Resurrection (17 page)

Chapter 43

  Charlie spent the night keeping a watch on the door. He did not know how long he had laid there; he had no Idea if it was morning or night. He had begun to hear noises coming from outside the room so he figured it must be dawn.

  He heard the familiar sound of keys rattling in the hall outside and soon the door opened and a man appeared in the doorway.

  “Philip?” Charlie said.

  “No sir, name is Keith, Philip is running the kitchen this morning. I brought you some breakfast, eggs and sausage and toast and coffee.”

  Charlie was silent staring up at Keith.

  “Well then, I’ll just leave this right here for when you’re ready….”

  “Are we the only one’s here?” Charlie interrupted.

  Keith did not answer immediately.

  “Well sir,” he said after a few moments you are the only guests we have at the moment, you and the boy I mean?”

  “Guests?” Charlie said holding his shackled hand out towards Keith. “You sure have a funny way of treating guests.”

  “Well, you are trespassers and we have to act with utmost caution in the interest of the people who call this place home. The world has gone insane and this is the only safe and relatively stable place within hundreds of miles and I’m certain that when Mr. Nigel is satisfied that you and the boy have no bad intents, well after he consults with the Colonel of course.”

  “The Colonel?” Charlie said.

  Keith looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet realizing that he had revealed more than he had intended.

  “You better eat, your food is getting cold while we stand here gabbing, I’m going to leave you alone now.”

  “Wait, Keith, I know this may be a strange question but, would you happen to know what year it is?”

  “What year? Why no I wouldn’t I hadn’t thought about it. It’s funny, but I don’t even know what day it is, I guess we left all of that behind us when the plague hit. That is an interesting question though”

  With that Keith turned and walked out the door quietly closing it behind him.

  Charlie ate breakfast and sat the tray back on the desk. He put his back against the wall and tried to relax. Digging in his coat he was surprised to find that they hadn’t taken his tattered copy of The Grapes of Wrath.

  He pulled it out and opened it and the picture of the boy named Zeke fell out onto his lap. He picked it up and gazed at the fading color photograph. He had forgotten that he had kept it.

  He wondered about the boy, he wondered if the woman he had killed was his mother. She would have had to be of some relation to the boy otherwise why would she have had the picture with her. But then he thought of himself, he had kept the photo and he was no relation to the boy.

  Perhaps the woman had picked it up just as he himself had off some other dead or dying soul. His thoughts turned to Peter; he wondered how he was faring and cursed himself under his breath for leading him into possible danger.

  He laid the picture on the cot beside him and picked up the book. He thumbed through it looking for where he had left off and being unable to find it he picked a chapter and began reading.

  The narrative always took him back, back to a time before, when people sought to escape drought and hunger and choking clouds of blowing dust, when sheer poverty and despair were the persuaders.

  A time when men were broken, shattered by the sight of all that they and their fathers before them had bled for and had even died for being laid bare by the indifference of circumstance and nature.

  When upon seeing their children all dirty faced and swollen bellies they packed up all the belongings that they could carry, loaded them into broken down jalopies and moved ever westward into the sunset following stories of a land which flowed with milk and honey only to discover that it was all a myth.

  He liked to withdraw into the author’s vision of a time long since passed and fantasized that he too was escaping a more mundane enemy like Mother Nature rather than the reality he faced.

  But each time he read it he realized that this was his story, minus the crazed, flesh eating boogey men of course, but it paralleled his own. It was his story of loss and the search for redemption in a world gone to hell.  He was an outcast just as the Joad family was, just like Preacher Jim Casy and Rose of Sharon and Tom. This was his life and he had become comfortable in it.

  There was a knock at the door and then the rattle of keys. The door opened and Nigel entered.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” Nigel said.

  “No not at all I was just getting in a little reading; I hadn’t had much time lately but due to my present circumstances I now have loads of time.”

  “The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, classic American novel,” Nigel said in his thick British accent.    

Charlie reached down and picked up the photograph and stuck it between the pages of the book and laid it on the cot. 

“May I? Nigel said reaching for the book.

Charlie nodded his head in affirmation.

“I hope you don’t think me to forward but I couldn’t help but notice the photograph,” Nigel said opening the book and pulling out the photo. “Do you know who it is, a relative perhaps?”

“No I found it somewhere I just hang on to it.”    

“Hmmm, well I must say the boy does bear a striking resemblance to you.” Nigel said handing the book and photograph back to Charlie.

“I thought you might like to get out of this stuffy room and get some air, I’ll show you around the place, quite a little community we have here and I’m sure you’ll find it most interesting.”

Nigel called for Philip who appeared in the doorway with a full set of shackles. Nigel took them and prepared to unlock the bracelet the held Charlie to the wall. “I hope there will be no trouble, you understand that in order to guarantee our safety as well as yours these restraints are necessary, for the time being at least.

Charlie glared at Nigel, he knew he could create a great deal of mayhem when his fetters were removed but he also realized that it would do him no good to try anything; that time would come but he would just have to wait until the right moment.

“No there won’t be any trouble,” Charlie said holding out his chained arm.

Philip removed one shackle and switched it with the pair of handcuffs and stood up, “After you,” Nigel said with a wave of his hand.

Charlie walked out into the hallway followed by Nigel and Philip. A short way down the hall they came to a stairway and after walking up three flights they came to a door. Philip opened the door which led to a cat walk and for the first time in several days he felt the warm desert air on his face.

Below him through the expanded metal floor of the walkway he could see another catwalk and another below that and above were several more. To his left was the desert, this part of the structure was open to the elements. He could see several small buildings and beyond those was a high fence with rolls of razor wire on top.

As they walked he began hearing the sound of engines running and the metal walkway began to vibrate slightly. They reached a door and Philip came around in front and opened it.

The noise of machines like that of a locomotive filled his ears, Nigel handed him a set of earplugs from a box affixed to the wall outside the door and Charlie fitted them into his ears.

They entered an enormous mechanical room filled with compressors and generators. Each of the machines had a pipe running to it which branched off a larger pipe running along the ceiling. The exhaust from each piece of equipment ran through the ceiling. There were large exhaust fans at each end of the room, but the temperature was still stifling.

Men in blue shirts walked around the machines carrying clipboards, they read the gauges on each machine and wrote the information that they gleaned from them onto a sheet of paper. Other men in brown shirts and wearing tool belts stood around the machines pointing and talking with one another.

As Charlie passed the men turned and looked at him, they stared and spoke words Charlie could not hear but he was certain they were about him. Upon reaching the other side of the room Philip opened another door and as the door closed behind them and the sound of engines became muffled. This room was much quieter yet it had its own sound, a kind of high pitched hiss.

Nigel pointed at a large steel pipe which came from several floors below and continued several floors above. They walked to the edge of the walkway and Charlie’s eyes followed the pipeline down to the desert floor.

It followed a course through the perimeter fence and out into the desert as far as he could see.

“This is how we power the camp, this pipeline comes from several natural gas wells out there,” Nigel said pointing out into the desert. “We tapped into them to power the generators which in turn provide us with electricity,” Nigel yelled above the din of machines and the hiss from the pipeline.

Charlie was stunned by the level of technology on display; He could not imagine that such a place even existed. After all, his journeys had taken him through a wasteland where man had reverted to primitive ways of existence.

Nigel took Charlie by his arm and led him to a staircase which wound its way down through each level to the ground floor. Once there they entered a door with the words “Control Room” painted in red lettering.

“From here we can control each of the generators as well as monitor the mainline. We can see the pressure of the gas in the line, oil pressure, temperature and output in watts of each of the seven generators we have running. We have four emergency generators which run on diesel, just in case.”

Philip opened the door and they stepped out of the control room. They walked out onto a graveled road and from there Charlie could see that the camp resembled a military establishment. As they strolled along the road Charlie saw people working gardens and tending to animals outside of metal buildings that he assumed were their homes. Children played in the street and the place appeared for all intents and purposes just like any small town would have been before the outbreak.

“Everyone here is self-sufficient, they grow their own food and everyone pitches in, no one goes without,” Nigel said.

Several men on horseback rode by on the opposite side of the road, Charlie recognized some of them as the men who had captured him on the mesa. They walked to the far end of the encampment and stopped in front of an impressive two story house. It was very different from the other homes which were made of corrugated tin.

A walkway wound through the carefully manicured lawn leading to a door which sat in between two large white columns.

“The colonel wishes to meet you, you are the first guest we have had in quite some time,” Nigel said.

Nigel led the way and when they arrived at the door they were greeted by two men, Nigel showed them identification and they were allowed inside. Philip bid them goodbye and walked back down the path to the road.

Charlie followed Nigel through the foyer, from the inside Charlie could see that the place was much larger than it appeared from the outside. He could discern from the way the house was decorated that it was some sort of official residence.

From the foyer they walked into a much larger room with a great stairway which led to the second floor. Two men stood on each side of the staircase. One of the men acknowledged Nigel and nodded to one of two men who were standing by a set of double wooden doors at the top of the stairs.

He tapped lightly on the door and a man dressed in suit and tie appeared. The two men spoke to each other quietly. The man behind the door looked over the balcony, shook his head and went back inside closing the doors behind him.

After several minutes the double doors re-opened and the man who had stepped out previously stepped onto the balcony. Then two men dressed in military attire stepped forward and took up positions on either side of the doorway.

It was at that moment that another also dressed in military style came forward.  The two men on either side of the doorway saluted as he passed through and he returned the salute and continued straightway to the railing.  He looked down at Charlie raised his hand in the air. 

“Welcome to Resurrection!” He said with a flourish.