by Roland Smith
People glanced at us as we walked by, but no one talked to us as we strolled down the center of the road past them, which I was sure was exactly what they had been instructed to do.
LaNae was still awkwardly weaving through the redwoods to our right, and Carl was walking on our left like a Sasquatch.
“Where did they learn to barbecue?” I asked. As far as I knew, Lod was the only Pod member who had owned a grill. I remember the day he had gotten it. I was around ten years old at the time. He was very proud of it. He would “grill out,” as he called it, a couple of times a week.
“Each rig was equipped with a grill and a grilling manual,” he answered. “Required reading. And they were happy to do it. When I got that old grill of mine in the Deep everybody wanted one. We couldn’t allow it. Too much smoke for us to vent. It would have set off every fire alarm we had.”
I stopped walking.
“What?” Lod asked.
“You got the grill because you knew that one day you would be here grilling with everybody from the Deep.”
“So?”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Our plans have been in place longer than ten years, but yes, that’s why I got the grill.” He smiled. “Which I recall you complaining about cleaning every time I asked you to do it.”
I had complained, and I returned the smile, but my mind was on the fact that all this, from the buttons on the vests to the brats sizzling on the grills, had been planned out years ago, maybe even before I was born.
I started walking again. So many questions, but to ask Lod anything more would create suspicion and show doubt. He expected blind obedience and that’s what I was going to give him.
Like all the others, Bella and Bill were outside their camper. Bill was manning the grill. Bella had spread a red checkered tablecloth on a picnic table and was setting it with utensils. In the center of the tablecloth was a pitcher of lemonade. Like all the other men, Bill had on a button-covered war veteran’s vest and cap. A couple Originals had served in the Vietnam War, but not Bill. He had been an antiwar leader, back in the day, and had served jail time for protesting.
“Are you going to stay for dinner?” Bella asked Lod.
“Sorry. I have things to do.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Here are your directions. We’ll do it in order. Radio silence. After you memorize it, burn it. No trail.” He nodded at the motor home parked in the campsite next to us. “When fifteen takes off, wait fifteen minutes, then go. The roads are marked. The tail car will pick up all the marks after everyone passes through.”
“What’s the mark?” Bella asked.
Lod smiled. “A rain cloud with lightning bolts.”
He pulled the little tool out of his pocket. Bella and I put our feet up on the bench.
“Forget it,” he said, putting the tool back in his pocket. “Just stay in your campsite. No wandering around. We’ll call it a test.”
It wasn’t much of a test. There were Guards everywhere. I was sure he had passed the word to keep an eye on me. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Before leaving he checked the burgers on the grill.
“These are overdone,” he said.
in the back of the camper, which didn’t make sense. The cab was a lot more confined. Maybe the three windows in the cab had tricked my claustrophobia.
“Unplug the headphones so I can hear the radio traffic,” Alex shouted from the front seat.
“Done.”
The radio was silent.
The ride in back was not nearly as comfortable as it was up front. It was like a rattling earthquake. I sat on the bench at the tiny dinette table. Alex had bungee-corded the radio equipment to it so it wouldn’t fall off. The sink was filled with dirty dishes and empty cans. A bad smell was coming out of the tiny toilet room.
I couldn’t see Alex’s backpack from where I was sitting, and I could see everything except …
I looked up.
Above me, to my right, was the slot for the bed over the cab. I wasn’t looking forward to crawling into it, but it was the only place Alex’s pack could be, and it was the best place to rifle through his pack because he couldn’t look through the rearview mirror and see what I was doing.
“Ten minutes to Arcata?” Coop asked, loud enough for me to hear.
“Less to the airport,” Alex answered. “It’s north of town, right next to Clam Beach.”
I needed to slip into the dark clamshell above the cab.
Now.
I boosted myself into the slit, trying not to think about it. As soon as I got up there I turned on my flashlight. Light always helped. It smelled like Alex. Old and musty, with a tinge of stale pipe tobacco. He had one of the sleeping bags we had bought rolled out. His backpack was at the open end of the bag. He must have been using it as a pillow, which couldn’t have been too comfortable.
I started to sweat.
Five or six minutes to the Arcata airport. I knew I wouldn’t last three minutes up there.
Alex hit a bump in the road. My entire body flew up into the air like I was on a trampoline. The back of my head slammed against the roof. There wasn’t time to take the pack below, search it, and put it back. And I didn’t want to climb back up there. Coop should have volunteered for this duty. He loved places like this.
I put the flashlight in my mouth and unzipped the pack. In the main compartment were clothes, toiletries, and a laptop computer.
Alex made us toss our computers but had kept a laptop for himself?
His laptop wasn’t sleek and minimal like ours had been. It was heavy-duty PC that would break your foot if you dropped it. It looked like it was brand-new, and had to weigh at least fifteen pounds. On the side of the laptop was a small antenna that flipped up. I opened the cover. The screen came to life instantly, asking for a security code. I wasn’t about to try it. There wasn’t time and I didn’t want Alex to know that I had tampered with it. What I wanted to know was what the antenna did. It wasn’t hard to figure out. In the upper-right corner of the screen was a blank Wi-Fi icon.
I closed the screen and looked at the opposite side from the antenna. It had a DVD drive. We didn’t need to stop and get a portable DVD player. He had a DVD drive in his pack. He didn’t want us to know that he had the laptop.
Why?
I unzipped an outside pocket. Inside was a cell phone, or at least what looked like a cell phone. It was a little bigger than a normal cell phone, clunky-looking, with a thick antenna sticking out of the top. At first I thought maybe he had picked it out of a Dumpster. He said that he had put together his surveillance system in the Deep with discarded junk. But this phone wasn’t junk. There wasn’t a scratch on it. It looked as new as the laptop in the pack. The peel-off screen protector was still in place. I turned it over and shined the light on the tiny words on the back.
It wasn’t a cell phone. It was a satellite phone.
I put the laptop back where I had found it. Coop was right. Alex was keeping things from us. I wanted to keep something from him, and we might need a phone. I shoved the phone into my pocket.
I felt the camper slow and veer to the right. We were leaving the highway.
Quickly I unzipped another pocket.
More surprises.
A revolver. Where had he picked this up?
I fumbled the cylinder open. It was fully loaded. I dumped the bullets out and put them in my other pocket, next to my digital recorder. If Alex wanted to shoot someone, he was going to have to ask me for the ammo.
The last pocket looked like it was empty, but I checked it anyway just to make sure. At the very bottom was a small aluminum container the size of a pack of gum. It took me a second to figure out how to open it. Inside, wrapped in foam to cushion it, was something that looked like a USB flash drive. It was obviously important or he wouldn’t have packaged it so carefully and put it by itself.
The camper slowed to a crawl.
I put the aluminum box into the pocket with the six bul
lets and the recorder.
Alex was obviously going to figure out that things were missing. I would return his stuff as soon as he told us how he was going to use it.
The camper came to a stop.
I backed out of the tight space and lowered myself down, relieved to be out of there, and pleased with how I had handled it. I might still have my claustrophobia, but it had gotten better.
I looked through the opening to the front seat. Alex was behind the wheel peering through a pair of binoculars.
“I told you that you wouldn’t get much sleep,” he said.
I nodded at Coop. He nodded back.
“Aren’t you going to get out and look?” I was eager to tell Coop what I had found.
“No point,” Alex answered, still looking through the binoculars. “The private airplanes and helicopters are tied down right here, and I don’t see Larry’s. He’s either still up in the air, or he’s landed somewhere else. We’ll head into Arcata.”
“What’s in Arcata?” Coop asked.
“Humboldt State University. I need to check something out.”
“I can drive,” I said.
“I got it,” Alex said, and put the camper into gear.
I’d taken only a couple bites out of mine. It tasted like a rawhide bone. Not that I’ve ever eaten one. Although I did taste one once because my favorite dog in the Deep, Enji, absolutely loved them. No amount of ketchup and mustard could soften it. Bill had a lot to learn about grilling. I wondered if the other “vets” had botched their meals.
The sun had gone down, and with it the clouds and mist had disappeared.
A gas lantern hissed on the table, lighting our mostly uneaten feast. Bella and Bill had both memorized the directions and burned the slip of paper to ashes on the grill. We’d barely spoken since Lod had brought me back. The reason for this was that LaNae and Carl had lingered within hearing distance for at least an hour after Lod had left. They were clearly no longer running clumsy security for Lod. They were watching me.
“I think they’ve gone,” Bella whispered.
“Ten minutes ago,” I said. “I think I can still hear them crashing through the woods.”
Bill laughed.
“What happened on your walk?” Bella asked.
Bella was just like every other Original. When Lod wasn’t around, they constantly pumped people who might know something they didn’t know. I had been pumped for information since I could talk. I had learned long ago what to say and what to hold back. When I was little, I think Lod sometimes leaked information to me that he thought I would pass on.
“I saw Bob, Susan, and Carol,” I said.
If this was a surprise to them, they didn’t show it.
“How were they?” Bill asked.
“They looked pretty good, considering I thought they were dead.”
“That was one of our better-kept secrets,” Bella said. “Did Lod explain?”
“He did. And it made sense. But I was still shocked to see them.”
“What did they say?” Bill asked.
“Not much. I think Lod took me there to see them, not to talk to them. Bob said something about an upgrade. The Deep Two Point Zero.”
“So that’s what they are calling it,” Bill said. “Bob was always a funny guy.”
“Are you saying you didn’t know about this?” I asked. “I thought you were they.”
“We are,” Bella said. “But we don’t know everything.”
“Like the location,” Bill said. “No one here knew where it was until Lod gave us the directions. It was a precaution. If someone got picked up or decided to defect, they wouldn’t be able to tell the feds anything.”
“I doubt anyone here would defect,” I said.
“You never know,” Bella said. “We thought you defected.”
“Lod still thinks I defected.”
“Time will heal that,” Bill said.
“What else did Lod say on your walk?” Bella prodded.
I told them, skipping the part about me, perhaps, taking his place someday. When I finished, I could tell by their expressions I hadn’t told them anything they didn’t already know.
“It’s getting cold,” Bill said. “I guess we should start packing up.”
“How about starting a fire instead,” Bella said. “I haven’t sat next to a campfire since I was a little girl. We’re number sixteen. We have several hours before we leave.”
I helped Bella put wood into the fire pit while Bill cleared the picnic table. It might have been decades since Bella had built a campfire, but she hadn’t forgotten how to do it. After she had the paper, kindling, and logs stacked it took only one match to ignite it.
Bill brought out folding chairs and blankets. We sat with our feet toward the crackling flames, blankets on our laps, watching cinders dance up into the redwoods. I wanted to know what they knew about the place we were going to, but of course I couldn’t ask them directly. I needed to get them to talk about it.
“I hope they have dogs wherever we’re going,” I said. “I miss my dogs.”
“Everyone misses their dogs,” Bella said. “Of all the things we left behind, that’s the one regret people talk about the most.”
“We won’t need dogs where we’re going,” Bill said. “No complicated labyrinth to find our way through, no homeless people living next to us, no city above, no reason to go up top. It’s a closed system.”
Maybe it was because they were sitting in the redwoods next to a warm fire. Maybe it was because we were almost at our final destination. But Bella and Bill were at ease, as relaxed as I’d ever seen them. I felt I could ask them some direct questions.
“You mean once we go down we’re not coming back up?” I asked.
“Not necessarily,” Bella said. “It means that we don’t have to come up unless we want to, or need to. It’s been operating perfectly for nearly three years now without a glitch.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Bits and pieces of it on streaming video,” said Bill, “which is not like seeing it in person, but I’ve seen enough to give me an idea what it will be like. It’s similar to the Deep in New York. The government got a lot right in the fifties when they built that secret nuclear shelter, but they didn’t have the technologies we have today. We had to retrofit technology as it became available, which was hard to do in a concrete underground structure. We made crude fixes, and they worked after a fashion, but this facility is different. It was built from scratch with everything we learned when we lived under the city.”
“All the vulnerabilities of our old space, and there were many, have been engineered out of the new facility,” Bella said.
“It’s like a spaceship that isn’t going anywhere, but nobody can get to it,” Bill added.
“We’re the core group, but there are already a lot of people there,” Bella said. “We’ve been recruiting and placing people in the new facility for years.”
“But who ran it?” I asked. “Who was in charge?”
“Lod,” Bill said. “And of course some Originals. Lod used video conferencing and emails, just like he ran Cloud’s Mushrooms for all those years.”
“We thought about coming out west with the first wave,” Bella said. “But decided that we’d be more useful in New York.”
“Not sure that was the right call,” Bill said. “But someone had to stay in the old place while the new place was being built.”
A motor home started up. We listened as it pulled out of its campsite.
“What are we going to do in the new place?” I asked.
Bella glanced at Bill, and that’s all it took to shut the conversation down.
“What we always do,” Bella said. “Live our lives, bide our time, wait.”
“Providing you live,” Lod said from behind us.
I nearly fell out of my chair. We all stood and faced him.
Carl was standing on his right, LaNae on his left. She was smiling, but not in a friendly way.
/> “Didn’t hear you walk up,” Bill said nervously.
“I know,” Lod said. “But I heard you spilling your guts to Kate.”
“I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.”
Lod laughed. “Yes, you did. And Kate knows more than she’s saying. Isn’t that right, Kate?”
I eyed the shadowy redwoods for a potential escape route. Carl wouldn’t be able to catch me, but I wasn’t certain about LaNae. She was clumsy but fast. And where would I go?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Beneath,” Lod said.
“What do you mean?”
He took a large envelope out from behind his back. “All of you sit back down.”
We sat.
He stepped closer to the fire and faced us. He pulled a sheath of paper out of the envelope.
“This,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You know exactly what it is. You and those two boys gave it to the FBI. This is a copy of the original dossier. It’s called ‘Beneath.’”
I shook my head. “I don’t —”
“Stop, Kate. It’s over. I read every word. It arrived from one of my couriers while we were out for our little walk. We don’t use the mail, or the Internet, or cells. So it took a while to get to me, but it came just in time.”
He flung the dossier at me. It bounced off my chest and landed at my feet. I picked it up with shaking hands.
CLASSIFIED
BENEATH BY PAT AND COOP O’TOOLE
isn’t far from here,” Alex said.
He pulled the camper into a parking lot across from Humboldt State University, taking up three parking spots with the boat and rig.
I was happy to get out of the back and eager to tell Coop about my find.
But it wasn’t to be. Not yet anyway.
Coop and Alex climbed out of the cab.
I heard a familiar tapping sound.
“You had tap shoes in your pack?”
“Behind the seat,” Coop said. “I’ve wanted to put them on all day. My feet hurt after my long walk on the beach last night. This is an old pair that I left in LA. Broken in. They feel great.”