Digger 1.0 (13 page)

He kept walking and another hundred yards
down located the tunnel entrance that broke off to the southeast.
That was a tunnel he’d not explored before. From the angle of it,
it looked like it cut south and eastward, generally in the
direction of the Scraps.

Not all of the tunnels ran at the same
depth. In order to access some of them, you had to climb or descend
a ladder. And some of the tunnels themselves went up or down,
sometimes at sharp trajectories. Sometimes he’d find stone
formations or other impediments the diggers had chosen to bypass
rather than blast through using brute force or explosives.

Most of the tunnels he’d found either
terminated in a room of some sort or circled back around to another
location. But this off-shoot tunnel jutted away at an angle that
seemed like it might eventually exit the high valley completely. It
dropped at a steep grade, which made Ellis feel like the diggers
had intended it to pass under the limestone cliffs, and the
direction it headed seemed to be toward the “Nowheres,” the barren
lands where the salvage graveyard known as the Scraps could be
found.

Who knows where this leads?
Ellis
stopped and thought.
I don
’t have time yet to run this tunnel to its
end. Maybe it ends at the cliffs, but maybe it doesn’t.

He made a mental note to come back with some
of the Claymore mines. He’d set up a booby-trap just in case that
tunnel opened up somewhere off the property. If somebody were to
find the entrance, he didn’t want a horde or maybe a gang of PMPs
using the tunnel to invade the valley.

He turned and continued down the Pillbox
Express, heading southwest. His plan right now was to surface in
the forest not far from the pillbox. He’d check again to make sure
the tunnel entrance was well hidden, then he’d trek through the
forest farther to the southwest until he’d come upon another tunnel
entrance, almost on the edge of the impenetrable thicket that
barred passage from the south into the raised valley.

That tunnel, the one with the entrance near
the thicket, ran due north from there, almost skimming the
limestone walls of the Solekeep. Ellis called this tunnel the
“North/South Pike.” It ran about twenty-five feet under the peak
where the boys would haul water up from the Solekeep, and continued
on until it made a hard right near the main road to the north. From
that turn, it headed straight east almost three football fields or
more before it “
teed
”
into the main tunnel that ran north from the farm and terminated in
the “big drop” (that’s what the family now called the 150 ft. drop
from the entrance hidden within the rocks of Utah down to the
portion of the tunnel that led northward from there.)

Walking these tunnels allowed Ellis to
memorize them, to check them for safety again, and to make sure he
wasn’t missing some weakness, some entrance that could be gained
from off the property.

~~~

Up top, Chuck, Rooster, Kay, Neil, Marlon,
and Patrick were busy on another project.

They were rigging Fontana’s Bridge to
blow.

Shooter and Renny were on overwatch
duty.

Delores would be in the farmhouse, working
on the next meal. She didn’t like the idea of messing around with
bomb material, so she’d left that duty to Kay.

Kay was reading the Army field manual on
explosives and familiarizing herself with the whole process, while
the other five were crawling over and under the metal bridge like
monkeys, following the directions Kay would shout to them when
necessary.

Rooster was doing more climbing and playing
than working, but that kept her out of everyone’s way, so they all
just let her play.

“Run that wire underneath the rail supports
where it can’t be seen!” Kay hollered to Chuck, who nodded at her
without looking up.

“Check the wires every inch of the way,” Kay
shouted at Neil, “if there’s a kink or a split in the line, the
thing won’t blow when we need it to and we’ll all die!”

“We’re checking the lines!” Neil shouted
back. “Sheesh! Everyone knows that! Just make sure everything will
go off in the right sequence. We’ll check and double check the
wires before we hook up the detonator extensions. C’mon Kay, you’re
acting like this is the first time we’ve ever rigged a huge
suspension bridge with military grade explosives!”

“It is the first time, Joker,” Kay yelled
back. “Just do what I say and maybe we’ll all live. Maybe.”

She turned back to the book and whispered to
herself. “Line to the sniper nest. Errr… pillbox. Right. They make
me call it a pillbox for some stupid reason. Uhh. Line to the
house. Line to the barn. Line to the tunnels up under Utah. So we
need four sets of lines, and four hand-crank generators to send the
charge. Do we have four?” She stared off into the middle-distance
and counted on her fingers. “Yep, we have four. At least four.
Maybe more.”

~~~

At the pillbox, Shooter watched over the
workers scurrying on the bridge through his scope.

This is taking too long
, he thought.
Too much time spent being exposed.

He looked up toward Utah and saw young Renny
who was scanning the bridge area with his ‘nocs.

This is taking way too long
.

He looked down through the valley again,
past the work being done, then swept the area leading up the steep
hill to the bridge from beyond the Solekeep.

“Too long,” he whispered, then began doing a
quadrant scan from west to east.

There. Movement.

He scanned back and waited, hoping to see a
flash or an indication of whatever he’d seen. But there was
nothing. He held there for a full three minutes, barely
breathing.

Something. He’d seen something move.

He’d become a crack shot in every way
imaginable. Seated. Standing. Lying down. He could consistently hit
moving targets from over 800 yards, and he could set up and fire
accurately in seconds. With a trained spotter he was even better.
Now that they’d uncovered a ready stash of more ammo, he knew he
could practice even more, and he was convinced he could get better
still.

He’d read every book they could find on the
job of the sniper, and he’d practiced for hours on end from every
conceivable shooting platform the raised valley had to offer.

Shooter knew the prevailing wind currents
and conditions from every point up to half a mile away from the
valley. And in the last two years, they’d even taken the time to
transplant cattails down by the Solekeep and stands of reeds and
buffalo grass at strategic points in the climb up to the bridge, so
he could judge wind speed and direction in a heartbeat from
wherever he might be shooting.

His own position wouldn’t be given away by a
momentary sun reflection, he knew that. He was set back deep in the
pillbox, in the darkest of shadows. His rifle was set on a flat
desktop, a solid oak remnant of the days before the Beginning, and
the nest was almost completely invisible from everywhere… unless
one was to walk up on it. Which wouldn’t be likely.

And he could move too. He could fire and be
gone in seconds. Up to the shooting nest in the pines, or over to
the rocks in Utah. All without being seen. The new tunnels they’d
found gave him the ability to appear in just about any elevated
position in a short amount of time. This gave them some advantage
during an attack which must inevitably come from below. From down
by Fontana’s Bridge.

“Multiplying our force.” That was what Ellis
had called it. Making one, well-trained defender seem like three.
Or five. Or ten. And with two or three snipers set up, they could
be a pretty destructive force. Muddy up the plans of any attackers.
Perhaps taking out their leadership if need be.

Some of the others were good with sniping
too. Renny, though he was very young, had a good eye. Ellis was
very good too, and any number of them had the skills to set up a
crossfire position in the barn, or from Utah, or anywhere else if
it became necessary.

He steadied his breathing and heart rate and
even timed his blinks to make sure he wouldn’t miss any action in
the quadrant where he was sure he’d seen movement before.

But nothing moved.

He remembered a joke that Ellis had told
from a movie he’d seen back before the Beginning. A helicopter
gunner was asked about how he could tell an innocent civilian from
an enemy Viet Cong combatant. “Easy,” the gunner said. “Anything
that moves is VC. Anything that does not move is well disciplined
VC.”

Well, Shooter thought, if anyone is down
there spying out the work being done on the bridge, he or she is
well-disciplined.

He kept his scope on that quadrant for two
more minutes but nothing moved.

“Good work, whoever you are,” he said to
himself, even though he didn’t really believe someone was down
there. “Good work.”

~~~

Ellis forgot how long he’d been underground.
Was it a full day? A day and a half? He’d told the family he’d be
working and not to expect him back until morning, but time and the
particular position of the sun had no real regulative meaning down
in the deep. And had he told them that? Or was he misremembering?
Being underground had that effect sometimes too. The up top stopped
being real sometimes, if he let it. He laughed a little to himself.
The spelunking might be playing with his mind.

He was almost done mapping out the tunnel
system. At least he thought he was. He still hadn’t taken the
tunnel northward under the Solekeep, and there was still that
southeastern tunnel that broke off from the Pillbox Express and
headed… where?

But
he
’d remembered to set a booby trap in that tunnel. And he’d
marked it clearly from the Express so none of the family would head
that way. In order for them to actually slip up and get hurt,
they’d have to set records for stupid, stepping over the claymores
and then walking twenty more feet to hit the tripwire and trigger
the devices. Not gonna happen. Not with his bunch.

Now he was back down the rabbit hole, just
east of the big drop. Way down deep, and looking through yet
another “closet” of supplies. The architect of the tunnels had
regularly stopped work to carve out storage spaces, and usually
those closets were filled with valuable materials. Things that
could be used up top to make life better and easier, if he could
ever secure the down deep. He concentrated and made a mental note
of what the closet contained.

That’s what he was doing when he heard
Delores calling him through the darkness. From the direction of the
tunnel entrance. Her voice tumbled through the damp air, but he
could hear it clearly. And she wasn’
t happy.

She was up the ladder of the big drop and
standing in the offshoot tunnel, the one that led straight south to
the barn. They’d found half a dozen tunnels and routes, but he knew
instantly where Delores was. Voices carried well under the earth.
Not like up top where the wind and the weather might carry a cry or
shout away like a discarded newspaper. But down deep, the echoes
were their own thing, like haunting echoes imagined from the
nightmares of youth. Delores was standing and shouting down the big
drop. She'd come through the entrance in the barn. She was standing
up by the ladder, where it led upward to Utah, and down to the
bottom of the big drop. The barn entrance was the easiest one, and
the main one the family used.

“Ellis James Kint!”

Not good. Delores was using all his names.
That meant she was pissed off about something. Not a new thing, but
not welcome either.

Ellis flicked on his headlight and began his
slow ascent up the ladder that led vertically from the “big drop.”
He’d not explored the northward tunnel much. Not at all really. He
was planning on a short foray in that direction today. Because
North was one of the biggest unknowns. That way led under the
Solekeep River—or at least they were assuming that it must. It had
to. The River was only a stone’s throw from Utah when you were up
top. No one had gone beyond the limit of the torchlight in that
direction down in the tunnels. There’d been too many other, closer
tunnels to explore, and Ellis was constantly preaching that they
wanted to map the tunnels carefully, starting with the barn and
moving outward. No sense dashing under the river if there were
other answers to be had closer to hand.

“Ellis
Damn
Kint,” Delores
shouted.

“I’m on my way up!” Ellis yelled back into
the darkness. “Give me a minute! I can’t fly up like a bat,
Delores!”

“Get up here,” Delores said, quieter this
time. She knew her voice carried well under ground. “I need to talk
to you right now.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Right now, Ellis.”

The climb up the ladder of the big drop was
a workout, and Ellis didn’t like to make that journey more than
once a day. Twice at the most. It was also the most dangerous part
of the exploration, he’d discovered. This after almost falling
twice in the first day after finding the tunnels. The rebar steps
were rusty and damp. They were slippery from the years and from the
moist effusion of earth’s life force, even though he knew the
ladder itself was strong and could hold his weight.

Working with the headlight, he could see up
or down—whichever way he was looking—and the rest of the tunnel was
more than just dark. It was total blackness, just like the day of
blindness, only usually without the devilish spiritual weight of
that day pulling him into it. Without the omnipresent feeling of
death. Without the bodies landing around him, falling from on
high.

When he was parallel with the horizontal
shaft that led toward the barn, he stepped over and he could see
Delores’s headlight shining at him.