Digger 1.0 (22 page)

“I’m sitting in the Blue Velvet Bunker,
sixty feet under the desert floor, thinking over the last, well
what has it been since the levee broke? Five years? Five years,
when the levee broke. That’s right.  Zekes and dragons playing
with their food in Southern Cal. Hurricanes and bigfoots, monsters
and maniacs in diverse places, coming down the mountain when he
comes. The Hindenberg reborn, the Black Hand smashing and crashing
to a win in Argentina. Five years since the levee broke. And just
like Led Zeppelin says when the levee breaks, ‘crying won’t help
you’”

“Five years my friends. If you survived the
last five years, hats off to you all. You just won the best and
toughest damn lottery in the history of the world, surviving all
this mayhem. If you know what I mean. I count myself fortunate. I’m
in a steel cave with six close friends and my mother. I don’t know
about you. When the levee broke I did what I had to do and got my
people down with a minimum of gunfire and drama. Five years ago it
was. We even got cats down here, breeding just as fast as the
rabbits we got down here. The females are named after Addams Family
characters, the males after Knights of the Round Table. This was
decided by a split decision-boxing match between myself and
Professor Sunset, and guess who whooped that paraplegic? Professor
Sunset don’t give me no Manson eyes anymore does he? Just watch the
keyboards, friendo. Don’t care if you carry a pool stick around
like a jousting stick, I’ll flip that shopping cart when you least
expect.”

“Lucky seven we are, just a small tribe of
the strong and the weird in a steel cave beneath Pahrump playing
pinochle and watching Seven Brides for Seven Brothers over and over
and the entire works of Andrew Lloyd Weber over and over. Yes,
friends, pharmaceuticals are at work here and I personally have
three thousand gallons of the tastiest gin I have ever had, and yes
it was gained by armed hijack in the early days of this whole
carnival. Gin this good… you gotta steal. Well…”

“Five years of hellfire and garbage and we
all crawled through every gruesome bit of it.”

“We made it this far and we’re gonna make
it to the end. You should try to make it too. Easier said than
done? Well that’s sissy spineless talk. You gotta roll with these
demonic punches. You gotta get beaten back to the ropes, then spin
out a damned Chinese fireball right back into their faces. Get
mean, get nuts and go for the cheap shots. You deserve it.
You’
re human.
You
’re still alive. Remember that. That’s
something.”

“Now, important announcement before we get
to the full diatribe. The long discourse. This is important… so
listen up, friends and kitties.”

“We keep in touch with a lot of people out
there. The great and burning white light of our Network, going from
here to Acuña to the East Coast. And we’re hearing things. We pass
things along. Here’s some bits—got a contact on the Ham, let’s call
him Mister Outside, and he’s telling us there’s something stinking
in what’s left of the Land of Enchantment. I’m talking some odd,
scary, weird stuff… and I don’t have enough actual details here to
share because Mister Outside doesn’t either, but all those nukes
rumored to be out there? Gone. Completely gone. Because guess what?
Turns out they were doing genetics out in the desert. And that
freaky flu that was supposedly turning people into zombies? Who
knows, may have even come from a lab. But apparently even that part
of the world is gone now, except who knows what kind of genetically
modified stuff is left roaming around in the nothing. Crazy, right?
All I know… all I can say is… Keep yourself secret and safe and
think about that real hard. If you’re in the area, stay away!”

“And here’s a really important headline for
our friends in ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’—horde warning kiddies. The
waters of the levee are coming your way, Central Texas. Somebody
rang the dinner bell….

Now for tonight’s numbers...”

Then a little girl’s voice began to read out
a series of numbers.

“3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3”

Or, just one number. Over and over.

The kid Walker would come to know as Shooter
came down the small dirt road that led to the bridge. His young
friend left him at the bridge and hightailed it back up into the
valley. Probably to keep watch. Trust was a rare commodity post—end
of the world. The sniper boy came walking down alone, his rifle
resting atop one shoulder. Walker could tell the rifle had become
an extension, an appendage of the boy.

That’s why he’s so good with it, Walker
heard himself think. Then as if the fatigue of the days since the
destruction of the convoy had suddenly caused him to become
forgetful, he repeated the last part again and out loud. “That’s
why,” he mumbled to no one.

The kid had killed most of the bikers and
saved Walker’s life when Walker had been completely willing to
throw it away for the sake of mere revenge. Now, the madness, the
revenge, it felt a distant thing from him, like a country he’d once
visited and hadn’t understood. Ever since the collapse, he’d wanted
to go on living no matter what. He’d done everything to keep on
doing that just one more day at a time. Organized, led, killed,
ran, starved, stolen and watched friends die... all of it just to
go on living.

Just one more day.

That, thought Walker, is what I do.

“You were fixed fer sure, mister,” said the
kid with a broad easy smile that was the opposite of all the faces
and smiles Walker had seen in the last five years. In fact, as he
thought about it now, he hadn’t seen too many smiles in the last
five years. Too few, and almost no laughter… or real joy.

The thought made him feel old.

The boy swung a bag off his shoulder and
dropped it at Walker’s feet.

“Ammo and food,” the boy said. “We guessed
at the ammo, but whatever you need, it’s in there.”

“I…” and Walker stopped. Stopped the way you
might when your heart skips a beat. The sudden awareness that
something isn’t right. The dust beneath his boots, the earth
underneath, it suddenly felt hollow. Like it was imperceptibly
jumping. Vibrating. Being beaten by a hundred thousand feet. And in
that heart-stop second, the feeling and tremors and vibrations were
confirmed and growing.

The kid looked at Walker. Not sensing what
Walker felt. Only staring into his face and asking an unspoken
question. Then, “What’s the matter, mister? You shot?”

Walker could hear the girders in the old
bridge begin to creak and groan. Small wavelets were erupting from
the other side of the river, counter to the current, pulsing out
toward the valley. Behind him, Walker could see their dust rising.
He turned back to the kid with stark raving terror crawling across
his brain.

“Horde.”

“What?” asked the kid with the rifle.

“Horde!” screamed Walker. “Run!”

~~~

Down below.

At Mr. Vo’s direction, Chuck had turned off
the radio as soon as the man Vo called “Mr. Dr. Midnite” had
finished his senseless rant.

“What does all that mean?” Delores
asked.

Vo, who was still hugging Ellis, smiled.
“Mean that the darkness still rules up-top,” he said.

“What’s the deal with these tunnels,” Chuck
asked. “And what are you doing down here?”

Vo sighed. “Down here? This is my home. I
lived down here before the world collapsed up in your world.

“My old friend Mr. Jim and I built most of
these tunnels,” Vo said.

Chuck interrupted. “Most of them?”

“A lot of them,” Vo said with a nod. “They
connect with county utility tunnels near the cities, but we built
most of these tunnels ourselves.

“Sometime, I don’t know, in the 90’s I
think, we’d stolen enough from the bankers and robbers and
white-collar criminals to buy us a tunnel machine. Like they used
to dig wine tunnels and caves out in California.”

“What’d you do with the dirt?” Chuck
asked.

“We were good at this, young man, now shut
up and listen while Mr. Vo talk.

“So we got tunnel to go all the way up past
Hagersville up north. Got tunnel to go into WonderSoft! That was a
fun one. And the old military base too. And the prison, and out to
the Scrap. We got tunnel going everywhere!”

“And you were bad men?” Delores asked. “You
robbed from people?”

Vo laughed. “Man rob from bad men not always
bad, but you can say that. We cowboys that wore the black hat, me
and Mr. Jim.”

“Where is Mr. Jim now?” Chuck asked.

Vo grunted, almost as if he’d taken offense.
“I bury him up that way,” lied the tiny Asian man who smoked like a
dragon. “Up the tunnel there. In the wall. He die before up-top
went crazy. But not before he got it all back. Bought back his farm
too. Mr. Jim was a good man. Good friend.”

Chuck looked at Delores who was shivering,
still cold from the swim.

“I need to get back,” he said.

“Not ‘til Ellis is ok, Chuck.”

“But—”

“No but.”

Mr. Vo’s head popped up and his hand came
out from under the blanket.

“Wait…”

“What?” Chuck said.

“Shhh…”

The silence was interrupted by a low rumble,
far in the distance but growing louder.

Delores grabbed for Chuck’s arm. “What is
that?”

Just then, Ellis’s eyes popped open. All of
them could feel the tremor coming through the ground, down from
above and into the dark tunnels. Like a cattle drive passing
overhead.

“Horde,” Vo whispered.

Delores and Chuck ran. Almost as if they
were one person. They dove into the pond and in seconds were
surfacing on the other side.

Chuck grabbed his headlight where he’d
dropped it and pulled it onto his head, flicking on the light.

When they got to the point on the ladder
where the horizontal tunnel broke off and headed toward the barn,
Chuck looked down at Delores, her face showing fear and cold in the
beam of the headlight.

“Head to the barn. The family should be
assembling there. I’ll go up to Utah so I can blow the bridge if
they haven’t already done it.”

~~~

Up-Top.

After sprinting back over the bridge,
Shooter collected Patrick from behind the rock where the boy was
hidden.

“Get to the barn!” Shooter shouted at
Patrick. “Get everyone into the tunnel!”

Patrick started to run, but stopped, and
with fear on his face grabbed Shooter’s arm. “Why?” he asked.

“Horde!” Shooter said. “I’m gonna get Neil
from the pillbox. Get to the barn and blow the bridge! We’ll be
right behind you!”

~~~

Chuck pushed open the huge rock that sealed
the passage from the Utah stone formation to the big drop. Once
he’d cleared the entrance, he looked down through the valley, and
that’s when he saw it.

No dream or nightmare could ever match what
he saw coming toward them up the rise toward the thin metal span of
the bridge. Thousands upon thousands and tens of thousands of
things, humans, monsters, surging like water toward Fontana’s
bridge.

Chuck had heard of hordes before, and he’d
seen signs of their passing; dust in the sky that darkened the sun,
rooted up vegetation a quarter mile wide where the things had
passed, but nothing could have prepared him for seeing a full-on
horde coming straight at him.

Before he could fully comprehend the sight,
or pull out the hidden “clicker” that was connected by wires to the
bombs on the bridge, hundreds of the creatures had already reached
the structure and were barreling across it. Some had cleared the
bridge and were racing up the draw into the green valley.

He reached down to crank the detonating
switch and then remembered this clicker was battery powered. He
shifted the fail safe guard with his thumb, and without thinking or
praying about it, he flipped the switch.

He’d already turned and was back through the
stone entrance when he heard the deafening booms and rumble from
the mouth of the valley. He pushed the heavy stone closed, sealing
the passage, then scurried down the ladder. He needed to get to the
barn to make sure everyone else in the family had made it into the
tunnels.

Ten minutes later, all of them, including
the body of their dead brother Karl, were through the water lock
and up in Vo’s quarters. Chuck and Shooter had worked together to
swim Karl’s body down through the submerged tunnel, and up the
other side.

Vo was gone. Ellis was awake and partially
dressed, and as the family gathered, chilled and in shock, the
elder young man stood. He walked over to where Karl’s body lay,
wrapped and tied in blankets, and he put his hand on the young
boy’s chest.

He then walked silently to a box Vo had
shown him shortly after Delores and Chuck had rushed off to get the
family.

“I am done fighting,” Vo had said before
disappearing northward through the tunnels. “But I’ll be down here.
I’ll find you when you need me.”

Ellis opened the box and pulled out four
Claymore mines. He pushed the family back around to the far side of
the small fire, then bent and armed the directional mines, pointing
them out toward the water.

Above them, the ground thundered and shook
as dust rained down in sudden waterfalls from uncertain places in
the ceiling.

“Someday we’ll take the farm back. But that
someday is not today.

~~~

They came on in waves. Waves following
waves. Like running, dusty starving vultures scouring the land.
Walter, the Stranger in Black had run alongside them whispering his
temptations, driving them on toward the little valley. But now he
stood on a small and distant hill, looking upward at
one-hundred-thousand Slenderex junkies, almost-zombies, racing
across the bridge and streaming up into the tiny hidden valley. The
ground shook like it was being beaten by all the war drums the
world had left. A scream of moaning white noise, groaning for
relief from a constant hunger for calories rose like a white
squall, and there were occasional punctuations of tormented screams
and shrieks erupting within the mindless chorus.