B. E. V. (6 page)

"No toast?" I asked.

"Am I your mother?" she replied.

I shrugged, dug into the eggs, and picked up Pop's note:

 

"Hunter – Do your chores, double check our defenses – AND STAY INSIDE THE PERIMETER!!! If you see strangers, or get scared, use the safe room. I'll leave you messages and let you know what is happening as I find out.

Love, Dad"

 

I swallowed my eggs. "Sounds plain enough. Did you read this?"

"Of course, it's been sitting there all morning, what do you expect?" Kat picked up a piece of bacon and munched on it. "No lab today?"

"Don't think it would be a good idea," I replied. "If Pop or your dad return and we're not here, we'll have more to worry about than invading scavengers."

After we finished eating, I checked my mail for messages. Pop left me nothing yet. While Kat was cleaning up the kitchen mess, I went outside and did my chores. I wasn't bringing the cows out to the pasture so I threw them a couple of bales of hay instead. When I finished everything outside, I made a quick check of the fences to make sure we hadn't popped a circuit breaker during the night.

"Message from your dad," Kat said as I walked in, new worry in her voice as she hurried to the machine and gestured to the screen.

The computer in the living room was on, words shining on the screen. It read, "Council is dispatching a party to negotiate – we will try to buy Morgan off. STAY PUT! Love Pop."

"I wonder what he means by 'we'?" I said, straightening up, as worried as Kat. "You don't suppose him and your dad are going with the party, do you?"

Kat bit her lower lip and touched the message. "I hope not. What do you think he means by 'buy them off'?"

"Dunno. Maybe food, clothes, drugs?" I speculated.

Kat raised her eyes to me and said, "They could throw in Hank and Sonja, too, for good measure."

"We wouldn't be so lucky."

We spent the rest of the day anxiously waiting, alternating between wandering from the front porch to the computer and back, not talking much. Lunch was peanut butter and strawberry jam, which we ate without tasting. About noon, I received another short message from Pop: "We may have a deal" and then nothing more.

We waited.

At one point, Kat burst out, "If they have a deal, why aren't they back?" She was still making regular trips to the front porch, scanning the road into town for signs of life. I had given up searching and sat at the computer desk, staring at the blank screen. As it grew dark, I heard her gasp, "Hunter, quick! Come out here – you have to see this!"

I sprang to my feet and hustled out to her. "Pop? Your dad?"

"No." She was leaning against the railing and pointing with a shaky finger toward town. In the clear night sky, a lighter glow, the glow of fires shone.

"It burns."

Kat seized my arm and buried her face in my shoulder. Rumbles of explosions, and the chatter of heavy fire, drifted faintly from the direction of the town. I couldn't imagine the horror which was happening right now in Paradise Cove.

We huddled together the rest of the night on the front porch swing, watching the flames lower and rise until the early morning, when black smoke replaced the firelight and drifted into the sky. I kept searching and hoping I'd see Pop, his old truck rattling up the road and him telling me everything was all right. It was a mistake, a fire out of control. But as the hours passed, and the sun sank lower in the sky, I still saw no sign of him.

Smaller columns of smoke rose from all over the valley now, Black Morgan's scavengers attacking the farmhouses. Pop had been wrong, the colonel was taking everything down and carting away whatever he could.

Towards dusk, a column of soldiers, trailed by armored vehicles, crawled up the road to our home. I watched the men approach, frozen. Why come here? Then I realized we were next on their list of homesteads to raid and snatched Kat by the hand. "Better hurry, it's time to hide," I said more calmly than I felt.

She glanced wildly around the porch. "Where?"

"Our safe room, I'll show you. Wait here a minute."

I hurried back to the fence to check I'd activated our landmines, even though I knew they were, paused to think about what else I might have forgotten, and hobbled back to the porch steps, dragging Kat inside the house. "Here." I pointed to the floor in front of the fireplace.

Pop had decorated the boarder of the grate with flagstones meant to save the rug from burning embers. Along the edge of one stone, on the right-hand side, was a faint crack. I dug my fingers into the edge and heaved upward. The flagstone lifted, revealing a dark hole with a ladder. I slid the flagstone to the side and gestured.

"You go first," I said. "You'll find a hatch about ten feet down. Open it and keep going. I've got to secure the doors as we go."

"Wait!" Kat dashed away and returned lugging her duffel bag. She peered down the shaft dubiously. "You're sure? It's dark down there," she said.

"Yeah, don't worry, it'll be okay," I replied, pushing her forward while staring out the window. "I've done this a dozen times. I'll be right behind you – but hurry up."

Kat started down the ladder and I followed, trying hard not to step on her fingers as she hesitated at each rung. I dragged the flagstone back in place and locked it with two sliding bolts on the underside.

"I'm at the other hatch," Kat's voice floated up to me through the darkness.

"Good. Twist the ring to the left and lift it open. You'll find a toggle switch to the right – it switches on the lights."

A moment later, a dim, luminous glow flooded the shaft. "Got it!" Kat yelled back.

"Good, I'll be right there," I shouted down to her, "make yourself at home." I had one more chore to do.

Pop installed explosives on the trap door. Anyone trying to pull up the flagstone without first disconnecting them in a way only Pop and I knew would set off the bombs and collapse the shaft.

I made it through the second hatch and locked it tight behind me. Kat was standing in the middle of the room staring in awe.

"Wow, I never knew this was down here!" she exclaimed at last. "What is this place?"

"Our safe room," I said. "Basically, an underground bunker."

Against one wall were bunk beds with the power plant for the room tucked underneath. Two other walls contained shelves loaded to capacity with canned and dried food. Up against the fourth wall, Pop had pushed a work desk and stacked our medical supplies around either side. Water tanks stood upright in the corners.

"Will we suffocate down here?" Kat asked. She kept casting terrified glances at the walls and ceiling.

I slumped on the lower bunk. "Right now we're running off bottled air," I replied, "with an air purification system. If we're here more than forty-eight hours, I have to switch over to outside air, but I hope we don't have to be."

I walked to the worktable, switched on the computer, and received an outside view of the farmhouse. Kat hurried over and hung on my shoulder.

The armored vehicles had positioned themselves in front of the main gate. Men carrying rocket launchers fanned out in an arc with others waiting behind. I pulled up a view with the other cameras, and then became frustrated trying to switch back and forth between displays and split the screen into four, so I could watch all sides of the house at once. The rockets roared and the main gate exploded in a shower of sparks.

"They're not playing games," I muttered as the armored vehicles rumbled forward. The rest of the scavengers converged on the other three sides of our enclosure.

The rocket launchers spoke, and I lost my picture in a blast of static before the screen went dark.

Kat jumped and yelped, "What happened?"

"Hit the house and busted something," I replied. I threw up my hands. "We'll have to sit here and guess what's going on." I kept pushing keys and nothing appeared. "Everything is dead."

A few minutes later, a rumble shook the bunker. Kat cringed close to me, and I put my arm around her. "Is this going to cave in on us?" she asked as she stared at the ceiling in fright.

"No," I assured her. At least I
hoped
it wouldn't. "Something, or
someone
, hit a landmine." I squeezed her tight, trying to act braver than I felt. "The house is fighting back."

"Why are they doing this?"

"Don't know," I admitted. It seemed an awful waste of time and ammunition. I thought about it. "Maybe Colonel Morgan doesn't want to leave a bunch of pissed off people behind? I bet last time he destroyed a town whoever was left attacked him from the rear. If he kills everyone he doesn't have to worry."

It was well after dark when the attack started, and it seemed we sat for hours in fear, concussions of explosions rocking the bunker. But when I checked my watch forty-five minutes passed. Still, there couldn't be much left of our house by now. I waited another hour to assure myself the soldiers stripped what they wanted and moved on. When I hadn't heard anything in a while I decided to take a chance and reconnoiter. I wasn't going to try exiting the same way we entered, however.

"You stay here, Kat. I'll be back in a bit." I began hauling the workbench out of the way.

She lent me a hand. "What are you doing?"

"Going outside to see what's happening." Behind the table was a small steel hatch. I opened it revealing the dark mouth of a passage. "Lock this behind me," I cautioned Kat. "If I'm not back in an hour, I guess you're on your own."

I crawled into the opening and started inching my way up the tunnel, not easy with my leg and in the dark. I'd done it with Pop, but by myself it was twice as long and creepy.

The shaft sloped up and I was almost to the end. The mouth exited into a dry wash with a jumble of boulder on the hill above the house. I pushed bushes out of my way and low crawled to a spot where I could peer down at the farm.

Below, in the dark, I made out smoldering embers – the remains of my home.

A hand tugged at my pants leg. "Hunter?"

"AHHH!" I twisted away and stared behind me, almost jumping out of my skin at the same time. Kat wiggled up next to me. "What are you doing here?" I gasped, my heart beating in my chest. "You scared me half to death. I told you to stay in the room."

"I got frightened." She crept closer until her body touched mine and she could see the farm.

"Don't bother," I told her, "everything is destroyed."

"We have no place to go then," she said thickly.

"Sure we do. Back to the lab."

Kat gave a deep sigh. "I guess so, if it's still there.

We hurried back down to the shaft. Kat grabbed her duffel and I threw her a spare backpack. "Here, use this, we're gonna have to travel light."

I tossed a few things in a bag, and we left. My bum leg was already beginning to ache from all the crawling – not my leg really, but my hip and side. I debated sneaking down to the farmhouse to find my scooter and decided against it. Pop's workshop had collapsed, and my shed still smoked. If the scavengers hadn't taken it, my ride was buried under tons of rubble. We made it to the road leading to the lab and started.

After two miles, pain seared half my body and I gritted my teeth. In another quarter of an hour, I told Kat, "I gotta stop." I gulped, easing myself down against a tree.

Kat flopped next to me. "Leg hurt?"

"Nah, I figured you need a break, you're a girl." When she scowled at me, I admitted, "Yeah, sorta. Give me a couple of minutes and I'll be okay."

"What do we do if the lab's gone too?" Kat wondered as she gazed at the stars.

"I guess we become skels," I replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "We don't have many options do we? Unless Morgan's soldiers haven't destroyed the other towns in the area. In this case, maybe we can beg sanctuary with one." The agony in my body lessened. With a groan, I pushed myself to my feet. "Push on."

We kept this up throughout the night until the early hours of the morning. Every time the pain built to the point where it felt as if someone was shoving a nail up my spine we'd take a break. As the night wore on the rest periods became longer, the walking shorter. Finally I admitted, "Can't take it Kat. No more."

I could see panic growing in Kat each time we'd stopped, her eyes darting from my face to my leg. She said, "You rest. I'll go scout ahead, it can't be but a couple more miles anyway. No sense knocking ourselves out to get there, just to learn Morgan's destroyed the place and have to walk somewhere else, right?"

I hated to admit it, but she had a point. "Yeah, go – no wait." I fished around in my pocket. "Here, take the key. If the lab's destroyed you may still be able to enter through the garage and use the freight elevator."

"Thanks," she tucked it away. "Well –"

"Be careful, will ya?"

She flashed me a smirk and stood, hitching her backpack farther up her shoulders. "Of course. See you – I'll be right back."

After Kat left I fell into a stupor. I kept repeating under my breath,
"Lousy leg – lousy Black Morgan – lousy Greys for what you did to me!"
until it became a chant.

I fell asleep, dreaming Greys kept chasing me in a spaceship, shooting lasers at my leg. Black Morgan laughed in the background while I screamed in pain. Kat was shaking me saying, "Wake up, Hunter – wake up! You're having a nightmare."

I bolted upright. "Huh?"

A dark figure shoved a laser rifle in my face. The tip moved down and he jabbed the muzzle into the pit of my stomach.

"I said, up on your feet, kid!" The gun bobbed up and down.

"Uh, Yeah. Sure." I pushed myself erect and shoved my hands in the air. "What do you want with me? I didn't do anything."

Another man in camouflage elbowed his way through the bushes and stood next to him. "Haven't done anything for us yet, kid," he said, "but you're going to fetch us a small bounty once we bring you in."

The first soldier motioned with his rifle. "Start moving, keep your hands up."

They prodded me to an old Humvee and forced me inside. "Sit tight, son," advised the gun-toting soldier, slipping in beside me. He pushed his rifle against my side. "We'll take you back to camp, tie you up, and hand you over to our CO tomorrow. Afterwards, you're his business."