Hell's Fortress (21 page)

“Why?” Eliza asked.

“That’s exactly what I ask him. Turns out that Methuselah wants to see his fantasies come to life. He used to live in Las Vegas—had worked as a pit boss there for many years. Then Obama got elected, maybe Methuselah went off his meds, and he put all his savings into a doomstead in the desert. Now he wants to see Las Vegas destroyed. The three of us had a little conference.”

“I thought you said there were five survivors.”

Steve’s face darkened. “I glossed over a few things. When we were in the artillery company we fought several battles. We took casualties.”

“Oh. Sorry, go on.”

“And we decide—this is crappy, I know—to steal Methuselah’s homemade tank and leave him with his trailer and his food. Then we can go wherever we want. Fayer and Chambers are thinking Salt Lake, leaving me in Cedar City to hike over the mountains to Blister Creek.

“Meanwhile, Methuselah goes out to this Cold War–style bunker he has buried behind his place. He has a bunch of stuff he wants to get—gas masks, iodine pills, probably more guns and ammo. You can never have too much. While he’s pulling away the boards that hide it, he stirs up a rattler underneath waiting out the heat of the day. Big old diamondback. It bites his hand. All that time hiding in the desert, with the world falling apart around him, and it’s a stupid rattlesnake that does him in.”

“Did you drive off and leave him?”

“No. We couldn’t do that. He was in terrible pain and I knew right away he was going to die, with the hospitals being the way they are. We weren’t sure what was waiting around Vegas, if we’d be shot as deserters or if there was a military government who could put us in contact with FBI headquarters, but Methuselah was no threat anymore. What would it hurt to find a field hospital and turn him over?

“We never found a hospital. Methuselah died on the road, and when we stopped to bury him, someone started shooting at us. We drove off in our armored car, got chased into the suburbs of Las Vegas. Where we found ourselves in the middle of a growing battle. We stashed the vehicle in an abandoned air conditioner factory and tried waiting it out in the tunnels. We were safe at first. Three, four days—the bombardment never stopped.”

“The tunnels?” Eliza asked.

“There are storm drains beneath the city. Homeless people used to live down there and come up at night to panhandle and Dumpster dive. When it rained, they’d flee like rats. There are still people down there, only now they’re refugees from the war. It’s pretty miserable.” He shrugged, and she could see more ugly details being glossed over.

“The problem is,” he continued, “the federal troops were using the tunnels to infiltrate the city. They overran our camp one night. When we realized they weren’t Californians, we surrendered and explained who we were. Lot of good it did. They arrested us anyway. That’s more or less how we ended up here.”

Grover had been listening in silence. “You’re either super lucky,” he said, “or you’ve hit one terrible stretch of bad luck. I can’t decide.”

“Either way, it’s a strange story,” Eliza said. “One crazy thing after another.”

“Only the dead have boring stories these days,” Steve said. “Short, boring, and deadly. They got herded into a refugee camp and died of cholera. Bandits shot them. They starved to death while waiting for flour rations. Those of us still around are only alive because of a series of crazy coincidences.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “How long have you been prisoners?”

“About a month. They put us with these others, mostly California-born government officials. Nobody has been charged with any crime. They’ve moved us around, but always within Las Vegas.”

“How many prisoners are there?”

“About thirty now. We had a lot more. Maybe half have died. Every once in a while, new prisoners join us—like you—but nobody ever leaves, except as a dead body.”

Eliza let go of Steve’s dry, warm hand and rubbed at her scalp, trying to think. They couldn’t sit here, waiting for the building to collapse. Starving, dying of thirst.

As if to punctuate her thoughts, fresh artillery shells rained down on the hotel. The building shook and bucked, and more tiles fell from the ceiling. The bombardment continued for several minutes, then faded to the west. When it was over, Eliza went to find Miriam.

She had no intention of waiting here to be killed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Eliza found Miriam near the blown-out windows, taking in the scene. A wrecked armored personnel carrier sat in the street below. Craters pockmarked the road. The strip mall across the street lay in smoking ruins. Papers tumbled down the street. A block down, a slot machine sat in the middle of the intersection, as if carried away from its home by an explosion, then set gently to the ground.

The air blowing in from the street felt like a blast of air from an oven. But the shadows were long and with any luck the evening would bring relief.

“Don’t linger,” Miriam warned. “There might be snipers.”

Eliza stepped back. “Any ideas?”

“No good ones. I didn’t realize we were so far up. Seven stories. If you go up to the edge, you can see that a few people have made the jump anyway.”

Eliza shuddered. “Steve didn’t say anything about that.”

“He’s probably numb to death. You saw that Fayer and Chambers are here?”

“Steve told me, yes.”

“I talked to Fayer. The things she’s gone through would curl your toes.”

“You mean the part about the helicopter?” Eliza asked.

“I was thinking more about those drugged-up gang members in L.A.”

“You mean there’s more? I didn’t hear about that.”

“Let’s worry about the here and now,” Miriam said. “There’s no food, and barely any water. The army either doesn’t know what to do with the prisoners, or doesn’t care.”

“The army can’t even feed itself. Question is, what do we do? I’m not going to sit here waiting to die.”

“Me either. Maybe we could get the chairs and batter down the doors.”

“There are men outside with guns,” Eliza reminded her. “What about tearing up the carpet and dangling it out the window? We can lower someone to the next floor.”

Miriam raised an eyebrow. “How would we do that? Roll it into a big thirty-foot-long roll?”

“If we had tools we could cut strips and tie them together.”

“I’ve already looked around. There’s nothing.”

“I didn’t come all this way to fall into Steve’s arms and die by his side.”

“You don’t have to tell me, I’m not dying here either. I’ve got a husband and a baby at home. Did Krantz give you anything to work with?”

“Steve had an escape vehicle at one time. You heard about the tank?”

“The armored car thing built by the old-timer? Wasn’t it destroyed?”

“No, they stashed it in an abandoned factory somewhere in Vegas. Might still be there. Of course, we have to get out of here first. The prisoners have been here a week. I’m sure Steve has given it a lot of thought, but he didn’t seem to have any ideas.”

“Fayer didn’t have anything either. She thinks we’re finished. And not from starvation. You know how the building shakes when it gets hit? It didn’t used to do that. The foundation is giving way. When that happens, we’ll pancake all the way down.”

As horrifying as that sounded, it gave Eliza an idea. “Do you think you could take down one of the guards and get his weapon?”

“Maybe. I was looking for an opportunity on the way up, but I was always facing at least two guns. What are you thinking?”

“If Fayer has noticed the shaking, those kids outside have too. You’re a good actor, you could convince them the building is about to give way.”

“They’ll think I’m a panicky woman. What will that get me?”

“No, you’re not,” Eliza said. “You’re a structural engineer. Make stuff up. You infiltrated the Zarahemla cult—surely you can manage this.”

“Keep talking,” Miriam said. “Then what?”

“Then they’ll move. And they’ll take us with them.”

“Unless they leave us here to die.”

“They’ll take us,” Eliza said, with more confidence then she felt. She couldn’t think of any other plan. “When they do that, we’ll create a distraction, and you’ll take out one of the soldiers.”

Miriam looked thoughtful. “Those soldiers are jumpy. Even if I get a gun, the others will start shooting. People will die.”

“They’re going to die anyway.”

A thin smile. “Now who’s the ruthless one?”

“I’m desperate,” Eliza said. “Aren’t you?”

“Getting there.” Miriam nodded. “Okay, let’s make it happen.”

The prisoners were a starved, ragged bunch, plagued by weak, muddled thinking. Most of them wanted nothing to do with the plan. They wanted to lie down and be left alone. To curl up and die. Eliza imagined what they’d gone through and fought down her frustration.

She remembered another time, a pit in the desert outside Las Vegas. A young woman starving on a diet of lettuce. Starvation didn’t turn one into a fighter. But at the same time, Eliza’s current predicament didn’t sound impossible. She’d survived worse situations, or at least equally bad.

Together, Eliza and Miriam coaxed, prodded, pleaded, and threatened. Those who were too far gone they told to stay down and keep their mouths shut when the time came. And then they waited for the next artillery attack. And waited.

The shelling continued to the east, then swept through the center of the city again without passing near their building. The heat was suffocating and Eliza’s mouth felt like it had been stuffed with wads of cotton gauze. A woman cried out for water.

Eliza waited with Steve. She was sweating profusely, but his hands were dry and hot. If the soldiers ever delivered water, she’d fight the others if she had to, to get him his share.

When darkness came, gunfire started up in the streets. First a few isolated shots, then back-and-forth chatter. The gunfire grew louder, into angry-sounding bursts. A series of thumping detonations like an enormous bass drum sounded from the direction of the Strip. They were answered by lighter machine guns. A jet roared overhead. A light flashed, followed by a thundering explosion several seconds later.

Finally, the artillery came. Shells rained down on the hotel and its surroundings. Gunfire raged in the streets below. As soon as the building started to shudder, Eliza and Miriam pounded on the conference room doors.

“The building is about to collapse!” Miriam cried. “You have to listen to me—this is what I do for a living. I’m a structural engineer. I’m telling you, the center post of this room is the main load-bearing support of this whole wing. It goes, and we all go down with it—and it
is
going. They do
not
just vibrate like that!”

No answer. A thin blue light seeped beneath the doors, so someone had to be out there still. They kept pounding.

Miriam continued. “Please, for God’s sake. The post goes all the way to bedrock. There has to be a stress fracture running right down the center of it for it to shimmy like that. And if the post goes, the entire building pancakes in about ten seconds. You have to let us out.” She pounded the flat of her palm against the door. “I was the chief engineer for this building, do you hear me?”

The building lurched and the women grabbed for the wall to steady themselves. And still the artillery kept falling. A particularly heavy blast hit somewhere below them and the floor wobbled like something made of rubber. A beam crashed from the ceiling.

It’s real. It’s really happening.

Far from a bluff, their ploy was only reflecting reality. Under sustained bombardment, the abandoned hotel and casino was on the verge of collapse. And if there had been soldiers on the other side, those men had already fled.

Eliza grabbed Miriam. “The chairs. We have to batter our way out.”

Flashes in the street illuminated the room. The stacked chairs had tipped over. Prisoners were on their feet, staggering to hold their balance on the lurching floor. People screamed and when another light flashed, several had disappeared from the center of the room.

Steve found her. “Watch out. The floor collapsed in the middle.”

Another flash and a concussive explosion threw them from their feet. This time the light didn’t go out. White flames licked the carpet just inside the windows. A prisoner beat furiously at his legs. Eliza rose to her hands and knees, trying to regain her bearings. The room was shaking, but she didn’t know if it was her own swimming head or the building doing its best to collapse.

The hole in the floor was no more than ten feet across. Looking down, she could see the story below them, some sort of lounge with a dark TV screen and couches and easy chairs covered with dust and ceiling tiles and shattered glass. Two people struggled among the debris where they’d fallen. One of them screamed in pain, his arm twisted at an ugly angle. It was fifteen feet or so down to the lounge.

She found Miriam and Steve and they recalibrated their plans.

Choking on smoke, the building threatening to go down at any time, the three of them spread word through the remaining prisoners. Grover, when they found him, was shaking and pale, but didn’t cower in a corner awaiting orders. Instead, he was working of his own volition to help the weakened prisoners gather around the hole.

From there, Eliza, Miriam, and Steve lowered prisoners into the hole and dropped them onto a couch in the lounge. Last fall, Steve had been able to pick Eliza up as if she were a child, but now he strained and nearly lost his grip whenever his arms were fully extended into the hole. When they were helping Chambers down, Steve dropped his side. When he did, all of Chambers’s weight transferred awkwardly to the two women, and they lost their grip. The man fell with a cry.

“I’m okay!” he called up.

Soon they had everyone down who could move. The blast had killed three prisoners, and the man with the burned legs was so badly injured that he screamed when they tried to move him. He flailed and be
gged them to leave him alone. Feeling sick, Eliza abandoned the man to the smoldering, smoke-filled room. The air was so thick she had to find the hole again by feel.

With nobody to help them down, Steve and Miriam had made a jump for it. That left Eliza. They urged her down. She lowered herself into the darkness and cried out that she was jumping. Then she let go.

Steve and Miriam broke her fall and the three of them crumpled to the ground. Eliza regained her feet only to stumble when another shell hit the building. She regained her balance and groped for her companions.

All around, prisoners cried out for each other. A few forced their way down the hall, apparently taking their chances solo rather than waiting around for the soldiers to discover they were missing. The burned man could still be heard above them, screaming from the conference room.

“We have to get out of here,” Miriam said.

“Where’s Grover?” Eliza asked.

“Right here,” came his voice from the darkness. “I haven’t moved.”

“Fayer, are you there?” Steve called. “Chambers?”

They found Fayer coughing, and crying out weakly, but Chambers had disappeared. Nobody knew if he’d staggered off in some random direction, following the fleeing prisoners, or if he was lying in a corner, injured and unable to answer. Nobody had seen him since they’d dropped him through the hole in the floor.

“We have to go,” Miriam said. “Now.”

By now the other prisoners had dispersed. Gunfire sounded in the building, which shuddered from repeated explosions.

Grover found a doorway down the hall in the opposite direction from that taken by the bulk of the fleeing prisoners. “I think it’s a stairwell.”

It was, and the companions—Steve, Fayer, Eliza, Miriam, and Grover—found their way down the stairs by feel, hands following metal railings. They had descended two stories when they came upon a head-sized hole in the outer wall. Eliza looked out to see flashes in the street directly below them—a gunfight playing out only yards away. They continued down and soon reached a pair of heavy metal doors.

Beyond lay the main casino. Smoke and tear gas filled the air. Gunfire lashed from one side of the room to the other. Gaping holes opened in the walls to the outside, and men with gas masks poured through them into the building. Phosphorous grenades flashed.

It was a vision of hell itself, and Eliza tried to retreat. Then Miriam pointed to the destroyed plate glass window to their right, away from the firefight. They made a run for it. When Eliza reached the window, she lowered her shoulder and bashed through the hanging shards of glass. She found herself outside, among desiccated flower beds and toppled statuary. Tracer bullets lit up the sky.

When the others were out, they ran in a tight knot for the sidewalk. A helicopter thumped overhead. A missile roared from its underbelly and lit up a building down the block, which disgorged a ball of fire. Gunshots sounded all around.

It wasn’t until they reached the street that Eliza hazarded a glance back at the casino-hotel. The main building was burning on three floors, staining the night air red, with smoke pouring from its windows. One of the two hotel towers flanking the casino had a twisted, movie-monster look, while the other sat skeletal against the sky. Another shell came screaming in and a clap of thunder split the air.

The casino shuddered. When it fell, it would take down smaller hotels and strip malls around it.

“Over there,” Steve said.

He pointed across a cratered three-lane street. The poles holding the dead traffic lights bent at crazy angles across the road. In the near darkness, she couldn’t see what he was pointing at. An underpass of some kind, emerging from beneath the opposite side of the street.