Authors: David Berardelli
So far, so good. That meant once I got in I could wait until he slammed the
door. Then I could slide across the seat, kick open the other door, and try to make
it to the bushes just beyond the shoulder.
Then that gun barrel once again pressed against the small of my back.
I risked a glance toward the van to see if Reed and Fields were also being
escorted to other vehicles. But as soon as I started to turn my head, the soldier
behind me lowered his shotgun and shifted his feet.
Duck
...
Get out of the way quick and roll
...
My brain started working a little too late. Something hard and heavy cracked
me on the back of my head.
The night instantly grew pitch-black.
Something slapped my shoe, wrenching me awake.
I opened my eyes. Yellow haziness penetrated the darkness, making
everything soft and blurry. A whiff of some kind of disinfectant assaulted my
nostrils.
I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them again, my vision gradually cleared. A
table lamp about fifteen feet away had provided the haziness.
I lay on a couch. Two soldiers stood off to the side, watching me. Their faces
were identical and showed no emotion. Their eyes were Asian, and I immediately
thought of what Fields had told us about what she’d seen in Breezewood. They
wore combat fatigues and baseball-style caps, and shiny black boots. Their
uniforms had no name tags, patches, or ribbons. Their automatics—they looked
like Sig Sauers to me—rested in holsters over their right hips.
Cold nausea rushed down my back.
What the hell is happening?
One of the soldiers brought up his arm and jabbed a thumb behind him. He
clearly wanted me to get up.
I forced myself into a sitting position, and a heavy pounding began near the
crown of my head. My arm weighed a ton, but I managed to bring it up to
gingerly feel the lump. The memories swam back immediately: The roadblock. A
small army of these jerks all armed with shotguns. I’d been ordered out of the van
and escorted to one of their cars. And, when I’d turned around—or rather tried to
—the lights had gone out.
Obviously, they’d brought me here while I was unconscious, probably to
some secret government facility that they didn’t want me to know anything about.
They’d probably planned to blindfold me but resorted to the head tap when I tried
to resist.
At least, I hoped that’s what had happened. I didn’t want to consider the
possibility that I wasn’t supposed to see what they’d done to Reed and Fields,
assuming my two friends had been escorted from the van as well and not just shot
on the spot.
If the latter was the case, why spare me? Why not them as well? And if they
were still alive, where were they?
Too many questions. I strongly suspected I wouldn’t get any answers from
these two. My anxiety intensified the throbbing pain in my skull.
“Stand.”
If you don’t, they’ll yank you to your feet. You’ll throw up on both of them and
be shot for messing their uniforms
.
Why would two of them be sent here? Either of them could carry me over one
shoulder without breaking a sweat.
Even if I wasn’t so groggy, none of this made any sense, especially by
military standards. The world had gone down the tubes. Very few people were
still walking around. So why was any of this necessary? And why would anyone
go to the trouble of bringing me in?
I took a deep breath and forced myself to stand. The effort immediately
drained me. Dizziness made my head swim, and I nearly fell back down. One of
the soldiers quickly shifted toward me. He probably thought I was up to
something. I would have been if my head hadn’t been throbbing so much.
I knew I would have to get away. Hopefully, Reed and Fields were here as
well. If I could gain enough time to investigate, I might be able to find them.
But that thinking was premature. I had no idea how long I’d been
unconscious or how far away the van was. If I’d been out for a couple of hours,
we could be anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of the roadblock. We might
also be less than a mile from it.
“Move.” The other soldier extended his left arm toward the doorway.
I took a couple of steps. They were shaky, and I nearly stumbled. I bent,
rested my palms on my thighs, and took a few breaths. The pair waited silently
and made no move to hurry me along. I found this strange. They didn’t seem the
considerate type, and they’d been barking orders at me.
As I recovered, I surveyed the room.
It seemed to be a reception or waiting area, with the near end occupied by two
chairs flanking a small table, and a coffee table facing the couch where I’d been
dumped. The coffee table was empty of magazines or any sort of reading
material. Checkerboard tiles covered the floor, each about the same length as my
shoes, which made them a foot square. I quickly calculated a twenty-by-twenty
area.
A waiting room?
A small black box hung from the ceiling in the corner and faced the door
behind me. No tiny red light winked from its center. If it was a video camera, it
wasn’t working.
On the other side of the room, I saw a desk with a small cubicle behind it and
an open doorway feeding into a dimly-lit hall.
Gathering my strength, I slowly straightened again.
My escorts led me to the doorway. I spotted a closed laptop sitting on a green
blotter on the desk. A gray office phone with several rows of buttons sat off to the
side. No lines were lit.
We went out into the hall. Fluorescent lights spaced at wide intervals lit
portions of the tile floor with a cold white glow. An EXIT sign highlighted the far
end of the corridor, which appeared to be about sixty feet away. This was a large
building. That same aroma of disinfectant clouded the air. An artificial coolness
suggested the place was air conditioned.
I felt like shit but still wanted to make a mad dash for it. I knew they could
easily outrun me, but somehow I might be able to outmaneuver them. Adrenaline
provides certain advantages in impossible situations.
They must have sensed my hesitation, because I felt something solid now
pressing into the small of my back.
“Walk.”
Reluctantly I began moving toward the EXIT. When we got within about ten
feet from the doorway, one of the soldiers said, “Turn right.” It was another
dimly-lit corridor, and the smell of disinfectant grew stronger.
This facility didn’t make sense. Why would it continue to operate while the
rest of the world had practically shut down completely? This definitely reeked of
a military operation. No other organization could still function under such
extreme circumstances.
That’s what puzzled me. With the majority of the world gone, the military had
become unnecessary. And from what I’d seen during the last few months, there
was no need for a government, either.
This hall was much longer—maybe a hundred feet. There were no doors or
markings, only the next EXIT sign straight ahead.
A thought hit me.
Decrease your pace; sustain the tempo for about twenty yards then burst into
speed
.
If I could zip through the EXIT doorway, I might be able to trip them as they
followed me through. Maybe I could grab one of their guns, shoot them both, and
begin my search for Fields and Reed.
That’s when another thought arose in my aching head.
You’re too old for this. The men behind you are in their mid-twenties
.
I couldn’t ignore the obvious; I was way overmatched. If they came from the
same group Fields had encountered in Breezewood, they could easily catch me.
Enter, thought number three.
These two men have been ordered to take me somewhere. Someone has gone
to great lengths to bring me here
.
This realization gave me an edge. If they hadn’t killed me by now, I could
press things a bit to try to expose the source of the orders.
I decreased my pace.
Almost immediately, I felt the tip of the gun barrel nudging the small of my
back again. Time to exercise my new strategy.
Gain some distance
.
I hastened my step. If I could widen the space between us by even a few
yards, I might be able to dodge around a corner and shake them up a little.
I quickly realized just how hard a blow I had sustained. My limbs grew warm
and thick after the first ten yards, and I began breathing heavily. I struggled on,
forcing myself to keep up the increased pace, breathing deeply, my mouth open,
my calves and thighs on fire.
About twenty yards later, I glanced behind me.
They were still right behind me. I was nearly out of breath, yet they continued
breathing normally. Frustrated, I slowed back down and let my heart rate return to
normal.
Would conversation do me any good
?
These two hardly spoke. They were professional soldiers. They lived to
complete their mission and spoke only when giving or acknowledging orders. I
couldn’t imagine them engaging in any meaningful discussion.
Still, it might be worth a try.
“Where are we?”
No response.
“What building is this?”
“Shut up.”
So much for chatting; best keep walking and wait for my chance
.
I’d keep on looking for opportunities to goad them, but the time might also
come when they’d lower their guard. Even superbly-trained soldiers have
weaknesses. No matter how good they are, nobody’s perfect. They could turn at
the wrong time, reach for a door awkwardly, or even blink. If an opportune
moment arose, I’d knock their heads together and grab a gun.
Just before we reached the EXIT sign, one of them said, “Turn left.”
Inside the threshold, another corridor awaited us. Unlike the others, this one
was well lit and carpeted. I spotted two black plastic signs mounted on the wall
straight ahead. Their white lettering made my heart skip a beat:
This was definitely a government installation.
“Turn right,” one of my escorts said, as we reached the signs. Ten feet later,
we encountered a solid metal door. One of them reached around me and pulled it
open. “Inside.”
I hesitated.
Yet again, the gun nudged my lower back.
Briefly I considered driving my elbow into his jaw. That would probably have
been a seriously bad move. Stupid, too. His jaw was most likely made of steel,
and he could shoot me much faster than I could execute the blow.
My body trembled in anger, as I stepped through the doorway.
The door clanged loudly behind us.
Shivers raced down my back. For a moment I imagined I was about to be
brought down to hell. When the door clang stopped resonating, a heavy silence
followed, intensifying my feeling of isolation.
We were standing on a landing at the top of a staircase with nowhere to go but
down.
The gun barrel still in my back, a bolt of heat jabbed me deep in my gut. I
spun around and stood my ground. I didn’t know if it was anger or fear fueling
me; both emotions tend to mesh together in a frightening situation. Sometimes
one of them forces you to act, sometimes both. You often don’t know which
emotion causes it. In this case, it might have been panic or the fear of what
awaited me at the bottom of the stairs. Or, maybe I was just tired of being shoved
around.
“What happens if I don’t want to go downstairs?”
The gun barrels lowered simultaneously, both stopping at my kneecaps.
I didn’t move.
The cocking of the hammers, loud and frightening as they bounced off the
walls, made the decision for me.
Cursing myself, I turned and descended the stairs.
We went down twelve steps to another landing, turned right and went down
another flight of twelve. Then another landing, another turn, and twelve more
steps.
We descended a total of five flights, with each step appearing to be around ten
inches tall—sixty stairs equaling fifty feet. If our journey had begun on the main
floor of the facility, we had gone five stories below ground level.
A bomb shelter?
The panic returned. The bottom landing faced three metal walls and another
solid metal door. A six-inch-square black box mounted on the wall beside the
door rang of familiarity. The tiny red blinking light within its center brought back
an avalanche of memories.
Some kind of scanner. High security clearance
.
It was beginning to make sense.
“I didn’t bring my card with me,” I said flatly.
As if by rote, one of my escorts shoved his automatic into my back. Then,
shifting around me, he reached out and applied the back of his left hand to the
center of the black square. The door clicked.
A cold blanket of utter dread wrapped around me.
These two are chipped
.
Chipped. Superhuman strength. Razor-sharp reflexes. No emotion. No
expression.
The memories thundered back.
Following eight rough weeks of Basic Infantry Training, the military sent me
to Louisiana for eight brutally intense weeks of Advanced Infantry Training.
Once we’d all been tested and chosen for our individual MOS, our military
occupational specialties, we were paraded into a hot, stuffy classroom. There, for
two hours every afternoon for the next two weeks, we watched training film after
training film showing different phases of the military’s plans for future
technology in the battlefield.
High-tech weapons. Ultra-specialized aircraft. Remote explosives. Super
soldiers.
I remember our instructor, his khakis immaculately ironed, his brush-cut
shaved to the skull on the sides and buzzed flat on top, standing off to the side of
the big picture screen, speaking loudly and impersonally, his gaze cold and
vicious, like a shark during an attack.
The wave of the future, recruits. You are gradually becoming obsolete. In five
years, this country will no longer need soldiers like you. America will require a
stronger, smarter, more efficient fighter. Ordinary flesh-and-blood soldiers are
outdated. You are vulnerable. You tire, grow weak, hungry. You require rest and
nourishment, and cannot function properly when wounded or captured. You have
become the weakest link in our global defense program
.
The two behind me were such super soldiers. Anyone could figure that out.
But what did all this have to do with me, especially now, since I’d been out for
nearly twenty years?
That damned gun nudged me once again. I forced my thoughts back to the
present and pushed open the door.
In contrast to the dimly lit corridor and staircase, this area exploded with
light. A solid glass wall faced us. Behind it, a sea of processors and other
supercomputer hardware filled a large open area beneath a veritable blaze of
fluorescents. Long tables covered with laptops and other electronic equipment
also filled the room. Giant but blank video screens covered the far wall.
One of the soldiers again waved his hand over the scanner beside the glass
door. At the sound of the click, he pushed it open.
We went down a long aisle of processors, stepping carefully over knots of
exposed fiber-optic wires, clusters of extension cords, and tangles of power strips.
The floor was made of two-foot-square, vented metal tiles, the kind that had been
used in the old-fashioned data processing centers during the latter years of the
20th century.
Another metal door stood at the far end of the room. Once again, one of my
escorts reached around me and waved his hand over the black box next to it.
Another click, another door pushed open.
Three long rows of tables filled the small space, with a dozen laptops set up
on each table faced by an adjustable office chair.
A large conference table touched the far wall. A complex phone system sat in
its center. Six Styrofoam cups had been left on the table surface.
Signs of a brain at work here—or at least a human being?
“Sit.”
“Where?”
They both pointed to the chairs.
I sat.
“Now what?”
Without another word, they stood at parade rest behind me.
I glanced at the laptop keyboard.
“Mind if I play Solitaire?”
No reply.
“What are we waiting for?”
Ditto.
At least the chair was comfortable. I sat back, closed my eyes, and tried to
relax while thinking of a possible escape plan.