She’d said her goodbyes at their place in the small condo building they’d taken over off Sherman Avenue, once named for the notorious man known as the Butcher of the South, from another war long ago. Dalton was different now. Different than he was before his epic journey home from his mission in California. His struggle to make the journey back to them, he’d said, permitted him a view of a country he no longer recognized. The massive swath of destruction was worse in the once most-populated areas, where the majority of survivors lingered in greater numbers. It was that blank look in their eyes that convinced him most of them were no longer human, but still living the nightmare. He’d said the same of those who lost to a foreign power once on sandy ground. It was no different.
The funny thing was, she never expected him to survive. She’d had the feeling before he’d left that she’d never see him again. It was true he returned a different man. Now he couldn’t hide his emotions like he once did. That was a trait both good and bad. He knew it, too. He was afraid, this time, of losing her and that morning, after they’d made love, he’d kissed her gently, with a remarkable tenderness, and while shaking he said, “Please don’t leave me.”
She couldn’t get the look in his eyes out of her mind as she bounced around in the passenger seat of the truck next to Rick as he drove on, leading their small but vigilant convoy away from their community home. The intensity of his plea invaded her like a virus. And in order to refocus she said, “So remind me again why Umatilla has the equipment I need? My last recollection of that place was the local government in Oregon had obtained the rights from the national government and all of those nerve agents and munitions were destroyed.”
“Ah,” Rick said. “So naïve. The term ‘local government’ is, in itself, misleading. The Umatilla Chemical Weapons Depot remained under government control for over fifty years. At the time, they said the base consisted of over one thousand bunkers that the locals affectionately called igloos. The land is flat as a pancake there…it’s a sprawling, tumbleweed-blowing area, like something out of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon, with these little rolling humps as far as the eye can see in any direction. The base was built back before World War II.” Rick looked ahead but cocked an eye at her while he drove. “We had a little business to take care of back then with the Nazis. Not unlike what we’ve dealt with in our own time, although I’m not sure we’ve won this one on the whole.”
“No, I don’t think anyone can argue a victory here. So what did these bunkers actually contain and why do you think they’re still there after the site was decommissioned? Didn’t they build a giant incinerator out there to destroy everything? That’s the last I heard.”
“Yes, you’re right, and they did burn up as much as they said they did, down to the last ounce. Let me just say this, though. The agreed-upon deal always mentioned the property containing one thousand of these weapons caches. The entire place is as flat as can be. Each bunker is offset from the others so that if one went off, the explosion would be less likely to start a chain reaction. So…if you’re standing out there…could you really count them all?”
“Well, there must be satellite views. What are you saying? Are there extras?”
He nodded and pointed a finger in the air. “One thousand and ten…but who’s counting, right?”
“Someone must have. The Chinese, the Russians? Snowden?”
He shook his head. “You can pull up a picture and stare right at the place. No one really counted them. Or at least, no one has thought to count them. They’re in plain sight with all the rest. One thousand and ten.”
“Can’t really pull up pictures anymore.”
“You’ll see for yourself.”
“Okay, but still…what are these secret units supposed to contain? You’ve been out there, I take it?”
He chuckled. “I almost said…there’s no need to know. I suppose that’s an antiquated term now.”
“I had…have a security clearance, Rick. I suppose it’s still valid after all this time.”
“You’re right; anyone alive today has earned the need to know title. I would say so, Clarisse, considering how you saved the human race—at least on this continent…I mean, what remains of us.
“As far as the contents of the ten, after the United Nations resolution banned all chemical weapon use back in 1993, they pried open the ten-foot steel doors since the locks were all rusted through and cleared out the sarin, mustard gas and VX nerve agents…but there were a lot more things in those igloos than chemical agents. Including the means to make them. That’s why we’re going there. Some of the equipment was removed from the others and replaced behind specifically marked doors. Just like they never counted the actual numbers of igloos, they didn’t specifically mandate the destruction of the other physical contents. Some of them were like time capsules in there. Boxes of World War II biscuits, useless rubber gas masks you could slip two fingers under and what they deemed survival equipment in 1944.”
Clarisse let that sink in for a while. She still had questions but instead of asking Rick, she would see for herself when she got there.
“There is one thing,” he said after a while.
“What’s that?”
“I can’t imagine who’s guarding it now. I mean someone local must have known the significance of that place. It’s probably already been raided.”
“What? Wait, why are you bringing this up now? Haven’t you talked to anyone by radio around there? Doesn’t anyone close enough know?”
“That’s just the thing…I’ve been able to make radio contact with everyone surrounding us, even Sam’s preppers in northern Idaho, but not a word has come from there. It’s been on my mind for a while now.”
“What does that mean? Maybe the whole tri-city area was wiped out.”
“That’s the thing—in percentage-speak, that’s an anomaly. It’s too quiet.”
“Great, Rick…we don’t even know what we’re walking into there. That’s what you’re saying.” When he didn’t say anything to that, Clarisse looked out her side window. They were bumbling along what used to be I-90. Occasionally Rick would slow down and veer right or left, making a large curvature around whatever obstacles remained in the roadway. The two other vehicles behind them followed in the exact same pattern. In one of them, she saw Bang lean out, scanning the horizon. That meant Hunter was on the other side. They’d never gotten along as boys nor did they as men, but she knew they had each other’s backs regardless. They were from the same neighborhood, after all.
“You know what I suspect?” Rick said over the drone of the truck’s engine.
“What’s that?” she said, and she turned away from the window to face him.
“Indians.”
“American Indians, you mean?”
“Yeah, yeah. Those guys. They’re up to something. I can feel it.”
And it was the way he said it and the grin slapped upon his face that made her curious but not enough to ask further questions. She’d known him long enough to know there were some things going on in that man’s head at times that she didn’t want to know about.