Chapter 19
Makara was right; Bunker One was huge.
We made it to the elevator bank, continued on to the stairwell and descended…down and down and down. I stopped counting after twenty flights.
“There are fifty-two floors,” Makara said. “Not counting the L Levels.”
“L Levels?” I asked.
“The labs,” she said. “Only scientists were allowed in. It is protected by a huge vault door, not unlike the ones that guard a typical Bunker from the outside. They didn’t want anyone getting in that wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“I wonder what they were hiding,” I said.
“We’re about to find out,” Samuel said. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment.”
“It’s too quiet,” Anna said. “I don’t like it.”
“Yeah,” Lisa said. “Would have expected something to be attacking us in here. But it’s as if someone came in and cleaned everything up.”
“The lights are on, too,” Anna said. “Someone’s keeping house.”
Well, if anyone was here, they sure were keeping quiet.
Finally we arrived at the first floor.
“Well, we made it,” Makara said. “Thought all along we would have to bust in through the front.”
“It’s better this way,” Samuel said. “Stay alert. Who knows what surprises our friends left for us?”
Samuel forced the door open, and my breath caught. “Giant” did not even begin to describe the room we had entered. No, not a room. A chamber, a cavern, though manmade. It must have taken years to carve out.
It was basically a gigantic vertical tunnel. I looked up and saw the rock ceiling hundreds of feet above. It probably would take at least a minute to walk across the chamber’s entire diameter. The railed edges of floor upon floor ringed the tunnel’s circumference. It was like a circular skyscraper, only underground. Lights lit the place only dimly, so I couldn’t see its entire scope. Hundreds of doors and openings and archways lined the floors — things that looked as if they had once been stores, restaurants, dorms, places to relax.
This hadn’t been a Bunker. It had been an entire underground city.
“Home sweet home,” Makara said.
In front of us was a red stain on the rock floor, the remains of someone’s grisly death years ago. The body was gone.
“Labs are this way,” Samuel said.
We followed Samuel across the massive chamber, but I couldn’t keep from looking up. It must have taken an army of thousands of turned creatures to bring down a place like this. That army must have been controlled, somehow. I wondered what could be powerful and intelligent enough to do that. I didn’t want to think of the answer.
Samuel went through a large opening into a wide corridor. The corridor sloped downward. The echoes of our footsteps were painfully loud. Anyone or anything would hear us coming from a mile away.
A bullet whizzed past my head, forcing me to the ground. Falling to the ground had become an ingrained habit of mine.
“They’re right ahead of us,” Samuel said.
I looked ahead. Both Harland and Drake were kneeling behind a railing that served as a barricade. They were right in front of the vault door marked “Lab Levels.”
“Damn it, they’re guarding the entrance!” Samuel said.
“Because they can’t get in,” Makara said. “That thing is locked tight.”
“If they want me to open it again, they have another think coming,” I said.
“I don’t think anyone could open that, other than with brute force,” Samuel said.
“Well,” Makara said, “let’s take care of these guys, first.
“Wait,” I said. “Something’s wrong. They’re not doing anything.”
Silence. Then an explosion rocked the entire tunnel. It shook the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. Rock cracked and fell from the ceiling, threatening to bury us alive.
We all ran forward under a hail of bullets. They were forcing us out of the tunnel, out of cover, right into their sights.
A bullet nicked my boot and, lucky for me, it didn’t hit anything. But with a few more seconds of this, one of us would be dead. Maybe all of us.
I fell to the ground behind a rock that had crashed against the floor. Everyone else took their places beside me as the tunnel behind continued to collapse on itself.
I looked into the dark tunnel we had just run out of. Rocks buried the entire thing. That’s when I noticed there were only four of us.
Lisa was gone.
“Lisa?” Makara shouted.
“I don’t think she made it,” I said.
Makara shook her head in denial. Her eyes watered as her face turned red.
Samuel grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Lisa!” Makara screamed.
She stood up and ran back to the tunnel. More bullets filled the air, threatening to end her life.
I jumped from cover, and landed on her, bringing her to the ground.
She turned around, and was so pissed that she actually bit me. Tears were in her eyes as she fought back. I pulled her back to the rock. She went limp.
“She’s gone,” I said. “I’m not letting you die, too.”
“We have to stay alive,” Samuel said.
Even if we got out of this one alive, we were stuck. The tunnel behind us had collapsed, and there was an inaccessible vault door in front. We were trapped in here, along with the two idiots who cut off the only escape.
Makara reached into her pack. Tears in her eyes, she held a grenade.
“This might work,” she said. “As soon as it goes off, charge the bastards and finish the job.”
She pulled the plug, waited a second, and lobbed it overhand. She closed her eyes, waiting for the boom.
Nothing happened. It was a dud.
No one said anything. It was as if everyone had given up.
“Nice try,” Harland said. “Just open the door, like last time. We’ll spare your lives.”
“I’m not opening that damn thing for you,” I yelled. “You just killed one of our own.”
“Those Black Files are ours,” Harland said. “This is the sovereign territory of the Empire, and anything in it belongs to us.”
“You’ll have to kill us first,” I said.
“We’re working on that,” Harland said. “Serves you right for Kris earlier.”
“That was no one’s fault, and you damn well know it,” Samuel yelled.
Harland didn’t respond to that. It was another moment before he spoke.
“It seems we have reached an impasse. One of us is going to have to back down. Those Black Files are not going to be yours.”
“We need them,” Samuel said. “With that info we can find out how to stop the Blights. Maybe even the xenovirus. You have no idea what you’re doing by taking those files back to the Empire.”
“I don’t understand,” Anna said. “Aren’t the files digital? Why can’t we both have them?”
“The Empire doesn’t want anyone privy to that info,” Harland said.
“Well, you can’t get in there unless we open the door,” I said. “You need us, and you’re not getting anywhere without us. And guess what? We’re not helping you. If you had joined up with us like we had planned, we wouldn’t be dealing with any of this, and our friend wouldn’t be dead.”
“I’m tired of this,” Makara said. “They die.”
