Digger 1.0 (21 page)

“I was just…” her sobs broke through
again.

Shooter moved toward her and dropped to one
knee. “Take your time. Get your breath.”

Kay took a deep breath. “I was just going to
move him… him and Renny… into the bathroom. Into the bathtub for
protection.” She wiped her arm across her face. “He was looking out
the window there when I came in. He was trying to spot targets for
Renny who was at the other window.”

“
How could someone hit him
from down there?” Marlon asked.

“A good sniper could do it,” Shooter said.
“But the only good one down there was fighting our enemies with a
pistol. It had to be a stray shot.”

At this point, Renny spoke for the first
time. “There were bullets flying everywhere.”

“It hit him,” Kay said. “That’s all that
ever matters. It hit him… and he’s dead now!”

“Where are Chuck, Delores, and Ellis?”
Shooter asked.

He stood and walked to the window. Looking
out through the curtains, he sighed. “Probably in the tunnels.”

“Yes, in the tunnels,” Patrick said.
“Delores came looking and she was in a panic. She said Ellis was
hurt. Injured or something. Maybe he fell off the ladder, I don’t
know. But Chuck took off with her and sent Marlon and me up to the
hayloft to help with the crossfire on the bikers.”

Kay’s face tightened as she fought hard not
to cry even harder.

Shooter turned to the group and held out his
hands, palms down, an attempt to calm the temper of the room.

“We have things to do up-top here right now.
Patrick, you and I are going to take some ammo and food down to
that sniper who saved our lives today. We’ll need to talk to him.
To get intel on what he knows. And he’s served as an advance
warning for us so far. We need to make sure he has ammo in case
this isn’
t over.
”

“What about what’s going on down in the
tunnels?” Rooster asked.

“Neil’s in the pillbox. He doesn’t know
about Karl, so Rooster you go… tell him. Then you and Marlon get up
to Utah. We’re still watching that bridge. But watch your six. Who
knows what could be coming at us up through those tunnels.”

“What about Karl?” Kay asked, her eyes low,
holding the vision of the dead boy. “What do we do?”

Shooter clenched his jaw, then ran his
sleeve across his brow. “You and Renny are going to have to get him
to the barn. Wrap him in some blankets, but get him moved.” Shooter
turned to the twelve year old who still clasped his knees as he sat
against the wall. “You gonna be alright, Renny?”

Renny looked up with his tear-streaked face.
He blinked long and paused. But when his eyes opened again there
was something hard in them. “Yes. I’ll be alright.”

The long, exposed walk down to the bridge
was a solemn, almost funereal march for Patrick and Shooter.
Neither of them talked until they got close to Fontana’s
Bridge.

“I wonder who Fontana was,” Patrick
said.

“No
tellin
’,” Shooter replied.

Patrick held his rifle across his body,
barrel pointed downward and away from Shooter. His finger forward,
like he’d been taught. But now his finger tapped a little, and
Shooter knew the boy was nervous.

Shooter
sighed.
“Listen, this was bad. I mean… losing Karl…”

“I know,” Patrick said.

“But it could have been much worse. You know
that too?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“If they’d made it across the bridge,”
Shooter said as he readjusted the heavy pack across his back. Once
he had the pack corrected, he pulled the rifle—the M1A he wore
across the other shoulder—forward and carried it with the barrel
pointed toward the bridge.

Patrick nodded at the motorcycle laying in a
heap on the bridge up ahead. “Looks like that biker guy is the only
one who got close.”

“That’s thanks to the stranger down here.
The guy we’re going to meet.”

“You did your part too,” Patrick said.

“Yeah, I hit a few.”

“From where I was, looks like you hit most
of ‘em. How do… how do you feel?”

“After seeing what they did to Karl?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said.

A breeze crossed the river and passed the
rushes along the banks. The slender grass bent and whispered.

“Satisfied.”

On the bridge, past the crippled Hog and the
dead biker, Shooter’s hand came up in a signal that told Patrick to
slow down and be aware. “If any of ‘em are still alive,
they’
re dangerous.
”

“Got it,” Patrick said.

At the mouth of the bridge, they heard a
loud crashing sound, and too late, they spun and saw a wounded
biker clambering toward them through the brush and weeds, up from
the Solekeep. Apparently he’d been wounded and landed down by the
river, down but not out. Now, he had a sawed off shotgun in his
right hand and his face was twisted into a horrifying visage of
murder and hell and vengeance. He raised the shotgun and pointed it
at Patrick.

Time slowed for both of them. Patrick didn’t
freeze, but his surprise put him behind. Too slow to make a
difference. Just as Shooter knew that his friend was going to take
a full barrel of shot to the chest, the biker’s head exploded right
in front of them and the gangbanger’s body dropped and fell back
into the water and the mud.

Patrick finally had his rifle up and ready,
and he was staring down the barrel at the dead biker, his chest
heaving from the fear and surprise. “Holy…,” was all he could
manage.

“Damn,” Shooter said as he scanned the
opposite direction with his rifle.

That’s when they heard the voice. Off in the
distance and down the hill, scratchy and deep, aged with time and
experience and pain.

“You boys shouldn’t be down here. Nothin’
but death down here.”

It was Walker, and when he saw Shooter he
knew this was his long-distance friend. A boy who’d saved his life.
Walker almost smiled.

Almost.

Shooter turned to Patrick. “I know this guy.
You go back up the hill. Halfway up. The big rock there. Get behind
it and make anything dead that needs bein’ made dead.”

“What about you?” Patrick said.

“I’m gonna go meet Mister Sniper, see what
he needs.”

Down below.

When Ellis heard Chuck’s shout, he’d dived
down to the bottom of the pond again. The cold had finally mastered
him, and at the bottom, he felt a strange warmth begin to grip him
like a good coat. The tension left, and he’d felt himself giving
up, passing out, and letting go of everything that had made his
last five years a constant struggle.

With a last look upward through the dark
water, he thought he saw a face—Delores—smiling down at him, and
then the darkness crept in on his vision, and the warmth permeated
him like new blood by an ancient fire.

He knew he was going to die…

…and that wasn’t so bad.

Just before the lights went out, he felt a
force grab him and shake him, and then everything was dark and his
thoughts ran off, he assumed, for the last time.

~~~

When Delores, and then Chuck right behind
her, surfaced on the far side of the tunnel wall, they almost
couldn’t believe what they saw. A man, Asian and ancient, wet but
draped in a dry woolen shawl, was pulling off Ellis’
s pants.

Delores, shivering from the bitter cold,
didn’t even think before she pulled herself out of the water and
assaulted the man.

“What are you doing?” she screamed. “Let.
Him. Go!”

The man didn’t even slow what he was doing,
but reached out with one hand and met her assault with a
straight-arm, pushing her to the ground.

“Shut up and make fire hotter,” the man said
with complete calm.

Chuck was climbing out of the water, pushing
himself up and forward, but before he could attack, he heard the
old man’s words and stopped himself. “What’s going on?” Chuck
said.

“I’m saving your friend. He die if we don’t
get his body temperature up very quickly,” the old man said.

Delores, seeing that the man seemed to be
trying to help, crawled to her feet and moved toward the small fire
burning near a tunnel wall. She noticed the smoke climbed the wall
and then was sucked into an open vent hole that kept the tunnel
from filling with smoke.

Chuck helped the man finish undressing
Ellis, then the two of them carried the unconscious Ellis closer to
the fire. The old man pulled the woolen shawl off his shoulders—he
was naked underneath—and lay down with Ellis, embracing him and
then pulling the shawl around both of them.

Delores moved to protest again, but the old
man silenced her with a hand pointing at her face.

“He needs much body heat, and unless you are
proposing to strip down naked right now and provide it, then I need
you to build that fire up.”

The man now pointed to Chuck, “You, there
are more blankets under that cot. Pull them out and throw them over
us.”

“You’re the one that did this to him,” Chuck
said as he reached under the cot.

“True,” the old man said, “or partly true.
He jumped into my waters of his own accord. But I am the one who
trapped him there. For that I am sorry. I was asleep when he
surfaced on this side. I reacted from years of experience,
but…”

“But what?” Chuck asked.

“I’d told myself I wasn’t going to fight any
more. I was giving up. If one more enemy came into my tunnels, I
would no longer resist the evil.”

“Your
tunnels?
” Chuck said. “So what happened?”

The old man shrugged, “Hurry with the
blankets. I wasn’t fully awake. I triggered the trap by
instinct.”

“And then you decided to save him?” Delores
asked. “After your trap nearly killed him?”

“Yes,” the old man replied. “And, when I
heard the explosion from the other side, I figured it was all over,
that invaders would be coming through here.”

“Maybe they are coming,”
Delores said.

“I
don
’t care. Not anymore” the old man said. “Once this one is
out of danger, if invaders do not come, I will disappear, and no
one will find me ever again.”

Chuck turned to Delores, his mouth clenched
in anguish. “I need to go back, D. There was an attack. The bikers
were coming.”

Delores shook her head. “No. You’re staying
right here, Chuck. Shooter and the others can take care of
themselves. You said that to me. We’re not going anywhere until we
know Ellis is out of trouble.”

Chuck chewed on his cheek, his breath
finally stabilizing from the swim and the fear. He didn’t know what
to say. Didn’t know what to do. If he left, he’d be leaving both
Ellis and Delores to this stranger. If he stayed… who knew what was
going on up-top?

“Trust them,”
Delores said.
“That’s what you told me.”

“Turn on that radio,” the old man said. “My
name is Mr. Vo. These tunnels are my home. It is time to hear the
news, so please turn on the radio there on the table.”

“Radio?” Chuck asked. He looked over to the
table and saw the old radio set sitting on it. “How do…”

The old man barked at him, “Just turn it on,
it’s almost time. You’ll have to crank it one hundred cranks first.
Oh, and I’d have you two strip down too, but as soon as you’re a
little warmer, you need to go get your friends.”

“How does this smoke leave the tunnel?”
Chuck asked. “And how do you pick up a signal down here? He saw
that a bare wire ran up the wall, then followed the smoke tunnel
off into the distance. He was shivering, but his curiosity was
making it hard to concentrate on staying by the fire.

“You’re wasting time,” Mr. Vo said. “That
smoke shaft is the size of a man. It runs a half mile at an upward
slope and surfaces in a copse of trees on the far side of the
river. It’s how we did it in my country, long ago. It took us six
months to dig that shaft. Now please… crank radio. Warm
yourselves.”

“Us?” Delores asked.

“Please. The radio.”

Chuck cranked the handle and counted until
he’d turned the gyro one hundred times.

“Please now, turn it on. It is already
tuned. Mister Doctor Midnite should be on any moment now.”

Chuck flipped the on switch, and there was
buzzing and an otherworldly hiss.

“It’s just interference and solar noise,”
Chuck said. “There’s nothing there.”

“Wait,
” Vo answered.

And then they heard it, cutting through the
static, a voice coming through from a distance. A radio show of
some sort. And they listened to the voice and all its madness.

“Strange memories and original thoughts
today as I talk amongst you all, the last holdouts, the last true
fighters and the last real damn Americans fighting it out for
survival in a whirlwind of destruction. Welcome to The Midnite
Special, on 88.1 FM, my channel. Check with the FCC if you don’t
believe me. You’ll find them either six feet under or a hundred
feet down in a concrete bunker. Not sure which. They’ll explain it
all to you once you find them which I’m sure you will if you care
that much about it.”

“This is your old friend, Dr. Midnite,
the one who warned you, the poor man’s prophet from Pahrump telling
you what’s up for all you fine folk catching this frequency that’s
bounced through a relay from the high desert in Nye County to the
fine folks over the now non-existing border in Acuñ
a. Muy bueno, Acu
ña,
muy bueno. Thanks for taking up the message and boosting the signal
with that nice one-hundred-thousand watt blowtorch.”

“Emilio and Donny, watch your backsides
as always and keep your beer cool and the ammo stocked. There’s
strange folk abroad and even stranger things ringing bells of doom
all over the land. Case of beer for you all when this blows over
(and remember friends, things like this always do, if the wheel
turns to Doomsday it’ll turn back to good, just like Mother Midnite
always says now when she isn’
t sedated).
”