Fall of Man | Book 3 | Firebase: Read online

  “Turn around and go back up. You know it’s the right call.”

  I can’t.

  “Why not?”

  I came down here for a reason. They’re depending on me.

  “Fuck the others. Emily’s all that matters.”

  That’s what I meant.

  “Huh? You said ‘them.’”

  Emily and the baby.

  “Oh,” the Voice said, before it started laughing. “And here I thought I was the hardass!”

  Cole sighed and pushed all the doubts down, then threw virtual dirt over them. He’d come down here to do a job, and goddammit, he was going to do it.

  “That’s the spirit!” the Voice said. “It’s a good thing you have me. I’m always around to lend a hand.”

  Cole wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  The Voice cackled. “It’s definitely a good thing. Trust me.”

  Yeah, no, Cole said as he reached down and turned off the radio. The last thing he wanted was to have it squawking while he was in the middle of a life-and-death situation, and stealing his concentration. He couldn’t see a single soul down here other than him, but that didn’t mean it would stay that way.

  The Remington felt comfortably heavy in his hands. So did the Glock on his hip and the knife on the other. The extra shells and mag were also a fine feeling.

  “And me,” the Voice said. “Don’t forget me. What am I, chopped liver?”

  Around him, the generator continued to hum, the vibrations that resulted easily felt even through his boots. All signs that LARS was the safety they’d sought. Now all he had to do was make sure he could bring his wife and unborn child down here.

  Chapter 2. Emily

  “Check this out. LARS—Last Resort Station—is a state-of-the-art facility designed to withstand any calamity that can be wrought by man, nature, or any otherworldly events.”

  “‘Otherworldly events?’ What does that mean?”

  Dante shrugged. “I dunno. I guess alien invasions, or maybe mole men from the center of the Earth?”

  “‘Mole men from the center of the Earth?’” Fiona smirked. “Are you just making all this up, Dante?”

  “Of course not.” The teenager tapped the pamphlet on the table in front of him. It was from a stack they’d found in the drawers. Brochures for prospective investors. “It’s all here in black and white. That’s how they’re selling this place. A last resort against, literally, anything and everything. Not sure if they considered some kind of virus that affects only those with a particular blood type, though.”

  “That’s not true,” Bolton said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “You said it’s a ‘virus that affects only those with a particular blood type.’ It’s the opposite. It affects every blood type except the one we got.”

  “Ah,” Dante said. “I stand corrected.” Then, grinning, “Or sit corrected, if you really want to be pedantic about it.”

  Zoe smiled. “Glad you’re having fun with all this, Dante.”

  “Hey, if you can’t have fun with the end of the world, then what can you have fun with?”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” Savannah said.

  “What’s your take?”

  “We should all be crawling into our own private little corners and crying ourselves to sleep.”

  “Sure, we could do that…”

  “I hear a but coming.”

  “…we could do that, but where’s that gonna get us? Whatever’s happened has already happened. Nothing’s gonna change the last three days.”

  “Five days,” Greg said.

  “Well, four and some change,” Dante said. “Technically, we’re still in the fifth day.”

  “If we were to get pedantic about it,” Zoe said with a smile.

  Dante made a “gun” with his fingers and pretend-cocked the “hammer” at her. “Exactamundo.”

  Bolton, the chopper pilot, chuckled. “He’s technically correct.”

  “Technically, sure,” Greg said.

  “Let me see that brochure,” Zoe said.

  “Why? You wanna invest?” Dante asked. “One cool mil gets you a single bunk bed along with a kitchenette.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Greg said. “That much?”

  “That’s the basic package. Throw in another five mil, and you get your own entertainment center. Another ten and you get a personal toilet.”

  “Fuck me,” the contractor said. “How much for a hard floor and a tarp to sleep on?”

  “Never mind that,” Fiona said. “I wanna know what ‘wrought’ means.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Savannah said.

  Emily half-listened and half-ignored the others chatting behind her, their voices like characters from a TV sitcom someone had left playing in the background. She could hear every word but was mostly focused on the bright neon two-way radio sitting on the desk in front of her. It was her only link to Cole, and because of that, it was the most precious thing in all the world right this second. And the damn thing barely worked. Well, that wasn’t true. It worked, just not well. Not that she thought it would, given the ten floors of solid concrete between where she sat and where her husband was currently.

  As she eavesdropped (Was that really what she was doing?) on the others, Emily thought it funny they’d only become acquainted a few days earlier when all of this began. To hear them talking—her group and Cole’s—she might have thought they were old college chums that had reunited. They were that comfortable with one another. In her experience, when you put strangers in an intense situation together, they either bonded or exploded. These five had elected for the former. That was the good thing about combat (maybe the only good thing); it didn’t matter where you came from, how different your background was, once the bullets started flying all that mattered was staying—and keeping each other—alive.

  She resisted the urge to grab the radio and say Cole’s name. He had gone dark more than two minutes ago, even though it felt like two eternities, one after another, and she didn’t want to squawk him if he was in stealth mode. God only knew what awaited him down there. That was the worst part—the not knowing. They both hated it. She, more than him, because her job had always been to know what others didn’t.

  “Are you sure about LARS?” she had asked him last night when they had a moment alone together, with the others sitting inside the Bell chopper nearby.

  The helicopter was parked on the rooftop of the same big box store where they’d found the radios and other necessary supplies. Everything except more guns and bullets. That was one of the disadvantages of living in a state with tight gun laws. If they were in Texas, things would have been different.

  “No,” Cole had said. “But I don’t know where else to go. You have anything better?”

  She’d shaken her head. She hadn’t thought about LARS, or the man responsible for it, for a long time now. But it made perfect sense as their destination. LARS’s entire existence was to survive something like this—even if they didn’t quite know what this was yet.

  “So, LARS,” she’d said.

  “Why not?” he had said with that cavalier smile of his. Or it was supposed to be cavalier, anyway. She knew better.

  “Well, for one, it could be gone.”

  “Or it could be there and doing exactly what it was designed to do.”

  “True.”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  She had shrugged. “You’re more optimistic than I am.”

  “One of us has to be.”

  “Since when has that been your job?”

  “Since this,” he’d said, placing his hand over her stomach and smiling that bright smile that told her, without a shred of doubt, she’d made the right choice when she decided to give up everything to marry this man.

  That was last night, and this morning she was stuck up here while Cole was down there. At least he had lights and the proper equipment to get the job done. She hadn’t caught everything he’d said because of the hea
vy static interrupting their connection, but she’d managed to piece together enough of his broken sentences.

  “He still dark?” Dante asked as the teenager rolled over to sit beside her.

  She smiled at the kid. “It’s only been a few minutes.”

  “Really? Feels longer.”

  “Don’t worry, Cole knows what he’s doing. This is actually what he’s good at.”

  “You mean going into an underground facility all by himself with everyone waiting up here for him to signal that everything’s hunky dory?”

  “Something like that.”

  Dante grinned. “I’m not sure any of us would have made it without him.” Then, looking back at Bolton, who was playing rock paper scissors with Ashley across the room, “Well, maybe except for Grizzly Adams there. He seemed to be doing all right before he met up with us.”

  Emily glanced over at the others.

  They were huddled inside a building dubbed The Welcome Room, according to one of the brochures, which was really just a big warehouse converted from a 120 feet x 240 feet airplane hangar, and was longer than it was wide. It was big enough that whenever they walked along its concrete floor, there was an accompanying echo. The building sat on top of the LARS main facility ten stories below and was the only way to access the structure. A single elevator, in the center and near the back, was the sole entry/exit point. Everything up here was sparse, with only two offices to one side—the one they were in now and a smaller one nearby—and enough space to host a few hundred guests and, maybe, the luxury cars they’d come in. That is, if they hadn’t arrived by private plane or chopper and parked them in the airfield outside.

  The whole thing was very theatrical, which was exactly Anton’s style.

  Anton.

  It was a name she didn’t think she’d ever say again—and really, hadn’t yet; at least not out loud—ever since she left the Army for the private sector. She didn’t even think she’d ever see the man again. But here she was, sitting at the very heart of his pride and joy. Or, well, above it, anyway.

  She could see the lone elevator that led down to that pride and joy right now. It looked more like an all-chrome version of Doctor Who’s TARDIS time machine, and was easily visible from the office thanks to the glass walls that ringed the room. There wasn’t much to it—and at the same time, it was a sight as it sat on hard concrete floors while surrounded by big and tall walls, easily dismissed as inconsequential in any other setting except this one. Anton’s version of creating buzz for the civilian investors because the military version of LARS was not nearly as dramatic.

  The lights didn’t work, but they didn’t need them anyway with the large, high windows along the top of the place, allowing in plenty of sunlight. All the windows, for some reason, were opened, and they were unable to find controls to close them back up. There had to be, because no way could they be opened and closed manually each time. That would have been much too time-consuming; not to mention someone would have had to climb up there to do so, or use a very, very tall ladder. For now, the plentiful lights provided by the open windows were a benefit, as were the free-flowing air they let in. Of course, things would be different when it got dark.

  Emily was surprised—though she didn’t say it out loud, and neither did Cole, who felt the same but also didn’t say it out loud to the others—to find the elevator still operational. That was a very good sign, because it got power from the facility below. And if that was still running, then they hadn’t come all the way here for nothing.

  The compound itself sat in the middle of nowhere. Literally, in this case, with the closest hint of civilization a good ten miles in any direction. That was the small town of Terry Flats, which had seen its boom come and go nearly a century earlier. From the air, Terry Flats hadn’t been very much to look at, but they hadn’t exactly hovered over it to get a better look. It could have been teeming with crazies, as Cole called them, for all they knew.

  Anton’s dream project was situated in the middle of 50 acres of sun-blasted and cracked earth. The hangar was part of a private airstrip that had been abandoned a while back; helicopter landing pads had been added recently and, from what they could tell when they arrived, used regularly. It wasn’t hard to find the place once you got past the rolling hills that surrounded it, but if you didn’t know where to look, you might have driven right by and been none the wiser of its existence. Anton had chosen the spot carefully.

  For Emily, it hadn’t been difficult to locate. She knew where it was because Anton had sent her the coordinates and kept her up to date on its construction even after he had gone private with the project.

  “He wants to impress you,” Cole had said when she told him about Anton’s correspondences.

  “What do you mean?” she’d asked, as if she hadn’t already known but just didn’t want to admit.

  “Maybe he thinks you’ll go back to him if you find out LARS has become a reality.”

  “He knows better than that.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Emily hadn’t answered that one quite as quickly. Did she know that? Her relationship with Anton had been…complicated. Maybe even more complicated than it was with Cole, and that had been pretty damn complicated.

  That was the last time they’d spoken about Anton, even though he continued sending her updates through her old e-mail account. It was a throwaway—what people in her old business used to call dead drops; or, well, a virtual version, anyway—and she had thought about deleting it but had never gotten around to it. It was still the best way for friends from her old life to reach her. Anton just happened to be one of them.

  And now here she was, back in his life.

  If he was even still alive. She didn’t know Anton’s blood type. Maybe he might have told her once, but she didn’t remember it. Was he even still alive under all the cement? Even if he wasn’t, it didn’t mean coming here was a waste of time. LARS was more than one man, and it was the place they had come for, not the people running it. Emily was expecting to see a crazy or two waiting for an unwitting victim to stumble into their path when they moved from the airfield to the warehouse but was surprised to find none. There wasn’t even any blood inside or around the building, or hints of a single fight. The area was deserted, as if everyone had simply picked up and left for the day, then never got around to returning to work.

  Well, this isn’t ominous at all, Emily remembered thinking as soon as they touched down, Bolton parking his chopper alongside two others. Besides those aircrafts, there was an unoccupied Gulfstream jet nearby, so someone had arrived at LARS before they did. The question, then, was that before, or after, everything went to shit?

  “He used to be a badass, right?” Dante was saying.

  Emily looked over at the kid. She’d never asked, but she assumed he was fifteen—possibly sixteen, but definitely no older than that—and never once gave her the impression he was confined to his wheelchair. Even though, of course, he was. But there was a big difference between allowing your limitations to limit you and overcoming it. Dante had done the latter a long time ago, and Cole had confirmed it.

  “Who?” Emily said.

  “Cole,” Dante said. “The way he handled himself, I wouldn’t want to mess with that dude of yours.”

  Emily smiled. She’d never heard anyone refer to Cole as that dude of hers before. “He’s something, all right.”

  “He used to be in the Army?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He didn’t talk much. Except about getting home to you.”

  She smiled again. She couldn’t help herself. She’d been 100 percent sure Cole was on his way back to her ever since all of this began, but to have it actually come true was some kind of miracle. In a city that was tearing itself apart at the seams, to know there was still one man she could count on was more than she could have hoped for.

  “I’ll let him tell you when he’s ready,” Emily said
.

  “Fair enough,” the kid said. “What’s—” Dante started to say.

  He never finished because they heard the radio squawk and Cole’s voice, badly distorted with static, coming through.

  “Emily…there?”

  She grabbed the radio and could hear the others hurrying over at the same time behind her. She pressed the transmit lever. “Cole. I’m here. What’s the situation down there? Are you okay?”

  “…news and bad…” Cole said.

  Dante gave her a puzzled look. “News and bad?”

  She shook her head, but instead of wasting time filling him in, said into the radio, “Are you okay? Cole. Are you okay down there?”

  “…hear you…” he said.

  “You can’t hear me?”

  “…shit…” He said something else, but the rest was lost in static.

  “Cole, come in. Cole.”

  “…dead…”

  “Did he just say ‘dead?’” someone said behind her. It was male and sounded like Greg because Bolton, the only other male behind her, had a much gruffer voice. She could have turned around to confirm but didn’t have the time.

  She said into the radio instead, “Cole, can you repeat? Can you repeat that last one?”

  “…dead,” he said again.

  “Dead? Who’s dead?”

  “…all dead…”

  “All dead,” a voice said behind her. Fiona. She sounded scared. “We all heard that one, right?”

  “Yes,” Zoe said.

  “Shit,” Bolton said.

  Emily tightened her grip on the radio so much that her fingers turned pale. She leaned in closer. “Cole, what’s happening? What’s dead? Are you okay?”

  “Wait,” Cole said. “Something—” The boom! of a shotgun blast in the background rang through the two-way loud and clear.

  Emily jerked away from the radio reflexively, and someone behind her gasped. It was either Zoe or Fiona, or possibly Savannah. Because it couldn’t have been her.

  At least, she didn’t think it was her, but she could have been wrong.

  Chapter 3. Cole

  He hadn’t been all that impressed with LARS as they circled the area in Bolton’s chopper. It was big and flat, and aesthetically a sore on the eyes. It was an entirely different story once Cole stepped out of the elevator and into the first passageway. The first, because according to Emily, there were more waiting for him. He had a general idea of what to expect, but even so, Cole was a little caught off guard by just how…nice the place looked.