The world slowly materializes into white walls and bright lighting as my eyes focus on my surroundings. I’m in a room that looks to be a cross between a hospital and a clean room. My left arm is attached to the metal bedrail by an unusual looking handcuff. It’s gold and thick and looks more like Wonder Woman’s bracelet than a handcuff. I pull on it but it doesn’t budge. There are motorized bed controls on the right panel and I push the button that tilts the bed up to the sitting position. There is a cart on the far side of the room fitted with computerized medical instruments. I have no idea what they’re used for.
I wonder what happened to Liam. Did he get snatched also? Or is he still in the city, wondering what happened to me? I think about Liam wandering around looking for me, driving back to my car to find it still parked where we left it, worrying about me. I have to get back to him. I spot a camera in the corner of the room and start waving to it doing my best mime for hello, I’m chained to a hospital bed and it’s not cool. A little help, please?
Someone must have seen me because the door opens and a man enters. He has a round face, is dressed in white scrubs and has a stethoscope around his neck.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Just fine,” I answer.
“We found a microscopic tracker into your blood stream,” he says. “They must have injected it when you were taken. We had it removed before we brought you down here.”
“Who are they,” I question. “Wait—who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Jones,” he says and then hesitates. “I’ll let the authorities fill you in on who they are. I’m just your doctor.”
“Where are we?” I blurt out.
“Underground,” he answers. His answer only raises more questions in me.
“Where underground?” I ask impatiently.
“It’s classified,” he says, “I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Can you at least tell me what state we’re in?” I plead.
“No, sorry, I’ve already said too much,” he says firmly. “You’ll see them soon enough. Are you hungry?”
I reply with a yes and he leaves the room. What did he mean he’s told me too much? He gave me his name and told me that we’re underground. How is that too much information?
I don’t stew over it for long as a young blond nurse brings me a tray with breakfast on it. The sight of her finally makes something sink in for me. There are survivors here, lots of survivors. To maintain this kind of secrecy means that the government or a portion of it is still alive and well. She greets me with a “good morning.” I ask her what time it is and she tells me 8:30 am. I hadn’t realized that I was out for so long.
She places the tray in front of me. Breakfast consists of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and a glass of orange juice. I can’t believe my eyes so I close and then reopen them again. It’s still there. “Where are we?” I say in a daze, still looking at the food, not expecting an answer. She asks if I need anything else and I deicide it’s worth a try. “Can you unlock this?” I ask while pointing at my left arm. “Sorry darlin’,” she says in her sweet southern accent. “Rules are rules.”
I’m okay with her answer because I haven’t had eggs, bacon, butter or orange juice in a long, long time. A surreal feeling comes over me while eating this gourmet old-world breakfast. Not only do I not know where I am, I am also starting to question when. Everything in this room seems futuristic to me. Was I cryogenically frozen and this is hundreds of years in the future after the survivors have rebuilt civilization?
Maybe I’m a mental patient and the zombie apocalypse only happened in my head. Maybe my mind created the last seven months in response to some kind of trauma. Maybe Dana, Cujo and Liam never really existed. As troubling as this may seem, I’m comforted by my eggs, bacon and toast with butter. I never realized just how much I missed this type of comfort food. Upon finishing my meal I decide that as long as they keep feeding me this well then I’m going to be the best mental patient they’ve ever had. I’ll say anything they want and adopt whatever reality they want me to.
Maybe they’ll even remove my handcuff one day so that I can eat with both hands.
I’m left alone for some time after my meal and all I can think about is how surreal this place is: the food, the people, the high-tech furniture, the room itself. Even the white walls seem to be covered with a special coating that sparkles. It looks like candy apple white, if such a thing is possible. If it weren’t for the food I would think it was a dream. I’ve never been able to eat and actually taste food in my dreams. Sure, there were plenty of times I’d dreamed about sinking my teeth into a hamburger or bite of food, but it never had any flavor and I would soon wake up realizing it was all just a dream. I guess you just can’t dream taste—and the food that I just consumed definitely had flavor.
The nurse comes back in and lays some clothes down on the chair. She then comes around, unlocks my handcuff and takes my tray. “Get dressed honey and these two men will take you to your interview,” she orders in her southern accent. “Just come out when you’re ready.” Standing up, I realize that my back side is exposed as I’m only wearing a skimpy hospital gown. The clothing consists of a shirt and matching pants, black with blue stripes on the arms and chest. It’s a breathable elastic material and almost seems like a casual uniform of sorts. There is also a pair of black tennis shoes with Velcro straps. I am surprised at how well it all fits, especially the shoes. I walk out to find the two armed guards on either side of my door. They are in the same black high-tech space armor suits minus the helmets and contrast nicely against the white hallway. This whole area must be a germ free zone or something.
I wonder what kind of “interview” I’m going to as I follow the lead guard down the hallway. Maybe I can finally get some answers. We pass through an airlock, a security checkpoint and then another airlock before we’re out of the white zone. These guys are serious about their quarantine zones. The next room looks like a hotel lobby with potted plants and nice furniture. I’m led into a black room with a square black table in the center and three black chairs. There is a mirror along one of the walls facing the “hot seat” and light holes in the ceiling. The room looks like it’s used more for interrogations than interviews. The guard motions, but I’m already moving toward the hot seat. It’s the obvious one by itself facing across the table, toward the one way glass. Even the ceiling is black in here. I know I shouldn’t be smiling at a time like this, but I find the contrast amusing. First I’m in a room that’s as white as possible and now I’m in a room that’s as black as can be. I guess these people don’t believe in shades of gray. Based on their décor I’d say my hosts are a bunch of extremists.
After sitting a few minutes, the door swings open and two officers in blue military uniforms appear. The lead officer is a few years older and the other is a bit younger than I am. He introduces himself as Colonel Fallick and the other as Lieutenant Shaw.
At this point I’m really trying hard not to laugh at his name. I pull my lips into my mouth, bite down and look toward the door fighting the urge. He tells me that the Lieutenant will ask me some questions that he’d like me to answer to the best of my ability. He then asks if I have any questions before we begin.
I ask him where we are. He responds with the usual answer and that I don’t have clearance yet, so he can’t tell me more. “What can you tell me?”
“Not much without clearance,” he replies.
I ask if this is an interrogation and he assures me that it’s just a “fact finding interview.” I had forgotten what it was like to live in a world with other people’s rules. Of the few things that survived the apocalypse, why did bureaucracy have to be one of them?
The first question I’m asked is my name for the record. Then he asks for an account of my time since the outbreak so I tell him a general overview of my last seven months. Next he asks me about my knowledge of the zombies and whether I have noticed anything peculiar about them.
“Besides the fact that they are zombies?” I say.
He nods. I explain the change I’ve noticed in their blood whereas the first few days it was red, but slowly became the same green color as their eyes. I also tell him about my experiment with Dick and that it took twenty hours for him to suffocate with a plastic bag over his head. The two officers give each other a look. Either they’ve never heard this before or I’m not supposed to know about it. I break the tension with “am I immune?” The Lieutenant looks at the Colonel who finally tells me no, none of us are. Either that wasn’t classified or he has finally started to loosen up.
Next they ask what I know about the ship that abducted me. I say “I know that it was cloaked until you guys blew it out of the sky.” I tell them about the tentacle that snatched me and how it was hard like steel but still flexible.
“Who are they?” I ask. The Lieutenant tells me that I’ll probably have my basic clearance by the end of the day.
“Can I get my guns back?” I ask.
“That will be another discussion after you get your basic clearance,” says the Lieutenant. He then thanks me, says that’s all the questions they have for now and to wait here.
A few minutes later a soldier comes in wearing a jet black tactical space suite minus a helmet. He has the same two black futuristic Uzi-like SMGs that I saw before my world went dark. He’s young, tall and attractive with dark hair and blue eyes.
“I’m Lieutenant Blackburn,” he says extending his hand. “You can call me Jason.” I stand to shake his hand firmly. “I’ll be your escort until your base clearance is granted. You’ll probably get it this afternoon and then General Hawthorne will want to speak with you.” The idea of talking with a General makes me nervous.
“Can you tell me where I am?” I ask once again. I swear if he says underground I might just punch him in the face, regardless of how attractive he is.
“Not officially, but we can go for a walk.” He winks at me and leads me out of the room. It seems that maybe I have finally found a friend in the bureaucracy. Maybe now I can get some answers. He takes me out of the lobby through a door and we are outside. But we’re not outside; we’re in a giant cave. The walls are reddish brown and have a smooth-looking texture. The ceiling is about fifty feet from the ground. I’ve never seen a cave like this before and get the feeling that I’m inside of a Jules Verne novel.
Jason leads me to a security gate that leads to a tunnel. The guard at the gate hassles me about not having a badge, but the Lieutenant pulls rank on him and he quickly opens the gate, letting me pass.
We walk for a while in a tunnel about the size of a four lane road which opens up to an even larger cave than the last one. It’s a city, but underground. The buildings and shops are spread out in what can be described as a giant tunnel. It snakes around and seems to go on forever in both directions. We make a left and pass by a few small houses before the tunnel snakes around to the right and I realize the giant tunnel is forming an enormous circle with a giant pillar in the center for support. This looks to be the city center or ‘downtown area’ judging by the restaurants and stores here. There are a lot of military personnel, but also civilians dressed in everyday clothing, going about their business as if we were in a normal city. Do they not know what’s happened on the surface of the planet?
“What is this place?” I say in awe.
“Dystopia,” Jason says, “that’s our latest name for it. It’s the last city on the planet, the last one with humans in it anyway.” We walk the circle and window shop. There is everything from clothing stores to beauty salons, everything you would expect to see in a normal town, even a grocery store.
“Do you want to get some lunch?” Jason says. “The General’s probably going to want to see you at 1300 hours sharp. This place has really good burgers.” He motions to the restaurant on our left called End of the World Bar and Grill.
“It’s nice to see that people still have a sense of humor.”
“Yeah, it used to be called Jim’s,” says Jason, “but he changed the name seven months ago.”
“On Z day?” I ask.
“Yeah, on Z day,” he replies.
“Wait, you guys have just been chillin’ down here the whole time?” I say raising my voice.
“Yep,” he says with a pained look. “It’s a long story best told after a few drinks.”
We sit down at a table then look at the menus as I remember him mentioning hamburgers. I drop my menu. “You guys have a farm down here?” I say.
“Farms, full crops of fruits and vegetables, everything you ever wanted,” Jason says. “We’re a regular self-contained under-earth living apparatus, our own biosphere. That was our unofficial name for this place a couple years ago, Scuela.”
A petite brunette waitress shows up, starts flirting with Jason and asks what we would like. It’s fairly obvious what she would like. She takes our orders, two burgers, and walks away smiling at him. “I have to thank you,” he says looking pleased at me. “You helped us complete a mission that we’d been unable to for months now.”
“What mission?” I reply.
“We’ve been trying to knock one of those ships out of the sky in order to recover some of their technology,” he says. “Thanks to you, now we have.”
I think back to the last city that I was dropped in, where I was about to die just before they showed up. If anything I should be thanking Jason for saving my life.
“I was about to die, I don’t see how I helped you any.”
“First you stayed alive long enough for us to enter the area. Then you led the ship to that parking structure which was the perfect kill zone for us to take it down. Next you stayed alive long enough for my team to secure firing positions in the surrounding buildings. I’ll have to show you the playback some time; it was amazing, like you were a part of the squad without even knowing it,” Jason continues excitedly. “That business with you holding them on the stairs at each floor was brilliant. By the time you reached the roof my guys were in position. It takes a lot of concentrated fire to take one of those things down, but you gave us the time we needed and with the element of surprise, we took care of the rest.”
My mind races back to the scene on the rooftop with the grenade explosions, the green lasers then the missiles that split into hundreds of smaller ones. “You used an automatic grenade launcher,” I say, “and some kind of rockets I’ve never seen before, lots of rockets.”
“Right on both counts,” he says. “Their defensive lasers can repel about one hundred projectiles per second at close range, so we have to exceed that to bring them down. Ideally the grenades detonate just before coming into range of their defensive laser screen, which is about twenty feet. These grenades are specially designed and if detonated close enough send about fifty pieces of shrapnel toward the ship. Two grenade detonations per second should have been enough to keep their defensive screen busy. But our intel was wrong. We didn’t account for target prioritization.”
“That’s why some of the rockets were destroyed?” I say.
“Yes, because they were prioritized as being a larger threat than the smaller pieces of shrapnel coming from the grenades,” Jason says in a more serious tone, “so it almost didn’t work.”
“But it did,” I say.
“Only because we used an extreme overkill tactic,” he says grimly. “What we thought was extreme overkill turned out to be just enough to kill. If that ship had gotten away then it would have been all over… for all of us.”
He looks down at the table and I see something in him that I hadn’t noticed before, a sense of desperation. I suddenly realize that all of the people that I’ve met here are the same way. They all have that same sense of desperate hopelessness about them. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Everyone’s moral has been affected and it’s not due to the zombies, it’s because of the cloaked ships and whoever is behind them. I don’t know the whole story, but right now I know that these people don’t think we’re going to make it. I can feel it all around me now. They think that we’re all as good as dead already.
“Who are they?” I ask.
“The invaders,” he says. “That’s what we call them at least—little green men from outer space. I haven’t actually seen one of them, no one has.”
I just stare at him. It makes sense though. The invisible ships with the tentacles just don’t seem like they’re from around here. “They’re the ones who spread the virus that turned everyone on the surface into zombies,” Jason says.
“They orchestrated it?” I say.
“Orchestrated is a good word for it,” he says. “The bastards used our own freeways against us. They seeded all the major routes infecting people in both directions. We could not have designed a better means of spreading their infection for them if we had tried. We had no way of knowing how it would happen but the Gray did.”
“The Gray?” I ask.
“Shit, I’m not supposed to be telling you all of this,” he says taking a breath. “They’re the other aliens, our supposed allies. Can you do me a favor and act surprised when the General tells you about these things?”
“Sure,” I say nodding while trying to absorb what he is saying. In the last few minutes I’ve learned not only that we are not alone in the universe, and not only that an alien race has almost killed all of mankind, but that there is also a second alien race pretending to be our ally? This is too much information to learn in the same minute and my brain can’t process it.
The flirty waitress brings our food which is a welcomed distraction for me. The hamburger is juicy and delicious with fresh lettuce. As we sit quietly eating our burgers, the world seems simultaneously more normal and stranger than it ever has. My mind oscillates back and forth between the bizarre clash of eating a pre-apocalypse meal at a restaurant and contemplating the new multiple-alien-invasion end of the world scenario. As my sinking feeling grows, I almost wish that Jason hadn’t told me about the aliens.
After we finish eating he leads me back to the military base. I can tell that he wants to say more, but is restraining himself. No matter, I already have too much to think about for my own comfort. We go through a different checkpoint then into a large two story building. Downstairs there is a window where we pick up my security badge. Funny but I don’t remember them taking my picture. It’s not a bad shot, but I’m not exactly looking at the camera. Seeing my bright red hair in the picture makes me smile at least. It’ll do.
Jason leads me upstairs to General Hawthorne’s office and introduces me. “Ah yes, Miss Eversol,” says the General in a rough but friendly voice. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” The General is a middle-aged man with short brown hair that’s grayer on the sides. He strikes me as strict, but grandfatherly somehow. I never knew my own grandfather so it’s odd that I sense this about him.
“Nice to meet you, General,” I say shaking his hand firmly.
“Please, call me Blake,” he says, “and have a seat.” The General motions toward a chair in the front of his large desk. I want to tell him to call me by my first name too, but decide it’s probably best if I talk as little as possible. This man seems to have the most control over my fate and I would like to stay on his good side. Jason closes the door behind him and I’m left alone on the hot seat in front of the General.
“Well I bet you have a few questions,” he says, “or would you rather I start in with a history lesson?” I want to tell him how I was separated from Liam and want to get back to him. But at this point I really need to catch up on my history. I say as much and the good General begins his dissertation.
He tells me that an alien craft crashed in June of 1947 at Roswell, New Mexico. “Two aliens died in the crash and one survived: aliens from a race that we now refer to as the Gray. The wreckage was moved to a nearby air base and the survivor was moved to a special medical facility. That afternoon, one of their craft dropped their ambassador off in front of that facility. That was the time that we had our first dialogue with an extra-terrestrial. He spoke to us in our own language. This was kept secret from the public to prevent panic at first, but then other reasons arose that bolstered the cause of secrecy. The Gray wanted their crashed ship back, but we wanted to study it. They warned us of grave danger in studying their technology if care was not taken. They also warned of an advanced alien race that had driven them from their home world, a race that might be coming to do the same to our planet in the near future. Their ambassador proposed an alliance. They would help us understand their technology at a safe and appropriate pace. They would share their information on the invaders and help us prepare to defend ourselves against them. All of this was in exchange for allowing them to live in a protected community here, underground. The deal seemed to be too good to be true at first. Of course the devil was in the details of the phrase appropriate pace. We soon began collaborating. The first thing they shared was their digging and tunneling technology. One of their machines could pass through earth like we pass through water, creating tunnels at up to forty miles per hour.”
The General takes a drink of water and then continues with the history lesson. “They told us that the only members of their civilization who had survived were either in space or underground during the attack and suggested that we create a joint underground base as soon as possible. We agreed and began covertly digging our base at night time in New Mexico. That’s where we are right now. The initial tunneling was completed within two months and the building construction began in January 1948. By summer, the initial eighty occupants had moved in. They consisted of mostly scientists and engineers with twenty soldiers for security. Of course the Gray moved in too, over a thousand of them. They lived in their own series of caverns and still do today.”
“After working together with the aliens for four years, President Truman decided to have a treaty drawn up between the U.S. and the Gray that would make our relationship official, but still secret. He even came down to sign it himself, after four years of scientific investigation into the Grays revealed that it was safe for him to do so. It was called the Covert Alliance Treaty which created the Covert Alliance Treaty Organization or CATO. Our mission was to work with the Gray on preparing a defense against the invaders and to be ready when that day came. The Gray believed that they can prevent our subterranean city from being detected by the invaders, as long as we’re careful. Truman knew the importance of CATO and kept it secret from all others. The only ones who knew were the Air Force General and his officers. Truman didn’t trust his successors which is why he made CATO an independent organization. The best practice for hiding ourselves from the invaders is to actively hide ourselves from the people in the world above us including our own government. In the event that we were ever found out, Truman left us with an official document with his presidential seal along with a video of himself explaining the reason for CATO’s secrecy and why he created it. We’ve never had to use it. Truman is still, to this day, the only president who has ever known of our existence. If there’s one thing that we’ve done well over the years, it’s that we’ve remained undetected. We have the Gray stealth technology to thank for that. We produce all our own food through farming, have an ample water supply and are almost completely self-sufficient. The few supplies that we do need are brought in by stealth vehicles. The invaders can easily detect heat signatures, so that’s an important component to our cloaking technology. I’m sure one of the egg heads around here would be happy to fill you in on the details.”
“The Gray have a technology that allows them to record events through their own eyes and play them back later. In 1995 they were able to adapt a playback device for human use. One of our scientists tested it on himself and while he continues to deny it, we could all see a change in him. He became overly empathetic to the Gray cause. The Gray insist that the device only consists of video plus the recorder’s emotional state so that you can feel the recording in addition to watching it. Two more people used the device with similar results before I banned anyone else from using it. In all three cases the subject had become more empathetic to the Gray cause than to ours. In short, they had been brainwashed.”
“There are two reasons that I’m telling you about this. First, I’d like to offer you a commission. You were instrumental in helping us complete a critical mission. Lieutenant Blackburn and his team speak very highly of you. We have a need for someone with your abilities and the job is yours if you want it.” I feel like I’m getting too much credit for just trying to survive, but don’t want to seem ungracious.
“Thank you, sir.” I say. I want to add but I was just trying to survive, but feel that keeping my mouth shut as much as possible is the best thing to do in front of the good General.
“The second reason is,” he says solemnly, “because the Gray ambassador has requested a meeting with you.”