Digger 1.0 (23 page)

Trees fell as the maddened riot pushed in on
the little farm and the few animals there. The Man in Black
delighted in imagining what would happen to the yokel farmers that
must’ve once thought they’d be safe in their “hidey hole”. He
cackled with delight envisioning what it would be like as they were
ripped to pieces by his children. He imagined what it would be like
to watch it all happen, live. But now it would be too dangerous to
get too close. It would be a shark feed now.

The bridge collapsed as a massive press of
Slenderex cannibals surged onto it like a man trying to swallow a
wad of meat or a chicken bone. It collapsed into the river,
drowning some and spilling others into the racing waters who,
undeterred continued across. Climbing over their own dead.
Scrambling up the far embankment. Using their drowning, trampled
own as a ladder to reach the hoped for treasure of promised
calories. A few were carried away by the current. Others lay
trapped within the wreckage. Mayhem, the Stranger in Black,
chuckled with glee at all the terrible things he’d made.

For an hour he continued to watch the Horde.
By now they would have found their victims and the feasting and
fighting and sexing would have begun. Then the precious sleep
they’d catch for an hour or two, at most, before the insatiable
hunger for more drove them on to their next meal. But none of these
things were happening. The Horde had raced up and across the hidden
valley, even spilling off the high cliffs to perish in the river
below, like angry and unsated hornets. Frantic. Desperate.

The Stranger in Black knew, had known, there
were survivors here. Or the potential for survivors. And survivors
represented the greatest threat to his Queen. All survivors, anyone
who clung to the good and tried to build something despite the
destruction, were to be eliminated. Destroyed. Erased by any
means.

Terminated.

But the Horde was doing none of the things
it did when it found fresh calories. Which meant fresh calories
were not to be found. Angry now, and cursing, the Stranger in Black
strode toward the bridge and watched as the front runners began to
re-cross the river, mindlessly convinced that the calories they’d
been promised were somewhere other than here.

Mumbling, sweating, cursing, eyes crazed,
the Stranger in Black stood before the ruined bridge. He sniffed at
the changing wind, his head turning and twisting in new directions
as he did so. Then he snarled, stamped his foot, and started to
scream at the top of his lungs. He’d planned a maddening,
blood-curdling roar that would have sent every Slenderex cannibal
scrambling away from him in fear… but he stopped. He didn’t
scream.

He stamped one of his hobnailed boots again,
pounding it into the dust. And again. And again. And when he was
satisfied of something, he began to smile and the smile turned into
a laugh.

He was on his knees, laughing
uncontrollably, “hysterically” as people used to say, slapping his
large hands into the dusty Earth and repeating, “I know you’re down
there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

“I know you’re down there!”

His voice was a croak and a rusty wheeze as
the cannibals fled past him, leaving the valley of undelivered
caloric promises.

“I know you’re down there!” he whispered. “I
know.”

At that moment the earth began to shake,
back and forth, and the Stranger in Black fell over on his side,
and rolling onto his back and laughing like a stuck pig that had it
all wrong. Then there was a sudden “drop”.

And silence followed.

Yes, the horde, the Slenderex cannibals were
still racing past him seeking youth, beauty, and fame in a bottle
they’d opened years ago. Yes, all those things. But the Stranger in
Black knew something wonderful had just happened in the earthquake.
Something he’d been waiting for… for a long time.

He got to his knees wiping away the tears of
laughter that had caused streaks to form on his dusty face. He
sniffed again, cast his eyes wildly and knowingly about, and when
he was sure of what was known, he spoke the words he knew he’d
speak when first he’d been promised the dreams of a madman.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.” And, “Oh no,
we are most definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

The Baron stood atop the wall of wrecked
cars, watching the night. Again he played the report of his scout
over in his mind.

“A horde took the high valley.”

The Baron doubled the guard and watched the
night. He knew the Stranger in Black, the Madman of Casperville,
was somehow behind every bad thing that happened recently. And he
knew there was no fleeing now.

The Baron watched the night and wondered
what evil had come into his world.

Nick Cole
is a
working actor living in Southern California. When he is not
auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot,
kicked, stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools
for their projects, he can often be found as a guard for King
Phillip the Second of Spain in the Opera Don Carlo at Los Angeles
Opera or some similar role. Nick Cole has been writing for most of
his life and acting in Hollywood after serving in the U.S. Army.
For more information about Nick Cole, check out his website:
http://nickcolebooks.com

Michael Bunker
is a
USA Today
Bestselling author, off-gridder, husband, and
father of four children. He lives with his family in a "plain"
community in Central Texas, where he reads and writes books...and
occasionally tilts at windmills.

Michael is the author of several popular and acclaimed works of
dystopian sci-fi, including the Amazon top 20 bestselling Amish
Sci-fi thriller
the Pennsylvania Omnibus
, the groundbreaking
dystopian vision Hugh Howey called "a brilliant tale of
extra-planetary colonization." He also has written the epic
post-apocalyptic
WICK
series,
The Silo Archipelago
(set in Hugh Howey's World of
WOOL
,) as well as many
nonfiction works, including the non-fiction Amazon overall top 30
bestseller
Surviving Off Off-Grid
. Michael was commissioned
by Amazon.com through their Kindle Worlds program to write the
first commissioned novel set in the World of Kurt Vonnegut's
Cat's Cradle
. That book is entitled
Osage Two
Diamonds
, and it debuted on Dec. 17, 2013. Michael has been
featured on NPR, HuffPost Live, and The Guardian, and was recently
interviewed in a Medium.com article that will give you more
background and insight into his life and works...
http://bit.ly/17YbE63
.

On November 21st, 2014
Tales From Pennsylvania
, a fanfic
short story anthology featuring 10 top speculative fiction authors
writing fanfic short stories in the world of Michael Bunker's
Pennsylvania, was released in paperback and e-book format. There
are more than twenty authors currently writing fan fiction in the
world of Michael's
Pennsylvania
.

Michael recently joined with hybrid bestselling author Nick Cole
(author of
The Wasteland Saga
and
Soda Pop Soldier
,)
book marketing guru and author coach Tim Grahl (author of
Your
First 1,000 Copies
,) and Internet entrepreneur Rob McLellan
(owner of ThirdScribe.com,) to form a new company called Wonderment
Media. Wonderment has launched a new apocalyptic world called
Apocalypse Weird
and is bringing on dozens of the best and
brightest authors in speculative fiction to write books in the
Apocalypse Weird
world, attempting something that has never
been done before in digital publishing. Readers who subscribe to
Michael's newsletter get free copies of his books, usually before
they're published:
http://michaelbunker.com/newsletter

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1985.

Jim Howard was down tunnel. Way down. Deep
inside the telecom tunnels beneath Central City. He was threading
the main conduit, looking for the junction that would lead away
from City Hall and down toward the college.

The week before, he and Mr. Vo had robbed
the Savings and Loan. They hadn’t robbed it of money. Instead,
they’d robbed it of one safety deposit box in particular.

A box they’d heard about in Mexico from
their “friend” Escobar. Learned about it at the Haciendado on one
of Escobar’s legendary “Miami Vice” weekends. The box was linked to
the secret bank account of the Chief Financial Officer of
WonderSoft, the big tech startup that was making interactive
learning software and had opened their state of the art
headquarters in the Basin. Cutting edge CD ROM stuff.

The word was, that whatever was in the box
would be worth a big ransom. A hefty ransom. That’s what some
junior exec who liked coke a lot and had to cross over the border
to get as much as he wanted had intimated to Escobar.

A hefty ransom.

After the robbery, Jim had hidden the box in
the tunnels and gone back topside to start a brushfire out on
McCain road at a grain silo. A diversion.

Now, a week later, he had the box and was
heading back to the hideout. All he needed was to get out to the
limits of Central City and come up through a tunnel in the old
junkyard and then he could drive back out to the valley.

He passed traps and signal trips he’d set
up, threading them carefully. No one ever came down here. So,
everything looked pretty good. Or at least that was what Jim kept
telling himself.

The problem was, he felt uneasy. Real
uneasy.

He had that “Cong’s in the tunnel” feeling.
He had it real bad.

He pulled out his pearl-handled .45 with the
cartoon mongoose he’d had made down in Mexico, and kept it at his
side as he made his way further down tunnel. Ahead, he could see
the junction leading to “his” tunnels, and safety.

Keeping the gun at his side was the mistake.
One he’d never have made in-country. Back in ‘Nam.

They grabbed him from behind. He couldn’t
get the gun up and he didn’t even squeeze off a shot as he felt his
arms instantly turn to ice water.

They drugged me, was his thought as he slid
to the cold floor of the tunnel. With something in a needle...

As if knowing mattered.

As if anything mattered.

Later, he regained consciousness for a
moment.

He knew he was underground.

Not in the tunnels.

But underground. You could just tell if
you’d been in the tunnels long enough.

He was on a gurney. The walls were
government cream and light gray, overhead lighting fluorescent.

He knew someone,
someones
, were
nearby. But he couldn’t see them.

Elevator muzak was playing. He knew the
song. From ‘Nam.

“Going outta my head…

…day and night.

Night and day…

…over you…”

He knew the words that should be there, but
weren’t because it was the instrumental muzak version.

His head lolled to the side and he read a
placard on the wall as he was wheeled past.

Department of Defense

Tarragon Corporation Liaison Office

And then there were some framed photographs
of people he didn’t recognize. He knew the types of photographs
though. He’d seen them in the military. The Chain of Command Photos
that adorned every headquarters hallway.

Base Commander.

Department of the Army.

Secretary of Defense.

No one he recognized, but then again he
hadn’t been paying attention much lately what with all the
tunneling and robbing and Mexico.