it down in front of Martinez.
“You’re not eating?” she asked.
“Ain’t hungry,” he said. “You need food. Gonna go put clean sheets on the bed for ya.”
Martinez ate every bite, then limped into the room where Titus had disappeared. A pile of dirty linen was in the corner and he was finishing up by spreading a light blanket over the freshly made bed.
“Shower’s in there,” he pointed. “If’n you wanna clean up ‘fore you sleep.”
“You said Major Chase was here a few months ago,” she said.