“But the general public isn’t aware of that reserve. The Navy’s kept it under lock and key belowdecks. What does Hadrian think about the idea?”
“He’s not opposed to it,” she said. “But he’s suggested sending a destroyer first to reconnoiter the shoreline, dispatching shore parties all up and down the California coast.”
“What about Boxer?” Shipman asked.
“Who?”
“Not who,” Shipman chuckled, “it’s a what—the USS Boxer. It’s a small aircraft carrier meant for helicopters and amphibious landing craft. And it’s not nuclear powered.”
“Which must be why the Navy hasn’t suggested it,” Ester said, perturbed. “That Longbottom is trying to hoard his fuel for the big war he thinks he’s going to have someday with God knows who. Well, that’s what we’ll do, then. We’ll send the Boxer and one destroyer escort… Oh, and the volcanologists are already after me to send an expedition to find the impact crater. Have you heard this insanity?”
Shipman smiled. “Yes.”
“Like we have the time and the resources to mount such a frivolous expedition.”
Shipman chuckled. “Is this the same Ester Thorn who got so angry with the government thirty years ago for refusing to allocate more money to keep an eye on the Great Beyond?”
“Oh, shut up, Harold. It’s not even remotely the same.”
“How can you say that? You’re a scientist.”
“The U.S. government had more than enough money to fund such a project, and it would have directly benefited mankind—which was exactly what I told them!”
“Well, I can’t argue that point,” he said, glancing at the dead countryside.
“Allowing them to mount an expedition like that now wouldn’t be any different than sending them to the gallows.”
“Well, you know geologists, Ester.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “And I understand their desires, but they’re just going to have to wait until we’ve gotten these islands more than a couple of weeks ahead of our food consumption. I wonder what old Longbottom’s going to say when I tell him to send the Boxer out. You know, Harold, I need a liaison to the Navy who I can trust, someone to tell me about things like the Boxer so I know what types of resources we truly have.”
“That person may be tough to find,” Shipman said. “Longbottom has a pretty tight rein on most everyone who knows anything about their internal affairs.”
Fifty-Nine
With the siege a distant memory, the silo population was preparing to celebrate their second Christmas belowground. Forrest and Kane had both recovered from their injuries with minimal hearing loss, and Emory’s baby was quickening nicely, still nursing regularly at her breast. Erin was unquestionably the baby’s mother, however; Emory behaved as little more than nursemaid to the child, and was already being referred to as Aunt Shannon.
The installation remained secure. The antenna array was raised every morning so the men could watch the countryside with the robotic camera, and lowered each night after dark. Thus far there had been no further signs of life aboveground. It did not snow a great deal over the summer, but no more than half the snow had melted, and flurries began to fly again with the coming of autumn.
The rat population now stood at thirty-five mating pairs and, amazingly enough, was still a secret kept among the men, Melissa and Emory the sole exceptions. The food stores were holding out better than Forrest had any right to expect, but he knew that by late March they would have to begin incorporating rat meat into their diets if they were to stretch the rest of the food through the summer—which meant it was time to start letting the rats breed at will, and they still hadn’t figured out what to use for cages. So far they had partitioned off four empty fifty-gallon fuel drums cut down the middle, but the little critters were escape artists, so Danzig and Kane had an almost full-time job just keeping them wrangled. Fortunately, the loss of the bay’s first blast door provided an excuse for keeping a man on duty within the cargo bay at all times without raising suspicion.
Ulrich tossed his pen down and sat back from the console with a brief glance at the monitors. “No matter how I crunch these numbers, Jack, we’re down to rat meat and the occasional tomato by the first of September. And we still don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do for breeding cages. The little sons of bitches can chew through damn near anything.”
“Okay. So maybe we need to forget the rats altogether,” Forrest said, thinking they might need to make a break for it before the food ran completely out. “Those figures of yours don’t include the MREs, do they?”
“You ordered me not to, so no, but each truckload only buys us an extra month at one MRE per day per person, which isn’t exactly a feast.”
“So, come the first of September we load into the trucks and roll south with the MREs.”
“South to where?”
“Maybe Altus Air Force Base.” Forrest grinned. “Marty seems to think it’s teeming with geologists.”
“That’s a pretty huge maybe, Jack, and we’ll only have a month to find a safe haven.”
The door opened and Erin came in carrying Emory Marie Ulrich, named after her birth mother Shannon Marie Emory, though everyone called her Emmy. Laddie got up from where he lay on the floor near Forrest’s chair and sat watching as she offered the infant to her husband.
“Would you hold Emmy for a little bit, honey? I need to eat.”
Ulrich sat up straight in the chair and put out his arms. “You mean with all those women out there you can’t find anybody else to hold her?”
“Everyone else is eating lunch,” she said. “It’s not going to hurt you. You are her father, right?”
Ulrich accepted the baby with a nod, and Erin smiled, kissed him on the lips and left the room. “That’s a buncha bullshit,” he grumbled. “Those broads fight over this baby.”
“She wants the kid to know you’re her father,” Forrest said, scratching the dog behind his ears. “What’s wrong with that? You’re supposed to be doing this for your wife. Remember?”
“Oh, shut up,” Ulrich said, holding the baby delicately, almost as if he were afraid of hurting her. “Pretty thing, though, ain’t she? I can’t believe Shannon still doesn’t want her.”
“She’s got reason enough,” Forrest said. “Marty told me she went through some pretty heinous shit. Maybe not as bad as Liddy and Natalie, but bad enough.”
The two women they had freed from Moriarty—Liddy and Natalie—were neighbors before the asteroid, and their families had been captured together in a basement by Moriarty’s men. Both women saw their husbands and children killed and eaten over a period of weeks, and if not for their mutual support of one another, Forrest was certain they would have killed themselves by now. Even after eight months of safety belowground, they rarely left one another’s side, as if still afraid of being violated. Michael doubted they would ever completely assimilate, both women still suffering from severe post-traumatic shock and horrible nightmares.
The baby began to fuss, so Ulrich stood from the chair and took her for a walk in the halls, talking softly to her and hoping that one of the other women would offer to take her off of his hands, but none of them did, and he began to suspect a conspiracy. There was no sense in trying to find out for sure, however. The women had grown thick as thieves over the last eighteen months.