First Light - An EMP Survival Novel (Enter Darkness Book 5) Page 9

  “Who’s running the place?” Brad asked warily, knowing how easily a seemingly idyllic fortification could descend into butchery.

  “Lady by the name of Marley,” said William. “She’s one of the most brilliant women I’ve ever met. She’s a scientist and inventor. She’s tried to explain to me some of what she does and it flew right over my head.”

  William laughed modestly before he went on, “Nobody expects me to do science-y things; I’m a hunter. We’ve also accumulated a fairly sizable library with all the books we’ve brought back from our forays into the suburbs. Normally I’d feel bad about stealing books out of people’s homes, but I figure they’re not going to be reading them anymore, are they? Better to bring them where they can do some good.”

  “Do people actually have time to read at the end of the world?” Brad asked in surprise.

  “More time than you would think.”

  Between the hallucinatory glow of the flashlight and the stillness of the surrounding woods, Brad half-wondered if maybe he had dreamt the events of the last hour. At sundown he had been stranded deep in the woods with a dying woman; now they were headed toward what seemed to be a place of light and safety.

  He was reminded with an eerie feeling of the dream he had had the night before. It wasn’t quite coming true in the way he had foreseen, but it appeared to be coming true nonetheless.

  “Did you say this place was powered by electricity?” he asked. “How?”

  “That’s one of the glories of the place,” said William, straining to lift Anna over a snow-powdered log. “I like to tell people we won the end-of-days lottery by having Marley living with us. If civilization fell and you could bring one person back from the dead to help you through the aftermath, who would you bring back?”

  “Obviously Albert Einstein,” replied Brad.

  “Pretty much everyone says Einstein.” A strange smile lit William’s face. Brad wondered why he had ever been afraid of him. “Having Marley around is like living with Einstein.”

  William seemed to possess something of Brad’s navigational instincts, for he knew when to turn on the trail without the use of any navigational equipment. In good weather, traveling alone, it wouldn’t have taken either of the men more than ten minutes to walk back to the waiting vehicle, but in their present exhausted condition, carrying an uncooperatively heavy body, it took them more than twice that long.

  Although he had repeatedly warned himself not to be lulled into a false sense of hope by the hints William had given about his place of residence, Brad couldn’t help feeling a jittery twinge of anticipation as the journey lengthened and he knew the vehicle, whatever it was, must be getting closer. Before long the wall of beech and aspens that lined their path began to thin slowly, and they emerged into a clearing where stood a battered-looking truck the color of pea soup. Judging from the design, Brad guessed it was a 1960 Mercury M250.

  “Is this our ride?” he asked.

  “You see any other trucks out here?” William replied.

  “Point taken.”

  Now that he had overcome his initial suspicions, Brad could appreciate how genuinely funny the man was. Or maybe everything seemed suddenly funny because this was the first truly good thing to happen in weeks.

  Once or twice in his life Brad had experienced the sudden flood of relief that follows the end of an interminable season of waiting, when life seems to be moving again after being stalled indefinitely. It was like being in a plane on the runway preparing for takeoff: there was a period of ten to twenty minutes, though it always felt longer, when the plane lingered on the tarmac until it began to feel like it would never leave, and then suddenly it was cruising down the runway and up, up, up on steely, sun-glinted wings into the bright sky.

  A similar feeling lingered over him now as together he and William loaded Anna into the middle seat of the truck. The last two days had felt endless and he had begun to fear that he was doomed to wander through the snowy woods forever. But now someone had appeared to offer them a way out, and he was cautiously hopeful that this event would prove to be a turn in his and Anna’s fortunes.

  Emerging from the woods, they ascended a low slope onto the snow-slick highway. Brad and Anna had been about three miles from the Canadian border when William found them. Now they were heading in the opposite direction, back toward the frozen lake. Within a few minutes they had passed it.

  Even in his weak state Brad couldn’t help but marvel over how quickly they were now moving. It had taken them nearly two days to walk from the lakeside to the northernmost edge of the state, and now lake, beeches, bears, cliff-sides, partridges were all receding behind them in the rearview mirror like a dream after waking.

  As the miles lengthened he leaned forward in the seat, his body tense with anticipation, wondering where they were headed and hoping he wouldn’t come to regret having accepted the help of this stranger. Anna remained fast asleep, mouth pressed against his shoulder, oblivious to her own rescue and to the man in the driver’s seat who navigated the icy roads with an ease born of experience.

  “How much further?” Brad asked after they had been driving for about twenty minutes. It occurred to him only now that William’s community must have access to a large supply of gasoline.

  “Not very,” said William. “We’d have been there sooner if the roads weren’t so slick. Don’t want to risk your friend dying on the way to saving her life. Besides, I’m probably as eager to get to bed as you are. ‘I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn-tired.’ Robert Frost.”

  When Brad didn’t respond, William added, “Do you read much?”

  “Haven’t had much time for it lately.” Even in the darkness and silence Brad could sense the man’s disappointment. “How about you? You much of a reader?”

  “We have to be.” Slowing the truck almost to a halt, William turned off the road and began to descend a snow-dusted slope. “If we want to rebuild civilization, we can’t do it without books.”

  He spoke with such confident matter-of-factness that the statement struck Brad as doubly bizarre. It had never occurred to him that book-readers might be the key to rebuilding a broken world; he had assumed they would be close to useless.

  They drove for a few minutes in silence down a gravel road, Brad fearing he had stumbled across a colony of eccentric intellectuals. He supposed it could have been worse; the last time he and Anna had been trapped in a compound, they had only escaped by killing a significant portion of the leadership. But if this new group’s worst trait was being annoyingly literary, he might not have to kill anyone.

  Still, he was beginning to wish he hadn’t just used the last of his bullets.

  By now the gravel had given way to a paved road winding through a dark valley, from the base of which immense hills wooded with pines and firs rose over them. They were approaching what appeared to be a vast frozen reservoir.

  William had been telling the truth when he said Brad could never have found their headquarters without his assistance. If anyone lived here, there was no sign of it.

  “Hang tight,” William said as the truck gained speed, “and don’t be alarmed.”

  “Why would I—” Brad began, but the answer to his question loomed in front of them.

  They had reached a solid wall in the side of the dam, consisting of debris and miscellaneous foliage. If he had been driving, this is where he would have either brought the vehicle to a halt or swerved onto the exit ramp. But William drove straight on, into the wall, as if oblivious to the fact that he was bringing death on himself and everyone else in the truck.

  Brad swore. William ignored him and drove through the screen of debris, emerging into a low cement tunnel dimly lit by electric lights.

  “What the hell was that?” demanded Brad.

  “That was our concealed entrance,” said William with remarkable calm. “That’s the reason people like yourselves can’t find us.”

  “Are we inside the dam now?”

 
“We’re inside the dam.”

  William smiled; he seemed to be enjoying Brad’s confusion and bewilderment.

  “Welcome to the Renaissance,” he said. “If civilization ever rises from the ashes, it’ll start here and it’ll start with us.”

  Chapter 11

  “Isn’t anyone here a real doctor?”

  Brad stood in the center of an underground bunker lined with concrete, holding the moaning and half-conscious Anna in one arm. Behind him a boxy, mid-century furnace stained puce green vibrated as if in shared agitation.

  He was surrounded by survivors—six men and two women, none of them carrying weapons, all looking welcoming and sympathetic. Having overcome their initial surprise at the arrival of the two strangers, everyone seemed willing to help. But whether they possessed the capabilities was another matter.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” said William in a conciliatory tone. He seemed to be worrying that he might have invited someone violent and unstable into the Renaissance. “We’ve got medical supplies if you or someone else wanted to try patching her up. Margot here is a dentist.”

  “I trained to be a dentist before getting my MFA,” the woman rushed to add. “I never formally practiced.”

  “MFA?” Brad repeated hopefully, thinking maybe it was an advanced medical degree.

  “Master of Fine Arts,” said Margot, drawing herself up proudly. “In creative writing.”

  Brad’s eyes were beginning to burn from the overhead lights—he hadn’t seen artificial lights in months and it was going to take time for him to adjust. Tears were forming in his eyes, making it look as though he was crying.

  “That’s great,” he said. “But it doesn’t help me, or Anna.”

  In any other circumstance he might have been amused by the irony of the situation. Looking for medical assistance, he had stumbled on the world’s one remaining artist colony. Undoubtedly there were some brilliant scientists among this tiny band of survivors, but none of them were licensed to perform surgery.

  “If you guys hope to rebuild anything,” he said aloud, “you’re going to have to find a real doctor.”

  “We’re working on it,” said William.

  “Seriously, what if this Einstein lady dies of an infected splinter?” Though he was beginning to wonder if Mandy or whoever even really existed. “Then what would become of your movement?”

  “My name’s Marley,” said a slight woman with grey curled hair and coke-bottle glasses, striding briskly out of the center of the small circle. “Collectively we have enough basic medical knowledge, and supplies, that none of us will be dying of minor ailments. We can help your friend.”

  “The closest thing you have to a professional doctor is a failed dentist,” Brad said. Despite the aura of mystique that the rest of the community seemed to feel toward this woman Marley, he wasn’t remotely impressed by her. “I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

  Anna had finally awoken, though she remained largely insensible of her surroundings and lay on a cot near the furnace lolling her head stupidly and crying in pain.

  If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, Brad might have treated the colony and their leader more favorably. If not for a happy chance, he’d have been spending this night in the snowy woods trying to make Anna’s encroaching death as comfortable as possible.

  He wasn’t oblivious to the good fortune that had led him deep into this bunker under the dam, where he had found warmth and food and adequate medical supplies and, perhaps best of all, the company of other people who were well-intentioned if not especially helpful. He was only just realizing how lonely he had been these past few months; he was like a faucet whose pipes had frozen solid.

  He wanted to interrogate the group at length, not hostilely but with exuberant curiosity, about how it had formed and how it functioned and what it hoped to accomplish. But at present Anna took precedence; and he had likely already doomed himself to expulsion from the group with his flashes of anger and threats of disobedience. At this rate, he would forever be trudging through the howling wilderness; this momentary reprieve in a warm bunker was already slipping away like the very dream that preceded it.

  “I hope you know that we support you, whatever you decide to do,” said Marley, not very convincingly. “My expertise doesn’t extend to surgery, otherwise I would offer my assistance.”

  “Think of it like this,” William added serenely. “She has a much greater chance of survival here than she did in the woods. At least here you have bandages, painkillers, and some basic sterile equipment.”

  “Anything in the way of sedation?” asked Brad.

  William shook his head. “No, but we’re working on getting some.”

  “That doesn’t do me any good now.” The urgency in his voice was tipping over into anger. “What about alcohol?”

  “That, we can do.”

  Motioning for Brad to follow, William led him out of the bunker and down a narrow corridor with doors on either side. Coconut matting had been laid on the floor to add a bit of color, but it had the perverse effect of exacerbating the monotony of the place.

  Near the end of the corridor William entered a room no bigger than a bathroom containing a large wooden cabinet. Assuming it must be a medicine cabinet, Brad was surprised when he opened it to find several dozen bottles of whiskey, gin, and vodka.

  “We’ve been collecting them during our suburban raids,” William said proudly. “Most of the stores had already been plundered by the time we reached them.”

  Brad eyed the collection approvingly, trying to remember the last time he had had a drink. “Do you ever crack open a bottle, just for the hell of it?”

  “We’ve talked about having a celebration, maybe one night. Marley seems to think we haven’t earned it yet.”

  “What are you waiting for, exactly?” Brad asked, but William was as opaque as ever.

  “You’ll have to ask Marley about that,” he said. “She knows better than me what we’re up to. I’m just the muscle that she graciously allows to live here.” He patted the bottom of the cabinet briskly. “Anyway, there’s whiskey here if you need it. God knows I wouldn’t want to be operated on without it.”

  William walked out, then, leaving Brad alone in front of the communal liquor supply.

  The gesture surprised Brad; any other member of any other collective would have hovered behind him until he had made his selection and then escorted him back to the bunker where Anna was waiting. Perhaps the move had been a kindly display of trust in this newest arrival, or maybe it was some kind of test to see how Brad would react—if there were lights, then maybe there were also hidden cameras monitoring and recording his every move.

  Unnerved by the thought, while at the same time reproaching himself for his paranoia, Brad grabbed a single bottle of whiskey and returned to the bunker, where he found Anna lying feverishly on the cot where he had left her.

  “Brad, what’s going on?” asked Anna. Her body was shaking and her face had turned deathly pale. “Are they going to hurt me?”

  “Who, these people? No, they want to help us.”

  He still wasn’t entirely sure this was true, but at present Anna needed his reassurance more than his honesty. He could feel the group shuffling behind him as though quietly leaning in to listen.

  “We’re going to get you sewn up in a minute,” he said. “They have the supplies to do that. But first I need you to drink some of this.”

  He offered her the bottle of whiskey, which she eyed cautiously.

  “What’s in it?” she said. “Why do I need it?”

  “It’s whiskey, and it won’t hurt you.” He could see in her eyes the same paranoia that had made him so anxious in the first hour after their arrival. “No one is going to poison you, if that’s what you’re thinking, but it might help dull the pain when I stitch up your leg.”

  When Brad had first mentioned stitches, she had seen the crowd of strangers assembled in the small room and assumed that one of them possess
ed the skills to perform the procedure. This was her first intimation that Brad would be doing it himself, again, and the look of dismay on her face reminded Brad of a kid remembering her most recent trip to the dentist.

  “It won’t be nearly as bad as last time,” he assured her. “I won’t be ripping off strips of my shirt, for one. We have actual bandages. And the whiskey should help if you drink it in moderation.”

  Hearing this, Anna’s hesitation toward imbibing the contents of the bottle melted away. Left to herself, she might have drained the whole thing.

  “Now, you can’t drink all of it,” Brad said. “Just a few sips should do it.”

  His tone toward her had changed markedly since leaving the woods, perhaps because he sensed how close he was to losing her. However, his benevolent manner failed to reassure Anna, who turned the bottle aside as he guided it toward her mouth.

  “Wait, are you telling me this is the only form of anesthetic they have?”

  Brad had been hoping they wouldn’t have to discuss this.

  “Right now this is all we’ve got,” he said helplessly. “I want you to think again of the worst pain you ever felt and how quickly it was over. Do you remember yesterday by the lake? This isn’t going to hurt nearly as much as that did. If you made it through that, you can make it through this.”

  William, who had been standing awkwardly behind them for much of the conversation with his hands in his pockets, stepped anxiously forward.

  “Do you need me to keep her still ?” he asked.

  The question seemed to alarm Anna, who sat upright on the cot and pulled her thin, threadbare blanket close to her chest.

  “Why would he need to do that?”

  Ignoring Anna’s remonstrations, Brad nodded at William then held up the bottle and spoke to Anna in a firm voice.

  “Drink this, then William here is going to hold onto your arms while I clean out and sew up your wound. We can’t have you thrashing around.”