Weapons of War (28 page)

"Not if I can help it."

Donovan smiled. "What if you can't?"

Donovan trailed behind Kraeger, while Soon and Ehri covered the rest of his remaining followers, keeping them at gunpoint while they traversed the building. Kraeger hadn't stopped talking the entire time, keeping up a litany of chatter about how he wound up first in Mexico, and then at the rest stop between San Luis and Monterrey.

"I almost died five, six times on the way down," he was saying as they reached the small security room in the back corner of the structure. "Not Dread, mind you. Jackals. It isn't just the innocents they go after, you know. Anybody who looks weak is fair game, and I was pretty weak at the time. Not by choice. Just a series of bad decisions that didn't pan out in my favor." He laughed. "All because of a girl, believe it or not."

Donovan didn't answer. He kept hoping that not engaging would get the man to quiet down. It didn't seem to be working.

"So, I came into this place, and there was just blood and guts and death everywhere. At first, I thought it was more jackals, and I was ready to get the hell out, but then I came across the dead clone. The Dread had cleaned this place out maybe a day or two before I got here. Just wiped everyone out. They had used small arms, though, not heavy slugs like their mechs fire. They wanted this place intact. They wanted to use it to bring people in. Their honeypot."

They filed into the space. There was power being fed to the equipment, and screens displayed the inside of the building from almost every angle. There were even cameras on the outside of the space, and Donovan could see the Monster clearly through one of them.
 

"Standard security," Kraeger said. "Low cost, easy to maintain. Nothing fancy like they had up in the States. It was out of order when I got here. Like I was saying, the Dread were using this place to bait humans. It got me thinking about the idea as I explored. What if I could do the same? What if I could start rebuilding my resources, start a new community, do my part to save humankind? It was all wishful thinking at the time. I knew if enough people showed up here the Dread would come back and wipe them out again. I'm sure you've heard of it happening before?"

"Too often," Donovan said.
 

"Yeah. So I was just daydreaming about it. I didn't think it would ever work. Then I came in here, and I learned the most important lesson of my life."

Kraeger paused and looked at Donovan, waiting for him to ask.

"Which was?"
 

He smiled and reached under the security desk, feeling the bottom. He did something, and a piece of the floor slid aside, revealing a ladder the descended into darkness.

"Always be on the lookout for narcotics trafficking tunnels," he said.

"Narcotics?" Donovan said. "As in, illegal drugs?"

"Yup. I came in here and looked around a little bit. I found a frayed wire leading into the floor, and that made me curious. So I ended up on my hands and knees below the desk until a cat or something made noise and I tried to jump up." He laughed. "I hit my head on the switch to activate the hidden door. It was a total accident, can you believe that? Anyway, I followed the rabbit hole. The tunnel to the drop point is about a kilometer long. That was where I found a stash of drugs and guns. There's another tunnel that goes five kilometers out that way, toward the mountains. That's where the bunker is."

He moved to the ladder, turning around to climb down.
 

"From what I've been able to learn, it used to belong to a guy named 'El Diablo.' The Devil. He was a pretty high and mighty drug kingpin until the day the Dread attacked. The bunker was his hiding place away from all the rivals and government agencies that wanted to take him down. It was like his own private estate, tucked away from prying eyes and offering a level of comfort and security that should have carried him through a pretty peaceful life hiding from the aliens."

"Should have?"

"When I found the place, the generator was running, and the power was on, but nobody was home. It seemed that El Diablo and his entourage never made it to the bunker to hide. They probably got blasted on the way here."

Kraeger started climbing down the ladder. Donovan followed after, careful to keep him in view. They descended twenty meters until the walls around them opened up into a fairly large tunnel.
 

"I always guessed that he owned the building through some shell corporation or something and that the whole thing was a front for his real operations. It's easy to access from the highway, but also pretty nondescript and utilitarian. Who would ever have thought it was a facade?"

"How many people are down here?" Donovan asked, staring past Kraeger and into the long corridor. He couldn't believe a place like this had been so close to the resistance base the entire time, and he had never known about it. Then again, wasn't that the point?

"Four hundred," Kraeger replied.

"How do you keep that many people fed down here? There's nothing to forage nearby." He remembered that Kraeger had mentioned eating human flesh, and he began to feel sick.

"That was a part of a darker past," Kraeger said, noticing his discomfort. "The bunker is self-sufficient, Major. Indoor farms provide more than enough veggies to keep everyone healthy without resorting to cannibalism. It's funny when you think about it. El Diablo must have spent billions to get it assembled, and then he got offed before he ever got to use it. But now we have a growing community here. A thriving community. It's like a fairy-tale."

"Except for the part where you kill people," Donovan said.
 

"I won't lie and tell you I never enjoy killing. But the difference between me and some random asshole is that I have a reason for it. You come into my house looking for food or shelter; I'm happy to oblige if you can be of service to me. If you have skills. If you've been out there too long, if you're rabid, or if you're too damn weak and useless, then I don't have a use for you and the rest of the world doesn't either. You're Dread fodder regardless, so is it a big deal if I keep you from grabbing that last candy bar that might keep someone strong alive for another day? If that little bit of sustenance can get them to me?"

Kraeger stopped walking, turning and facing Donovan. He raised his gun in response, uncertain about the man's intentions.

"Answer that for me, Major. Should I let weak people live and risk that the strong people will die? Do you think there's a place for that kind of charity in the world today?"

Donovan would have known the answer to that a month ago. The world they lived in had always been dangerous, but there had been room for everyone in the security of the silo. But now the resistance base was gone. Matteo was gone. His mother and Diaz were gone. Thousands of people were dying every day at the hands of the Dread. Maybe there was some truth to Kraeger's words, even if it was a truth he didn't want to see.

"I can tell you're not as sure as you were an hour ago," Kraeger said. "I call that progress. I can show you more, Major, but I know you have somewhere else you want to be. So what do you want to do with me? With us? I can't stop you from taking your people and leaving, or from killing me and claiming this place for yourself. So the question is: now what?"

"How long?" Donovan asked.

Kraeger turned his wrist, checking a heavy, antique gold watch he had recovered from his quarters in the bunker the residents affectionately referred to as Hell.

"The situation's a little different this time, Major," Kraeger said. "Usually, they come to check their trap, find nothing, and head out. You left their transport sitting out there on the back of a big-rig. Not to mention, they appear to be more than a little worried about you."

They were inside what Kraeger had called the Ready Room, a secondary, heavily fortified space inside Hell that contained remote links to the cameras positioned throughout the external complex. Through them, Donovan could see the new Dread troop transport that had arrived. Clone soldiers were crawling all over the interior of the former shopping area, examining every nook and cranny for evidence that Donovan, Ehri, and the rest of the scavengers were hiding inside.

According to Kraeger, that was the typical Dread deployment. In this case, their forces had been bolstered by a pair of mechs and the presence of a squad of fully armored pur'dahm. Ehri had identified them as more Hunters.

"But we're safe down here, right?" Donovan said.

"So far, so good," Kraeger replied. "But we left your people out by the tunnel armed to the teeth for a reason."

Donovan checked the camera feed that showed the scene by the heavy steel door that could seal the bunker off from the tunnel. Soon was leading a group composed of both scavengers and jackals there, the men and women who had agreed to be part of their overall defenses. They had ten of the enemy plasma rifles in all, enough to put up a pretty good fight if the Dread found the tunnel and entered it.

It had taken Donovan nearly the entire remainder of the hour he had had given them to free the Monster to come to the decision to work with Kraeger. Then it took almost another hour to forge an agreement with him to allow any scavengers who wanted to stay to stay, and to swear to let them become part of the community regardless of their skills. Donovan hadn't known exactly what he was bargaining for until he returned to the scavengers, explained Murphy's death, and led them down into the tunnels and to the bunker.

Hell wasn't a bad place overall, but it did come with a well-defined hierarchy of status based on usefulness. Women were valued for one of two things. Either you had a trade the community could use, or you had a body the community could use. It was a hard idea to accept, but the cold truth was that humankind needed more humans, and there was only one way to get them. At the same time, the pregnant women Donovan had seen were treated like royalty, given every comfort they could want as well as the best pick of the available food.
 

The process was similar for the men, though they were typically culled based on age, physical health, and personality along with skill set. And when Kraeger said culled, he meant culled. The majority of the travelers they killed were men who didn't fit into the community; the decision made after an ambush and a quick interview. While Donovan had made Kraeger promise to spare the scavengers, he had a feeling that treaty was only going to be good for as long as Donovan was in the bunker. Kraeger claimed to be an honorable man, but he was also a pragmatist, and those two things didn't always mesh.

"They're in the control room," Donovan said, watching one of the pur'dahm Hunters move in. The armored bek'hai stared at the equipment, tapping on the panel to see if it was functional before turning and running his eyes across the room. He walked out a moment later.

"A good sign," Kraeger said.
 

"Where do you think they're going to think we are when they can't find us?" Donovan asked.

"Scattered into the brush, most like," Kraeger said. "That's what usually happens. They'll try to track you down, find a few stragglers out there, and then kill them and call it a day."

"You've seen it happen?"

"Plenty of times. I spent twenty years out there before I came here."

"Before or after the woman was involved?"

He laughed. "Both. I had a couple of years in the middle that were damn good. A few on either end that made me question my sanity." His face suddenly turned dark, and he cast his eyes to the floor. "You have to learn to accept who you become, or you can't ever come back."

"I've only ever been one thing, and I plan to keep it that way. A soldier."

"I wish you the best of luck with that, Major."

They sat silently for a minute, watching the Dread. It was obvious when they finished the sweep because they retreated as one back to the transports. The Hunters loaded themselves into the one Donovan had taken, and it lifted off with the others, heading out toward the brush. The two mechs abandoned the facility as well, moving west.