Particle Z (Book 1) (14 page)
The realization that blowing another hole in the floor would be the easy part when compared to herding the Changed away was daunting. This entire operation was proving to be trickier than anticipated. Mike and Eric stood there looking down through the first hole they had opened, or H1, as Julian called it. Turned out the guy was a naming convention geek. Must be some sort of OCD they had never heard of. H2 was now the short name for the new access point closer to the bunker.
The room was filled with putrid corpses, Haya’s among them, and most were staring up at them, well aware of the livings’ presence just out of their reach. Mike didn’t need a Master’s to know there was no chance of getting back downstairs now. The room was so full of the Changed that Mike decided to try another, more forward method. He pulled thee grenades from his belt and looked sideways at Eric, who raised his eyebrows and then just shrugged his shoulders.
“Let’s do it,” Mike said, sounding like a school-aged boy about to do something he knew was wrong. “Julian may not like it, but we aren’t in his chain of command and improvisation is the key to success, right?”
“Whatever you decide works for me,” Eric said, chuckling at Mike’s attempted self-justification.
“Okay, let’s make some Z-stew,” Mike said as he pulled the pins and tossed all three grenades into the room below. “Now let’s get the fuck outta here!”
They both took off running back to Julian and Davis, who were waiting near the new access point.
They were almost back to H2 when they heard the collective blast from the three grenades they hoped would work as bait and draw the Zs away from the bunker entrance below.
“What did you do?” Julian asked as they ran up to his position.
Mike answered for them. “The room was overflowing so we tossed a few grenades through H1, hoping it would draw the Zs below away from this area.”
“Julian, it looks like it may be working. The Zs are moving toward the sound of the blast,” Davis said while peering down through H2, being careful not to be spotted by any of the Changed below. He didn’t want to shift their attention now that they had them moving away.
“It’s bunker or bust now, fellas,” Julian announced.
Mike wasn't sure he was too keen on the bust part of that statement, but decided not to say anything about it. Within seconds, they were all on the ground floor and moving toward the back wall of the exposition hall. The Changed had taken the bait and, for now, the vast room they now found themselves in was eerily quiet. Julian headed straight for the far corner of the room. Mike looked around uncomfortably. They were a good distance from where they had dropped down, and he didn’t see any escape routes.
As they reached the back wall it appeared as though they had hit a dead end. Mike was starting to wonder if Julian knew where the bunker really was.
“Help me open the panel,” Julian said to no one in particular.
Eric stepped forward with a quizzical look on his face while Mike ran his eyes across the wall looking for a door. The wall was ornate like the rest of the resort, white with glaring yellow geometric patterns printed from top to bottom. Nothing you would ever think would look attractive to the eye, but in this room it all somehow managed to appear expensive and cultured.
Julian, with Eric in tow, walked over to the corner. He pushed into the wall with the palm of his hand then moved his hand away. There was an audible click and the entire wall shifted outward slightly. They grabbed the edge and slowly pulled it open. The entire back wall of the exposition hall started to move and pleat, the complexly hinged panels folding back one at a time, revealing a small, industrial-looking area behind what had looked like a solid wall at first glance.
With most of the panels now open, a massive steel door came into view. Majestic and bold, it reminded Mike of a 1950s-era bank vault door. The bunker’s primary entranceway door was smooth except for a rotating wheel slightly off center to the left, with a small pull handle to assist with opening and closing such a massive slab of steel. Mike was so engrossed with how cleverly the entrance was hidden that he missed the look of alarm cross Eric’s face. It wasn’t until he heard the muffled report of silenced automatic weapon rifle fire that he turned to see what was going on.
Something had turned the Changed away from the diversion Mike had hoped would provide them with time to get inside the bunker. Not only were they not inside the bunker yet, now they were facing a mob of the Changed, deadly intent twisted into the face of each ghoul. Mike took a quick survey of their options and knew if Julian failed to get the door open in the next few minutes they were dead men or worse.
“Julian, I think it’s time to get the door open!”
“The thought crossed my mind, Mike.”
Julian walked along the door, tracing his hand along it until he was standing next to its massive steel hinges. He was looking for something, but Mike wasn’t able to see what because his attention was ripped back to the scourge approaching from behind. Raising his rifle, he joined Eric, Davis, and Aggeles in their attempt to slow down the crowd while Julian worked feverishly to open the bunker door. Mike took shot after shot, sometimes hitting the same Z one of the others had targeted. The bodies were piling up, slowing the shambling assembly ever so slightly. Mike estimated they had about fifty feet before they would be overrun.
Davis yelled over the pandemonium of weapons fire, “Go for the knees, maybe they’ll trip each other up.”
They all followed his lead and changed up every other shot. When they went down, the maimed Zs grabbed for anything that brought them closer to their prey. This new tactic caused chaos in their ranks and had the slowing effect Davis had hoped for. Mike took a quick glance back and eyeballed Julian for a second. He had a small panel open now and was intently keying in some sort of code. If the door didn’t open in the next few minutes, they were sure to be joining the ranks of the Changed. It was that thought that had Mike popping off round after round in a reenergized attempt to slow the tide of death agonizingly inching its way toward them.
With just twenty-five feet separating them from the Changed now, Mike could make out every bite mark and festering laceration suffered before turning. The whites of their eyes were teeming with angry red veins. The smell of urine, feces, and much worse was pungent and hung in the air so thick Mike could taste it.
“I’m out,” Eric called and pulled his pistol from its holster. He didn’t start firing again; instead, he looked back at Julian then back at the looming death splayed out in front of him.
Mike knew instinctively why Eric had stopped firing. He was going to save the last few rounds until the Zs were on top of him and the final round fired would be for Eric himself. Mike didn’t blame him, because he had already decided to follow the same path when that time arrived.
The Changed were not ten feet from them when they heard Julian whoop in excitement and they heard the click of a lock unlatching and the metallic grating of the door’s inner bars sliding open. The sound was unmistakable and music to the ears of the living.
“Disengage and fall back now,” Julian screamed as he pulled the door open just enough to allow one person at a time access to the bunker.
Davis and Aggeles let rip one last lethal volley as Mike and Eric slipped inside. The remaining three men quickly followed, and Julian pulled the door shut to the shrill screams of the Changed. Their angry cries sent a shudder down the spine of more than one man. It felt surreal to finally be inside the safety of the Greenbrier bunker. Congressional planners could never have imagined their Cold War retreat would be used one day to take refuge from a horde of molecularly transformed undead and not the nuclear holocaust they had so meticulously calculated for.
Mike heard shuffling in the pitch black, then a click followed by a laser-white beam from a Maglite cutting through the darkness.
“This place have power?” Mike asked.
“It’s completely self-contained. Power, sewer, food, water, communication, and medical supplies. Like I said before, this place was going to house Congress up till the early ‘90s. They never really decommissioned it even though that was the official line,” Julian opined.
Eric rolled his eyes and smiled. “Hidden in plain sight. Very clever and effective. The Feds get some things right every once in a while, I guess. Now how about that power?”
“If I recall, the main breaker is around here somewhere,” Julian murmured while whipping the flashlight around. The light honed in on a set of electrical breakers a few feet down what Mike assumed was a tunnel of sorts.
“Let there be light,” Julian proclaimed as he flipped a breaker up, and one by one, the lights flickered to life, making their slow progression down the center of a long industrial corridor lined with neat rows of exposed piping and conduit. The overhead lighting reflected off a polished concrete floor. Mike was impressed. The bunker must be situated deep underground, because the corridor ran further than he expected. It ran so far, in fact, that he was unable to make out the opposite end.
A slight movement in the distance caught Mike’s eye. Maybe a rat slinking around looking for a new hole to hide in. This facility would provide a good place for their group to catch up on some sleep and plan their next move without fear of the Changed at every turn, as long they were the only ones who had managed to find their way inside.
As if reading his thoughts, Davis cleared his throat before speaking. “We need to be careful until we know for certain we’re alone.”
“Roger that, brother. We made it this far and now it’s time to focus on getting the rest of our people safely inside,” Eric said, reminding everyone of the fact they had others outside that might find themselves in mortal danger if a large cluster of Changed ran across their position. MRAP or no MRAP, time was of the essence.
Alert for anything that might pose a threat, they traversed the length of the corridor and found yet another blast-proof steel door. Mike was sure they had walked at least a half-mile to get to this door. In an attempt to look at things on the brighter side, he took comfort in the fact that the movement he had seen earlier was most likely just a flickering lightbulb. Julian quickly moved to a small access panel and keyed in another code from a small notebook he pulled from a sleeve pocket. This time there was no sound of a lock unlatching. He walked over and pulled on the handle. The huge door must have been perfectly balanced, as a simple tug had it swinging silently open, revealing a well-lit room that appeared to be the in-processing station for staff and dignitaries arriving at the bunker.
“Just past this door is a medical clinic, followed by the power plant and a small communication room. The living quarters and assembly areas are downstairs on the lower level. Each area can be secured from one another, so once cleared we don’t need to be concerned with any surprises from behind. A tunnel leads from the power plant to the surface that exits to the hills just north of the Resort. That’s where Shrader will need to meet us,” Julian explained.
“Have you radioed them? Are they okay?” Mike asked.
“Our communication gear doesn’t work down here. The walls were built to withstand an indirect nuclear blast, so our handheld gear doesn’t stand a chance. The equipment kept in the bunker will be able to get through to them. It’s connected to relays and antennas hidden topside and hardened to withstand most conventional weapons and even an EMP.”
Mike nodded. “Let’s clear the next few rooms and get them inside as soon as possible. I don’t like knowing they’re sitting ducks up there.”
“One of my best men is watching over them, Mike,” Julian said, trying to reassure him.
Davis approached the next door and tried the latch and handle; it also effortlessly swung open without a sound. Mike had to tip his hat off to the people that maintained the place; considering the construction dated back to the late 1950s, everything still worked like new.
Just as Julian had described, a spacious medical clinic was in the next set of rooms, complete with beds, cabinets full of basic first aid materials, and a separate room that must have been a surgical suite. They carefully checked every corner of the room, declared it Z-free, and continued on to the next room housing the power plant.
“I don’t hear any equipment running,” Mike said in a low whisper.
“The generators cycle on at set intervals to make sure they stay operational. The bunker is powered from the town’s power grid until the power supply is interrupted,” Julian explained.
This made sense to Mike; they would be able to conserve their fuel stores until it became necessary to use the bunker’s power generation system, perhaps significantly extending the facility’s operational capability before they would need to head back outside to face unknown conditions. This facility was exceptionally well-thought-out. It was a shame they would need to move on in search of help for Marlee. Mike couldn’t think of a place better suited to keep them safe from the Changed.
“Davis, take Aggeles and secure the communication room, then radio Shrader with the coordinates for the entrance.”
“Yes, sir.”
While the two men set out to execute Julian’s order, Mike and Eric poked around the power plant looking for the tunnel. Not surprisingly, they were unable to locate it. Everything was well-hidden. Necessary precautions, Mike assumed.