Stranger

Thirty-eight

Michaela sat up in bed when I switched on the light. She looked uneasy. “They’re going to be sore if we start snooping ’round those bunker rooms.”

“You really think they’re going to throw us out to the hornets?”

“I wouldn’t like to chance it.”

“They’ll never know. They’ll all be asleep at this time of night.”

“OK. Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

I backed out through the doorway of her bedroom and waited in the corridor as she slipped on the green sweatshirt and pants. The time was creeping up to two in the morning. I’d waited until I guessed the bunker crews in the main part of the installation were asleep, and I was wagering that the sealed rooms in our annex weren’t wired to an alarm. I know there really wasn’t a good, logical reason to poke ’round in places that were off limits. But I still had a sneaking suspicion something wasn’t right. I remembered how Phoenix had put us through the degrading decontamination procedure while no doubt ogling himself rigid (and, yeah, I had a gut feeling that Phoenix was a HE, not a SHE). We knew, also, that he spied on us and eavesdropped on our conversations.

“You got the numbers?” Michaela asked as she stepped into the corridor.

“Right here.” I touched my pocket.

“You know, if sirens start screaming because we’ve tripped some alarm we’re going to be in the crap waist deep.”

“Don’t worry.”

“These military types don’t like people disobeying orders.”

“Phoenix said he was on the civilian side of things.”

“But there are army personnel here.”

“I’ll tell them I was sleepwalking.”

“Yeah, right, and you just happened to dream access code numbers to locked doors.”

“There’s probably nothing behind them anyway.”

“Then why bother risking our necks to poke in some storerooms full of pails and brooms?”

“Phoenix isn’t telling us everything.”

“And what makes you think he’s not listening to us right now? There could be bugs hidden in the walls.”

“There might,” I agreed. “But the guy’s got to sleep sometime.”

She sighed. “Let’s get this over with then.”

We walked along the corridor, past the stairway that led up to the living room level, through the double doors and into the bleak-looking concrete passageway beyond with the sealed doors that had a brooding quality about them. It was colder here, too. Michaela shivered, gooseflesh raising her arms into bumps. She folded her arms.

“No, Greg. Whichever way you look at this I don’t like it.” Her shoulders gave another shiver. “These doors are locked for a reason.”

I pulled the sheet of paper that contained the porn doodle of Dr. Roestller and the columns of numbers from my pocket. “See this?” I said, and read out the four-digit number. “Seven-six-o-eight. The letters by this one are SB.” I nodded at the door labeled SICK BAY. “I guess this one matches with that number.”

Michaela’s unease grew. “You’re not looking in there, are you? All you’ll find are Band-Aids and bed-pans.”

Glancing down at the list of numbers, I matched doors to code numbers. Beside each steel door was an illuminated keypad, inviting me to tap a number and- open sesame!-I’m in. “One of the doors doesn’t have a keypad.” I nodded toward a set of twin steel doors. I read the word stenciled there. “ Comm-Route. What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know, Greg. Come to that, I don’t really care. Listen.” She touched my arm. “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

“You think I’m being goddam nosy?”

“Yes. Phoenix has invited us to bring the rest of our people here. Don’t louse it up for Zak and the others.”

“But there’s something he’s not telling us.”

“Such as?”

“Didn’t you think that sudden invitation to Phoenix’s house party seemed convenient?”

“You saw what I did on TV. The military have launched an offensive against the hornets.”

“I know. I’m as pleased as the next man.”

“But?”

“I don’t know, Michaela. I just don’t know…” I murmured the words as I ran my hands over the twin doors marked COMM-ROUTE. These were more solid than the doors to the sick bay and boardroom. What’s more, a lip of steel ran ’round the doorway to seal them tight. They made me think of bulkhead doors in a submarine. I ran my fingers ’round the edge of the doorway. “Rubber seals,” I said. “It’s meant to be air-tight. But look at this at the bottom.” I crumbled a piece of rubber between my finger and thumb. “It’s rotted.”

Meanwhile Michaela looked ’round, as if she expected a voice to boom out, ordering us to return to our rooms.

“Hell,” I said, “this stuff is coming away by the yard.” A length of rubber looking like black spaghetti came away in my hand.

“Greg, leave it, please. They’ll go ape if they think you’re wrecking the place.”

“It’s rotted to crud.”

“Greg, I’m going back to my room. You do the same… please.”

“Michaela-”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to find, apart from a whole heap of trouble. But we’ve got a chance to bring our people into a place of safety. Don’t you understand what that means? They can eat and sleep and take it easy just like we have. Listen, Greg, Phoenix is giving us a chance to live normal lives again. We can’t just… Greg, what’s wrong?”

I squatted by the door. Another strip of rubber seal came away. Wet and cold. Condensation had been working on the rubber for years. The rubber lay limp as a dead snake in my hand. The moment it fell from between the door and the steel frame I felt a jet of air play against my lips and nose. Cold as ice, it carried the smell of damp, confined spaces. When you lever back the slab of a tomb it must feel and smell like this. Faint toadstool odors. Moss. Damp. Decay. Chilled air that sends a shiver down your spine and fills your head with images of shriveled eyes and long-dead bones.

“Greg? You don’t look well.” She sounded anxious. “What’s wrong?”

The jet of air struck my face… something liquid about it.. . a sense of poisons floating there…

“Greg, are you-Greg, don’t!”

I slammed against the door. My fist punched at the steel. I punched again. My skin ripped across the knuckle, sending blood streaming across gray paint-work, smearing COMM-ROUTE.

I snarled through gritted teeth, “They’re in there… they’re in there!”

“Hornets?”

I nodded, my muscles snapping so tight in my stomach and back that I wanted to roar with pain. “Comm-Route… it means Communicating Route, doesn’t it?” I pushed myself back from the door to stop myself trying to tear it down with my bare hands. “That’s the tunnel link between this annex and the main bunker.”

“Easy, Greg…”

I clenched my fists as my stomach muscles spasmed like they were trying to rip out through my skin. “They’re in there. They’re inside. ..”

“That can’t be right. We’ve talked to Phoenix. We’ve seen the bunker crew. This place is secure; it’s like a fortress; hornets can’t be-”

I backed away from the door, shaking my head, perspiration running down my face, my heart pounding. “They’re here…” My voice came in a rasp. “They’re here… I don’t know how… but they’re here. ..”

Her eyes were frightened, huge-looking. “Greg, come away from the doors… no, right away.” She pulled me back. “Let me see your hand; you’ve cut it.”

“No. I’m going to find out what’s happening here.”

I yanked the sheet of paper from my pocket. Scanning it, I compared the words on the doors to the numbers I’d copied down. “Sick Bay. Boardroom… they don’t seem important. What’s this one?” I looked at a steel door. “Quartermaster store. There should be fire-arms in there.”

“I’ll feel more confident with a gun in my hand.”

Michaela suddenly became businesslike. “Tell me the code.”

“Four-seven-nine-nine.”

“Got it.” She tapped the number into the keypad. The electronic lock buzzed, then clicked. Michaela pushed the door. It opened easily. A light flickered on inside. “Oh, hell.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Empty. Someone cleaned it out.”

I glanced into the storeroom. Bare shelves. Empty racks that must have once held rifles. “There were guns here,” I said. “But Phoenix’s people didn’t want guests helping themselves. Try the next one.” To do this I had to pass the big double doors with my blood smeared across COMM-ROUTE. Instantly the Twitch came back to me. God, yes, those sons of bitches were in there. But how did you get through those twin doors? No keypad, so no electronic lock. No handles. It must be locked from the other side.

“Greg… Greg? Are you sure you want to do this?”

I looked at Michaela, my stomach muscles jumping.

“Greg, you don’t look well.”

You look crazy. That’s what she wanted to say. I knew my nostrils were flared. I was panting. My eyes would be blazing like the fires of hell. But then, this was a bad one. I could believe there were a thousand hornets lined up there, waiting to burst in and pound us to bloody hamburger meat.

I took a deep breath to try to steady my racing heart, but, hell, nothing would stop the muscles in my stomach writhing like a bunch of snakes. “There’s nothing written against the next numbers,” I said. Jesus, I felt surprised at how calm I sounded. “Try all of them.”

“OK. First one.”

“Six-seven-three-one.”

She tapped the number into the keypad beside the door marked BACKUP OPS. She waited for a moment. No buzz. No click.

“Next,” she said.

“Four-four-one-one.”

She punched in the code. Nothing.

“OK. Next.”

“Eight-seven-three-o.”

Buzz. Click.

“Bull’s-eye, we’re in.” She pushed open the door. Inside, the room had the feel of a dark cavern.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I don’t know if we’ve got company in here.” I leaned in, feeling the inside wall for a light switch. My fingers located a plastic pad. I pushed it. Instantly, fluorescence came with a fluttering brilliance. “Looks as if we’ve struck the jackpot.”

Michaela stepped in, her eyes wide with awe. “Just look at this place. Look at all the equipment! It’s like a TV newsroom.”

Good description. The room was maybe thirty-by-forty feet. In two rows, one behind the other, were workstations complete with keyboards and monitors, while filling just about the entire end wall was a vast booster screen. At the side of it were a bank of electronic clocks.

I glanced at my watch. “They’re showing the time coast to coast.”

“This must be the backup command center in case the one in the main bunker gets knocked out.”

“If this is a duplicate of what’s in the main building, then we could do all the stuff that Phoenix does, accessing other bunkers.”

“I guess.” Now thoughtful, she ran her fingers along the desktop, drawing furrows in the dust. “If we knew how to work it.”

“Try.”

“Greg? I don’t know where to begin.”

“You had a computer at home, didn’t you? You used one at college?”

“Sure, but-”

“Then the principle must be the same.” I pressed a button on one of the computer terminals. Nothing happened. “Huh. Maybe there’s some central control you need to switch on first. A circuit breaker or-”

“Greg.” I felt her hand on my arm. “Look at the big screen. Something’s happening.”

The booster screen that filled the wall had developed a snowstorm. A second later that flickered out, to be replaced by a color bar test pattern with the words HIT ANY KEY through the center. Michaela reached forward, her slender finger running beneath the computer monitor. She rotated a control beneath it and the screen brightened, to reveal a screen identical to the one plastered across the wall.

“Hit any key,” I said. “Here goes.” I tapped a key at random on the keyboard.

“Better make it fast,” Michaela said. “Somewhere I’m sure the alarm bells are ringing.”

“OK, five minutes, then we’re out of here. What now?”

“Wait, it looks to be booting up.”

“Here.” I pulled up a swivel chair. “You’re going to be better at this than me.”

She shot me a grim smile. “Thanks for your confidence… uh, that doesn’t look good.”

I read the words on the screen. “ ‘Enter password.’ ”

“Any ideas?”

“Is there a way to bypass it?”

“Sure there is, only I haven’t a clue how to begin.” She looked at the now bloodstained paper in my hand where my wound had leaked onto it. “Anything on there?”

I scanned the note. Straightaway my eyes went to the meaningless phrase that had been heavily underscored beside the word: MEMORIZE! I murmured, “Thank the Lord for our forgetful friend. Type in maple eagle green.”

She did so, slender fingers racing across the keys. God, she was good.

But: “ ‘Incorrect password.’ Try again?” She sighed. “It looks like a dead end. We should get out of here before-”

“No… it’s me. I’m a blockhead. I didn’t give it to you properly. In lower case type maple dash eagle dash green.”

“OK. Enter.” She pressed the key. We both stared at the screen, as if waiting for marvelous things. What came next might not have been marvelous, but it was something. The huge booster screen suddenly filled with lists of words.

“We’ve got menus,” she said. “What they mean, God knows.”

I scanned them, reading at random. “Inventory. Fuel stock. Quartermaster regime. Comms mail. Comms voice. Comms vid. Archive. Personnel Register. Personnel Directory.” I shook my head. “It’s not looking very helpful, is it?”

“Not a great deal. The computer’s inviting us to choose whether we want to e-mail people or communicate by voice or, I guess, by video conferencing system. Yup, look up on the wall.”

I followed her line of vision. Bolted to the wall was a closed circuit TV camera.

“Let’s hope they’re not watching us now.” I searched the menu list on the screen again. “Try this.” I pointed at a box. “The one marked Installation Directory.”

Using the arrow keys she brought the cursor down to the box then hit ENTER.

“We might have something,” I said as the screen changed. “See this column of letters ALA, ARK and so on right down to WYNG?”

“Abbreviations of state names?”

“They appeared at the bottom of the screen when Phoenix was showing us what was going down at those other bunkers.”

“You want to see more?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“Which one?”

“Try TXS. Phoenix showed us the Texas bunker launching an attack on the hornets.”

“OK.” She selected TXS. “You’ve got a choice of around fifteen.”

“Each TXS letter code is followed by a number code. It must represent different bunkers in Texas. I can’t remember the number code.”

“I’m pretty sure it was TX-o-three.”

“OK, go for it.”

“Computers.” She hissed the word in frustration. “It’s giving me a whole list of camera locations. Interior and exterior.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “We can’t have much time left. Take pot luck.”

She brought the cursor down at random before clicking on one marked 11. INT. The screen had an appetite for frustration. It flashed up another menu of options. Select: Night Scope. Daylight. Sound On/Off. She didn’t select any; she merely rapped ENTER with her thumb.

I looked up at the booster screen. The identification popped up in white print along the bottom, but otherwise the screen was dark.

“It’s bust,” I snapped. “

It’s also dark. We might be seeing the canteen or some warehouse in darkness.”

“Or a bedroom. Hear that?”

“I hear something. It sounds odd.”

“Someone breathing?”

“Could be.”

“I’ll try another.”

“Go for another interior camera. It’ll still be nighttime in Texas.”

She returned to the camera menu and plucked out 01. INT. “Might as well go for numero uno,” she said. She grunted. “Oh, no… that doesn’t look right.”

The image was black and white. “It’s in nightscope mode,” I said. “But I don’t understand what we’re seeing. Have we got the same bunker as we saw yesterday?”

“According to the reference it’s the same. But look at that… oh, crap… oh fucking, fucking crap…”

She sighed. I heard disappointment as much as anything in the sound. Thing is, when I looked up at that massive screen I felt it, too. There, from wall to wall, was an image that could have been subtitled Abandon Hope. We were looking at what could have been some garage in the bunker. The nightscope showed everything either in inky blacks or blazing fluorescent whites. In the center of the bay sat a tank; beyond that were two massive steel doors. They lay part open. Spilling in through the opening came desert sand. It had flowed across the garage floor to bury the tank’s tracks. Tumbleweeds had rolled in. Bleakest of all were the number of bodies-or what were left of bodies. Skeletons, some with dried husks of faces attached to skulls, lay all over the place. Some were partially covered by sand. A corpse mummified by the dry air sat in the tank’s turret.

“Wait, do you see that?” Her voice was a hiss. “Something’s moving.”

Through the doorway glided twin points of light, like two little stars that moved together across the garage floor. For a second I stared at the two lights, trying to figure out what I was seeing. Then it moved away from the camera.

“A rat,” she said. We’d been seeing the meager light reflected from its eyes, which had been amplified into twin burning points by the nightscope lens.

“I have a feeling I know what we’re going to see, but try the other cameras, Michaela.”

“Yeah, what you see might be of a disturbing nature… to use the old TV phrase. So, ladies and gentlemen, look away now if you’re of a nervous disposition.” Quickly she worked through the camera menu. This time she knew what to do and activated the nightscope lens on each camera. The first camera we tried when we heard the rasping sound revealed a coyote asleep in the corner of a room that could have been a clone of this one, complete with TV screens. Other cameras revealed rooms that had been trashed out of all recognition. Mummified corpses lay in army uniforms all over the damn place.

Michaela spoke with a flat voice. “Something went wrong during the attack. The hornets overran them in the end.”

I shook my head. “This makes no sense. Phoenix showed us live images of the attack yesterday. This bunker was overrun weeks, if not months ago.”

“He lied to us. He showed us archive footage. See the archive icon there?” She tapped the screen. “If we were to access that I’d wager we’d find what Phoenix claimed happened yesterday.”

“But why? Why go to all that trouble to deceive us?”

“Maybe he wanted to give us hope. That everything wasn’t as bleak as it seemed.”

“Jesus, I think he’s just made everything seem a good deal worse. Try the other bunker installations. The one in Wyoming.”

“Do you remember the identification code for the bunker?”

I shook my head, sighing. “I don’t think it matters now, do you?”

Face grim, she worked through the bunker codes. Within ten minutes we must have looked at a good dozen or so. All showed the same thing. Every bunker had been overrun at some point. Bunker teams lay dead in kitchens, in bathrooms, in lounges, at workstations. Total devastation. Absolute annihilation. Even the one on the Hawaiian island lay with its doors gaping open; skeletons picked clean by seagulls gleamed in the sun.

“So there you go,” I whispered. “Not one left intact. So much for Phoenix telling us that the government was still in control.” I nodded at the screen, which carried the words BUNKER COMMAND ONE with a room that duplicated the Oval Office in the White House. Smoke stained the walls. Rats gnawed at a figure wearing a business suit that sat in a slumping position beneath a portrait of George Washington. “I doubt if you’ll find as much as a single senator or army general still alive.”

Michaela shook her head. “But we’re able to access the cameras by remote control, so who’s maintaining the bunkers?”

“My guess is they have automatic self-maintenance systems. Computers will run what’s left of them for months before the generators’ fuel runs out.”

Michaela’s eyes glistened as she stared at the screen. “So it really is over. All of it.”

I put my arm ’round her shoulders. “We’re still hanging in there, buddy. There’s Zak and Tony and the rest. There’s bound to be more like us out there.”

“But for how long… those hornets… they’re like a disease we can’t cure. They’re going to kill us all one day. Every last one.”

“No, they won’t, Michaela. We’re going to make it, just you wait and see.”

“For what purpose?” Tears bulged over the rim of skin beneath her eyes, then trickled in glistening balls down her cheek. “For what purpose, Greg? Answer me that. To live in rags, drinking ditch water. Slowly starving to death. Getting so old and so tired that you can’t run from the monsters anymore. So you sit down in the dirt and wait to die.”

“Listen, you’re going to live. And you’re going to do it in style.”

“What the hell for?”

I crouched down beside her and stroked her face lightly with my fingertips. “Who else is going to have my babies?”

The sound that came out like a hiccup from her lips was a cross between a sob and a laugh. “Idiot, Greg. Babies? If I thought you could spirit us away to a tropical island I might take you up on it.”

Then she did start to sob. She put her arms ’round my neck and drew herself in tight against me. The sobs shuddered through her thin shoulders. I felt her tears wet my throat. It was like a dam had given way, releasing months of pent-up grief in a tidal wave of weeping that paralyzed her. I felt her body sag against mine as the convulsions of emotion ran through it. I stroked her hair and whispered over and over that I’d do every-thing I could to make it right for her. That I wouldn’t let her come to any harm. Just when I thought she’d never stop weeping, she did stop. That iron will of hers that had carried her through the madness and murder reasserted itself. She caught the sobs in mid-flow and stopped it just like you or I would switch off a TV.

“I’m sorry, Greg. I shouldn’t have let myself go like that.”

“You had every reason to. You can’t carry that kind of grief; it’ll eat into you like-”

“No. I’m OK now.” She loosened herself from my arms to turn back to the keyboard.

“Michaela, leave it now. We’ve seen everything we need to.”

She spoke crisply. “No, we haven’t. There’s one bunker installation we haven’t looked inside.” The cursor sped down the screen. “This one.”