Eagle one, p.13
Eagle One, page 13
part #2 of Bugging Out Series
A spot, dark and irregular, both on the worn white painted surface of the bench, and on the bare metal floor of the van. It bore the appearance of some liquid that had spilled and dripped onto the floor. A colored liquid, the tinge of deep, crusted crimson still apparent against the pale top of the bench.
Blood.
Twenty Five
The van stopped after just a few minutes, vehicle brakes screeching behind us, signaling that the convoy which had accompanied us from the airport had stopped. Voices consulted beyond the locked rear door for a moment, and then it opened.
There were guards everywhere. Men and women. Bearing arms that any big city tactical team would take for granted. Only the dress was different. Ninja black was traded here for hunter camo and sturdy work wear, load-bearing vests over all, mag pouches bulging, wires running from earpieces to radios. They were connected. To each other.
And to someone else. Someone calling the shots.
We were ordered out of the back and directed to walk north. Six of the guards escorted us down a narrow street, then between buildings, a stiff sea breeze whipping between the structures, the fog that had made our landing sketchy rolling in from the ocean in fat white waves. They’d stripped us of everything but our first layer of clothes at the airport, jackets taken and piled. The bite of the wintry ocean air stung.
“Mom, I’m cold,” Krista said.
Grace pulled her daughter closer as they walked and glanced back to Elaine. She was probably about Grace’s age. There was a hardness about her. An absolute conviction.
Still, she was a woman. Maybe a mother. If not now, then once.
“It’s freezing out here,” Grace said to her.
Elaine, her MP5 pointed at the ground now, considered the plea as they walked, then looked to Krista.
“We’re almost there,” Elaine said. “It’ll be warm. I promise.”
A touch of humanity, it seemed. But what about the others? All I knew about them so far were a smattering of names that I’d learned through introduction, or heard in the chatter back at the airfield. Burke. Jeff. Jenny.
And Martin. That name I’d heard more than one of our welcoming committee speak, though not in any direct way. There was no ‘Martin’ among them, but there was most definitely someone of that name they were speaking of. Speaking in strict tones. Not quite reverence, but close. Respect, if we were lucky. Anything beyond that and I feared we’d have another Major Layton on our hands.
“Up there,” Burke told us, pointing to a small warehouse, a pair of guards waiting at its door.
“The child is a liar,” Neil said quietly, looking to me as we walked.
I half-turned my head toward him, angry and incredulous. He knew. He’d understood what the dying crewman had said, right then and there, and he’d kept it to himself.
“You don’t work around diplomats for years and not pick up a bit of the major languages,” he said.
“So you just decided to keep that from me? From us?”
“Like you decided to after your trip to the foreign dictionary section of the Kalispell library?” he fired back, blunting my challenge.
So we both knew. And we both feared that letting on might dull our collective determination to get to Eagle One.
Yet we were here. Whatever ‘here’ was, beyond a mark on the map. Beyond a collection of people who seemed less than happy we’d dropped in on them, despite offering urgings to come and directions to guide us.
As we neared the old structure, corrugated metal sides tinged a solid rust red, one of the guards pulled the door open, a dimly lit interior beyond. But before we stepped through I noticed something else. A neatly stenciled sign next to the entrance. One that had the appearance of being freshly painted again and again, no hint of weathering or corrosion upon it. An innocuous descriptor of the building we were about to enter—Meeting Hall.
“Inside,” Burke told us, his AK at the ready now, no longer slung, finger just outside the trigger guard.
There was no point objecting or hesitating. We’d come this far. It was time to finish the journey.
I looked to my friends and then stepped through the doorway.
Part Four
Micah
Twenty Six
The door closed behind us and the six guards led us to the center of the space, an old, small warehouse, single light fixture suspended from the ceiling. Just enough light emanated from it that I could make out dozens and dozens of folding chairs stacked neatly on rolling carts pushed against the west wall of the structure, but nothing else. The room was otherwise bare. Besides the door we’d entered through, there was just one other, on the opposite wall of the space. It opened after we’d been waiting for a few minutes and someone came through, Krista gasping softly when she saw him.
He walked toward us, hissing through his mask, oval holes in the vintage respirator darkened, just a hint of eyes beyond the smoky glass. Black rubber gloves and boots covered his hands and feet, a loose white plastic jumpsuit everything else. A few feet from where we stood he stopped.
“What did you bring?”
The question he posed crackled past the mask’s dull filter, like steamy spittle erupting from a leaking radiator.
“They didn’t bring anything,” Burke said.
The man in the respirator looked past us to the head of the guard detail. An instant of silence seemed to telegraph some annoyance that was impossible to see on his face.
“I asked them.”
Burke offered no reaction to the verbal slap, standing mute behind us. Mute and armed.
“Nothing,” I said.
Behind, two of the six guards who’d escorted us here lifted their rifles and put the muzzles at the back Neil’s and my skull. Some not so gentle urging to come up with a better answer. Or else.
“That was not the information you gave when you were allowed to land,” the man said.
“It was the only way you’d let us land,” Neil said. “We tried Seattle, but the welcome they gave us included artillery.”
“Seattle,” the man parroted, laughing lightly behind the mask. “Yeah, that sounds about right for them.”
“Pardon me for not finding humor in this,” I said. “But the only difference I see between you and them is you look ready to shoot us on good old solid ground.”
Beside me I could sense Krista’s fear rising. Grace laid a harsh look on me.
“How about we just chill a bit?” she asked and suggested.
The man looked to her. Then to Krista. He took a step forward and crouched down, placing his masked face even with hers.
“How old are you?” the man asked.
Krista glanced up to her mother, seeking some permission to answer. To speak to the stranger. Grace hesitated, then nodded.
“I’m nine.”
The man seemed to mull on the answer for a moment, then his head tipped upward, gaze angling to Grace, then Neil, and finally to me. He rose and drew a long, filtered breath.
“Come with me,” he said.
The guards began to move as he turned, but he waved them off sharply.
“Just them,” he said, nodding to the four of us. “Just our visitors.”
It wasn’t as if we had any choice in the matter. The men and women equipped for battle weren’t following, but they would be close, I was certain. With only a brief hesitation stalling us, we followed the unknown man through the door he’d come in through and down a short hall, another door at its end, bits of muted light sneaking in around its edges. He pushed it open and an odd bright light filled the corridor, flat and filtered. We saw why as we emerged into an opaque tunnel, walls, floor, and ceiling all made of thick plastic stretched around a tubular metal frame, exterior floodlights bathing it from outside. It seemed to be affixed to the building we’d just exited, its length stretching across a narrow roadway, with steps at each side where street transitioned over curbs to sidewalks. Through the milky walls I could see people. A few to either side, the unmistakable silhouette of rifles in their hands. More guards, I thought. Securing this passage.
But a passage to where? To what?
The plastic tunnel reached a set of steps, the thick material following every tread and riser as we mounted them, landing on a porch, the tunnel pinched and gathered there to pass through a doorway minus the door. The masked man moved through the opening, leading us into a house. Or what had been one before every exposed inch was covered with the same sturdy plastic. Where there might have been furniture, a table, a television, in some past incarnation, the space, which certainly was the home’s living room, now served only as some sort of way station, one way in behind us, and two ways out just ahead.
The masked man stopped and looked at us through the respirator’s darkened lenses.
“Wait here until I call you back,” he said, lifting a hand and stabbing a gloved finger toward the left exit, strips of plastic hanging over it to obscure the space beyond. “Go that way only.”
He didn’t wait for any acknowledgement, simply turning away and disappearing through the exit on the right side. A rustle of movement sounded beyond, then a wet hiss cut sharp through the house.
“Any guesses?” Neil asked.
“On what?” I asked back.
Neil gestured to the space that seemed not far from some mob murder room depicted in movies.
“It’s a vestibule,” Grace said. “For a clean room.”
“A what?” Neil pressed her.
“A space to keep dirt out,” Grace explained. “Or germs. The way he went is a decon chamber. That’s the shower we’re hearing.”
“A decontamination chamber,” Neil parroted, uncertain.
“That way allows access to the clean room,” she said, pointing toward the shower sound.
“And this way?” I asked, gesturing toward the exit on the left.
The spray of water quieted and Grace looked to me.
“I think we’re about to find out.”
The slap of bare feet on a hard floor, then the rustle of clothes being slipped on, preceded a stillness. A silence. We waited.
“Come back,” the man said, his muted voice seeming to have shifted, coming from beyond the narrow strips of plastic obscuring the way beyond the left exit.
“After you,” Neil said.
I reached forward and pushed the plastic strips aside, leading us toward yet another unknown.
Twenty Seven
We came into a room that was cut in half, a plastic wall sealing one side from the other. Beyond the clear barrier I could see computers and wires and radio equipment arranged precisely atop a long table against the far wall. And above that, mounted to the plaster, was the thing that defined the place, for me at least—an American eagle, sculpted flat, the piece of art in relief seeming poised to spring off the wall.
“Eagle One,” I said aloud.
“Welcome,” the man said, stepping into the space beyond the barrier from a room to the right.
It was the man who’d been masked and bio-suited just minutes before. Now he wore jeans and sweatshirt, with pristine sneakers upon his feet, not the thick boots that had been mated with the bio suit.
“Just what is going on?” Neil asked.
“Just one moment,” the man said, then walked across the space beyond the barrier and tapped on a door. “Micah, can you come out?”
“I’ll be right out, dad.”
Krista looked up at us, excited.
“That’s him,” the little girl said. “That’s the voice.”
The man approached the wall of soft plastic and smiled at Krista, no mask between them now.
“You’re right,” he said.
I looked above. A small speaker and microphone was mounted to the ceiling, and on the opposite side of the barrier an identical setup existed, allowing clear communication from one side to the other.
“I’m Martin Jay,” the man said, introducing himself.
The door he’d tapped on opened, offering a glimpse of what lay beyond, a simple bedroom. A child’s bedroom. And from it came a child. The child.
“Micah,” Martin said. “Come meet our new arrivals.”
He was young, but older than Krista, maybe by a year or two. His face was thin, but not the kind of thin we’d come to know. Not the starving, jarring state of emaciation so many had worn like sick costumes as death raced at them. It was a stature thing with the boy, I thought. In times long past he might have been referred to as sickly. With his lithe limbs wrapped in sweats and a long tee shirt, feet clad only in socks, he looked to have appropriated the appearance of a patient instead of a pre-teen.
I took in the sight, not only of the boy, but of the environs that confined him, and realized that he was sick.
“Will you do the introductions?” Martin asked, looking to me.
“Of course. I’m Eric Fletcher, this is my friend Neil Moore, his...” I stuttered for a moment as I considered what label to append to Grace’s name, but realized it was their place to define the relationship, not mine. “...this is Grace. And this cute little bug is Grace’s daughter, Krista.”
Krista lifted her hand a bit and waved it shyly.
“Are you Eagle One?” the little girl asked.
“I am,” Micah said. “How old are you?”
“I’m nine.”
“I’m eleven,” he told her, the conversation narrowing to just the two of them. “I remember your voice. You started calling out to me as Big Sky Alpha.”
“I picked that name,” Krista told him.
“Would you like me to show you my radio?”
Krista balked at the invitation, her gaze sweeping the clear barrier between Micah and her.
“I can show you from this side,” he said.
Krista stepped closer to the separation. Martin looked to the rest of us and nodded toward the way we’d entered.
“Why don’t we let the young ones talk for a while,” he said.
Grace hesitated at the suggestion, the protectiveness about her showing.
“She’ll be fine,” Martin assured her. “You can hear from out there.”
The promise came from a stranger. A stranger who’d seen to our taking by force. But he was also the one who, if any consequences of our lie were to be suffered, had spared us.
“Okay,” Grace said, putting a hand to her daughter’s back. “I’ll be in the room we came through, sweetie.”
Krista acknowledged her mother’s words with a cursory nod, her attention almost fully fixed on Micah as the boy pointed to different radios and computers, explaining what each was, and what each did. Martin slipped from the room beyond the barrier, and so did we, exiting the way we’d come in with the chatter of little voices behind us.
Twenty Eight
Martin emerged from the right side access to the clean room, no full body suit and respirator this time. Just the same jeans and sweatshirt we’d just seen him in beyond the thick plastic barrier.
“My apologies for the precautions,” he said. “The bio suit is a necessity until I’m sure anyone I meet is relatively healthy.”
The man was worried about contamination. Not of himself, but of the boy.
“What’s his condition?” Grace asked for us.
“He has an immune system disorder,” Martin explained. “Which wouldn’t be such a mountain to climb if it wasn’t for his heart.”
His heart...
A memory rose. Images that had been broadcast from the Denver station, before Neil had reached my refuge. Strangers had gotten the cameras and transmitter working, sending out a message intended for Eagle One. One of the people, her name was Jennifer, I remembered, she was the one on camera, and at one point she displayed a photo. A grisly picture of an open chest cavity, instruments spreading flesh and ribs to reveal a, presumably, still-beating heart. She’d said then that what was on the picture was what they could bring. That bit of pulsing, vital human muscle.
“Does he need a transplant?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” Martin answered. “He had it two months ago.”
“Wait,” Grace interjected. “Your son in there had a transplant? A heart transplant? Here?”
The incredulity pouring from her was obvious and intense.
“Yes.”
For a moment her mouth hung slightly open. As a nurse, what she was hearing strained not only the limits of the possible, but also the prudent.
“Do you even have a hospital?” she asked.
“A functioning one? No. But we have a couple doctors in town. One of them is the surgeon who was supposed to perform the transplant on Micah before the world fell apart. He brought his wife with him here when we were able to assure some sort of safety to him. And to others.”
“And the heart?” I asked.
Martin quieted for a moment. A too long moment.
“Where did you get the heart?” I pressed, and still he did not answer. “I’m only curious about this, you understand, because I saw people broadcasting from a Denver television station with a picture of a heart still very much inside someone, and they were saying they could bring that. And they were talking to you. To this place.”
For another few seconds the man stood silent. But this interlude seemed to come from a place of contemplation, not avoidance.
“Some people took what we were asking for too literally,” he said. “They were desperate. Ready to do things that no person should just to get here, to the safety we could offer. We were just requesting medical supplies, instruments, things like that. Things we didn’t have but that the surgeon said we would need. That’s all.”
“Quid pro quo,” Neil said. “You bring us what we need, and you can stay among us.”
“Basically,” Martin confirmed. “We have had to turn some away. They weren’t compatible with our community. I doubt they would have been compatible with any community that didn’t include bars and guard towers.”
That was not surprising. Criminals, or those with such tendencies, were just as likely to survive as anyone. Maybe more so, actually. When morality was discarded, doing what one needed to survive came easier.
