Cannibal Reign (24 page)

They heard the blast on the other side, and Emory was shoving the hatch upward even before the flash of fire completely dissipated, urging Marty to climb with her because they were still hooked together. They struggled up from the hole as one being and sprawled on the floor with their legs not quite out of the hatchway, drawing their pistols from their harnesses and trying not to choke on the stench of raw cordite. There were panicked voices coming toward them, flashlights dancing on the walls through the smoke as they opened fire on the tunnel way.

Someone screamed and a flashlight fell, shining back into the tunnel to reveal three more wretched looking souls in filthy clothing, one of them a woman, their eyes wild with hate, their gums bleeding with scurvy.

Emory and Marty shot them down without hesitation and quickly reloaded, laying in wait in the gathering silence for close to ten minutes before daring to speak.

“What do you think?” she whispered into his ear.

“I think we got ’em all this time . . . but who knows?”

They waited another minute before Emory set her weapon aside and unhooked the carabiner from his harness. “You stay put . . . I’ll go for the M-4s.”

She returned quickly and they searched the immediate area, finding six freshly killed bodies. “Wanna look for their hideout to make sure . . . or get the fuck outta here?”

“Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

She went below and used smelling salts to bring Sullivan into semiconsciousness. “I need you to help climb outta here!” she urged him, dragging him back and sitting him up at the foot of the ladder.

“What the fuck happened?” he moaned. “My head is splitting!”

“Just climb, John L.” She pulled him up by the lift strap on his harness and helped him get his foot onto the bottom rung. It took them some time to reach the top, but within thirty minutes they were all in the hybrid and rolling slowly south over the rocky terrain, the video camera locked up in the glove compartment.

Marty drove while Emory removed the bullet from Sullivan’s skull and applied a dressing. Sullivan was still only in and out of consciousness, severely concussed.

“So where we headed?” Marty asked, glancing at her in the mirror.

“Might as well head for Altus AFB down in Oklahoma,” she said, climbing into the front and grabbing the road atlas. “We can give that camera of Yon’s to her geologist friends and see what kind of setup they got, maybe stay with them . . . unless you got a better idea.”

“I’m all out of ideas.”

She studied the atlas as they bounced along. “Okay. We’ll find a highway and drop down to Interstate 80, then cut east across Nebraska and drop down through Kansas by way of Topeka. That’ll put us real close to Altus when we hit Oklahoma.”

“Kansas,” he groaned. “You ever been through Kansas?”

She chuckled and closed the atlas. “One good thing about Kansas, Marty . . . an asteroid strike could only be an improvement.”

Thirty-Eight

M
ajor Benjamin Moriarty pushed back from the table and sat studying what was left of his decimated officer corps. He was down to four lieutenants now and a mere handful of noncoms, having been forced the day before to put Captains Winterfield, Scarborough, and Phelter—along with ten other enlisted men—before a firing squad after trying them all for sedition and attempted mutiny. The one positive result of the debacle was that the battle for the collective conscience of the men was finally decided, and those few hundred who remained in the ranks now understood that the weak must serve to bolster the strong in whatever capacity was required, and that morality was no longer anything more than a defunct and pointless luxury.

The meal had been meager. A potluck affair of heated vegetables poured from mostly label-less cans scavenged from in and around the city of Denver. The meat had been provided by Captain Winterfield, and it was only the third time the officers were driven to eat another human being. The regular ranks had been supplementing their diet with human flesh for the better part of a month now, but Moriarty and his staff were still in the process of learning that it was an acquired taste, to say the most.

“Lieutenant Ford,” he said quietly, picking at his teeth with a thin sliver of wire. “Direct the cooks to find another way to season the meat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain Winterfield may have been a candyass, but there’s no reason he should taste like one.” His men chortled dutifully, all of them having difficulty with the sweet flavor of human flesh.

“Lieutenant Yoder,” Moriarty said, noting the bilious look of his most junior officer. “You look a little green around the gills, son.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s still a little hard for me. I’ll adjust, sir. Don’t worry.”

It was no secret that Yoder had been a friend of Captain Winterfield, and Moriarty had chosen Winterfield for their meal with precisely that in mind. “I’m sure you will, son. You’re a fine officer and I’m depending on you to set an equally fine example for the men.”

“Sir.”

“Now, if the rest of you will excuse us, Lieutenant Ford and I have some things to discuss before retreat.”

The small hotel dining room cleared, and Ford sat looking at Moriarty through a pair of sagging eyes. He was sallow and gaunt-looking and his gums had begun to recede with the onset of scurvy.

“Eat some more,” Moriarty said with a gesture toward the platter in the center of the table.

“I’m fine, sir. Thank you.”

“Eat! You’re dying before my eyes, damnit, and I need you strong!”

“I’ll only throw it up, Ben.”

“Should I have put you on trial as well?”

“You know very well that I support you,” Ford remarked wearily. “It’s not my fault that starvation and cannibalism disagree with me.”

Moriarty despised the smaller man’s weakness but he needed him too badly, knowing that Ford was the glue between him and the rest of his staff.

“Then I want you eating two cans of cat food a day from now on,” Moriarty said, realizing that he was playing right into the lieutenant’s hands, but there was nothing to be done about it. Waiting him out wasn’t working.

“Yes, sir,” Ford said, wanting to shout
Hallelujah!
but concealing his victory.

“You will, of course, be expected to eat the minimum amount of meat before the rest of the staff. If they find out I’m treating you special, we’ve got more trouble.”

“Yes, sir. Have you given any more thought to my suggestion, Ben? The one about those Green Berets back in Nebraska?”

“I’ve thought about them once or twice. It’s too much of a long shot. They’re not likely to be any better off by now than we are. We only took them two truckloads of MREs. They’re probably long dead.”

“I don’t think the MREs were the reason for our delivery,” Ford remarked.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what did they need a defense network computer for . . . unless they intended on still being alive to use it when the sky cleared up enough to communicate with our defense satellites?”

Moriarty stared at him, reasoning it out. “A silo could hold a great deal of food.
If
someone had had time enough to prepare.”

“And it would be just like the Pentagon to lay an egg that would hatch years later . . . all in the name of being the last nation left standing.”

“Fine,” Moriarty decided. “We’ll send a patrol of trusted men back to Tinker for the silo schematics. The original blueprints will still be on file. When they get back we can begin working our way east, scavenging whatever we can along the way. And we’ll need to quietly inquire as to whether there are any demolitions men in the ranks . . . because if that wiseass Green Beret captain
is
still alive, he sure as hell isn’t going to open the goddamn door and give us back our MREs.”

Thirty-Nine

“S
o what was the problem?” Forrest asked, learning that Danzig and Vasquez had successfully unclogged one of the facility’s three commodes.

“White mice,” Danzig said. “The women are flushing their tampons down the toilets, and this old plumbing won’t take it. They’ll snag in there and clog the whole fucking system, so you have to tell them to stop. Tell them to bag the damn things and we’ll keep them in the cargo bay.”

“Something else I should have thought of. Thanks. I’ll be sure and tell them.”

The children were all in class, so Forrest was able to catch a number of women together in the cafeteria. Some of them were talking, others reading. A couple were arguing. About what, he didn’t really care to know.

“Excuse me, ladies.”

They all looked at him, waiting to hear what sort of law he was going to lay down now.

“Yes?” Erin said patiently.

“We need to not flush our feminine products down the toilets anymore,” he said as tactfully as he knew how. “The plumbing down here is very old, so the pipes are rusty inside and if we get another clog and can’t get to it . . .”

“Won’t be good,” somebody said.

“Won’t be good, right. So we’ll put bags in the bathrooms and store the trash in the cargo bay.”

“Message received.”

He went back down the hall and into one of the two common rooms where Melissa was sitting on the floor with a pad of paper and a pencil. “Hey, kiddo. Where the hell is everyone?”

“Some are in silo one listening to music,” she answered, her attention on her work. “Some are in the other room watching an R movie they don’t want the kids to see. One or two are bike riding, I think. And Veronica and Uncle Michael are in Medical talking to the doctors. One of Uncle Michael’s fillings fell out or something.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to figure out this code those people are transmitting,” she said, flipping through the pages of numbers Ulrich had written down. The transmissions only occurred about three times a week for half an hour or so and not necessarily on the same nights.

“You know about cryptography?” he asked, surprised.

“No, just some basic stuff Wayne told me, but I’ve been thinking these people probably agree when to talk again before they sign off at night, so I’m looking for patterns of numbers that appear only on certain days. Maybe if I can learn their codes for the days of the week, I can use that information as part of a cipher. Only, I haven’t found anything that matches yet and it’s pissing me— Oops!” She looked up at him, covering her mouth. “That slipped.”

“You’re grounded. No leaving the silo for a week.”

She smiled, enjoying having him as even a pseudo authority figure in her life. “It’s driving me nuts.”

“You do know there are literally millions of different algorithms, right?”

“Yeah, but Wayne thinks this one is pretty basic, and I don’t have anything else interesting to work on down here. It’s killing me not having the Internet. I miss my physics chats.”

“Physics chat rooms . . . you’re kidding me.”

“No. Why, does that sound stupid?”

“Hell, no. I just never heard of it. I guess there used to be a chat room for everything.”

“I can’t believe it’s all gone.”

“I know,” he said sympathetically. “Hey, before I forget . . . we’ve been having some trouble with hygiene products in the—”

“I know. Don’t flush my tampons down the toilet. I heard you guys in the hall.”

“You did, huh?”

“I hear everything that goes on in the hall. I even heard . . . never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

She leaned forward, trying to see. “Is anyone out there?”

Forrest double-checked. “No, it’s fine. What’d you hear?”

“I heard Oscar and Maria two the other night. They were in the kitchen when everyone else was asleep.”

“No, honey, you got it mixed up. Oscar’s wife is Maria one.”

“I know that,” she said. “He was in there with Maria
two
.”

Forrest’s
Oh, shit!
light began to blink. “You’re positive? They look and sound a lot alike.”

“I’m positive. I saw her coming back to bed after . . . you know. He was working the late shift in Launch Control.”

Forrest crouched down beside her. “So who was in the LC when they were in the kitchen?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t think anybody was.”

“When was this?”

“Few nights ago.”

“Don’t tell anyone else,” he said, standing up. “Let me know when you’ve cracked the code.”

Laddie suddenly came scrabbling around the corner into the room, soaking wet and full of suds, running and jumping all over Melissa and dripping water onto her pad.

“Laddie!” she shouted, holding the pad over her head.

“He’s down here!” Karen called down the hall as she came into the room laughing, her jeans wet from the waist down. “Sorry, honey. Somebody left the washroom door open.”

“That’s okay,” Melissa said, though it bothered her very much.

“I told you washing that dog’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Forrest said, chuckling.

Renee showed up and, with a great deal of effort, the two women wrangled Laddie out of the room and disappeared into the hall, laughing.

Forrest followed after them.

“Jack?” Melissa said.

He stopped. “Yeah?”

“Think you and Veronica will ever get married?”

“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. “Just wondering.”

On his way back to Launch Control, Maria Vasquez stopped him. “I want to ask you about something, Jack.”

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, preparing himself to lie for Oscar.

“Do you think for Halloween we could turn one of the silos into a haunted house for the kids? Nothing gory. Just spooks and ghosts, maybe some witches.”

“You know, I don’t see why not,” he said with relief. “We’ll have to be careful about the lighting, though. We don’t want anyone falling on those stairs.”

“Great. It’s something to do, you know? And the kids should get a kick out of it.”

“Sounds fine to me,” he said. He had already secretly planned a trick-or-treat for them, and was looking forward to it.

He found Ulrich in Launch Control with his feet up, reading one of his technical magazines. “Erin and Lynette were arguing about something in the cafeteria.” He took a chair.

“What about?”

“I didn’t pay attention.”

“That’s a good policy,” Ulrich said.

“I’ve been giving some thought to our future food concerns. Hydroponic tomatoes are only going to get us so far. What do you think about raising rats?”

“Rats?”

“Yeah. We find some rats, breed them in clean cages, and eat them. The damn things multiply faster than rabbits.”

“You ever eaten one?”

“Yeah, we ate a few back at Bragg during training. No big deal. Splash a little Tabasco on them and they taste like anything else. Look, meat’s meat. And West can show us how to raise them without a big health risk.”

“It’s a repugnant idea,” Ulrich said. “The women will never go for it, and Erin’s likely to freak the hell out.”

“By the time the food runs out, she won’t find the idea so disagreeable.”

“So what are you proposing? We catch a few and keep them as pets without telling anybody what they’re really for? These broads are smart, Jack. They’ll figure it out.”

“Well, it may not matter. So far it looks like we’ve done too good a job of killing them off down here.”

Ulrich frowned. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. We’ve seen a few rats gnawing on the dead guys upstairs. It’s only a matter of time before the bodies are gone and they find their way down here again.”

“Great, so problem solved,” Forrest said, getting up. “Put Oscar to work building some live bait traps.”

“I’ll put Linus on it. He’s better with his hands.”

“No, I want Oscar to do it. He apparently has too much fucking free time.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We’ll raise the little bastards in secret,” Forrest said, and disappeared into the hall.

Ulrich sat back and returned to his article. “And if I had wheels, I’d be a wagon.”

L
ate that night Forrest was sitting alone in the LC reading
For Whom the Bell Tolls
when Melissa came in and sat down at the console with her paper and pencil. He glanced at the clock to see that it was three
A.M.

“Can’t sleep?”

“No. Do you think I could scan the radio frequencies?”

He looked at her and smiled. “
That’s
why you’re up late. Wayne won’t let you play with the radio.”

She ignored the remark. “I know the code talkers aren’t on now, but I want to see if anyone else might be talking.”

“Wayne runs a scan twice a day.”

“I know, but he’s not scanning now . . .”

“Use the bottom set,” he told her. “If you mess with his, he’ll know and he’ll skin us both.”

“But that’s the junky set,” she whined. “Wayne’s is digital and its got—”

“Yeah, I know, it’s got all the cool lights. I thought this wasn’t about playtime.”

“Well, digital is better and—”

“Digital is not better. It’s newer, and that’s not the same thing. You can’t fine-tune with digital the way you can with analog.”

“What’s that mean?”

“What do you mean ‘what’s that mean’? Aren’t you a computer whiz?”

“I’m a physics geek, not a computer geek. Big difference. Huge.”

“Okay, well, the dial on the analog set is a rheostat . . . it works like a dimmer switch, so you can fine-tune the frequencies—if you’re patient. With the digital set you’re either on the frequency or you’re off, no fine-tuning.”

“But what good’s a signal if it’s full of static?”

He closed his book, marking the page with his thumb, and sat looking at her. “Well, Wayne, what good is a clean frequency if there’s nobody on it?”

She grinned. “So then why does ‘Wayne’ use the new one if the old one is better?”

“Because he is a bonehead . . . because he is too impatient for fine-tuning . . . and because he has always trusted the latest technology even when it sucked.”

“O-kay,” she said sarcastically. “I-think-I-get-the-point.” She scooted over to the shelf in her chair and turned on the more simple looking analog set. “How long do I have to wait for this antique to warm up?”

He chuckled as he reopened the book. “It’s not that old, you little smartass. And remember to move the dial in tiny increments. Take your time.”

After a minute Melissa picked up on a faint signal . . .

“Mayday, Mayday. This is Genoine Five,”
a scared sounding woman was saying.
“Does anyone copy? Anyone at all? If you can hear me, please, we are in Birch Tree, Missouri. We need your help! We need food and medicine. Mayday, Mayday. This is Genoine Five. Does anyone copy? Anyone at all? If you can . . .”

“I found somebody!”

Forrest had already heard the transmission many times and did not even look up from the book. “It’s a trap, honey.”

She turned to look at him in confusion. “How do you know that?”

“Because no one’s listening at her end. She’s on a loop. Same message over and over. Which either means that everyone in Beech Tree is dead or it’s a trap.”

“She sounds scared to death.”

“I’m sure she is—or was when she made that tape. She’s likely dead by now.”

Melissa turned the volume down, a scared feeling in the pit of her stomach. “But why would she . . .”

He set the book aside, realizing this sort of thinking was entirely alien to her.

“You take a female prisoner,” he explained. “Someone like you or Veronica, maybe. You give her a microphone and a simple script and you tell her to sound scared—which won’t be too tough with a knife at her throat. Then you play the recording over the airwaves for every idiot predator with a radio to hear. After that you just have to hope whoever comes to Beech Tree looking for—”

“
Birch
Tree.”

“Thank you,
Wayne.
As I was saying . . . you just have to hope that whoever comes to town looking for the woman on the radio has a smaller gang than your gang. If they do, you kill them and take their stuff. If they don’t . . . well, you lay low and pray to Christ they leave town without finding your ass.”

“No way!” she said in mortified fascination. “For real?”

“For real.”

“You’ve done stuff like that, haven’t you?” she said, her eyes shining with an almost prurient enthusiasm. “Uncle Michael says you’re
dangerous
.”

He smiled, recalling a once younger version of himself. “Your uncle Michael says a lot of things.”

“He says that before the boogeyman goes to bed at night he probably checks under the bed for you.”

Forrest laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Tell me something you’ve done!”

He shook his head, chuckling. “No. That’s not the kind of thing I need to be sharing with young ladies.”

She bristled. “So it’s not my age this time? It’s because I’m a girl.”

“Maybe I worded that wrong. Some things done during war can sound shameful out of context, and it’s not the kind of thing I prefer to talk about with anyone, man or woman.”

“Because I might get the wrong idea?”

“More because you might get the
right
idea. War is a bad, bad thing.”

“Uncle Michael says we’re in a war now.”

“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Forrest said, opening his book and sitting back in the chair.

Melissa sat back too, and watched him for a long moment before returning to the receiver and beginning once again to slowly turn the dial . . .

“Constantine, go ahead with your traffic . . . over.”

“Jawbreaker, we cannot make the rendezvous at this time. The entire mountain is on fire and we are cut off. Is there an alternative route that we can try?. . . . Over.”

“Negative, negative, Constantine. The mountain pass is your best bet. If you try going around to the north or south, you’ll be cut to pieces . . . over.”

“What about the tunnel? . . . Over.”