“We’ll only use that on the real enemy.”
“Aw. I was kind of having fun.”
Matt was surprised to see that she felt comfortable with the gun at all. Most people who’d never fired or held a gun treated it like a rattler that was about to bite them. Even though Jill was comfortable, Matt noticed she always kept the barrel pointed at the ground when carrying it. There was a saying that as long as you realized there was no such thing as an unloaded gun, you’d never have an accident. He was glad to see her treating it with respect.
“You look pretty comfortable with that,” Matt said. “I’m surprised.”
“Now why’d you say that? Is it because she’s a woman?” Harry said.
“No. I’ve been opposed to guns all my life,” Jill replied. “My father was killed by one in a robbery. But in this case I almost feel safer with it. In a weird way it’s comforting.”
She looked down at her feet, and Matt wondered if she wasn’t feeling a little ashamed, like she had betrayed herself by changing her stance on guns. He didn’t want her to feel that way, because this wasn’t an everyday situation. Creatures out of a horror movie were most likely coming for them, and if they couldn’t fend them off, they were all going to die in unpleasant ways. The guns were a necessity.
He sidled up to her and slipped his arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze.
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Let me show you the tunnel,” Harry said.
Donna stood watch at the front of the cabin, the M-16 resting in the crook of her arm, the barrel hanging and pointing at the ground.
“Anything new?” Matt said.
“Nada.”
She stood like an eagle looking to snare a rabbit, her eyes focused, watching every shadow in the forest. He was glad to have her on their side.
Inside the cabin, Harry pulled the oval, rainbow-colored throw rug to the side, balling it up at the foot of the bed. Underneath was a four-by-four wooden trapdoor with an iron handle.
Harry slipped his fingers under the ring, lifted it and pulled the trapdoor open.
The smell of damp earth rose from the hole.
Harry started down a small ladder.
Matt peered over the edge of the hole to see Harry shining the light on his face, the way kids did when telling ghost stories. He almost expected Harry to yell, “Boo!”
“Call Donna in here too.”
“She should stay on guard,” Matt said.
“Follow me, then,” Harry said.
They followed Harry down the ladder into the cool, moist earth. The chamber at the bottom of the ladder allowed them to stand at full height, but they had to duck under the concrete that jutted out from the tunnel’s ceiling.
The three of them hunched over, following Harry down the concrete tunnel. As they progressed, Harry’s heavy breathing echoed in the tunnel.
They came to a set of double steel doors painted olive green.
“Stand back. I haven’t opened her in a while.”
Tucking the flashlight under his chin, he gripped the handle and pulled as hard as he could. Even in the dim light, Matt could see a vein bulging in Harry’s temple. He hoped Harry didn’t put too much pressure on the old plumbing and blow a gasket. That would be all they needed.
“Harry, how about I give you a hand?” Matt asked.
“No way. Almost got it.”
He grunted and groaned the way a power lifter doing a clean and jerk might.
“Harry, let me ...”
The doors gave with a loud scrape, and Harry nearly tumbled backward before regaining his balance.
Harry disappeared into the doorway, his short, squat frame and their surroundings making Matt think of Bilbo Baggins padding around Bag End.
There was a click and bluish fluorescent lighting came on inside the shelter.
The three of them stepped through the opening and into Harry’s very own Little Big Horn, where he most likely planned to make his last stand against something.
The concrete walls in the shelter were painted a blinding yellow, made even more dazzling by the fluorescent lights reflecting off of them. When Matt commented to Harry on the color of the room, he responded by saying, “Studies show that bright colors improve mood. If I’m gonna be stuck down here with a bunch of guns and ammo, I sure as shit don’t wanna start feeling depressed.”
There was a bunk bed against one wall made up with brown surplus army blankets. The wall opposite the bunk was stacked with supplies including gallon jugs of water; canned vegetable and tomato soups, pineapple chunks and Dinty Moore beef stew; and brown plastic packages that Matt recognized as Meals Ready to Eat.
There was also a boxy white first-aid kit with a green cross on it, stacks of batteries, flashlights, Blue Tip matches and a black boom box.
Harry patted the wall. “Yep, she’s built pretty solid. I figure two people could survive down here for about two years before the food ran out.”
“What about using the john?” Matt asked.
“Over here.”
He motioned with his hand and they followed him into a smaller chamber that Matt hadn’t noticed, for he’d been too occupied looking at the supplies.
Six concrete steps led up to the steel doors that Harry had shown them from the outside. To one side of the steps was a toilet that had a retractable flowered curtain on a track, much like privacy sheets in a hospital room.
“I’ve got septic tanks down underneath here. You wouldn’t believe what that cost me, but it was worth it.”
“Why didn’t you have them install running water and a sink then?” Jill said.
“Don’t trust that outside water to drink. If there’s a biological or nuclear war, the drinking water’s gonna be shit.”
Matt couldn’t imagine living down here for two years, or even two hours. He felt as if the walls were going to push in toward him, getting closer and closer until they pinned him, crushing his bones and choking off his breath. Jill didn’t seem to mind the place, but he could feel himself start to sweat.
Once when he was four, he was playing underneath the rickety old porch outside his house’s back door. It was propped up on concrete blocks that passed as supports, like crutches holding up a three-hundred-pound man. He had tempted fate on a winter afternoon, digging a tunnel through the snow and burrowing under the porch.
When he was halfway under the porch, the tunnel collapsed around him, the snow pinning him facedown against the ground. Wet, slushy snow filled his mouth and nose, and his limbs were pinned. He remembered feeling paralyzed.
Immediately he began to scream until it got too hard because the weight of the snow was constricting his chest. His guardian angel was working overtime that day, because their neighbor, Mr. Fitzsimmons, happened to be taking his golden retriever, Shotzie, out to do his business. He heard Matt’s faint screams and dug him out.
The bomb shelter felt the same way. He hoped they wouldn’t have to come through here at all; it could very well be a tomb.
Harry worked himself into the corner near the steps and felt around for something. He pulled an L-shaped bar from two rungs on the wall.
There was a four-by-four-inch cutout in the concrete where a hex-shaped green metal socket stuck out. Harry stuck the L-shaped end of the bar in there and Matt realized that it was a crank to open the doors.
“Just crank her and the doors will start to open.”
Harry turned the crank for a moment to demonstrate, and the doors didn’t seem to budge at all.
“It takes a while to get them open, but it works,” he said.
The doors began to open, making a sound like someone punching a cookie sheet. Sunlight speared through the cracks.
Matt started back down the tunnel, unable to stay in the chamber any longer.
C
HAPTER
26
Twigs snapped; Clarence swung around the tree to take another look with the field glasses.
At first he thought his eyes were fooling him. The earth rose as if something big and buried were trying to force itself out of the ground. The dirt fell away from the rising object, and its brown skin fell away to reveal flat, gray metal.
They were doors to a cellar!
He took a good look at the doors, then looked back to the cabin and guessed the distance to be about sixty yards.
This would be useful information to give to Rafferty. Hell, he might even promote Clarence for this.
He didn’t want to chance being spotted, so he hurried down the hill, ducking low to avoid detection.
Matt returned to the table after calling his aunt and telling her he and Jill decided to go on an impromptu camping trip and wouldn’t be around for a few days. He ended the conversation by telling her that he loved her, and to keep her doors locked and stay inside if she heard any strange noises. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, but not to worry because she was going to visit her friend Ethel in Pittsburgh for a week. He breathed a sigh of relief when she told him that. It was a huge load off his mind knowing his aunt would be safe.
Harry sat with his fingers locked behind his head, leaning back, his gut swollen with a Big Mac and fries. Matt had run into town and picked them up a meal at the local McDonald’s. Donna looked ahead, eyes focused somewhere faraway.
Harry said, “Feels like I’m back in ’Nam. I mean the getting ready for a fight part.”
“What’s it like? Being in a war?” Donna said.
“A lot of boredom and waiting broken up by fear and extreme violence.”
Matt nodded in agreement. Desert Storm had been no Vietnam, but it was no tea party either. “Where were you stationed?”
“Khe Sahn.”
“Wow,” Matt said.
“Those gooks shelled the shit out of us. They had their big guns up in the Co Rock Mountains in Laos. Our artillery couldn’t touch ’em. My ears ring pretty much all the time now. From all the blasts.”
Donna focused in on the conversation and said, “That must’ve been a little taste of hell.”
“You bet. Like I said before, if I didn’t die over there, I’m not gonna die here. Let me tell you something. Me and two of my buddies were huddled up behind some sandbags. Well, don’t old Charlie start raining shells down on us. They come whistling in and I don’t know how I knew, but I knew we were gonna take a direct hit.”
His eyes glazed over, and Matt was worried that he might have a flashback.
“I got up and told the guys to run. I hauled it out of there and sure enough the shell hit just as I ate dirt. I got some shrapnel in my keister. They found my buddies’ body parts twenty yards away. I got to go home not too long after that,” he said. “We left some good guys over there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Harry,” Matt said, realizing how lame and inadequate it might sound.
“Don’t be. You probably weren’t even born when that happened.”
Harry picked up one of the paper McDonald’s bags and crumpled it in his hands. “It’s a hell of a thing to lose people that quick.”
“You ain’t kidding. Not a day goes by I don’t think about my Dominic,” said Donna.
“Dominic?” Harry said.
“My husband. Lost him to a brain tumor.”
Matt and Harry expressed their sympathies.
For the first time Matt realized that all four of them had lost people close to them. Maybe that was the common bond that brought them together, making them stick the whole thing out and not run away.
Donna said, “I miss him. And I feel like I owe him for letting him die. Maybe I can redeem myself.”
“It wasn’t your fault. How can anyone stop a brain tumor?” Matt said.
“I still feel like I let him down. My sister-in-law too. I couldn’t prove who killed her.”
Harry said, “I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel like if I could’ve moved faster and warned those guys, they would be alive. But you can’t torture yourself over it.”
“I know I shouldn’t.”
They sat in silence for a moment until Harry said, “Well aren’t we a bunch of jolly assholes.”
Matt broke into laughter, at first snorting through his nose, trying to contain it and then starting to laugh so hard his belly hurt. Soon Donna and Harry joined him, Donna with tears streaming down her face, Harry’s face pink and glowing with sweat. Maybe it was the combination of the words “jolly assholes” that had struck him so funny, or maybe they just needed a good laugh to break the tension and somber mood. Whatever it was, it had broken him up. “I’m gonna check on our perimeter guard,” he said, wiping tears from his cheeks.
Matt got up and went outside, muttering “Jolly assholes, that’s too much.”
The shadows grew longer.
The sun began its descent beneath the horizon, turning the sky shades of pink and lavender.
Matt stood in front of the cabin, an M-16 slung over his shoulder, waiting for Jill to round the cabin. It was her turn for guard duty, with Matt’s coming next, but he wondered if after dark they shouldn’t put two people on and have two sleeping inside the cabin. They had agreed to walk a perimeter around the cabin and scan the woods for any signs of trouble. If they suspected an attack was coming, they would fire a flare gun over the area where they had heard noise, lighting it up so they could see what was coming.
The spotlights mounted under the eaves flipped on, illuminating the yard in cones of mustard-yellow light.
Jill approached from the left, her head turned, looking to the woods for any signs of movement, listening for branches cracking or footsteps.
An M-16 hung on her shoulder, and her fingers drummed a steady beat on the strap. She also wore a beat-up army backpack that held six extra magazines, a flare gun and extra grenades. Matt joked with her before she went on duty that she’d better not trip or she’d be a one-woman Fourth of July spectacle. She had responded with half a peace sign.
She approached him and stopped.
“Anything yet?” he said.
“Nothing. A couple of snaps and cracks, but it turned out to be ’coons.”
“You okay with the weapons? All set on what to do with them?”
“Yes, Sarge.”
“Just checking.”
The crickets began to play their song, chirping in the woods.
He moved closer to her. “We’re gonna get through this. And we’re going to stop them.”
A branch snapped, and a brown rabbit darted out of the bush, stopped to observe them and scampered under a fallen log.
“Can I distract you from your guard duty for a kiss?” he said.
“Certainly.”
He kissed her long and warm on the mouth, as if it were their last.
“Back to duty, soldier,” Jill said. “I don’t know if I can concentrate after that.” She peered into the woods. “I can’t see very far into the woods. We might not know they’re out there until they’re on top of us.”
She was right. With light fading, you could see a couple hundred yards into the woods, and when darkness fell, that would be reduced even more. The creatures could cover ground quickly, and fifty or so yards wouldn’t leave much time. They needed to think of something, and quick.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“Last-minute plans.”
He rushed into the cabin. He tore through the door so fast that he caught his foot on the step, stumbling in and grabbing the table, stopping himself from going ass over tin cup.
Harry and Donna stood at the sink, Harry putting the bags and wrappers in the garbage can, Donna rinsing dishes. They looked at him, both suppressing laughter at his less than graceful entrance.
“I’ve got a few ideas, but we’re going to have to hustle to get them done.”
“What’ve you got?” Harry said.
“We might not have enough warning before we see them coming. They can move damn fast,” Matt said.
Harry scratched at his scalp, as if trying to stimulate his brain by massaging it through the skull. “That’s a good point. They could be almost all the way up the hill before we know it.”
“Well, they have to come from the road—at least start from there, right?” Donna said.
“Yeah. There’s really no other way. The other side of the woods, the side behind the cabin, ends at Old Mill Road, fifteen miles away in Newsome.”
“What if we put a sentry down by the road? With one of the flare guns,” Donna said.
“Who’s crazy enough to do that?” Harry said.
Donna said, “You’re looking at her.”
“If they come, you’d be caught out there,” Matt said.
“I agree,” said Harry, still holding a McDonald’s bag in one hand.
“Not really. You’re both forgetting we have three vehicles. I can take my truck to the bottom of the hill. Put someone on guard duty up here. When I see them, I’ll fire a flare and haul ass in the truck.”
Matt looked at Harry, whose face was screwed into a look of concentration. Matt was developing a tremendous amount of respect for Donna; there was steel at her core, as if her will had been forged in a furnace.
“Let me go with you,” Harry said.
“Don’t patronize me. Just give me some weapons and let me get down there.”
Harry exhaled out his nose. “All right. But the first sign of trouble, get your ass back up here.”
“Yeah, the first sign,” Matt added. He didn’t want to say too much more to Donna, because number one, he didn’t need to (she could handle herself), and number two, he suspected she might sock him one if she thought he was being a patronizing jerk.
“An escape route. A better escape route!” Harry said.
“Where?” Matt said.
“The logging road that cuts through the woods and eventually ends on Sixteen. Not many people know about it. Goes for about five miles. What do you say we park one of the vehicles out back near the bomb shelter? If we need to run, we can drive down the trail until we hit the logging road.”
That was actually a pretty good idea, giving them a retreat option. Matt liked it a hell of a lot better than the idea of being holed up in a bunker not much bigger than a walk-in closet.
“We’ll use my truck for the escape vehicle. It’ll handle the hills better than a car. Plus it’s got an extended cab, so we all can fit,” Matt said.
“Then let’s get moving. Before our company arrives,” Donna said.
Donna’s visibility ended five feet from the front of the truck. Fog rolled into the woods. It swirled in loops and rose and fell like a sheet in the wind, taking on a life of its own. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees. Maybe the cold was a precursor of the attack.
You’re being ridiculous
, she thought.
The fog ruined her line of sight, so her ears were her only means of detection.
Driving the truck down the hill had been no problem, for the fog had set in after she had parked. For the first hour or so, it was clear and visibility was good, but then, almost as a bad omen, the fog had come.
She had backed the Ford into a small clearing and angled it toward the cabin to allow for a fast escape. Her arsenal included a Defender shotgun, four Molotov cocktails, her Colt and the flare gun. She had the Colt in a holster, the Defender across her lap, and the cocktails and flare gun resting next to her on the seat. A lighter stuffed into her shirt pocket completed her armaments.
The gasoline smell was giving her a headache, so she cracked the window. The open window made hearing them easier, although for some reason she felt safer with the window closed. That was ludicrous, really, because she had seen one of those things in action, and she knew it could tear through glass like paper. Still, she felt more secure, as many people did in their cars. That’s why ninety-year-old ladies felt safe flipping the bird to two-hundred-pound truckers. The automobile provided false security, like a womb.
Another hour passed with no noises other than cars whizzing past on Route 16. The only thing she had seen were headlights flashing by.
Looking at her watch, she saw it was ten twenty-eight.
The fog had stopped swirling and settled in like a white blanket over the woods.
Her tongue felt like a piece of sandpaper, and when she pressed her lips together, they almost stuck from dryness. She licked her lips to moisten them.
Another half an hour passed before she heard them.
Dull thuds came up the hill, quick, scampering movements. Feet were hitting the ground fast.