He knelt beside her and took the grenade, spinning it nose down on the concrete like a top. He did this many times, spinning it as fast as he could without bumping it against the floor. “That should do it.”
“Don’t drop it or you’ll blow us to shit.”
He put the grenade in his pocket and went to the ladder. “I’ll need you to open the hatch so I can throw this thing into the room.”
He climbed quietly up to the top, and Emory climbed up tight behind him, hooking into his harness with a carabiner so she would have both of her hands free to push the hatch up. Marty hooked an arm over the top rung to keep them both from falling and took the grenade from his pocket. “Okay,” he whispered.
She twisted the wheel to unlock the hatch, and though she could feel someone fighting her on the other side, Marty had been right about the gear ratio, so she was easily defeating the other person. She felt the gear come to the end of its turn and whispered into his ear, “I’m pushing up in three… two… one!”
She had to shove with all her strength to lift whoever was sitting on the hatch, and she felt a muscle pop in her shoulder as she strained against the weight, but the hatch lifted nearly six inches before there was another pistol shot. Marty felt a harmless tug at his body armor as he tossed the grenade through the gap before Emory dropped the hatch.
They heard the blast on the other side, and Emory was shoving the hatch upward even before the flash of fire completely dissipated, urging Marty to climb with her because they were still hooked together. They struggled up from the hole as one being and sprawled on the floor with their legs not quite out of the hatchway, drawing their pistols from their harnesses and trying not to choke on the stench of raw cordite. There were panicked voices coming toward them, flashlights dancing on the walls through the smoke as they opened fire on the tunnel way.
Someone screamed and a flashlight fell, shining back into the tunnel to reveal three more wretched looking souls in filthy clothing, one of them a woman, their eyes wild with hate, their gums bleeding with scurvy.
Emory and Marty shot them down without hesitation and quickly reloaded, laying in wait in the gathering silence for close to ten minutes before daring to speak.
“What do you think?” she whispered into his ear.
“I think we got ’em all this time… but who knows?”
They waited another minute before Emory set her weapon aside and unhooked the carabiner from his harness. “You stay put… I’ll go for the M-4s.”
She returned quickly and they searched the immediate area, finding six freshly killed bodies. “Wanna look for their hideout to make sure… or get the fuck outta here?”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
She went below and used smelling salts to bring Sullivan into semiconsciousness. “I need you to help climb outta here!” she urged him, dragging him back and sitting him up at the foot of the ladder.
“What the fuck happened?” he moaned. “My head is splitting!”
“Just climb, John L.” She pulled him up by the lift strap on his harness and helped him get his foot onto the bottom rung. It took them some time to reach the top, but within thirty minutes they were all in the hybrid and rolling slowly south over the rocky terrain, the video camera locked up in the glove compartment.
Marty drove while Emory removed the bullet from Sullivan’s skull and applied a dressing. Sullivan was still only in and out of consciousness, severely concussed.
“So where we headed?” Marty asked, glancing at her in the mirror.
“Might as well head for Altus AFB down in Oklahoma,” she said, climbing into the front and grabbing the road atlas. “We can give that camera of Yon’s to her geologist friends and see what kind of setup they got, maybe stay with them… unless you got a better idea.”
“I’m all out of ideas.”
She studied the atlas as they bounced along. “Okay. We’ll find a highway and drop down to Interstate 80, then cut east across Nebraska and drop down through Kansas by way of Topeka. That’ll put us real close to Altus when we hit Oklahoma.”
“Kansas,” he groaned. “You ever been through Kansas?”
She chuckled and closed the atlas. “One good thing about Kansas, Marty… an asteroid strike could only be an improvement.”
Thirty-Eight
Major Benjamin Moriarty pushed back from the table and sat studying what was left of his decimated officer corps. He was down to four lieutenants now and a mere handful of noncoms, having been forced the day before to put Captains Winterfield, Scarborough, and Phelter—along with ten other enlisted men—before a firing squad after trying them all for sedition and attempted mutiny. The one positive result of the debacle was that the battle for the collective conscience of the men was finally decided, and those few hundred who remained in the ranks now understood that the weak must serve to bolster the strong in whatever capacity was required, and that morality was no longer anything more than a defunct and pointless luxury.
The meal had been meager. A potluck affair of heated vegetables poured from mostly label-less cans scavenged from in and around the city of Denver. The meat had been provided by Captain Winterfield, and it was only the third time the officers were driven to eat another human being. The regular ranks had been supplementing their diet with human flesh for the better part of a month now, but Moriarty and his staff were still in the process of learning that it was an acquired taste, to say the most.
“Lieutenant Ford,” he said quietly, picking at his teeth with a thin sliver of wire. “Direct the cooks to find another way to season the meat.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Winterfield may have been a candyass, but there’s no reason he should taste like one.” His men chortled dutifully, all of them having difficulty with the sweet flavor of human flesh.
“Lieutenant Yoder,” Moriarty said, noting the bilious look of his most junior officer. “You look a little green around the gills, son.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s still a little hard for me. I’ll adjust, sir. Don’t worry.”
It was no secret that Yoder had been a friend of Captain Winterfield, and Moriarty had chosen Winterfield for their meal with precisely that in mind. “I’m sure you will, son. You’re a fine officer and I’m depending on you to set an equally fine example for the men.”
“Sir.”
“Now, if the rest of you will excuse us, Lieutenant Ford and I have some things to discuss before retreat.”
The small hotel dining room cleared, and Ford sat looking at Moriarty through a pair of sagging eyes. He was sallow and gaunt-looking and his gums had begun to recede with the onset of scurvy.
“Eat some more,” Moriarty said with a gesture toward the platter in the center of the table.
“I’m fine, sir. Thank you.”
“Eat! You’re dying before my eyes, damnit, and I need you strong!”
“I’ll only throw it up, Ben.”
“Should I have put you on trial as well?”
“You know very well that I support you,” Ford remarked wearily. “It’s not my fault that starvation and cannibalism disagree with me.”
Moriarty despised the smaller man’s weakness but he needed him too badly, knowing that Ford was the glue between him and the rest of his staff.
“Then I want you eating two cans of cat food a day from now on,” Moriarty said, realizing that he was playing right into the lieutenant’s hands, but there was nothing to be done about it. Waiting him out wasn’t working.
“Yes, sir,” Ford said, wanting to shout Hallelujah! but concealing his victory.
“You will, of course, be expected to eat the minimum amount of meat before the rest of the staff. If they find out I’m treating you special, we’ve got more trouble.”