“Smartass blue-suiter. How about I show you the best part.”
“I hope it involves food, because we only got enough for a couple days,” Larry complained.
Zeke’s ever-present grin got wider. “Oh, baby, you have no idea. There’s enough in here for years. Come on, let’s run a jump.” He drove the Land Rover over to a diesel generator sitting by the wall, then hooked up his jumper cables. A moment later he had the machine started, and a faint orange glow started above their heads from dozens of sodium lamps. Not all of them worked, but there were enough. They turned off the car lights to conserve their batteries.
Elise wondered about the diesel emissions until she noticed its exhaust pipe ran up to a hole in the wall. The air in the cavern seemed fairly fresh, too. There must be some natural ventilation, like in those “breathing caves” found here and there.
Zeke walked over to the door at the end of the long row of windows. Vinny went with him. He turned on the lights inside, which were faint and flickering fluorescents. They looked like they wouldn’t last much longer. If they were going to refurbish and use this place, light bulbs were only the first of many things they would need.
“Oh man, this is a trip!” Vinny blurted, looking at the half-century old equipment.
“Yep, and not a computer in sight. Just good old dials, knobs and switches.” Zeke flipped some of the switches and the lights came on in the two big tunnels, stretching deeper down into the mountain. The generator coughed and strained under the increased load. He flipped another two switches and two-thirds of the sodium lamps above their heads went off. There was still plenty of light.
“What happens when we run out of diesel?” Daniel asked him.
“That’s just for temporary use. Let’s go down and get this place running again. Larry, Roger, Vinny, you come with me. We’ll get the hydroelectric plant going. You guys look around up here. There shouldn’t be anything more dangerous than falling rocks. That reminds me – I suggest everyone wear a helmet. If you don’t have one, there are hard hats in there,” he said, pointing to a storage-room door.
It took about four hours but eventually the tone of the generator changed, and a plethora of ancillary lights came on – exit lights over doors, secondary lights in the rooms behind the windows, and the sodium lamps got brighter. They also felt the soughing of a ventilation fan, apparently to supplement the natural air. That would help if they had to run any vehicles. Spooky took it upon himself to turn off the diesel generator, and nothing bad happened. It looked like the hydroelectric power was sufficient.
They’d been keeping busy exploring the cavern and the installations around it. There were locker rooms with showers and toilets, and after a lot of running, the water from the pipes cleared. The hot water faucets even ran fairly warm. There must be a hot spring or something like that.
There were offices with carefully mothballed manual typewriters, sealed canisters of replacement ribbons and bottles of ink. There were airtight boxes with paper and envelopes and manila folders, straight out of the 1950s. There were light bulbs and extension cords and fans and swivel chairs and a whole huge room full of shelves stocked with automotive parts in tinfoil and cellophane packing. There were cans of bearing grease and motor oil and differential oil and paint and ammonia and everything else imaginable. Daniel wondered how much money they could get for some of this stuff online. He knew one source of income they had if nothing else.
Much of it was unusable after all this time, but some was pristine, like the day it was made. He looked at a perfect, shiny set of hubcaps for the 1948 Ford Super Deluxe sitting on its flattened tires in the big cavern. The car itself had 257 miles on the odometer. It would probably fetch a year’s pay at an auction. This place was a museum and a goldmine.
Later on, Zeke showed them stacks of mint gold and silver coins in a vault, placed there to ensure the occupants had money if paper currency collapsed. There were also bundles of uncirculated US bills from the 1940s, which would fetch more than face value to collectors, at least twenty million dollars.
From this Daniel realized why Zeke hid that file. He was as honest and patriotic as the next man but who wouldn’t be tempted by twenty million in ready cash and all these toys? And it was all unknown, a victimless crime, a treasure trove just waiting half a century for someone to put it to use. He felt slightly guilty, but there were far more important considerations.
-17-
Daniel and the rest spent the next day moving in and trying to get the basics working in the bunker. Months of effort stretched in front of them if they were to live here long term.
They found a residence level, with over a hundred individual rooms. There were open bays that could house many more people in less comfort. Elise and Daniel took rooms well away from each other. Daniel didn’t trust the emotions born of those first intense moments, and he figured Elise didn’t either, so he would give it time, but they did spend a lot of time together, talking around their feelings, spiraling closer.
Struggling with not letting their physical desires for each other take over, Daniel realized more and more how much they were slaves to their own biology. There was an old saw about “if you don’t control your passions, your passions control you.” Daniel resolved to remain his own master, no matter what the Eden Plague did to him. He wasn’t about to jump in the sack with someone too soon. He’d done enough of that when he was younger. Besides, he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just because of the Plague...and did he really want to risk her getting pregnant?
They – the two of them, and the rest – ate almost every meal together in a cafeteria with a kitchen attached. Right now food preparation consisted of dumping cans into saucepans and heating up the contents.
After a few days Zeke called a meeting for dinnertime, and they gathered there at one long table. He talked on his feet, pacing up and down, while everyone ate. “We have electricity, food, heat, air, and supplies. We need to discuss our next move.”
“What ‘we,’ Kemo Sabe?” Larry quipped.
Laughter from the older people. Elise and Vinny looked confused.
“I’ll explain later,” Daniel told her. Probably had barely even heard of the Lone Ranger.
“Seriously. What are we going to do?” Zeke said.
A long silence. A raised hand.
“Yes, Roger?”
“We need to set up a lab again. We need equipment. An electron microscope. DNA sequencers. Computers.”
“Noted. You three scientists draw up a wish list.”
“We need to set up the satellite dish, get comms up. We need internet, preferably tap into a landline somewhere,” said Vinny.
“Ditto. Make a list. You’ll be on the shopping team.”
Daniel crossed his arms. “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? These are details. We need to discuss the bigger questions.”
“Such as?”
“Identity. Policy. Strategy. Structure. What are we? Are we just a bunch of outlaws? Are we an A-team? A township? Does everyone start bringing their families in here? Or do some of you who can, go back to a normal life and keep this knowledge to yourself? Because any one of us could blow the whole thing wide open, and get everyone buried deep in government black.”
Zeke blew air past his lips. “All right, good questions. Anyone?”
Elise said, “I think I speak for all of the former INS employees when I say we want to stay here for now and resume our research. This involves the fate of humanity. I don’t trust Jenkins or the government to handle it right. As long as this doesn’t turn into some kind of freaky cult, I don’t care much what the policy and strategy is. Not right now.”
Skull spoke. “We need to agree on some ROE, though. Rules of Engagement. Such as, no one they are looking for can leave the bunker unless it’s absolutely necessary.”