CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (8 page)

He swallowed the last half of his brandy, holding his breath, waiting for the first shot by one of their guards killing some innocent. Instead, he watched the outside door blow in, followed by two scientists, their lab coats flapping as they bounded the stairs. They barged into his office without knocking or asking permission to enter—another sign of the lack of respect he’d been getting since Maxwell and his friends arrived.

“Where is Mr. Thompson?” Dr. Ronald Stoneridge demanded, out of breath and frantic.

“We really need to talk to him,” added Dr. Montgomery Merriweather, more composed but equally winded.

This
is what disturbed Preston the most. These two scientists, who would have come to see only him a day ago, were now demanding to see his boss. What the hell did Thompson know about Cicada’s day-to-day workings? Sure, he may have built the damn thing and used his considerable fortune, but he was never here, instead spending his time at the beach in Mexico; it had been up to Preston to manage, to make and institute policy, to make the hard decisions when society was collapsing right outside their gates.
Then Maxwell shows up and these two nerds demand to see him and not me
? All the while, Maxwell has declared war on all the poor starving SOBs who just need help. What a hypocrite, a Christian that won’t help his fellow neighbor.

“Mr. Tanner, we really need to see Mr. Thompson. This is very important. It affects everyone here at Cicada.” Dr. Merriweather was insistent.

“Actually, it affects everybody in the world,” Stoneridge corrected.

Max could have used a drink, bad. It was a feeling he hadn’t had for many years now, not since Basra. He puzzled over where this urge was coming from. Thankfully, he had no time for either drinking or wondering why he wanted one. The runners had returned safely. And now that it was dark, the next phase of his plan was to take place. It would be the one thing that would remove all aggression from the Squatts.

He walked briskly down Cicada’s main gravel road, called Russell Avenue, having just thanked the men and women who volunteered for what could have been deadly service. Rather than continuing straight to the watchtower and Operations below, where much of Cicada’s arms and a fair amount of its munitions were kept and where Cicada’s guards would usually suit up for an operation such as this, he turned right instead. He went around the Research Facility and marched straight up Max’s Court to his residence across from the Rec Facility. He didn’t have everything there, but he had more than what he and his partner needed to run his planned op quickly and quietly. The primary reason for the alternate prep venue was to avoid the scrutiny of others, especially Preston or the Kings.

He learned from both the Bible and the US military that to effectively control a population, there had to be a respect, which came from fear, which came from the rule of law, which must be policed absolutely by a higher power. This cause and effect was sometimes brutal and misunderstood by others who scrutinized their actions, believing a “kinder, gentler” policy was more humane. But that was always the opinion of a lazy few who were on a winning side. What Preston didn’t seem to realize was that they were losing right now. Once he had them back on a winning side, they could argue what was morally right or wrong ad nauseam. Until then, the last thing he wanted was to have to explain himself. Once the results of his policy were visible, Max believed few would complain about it.

What Cicada needed was quick policy execution so that it could immediately reap its benefits and not waste its valuable resources on unnecessary skirmishes. How could his Cicada family work and play under the threat of constant attack? And with some luck, Max hoped they could find out how a hodge-podge group of squatters got their hands on military explosives.

He angled to his residence; cutting across the empty road named after him and approached his small detached home, right next door to an ancient adobe dwelling known as the First House. It had stood long before his great-grandfather added to it a hundred and fifty years ago. Today, it was maintained as a museum and reminder of Cicada’s roots. The old mud-adobe building sagged from time and the elements.

Like a real-life demonstration of old vs. new, Max’s residence—and many of Cicada’s buildings for that matter—was made of a composite concrete block, consisting of a special polymer compound and concrete. The concrete was more for weight than anything else, as the polymer compound was as strong as steel and had an RF of 100 in the walls and ceiling. This construction turned out to be genius when the environment turned into 365 days of summer. Despite the unreliability of their power (and therefore their air conditioning), they mostly stayed cool.

Tom Rogers was already waiting for him by his front door: punctual, just like the military.

“Mr. Thompson.” Rogers stood at attention and held his hand out.

“Max, please.” Max shook his hand warmly. “Thank you for coming, Tom.”

“You’re very welcome Mr… Ah, Max,” Tom responded and watched Max open his front door and walk in. “Don’t we need to suit up at Operations?” he asked.

Max closed the door behind them and turned the deadbolt.

Tom wasn’t sure that Max had heard him because he hadn’t responded and continued walking to what looked like a bathroom door. Tom figured the man really had to take a leak. Max slid a long key into a lock that looked like overkill for a bathroom and opened the door. The room’s lights flickered on.

“We have all we need in here,” Max finally answered, beckoning Tom to come in.

“You ain’t kidding,” Tom said.

Max knew it was a prepper’s wet dream: seven fully equipped M4s, a couple AKs, two Mossberg shotguns, multiple handguns with suppressors, grenades, tactical vests and helmets. In the middle of the small room was a table with shelves underneath. These were filled with C4, various comms equipment and ammo.

“Let’s get suited up,” Max said as he grabbed a vest and tossed it to Tom, “and let’s go hunting.”

Westerling waited impatiently in front of an innocuous but very secure door marked
B216
and below that
Authorized Personnel Only
. He studied a thick multi-page document, which was heavily annotated and underlined; half of its pages hung by a single staple in the top corner. He reread the main points, not caring at all to decipher the tech-ese that made up most of the report. The result was what he cared about, not the technical reason why it occurred. And the result was not good. But he had a solution.

He closed the pages, rolled them up like a club and clutched them, punctuating his displeasure with a loud sigh. He really didn’t care for it down here. Everything sounded hollow and the light was unnatural. Deep down, he felt he’d get sick if he stayed too long. He looked down the short end of the L-shaped hallway to B225 and the doorway to his bunker and winced at the thought of staying there for an extended period of time. If this necessary exercise doesn’t take too long, he could get out of here and go topside where he belonged.

An electronic click echoed from the far end of the long side of the L, followed by two sets of boot steps and a large door closing. The boot sounds reverberated louder as they neared his location. As the two men turned the corner and headed his way, he could see that Dr. Carrington Reid was in front of one of his guards. Dr. Reid wore a smirk of confidence crowned by a fedora and an overall attitude of someone who was in control. This, of course, was a façade because Westerling was the only one in control of what happened here. He wanted to enjoy rubbing Reid’s nose in his own self-righteousness, but his end purpose was greater. He needed this man, but he didn’t want him to know it.

When they arrived, the guard nodded at Westerling, who nodded back. “Thank you, Jones.”

“Sir.” Jones stood at ease but clearly alert.

“Dr. Reid, I know you know who I am and I know you, so let’s get down to why you are here.”

Westerling turned and pressed his thumb on a flat-plate above a keypad, and the door instantly clicked its acknowledgement that he was “authorized personnel.”

“After you.” Westerling motioned Carrington inside and looked at the guard. “Stay here until I return.” Jones promptly turned, back to the corner, so he could see down both hallways and stood at attention as Westerling closed the door behind them.

He was about to set into motion a plan that would have a disastrous effect on both their lives.

The first thing Carrington noticed was the humidity. It was sweltering inside, like being covered by a hot, soaking wet wool blanket. Breathing became difficult. As he struggled inhaling, he began to get a sense of the room’s cavernous size. It was several stories of concrete-lined walls with massive machinery, some reaching up to and going through the ceiling of the room. Pipes, conduits and giant wires snaked up and down and around the space. Several huge conduits fed into what looked like a steam turbine in the room’s center. A similar group of conduits on the other side ran out of his field of view. The walkway they were standing on wrapped around the entire circumference of the chamber. Just in front of them, an opening in the walkway led to a stairwell that went down and around to the next wall, and then opened up onto the bottom floor.

Westerling stopped at the very edge of the walkway, only a small railing separating him from what was at least a hundred-foot drop. Just for a moment, Carrington thought,
It would be so easy…

“I even know what you’re thinking,” Westerling said, and Carrington jumped, feeling like he’d been caught, his thoughts somehow exposed. “You’ll have ample opportunity to try that, but you’ll want to hear what I have to say first.”

It was the stifling heat, his sense of vertigo and perhaps the loud rumble of the machinery below that threatened to take hold of him and send him tumbling over; all conspired to knock him out at any moment. He said nothing and continued to stare forward and not down, desperately trying to get a firmer footing.

“Come here and take a look,” Westerling said. He waited to say anything more until Reid ambled over; instead, the scientist remained where he was, a few steps back from the railing.

Westerling chortled. “I see, so the larger-than-life Dr. Reid is afraid of heights. This is something I didn’t know.” He smirked.

Smug bastard
. Reid trudged over, not willing to let this man get the better of him.

“What do you want?” Carrington snapped.

He noticed the shaft that ran from the main piece of machinery topside, trying to think of anything but down. It occurred to him that they were right under the tower where this prick had his penthouse overlooking the whole facility. He guessed this must be the main turbine for a geothermal power facility and the tubes were channeling the steam through and away from the turbine.

“You noticed the most central piece of Bios-2. This is our power source. It supplies the almost unlimited supply of power that runs this entire facility. It’s what gives us our lights, but even more important, our security. The length of conduit you are looking at, running through the ceiling, powers our EPF that keeps us safe by keeping all the cannibals out.”

Carrington couldn’t help but be intrigued with the brilliant design of the place. Feeling a little more confident, bolstered by his curiosity, he ventured a glance down the tube running from the shaft in the ceiling to the large turbine below. It hummed smoothly. On the other side of the cavernous room sat what looked like a bank of normal-looking gas generators.
Perhaps backup
.

“I can see you’ve figured out that our central generator is not powered by the diesel that runs our backup generators, which would be disastrous if it were to fail. Have you figured out how the main generator works and how it powers a small city of our size?”

Westerling obviously had some point to make, so Carrington patiently waited in silence for the conclusion of this insipid exercise.

“Fine, I’ll tell you… it’s geothermal.”

Westerling started walking slowly, using the railing as his guide. “Follow me; I want to show you something.”