All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor, page 18
The Last Survivors had been camped outside Farleigh for more than twenty-four hours, planning and putting teams in motion.
The battle itself lasted less than forty minutes.
When Milken led his men forward in a charge toward the sandbags, they were not met by any resistance. Even those soldiers had seen the inevitability of what was happening. They had laid down their weapons and backed away, arms raised.
Even so, in the initial wave, there were heavy casualties on the town side. Hundreds of them were dead.
Harve rode in on Thunder, surveying the town. He had a group of ten armed soldiers surrounding him. It was possible that someone would take a shot at him from a window, but they would have to be a good shot. He wore body armor, so it would need to be a head shot to get him.
He put his bullhorn to his lips and said, “People of Farleigh. We’re going to be conducting a sweep of the town. One of three things will happen to everyone. One, you can apply to join us and if you are capable of fighting or carrying your weight in some other way, we will give you every consideration. If you don’t meet that criteria, you are free to leave. If you do leave and then return, you will be killed. If you do not join us and do not leave, we will find you. We will sweep every room, every closet, every crawl space in this town. We will find you and if you make it that much work for us, we will kill you.”
He turned his horse and walked him slowly back in the other direction.
“One other thing. If you want to leave the town and need assistance in doing so, contact any one of us. We will help you get out of town and will not harm you.”
At that exact moment, a young man holding a pistol stepped out of the crowd so everyone could see him. Two dozen men aimed up at him, but before anyone could fire, he yelled, “Sic semper tyrannis!” He put the pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet exploded through the top of his head and his body tumbled to the street.
Sic semper tyrannis. Latin for Thus always to tyrants, and the words John Wilkes Booth uttered after assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
If Harve was upset, he did not show it. He put the bullhorn to his mouth and said, “Or you can do that, I suppose.” He looked at the young man’s body splayed in a pool of blood and brains on the sidewalk. “It does make a terrible mess, though, and we will not be cleaning it up.”
A man on the sidewalk had been listening to Harve’s speech quietly but was suddenly overcome. He was weaponless, but he rushed at Harve’s horse.
He was shot eight times before he got within ten yards of the horse.
Again, Harve lifted the bullhorn. “There are many ways to kill yourself, but there is no glory in what you’ve seen here. If you wish to live, you have one hour to either vacate the town, apply to join us, or ask for help with leaving. After that, we will begin our building-to-building search. That is all.”
Harve handed the bullhorn to a man standing below him, then leaned over to talk to him. A moment later he said, “Come on, Thunder.” The horse walked slowly down the main street of the town to the City Hall. Harve handed the reins to one of the men who accompanied him and went inside.
The mayor was there in his office.
“What choice do you make, Mayor?” Harve asked. “Join or leave? I assume you don’t want to make me kill you.”
The golden nameplate read Mayor John Keach. The mayor appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He did not look much like a man accustomed to being pushed around or surrendering. He had overseen the worst thing that could happen to his town in the previous months and had managed to keep things running as smoothly as possible.
Now, he had run out of options.
“I’ll be gathering my family together. We will leave the town.” He walked around the desk and brushed past Harve. When he reached the door to his office, he turned and said, “Are you going to stay here permanently?”
Harve looked at the man, trying to decide how much to tell him. Finally, he said, “No. We’ll stay here and use up every bit of food and whatever resources that you have, then we’ll move on. Are you thinking of returning after we’re gone?”
“I am.”
“There won’t be anything of value left here. We’ll use or take it all.”
“There will be value to us. No matter what you do, this will be our home.”
Harve sighed. He believed that the time for holding on to such ideals ended when society crumbled. Mayor Keach obviously disagreed.
The mayor left in a hurry and Harve plopped himself down in the comfortable chair behind the desk. These moments—right after another victory—were always a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, it meant that all of his people would be in a relatively safe place for the immediate future. On the other, this was the moment when he hated what they had done to achieve it. The pressure of finding the next target began again.
On the wall to the left of the mayor’s desk was a map of the surrounding area. Harve stood back up, groaning a little as he did. The more time he spent on Thunder, the more he felt it. He approached the map and looked at what their next target might be. He preferred to find something close so they wouldn’t be so worn out walking.
He found a likely target, but then noticed an odd, hand-drawn word on the map. In what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, someone had written, Altor.
“Front!” Harve yelled.
A man appeared quickly. “Yes sir?”
“Get the mayor back here. I want to ask him something.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Search and Rescue
Longbaugh State Prison was technically classified as a medium-sized prison by the Montana Bureau of Prisons. That is, it housed between fifty and four hundred fifty prisoners. At its peak capacity in the 1960s, it had two hundred and seventy-five inmates.
Longbaugh had become something of an embarrassment to the state of Montana, however. It was too old, too decrepit, but the state legislature never allocated funds to change that. Over the decades, the population had declined to a point that there were one hundred forty-three inmates incarcerated on the day the power went out.
On the day Nyx and Emmanuel landed, that number of inmates had shrunk dramatically. There was technically only one—James Rolls Royce.
After the population had shrunk, some areas of the prison fell into disuse. There were entire wings of unused cells. Discarded or broken machinery, implements and random boxes of materials were stuck into dark corners that no human had seen for decades.
No humans, perhaps, but these rooms became a favorite breeding ground for black widow spiders and other scurrying insects.
When Allison had suggested a treasure hunt, Harry had outlined the best method. He quickly sketched out a drawing of the prison on a piece of butcher paper. With help and suggestions from everyone else, he put large Xs through the common areas that got the most use. When he was done with that, even though the prison was almost two hundred thousand square feet, they had a reasonable search area, and that was mostly in the basement.
Everyone who lived in Longbaugh was already aware of those black widows, so they took precautions before they descended to the least explored part of the prison. First, they ran tape around the bottom of their pants legs to stop anything creepy from crawling up their legs while they explored. Then, even though it was a warm day, everyone put on long sleeves and gloves. A selection of medical-grade masks from the pharmacy completed the outfits.
“I feel like I’m in an old horror movie,” Jack said. “Indiana Jones and the Big Scary Spider or something.”
“It was snakes,” Nyx said.
“What?”
“It was snakes that Indiana Jones was afraid of.”
“Oh, right. Well, come up with your own title, then,” Jack said.
The basement level was mostly one big room with a few closed-off doors and short corridors here and there.
Everyone carried flashlights and did their best not to stir up too many levels of dust, masks or no. There were indeed spiders—and billowing spiderwebs—in many places.
“Black widows are easy to identify, but they’re not aggressive. Let’s just assume that every spider we see is one and avoid them all.”
Everyone agreed and began the hunt.
“Do we know what size the box is?” Allison asked.
“We do not,” Emmanuel said. “All I’ve got is that image. When we find something that matches that, we’ll know.”
The basement was cooler than it was upstairs, but even so, everyone had sweat dripping off them after a few minutes searching. They spent an hour scouring every obvious hiding place with no luck at all.
Finally, Emmanuel took off his mask, wiped his face and said, “Are there any outbuildings where it might be hiding?”
“Maybe,” Harry answered. “There are outbuildings, but we’re in and out of those fairly often. I think if there was a box with those distinctive markings, I would have noticed it.” He paused, then said, “Or maybe not. Let’s split up, then. Jack, you and our visitors stay here. The rest of us will go search the outbuildings.”
Nyx had stopped dead in the middle of the biggest space, thinking. They had searched every aspect of the basement, with the exception of any possible hiding spots around the ceiling. She flashed her light here and there, then stopped cold.
“Look,” she said. “There’s a shelf built in that recessed area over there. Doesn’t that look like our box?”
Ninety seconds later, Jack had climbed a ladder, blown the dust off the box, and it was down. Emmanuel brought the hologram picture up, and it was a perfect match.
“Now I’m kind of curious,” Jack said.
“Should we open it?” Allison asked.
Emmanuel shrugged. “It’s not our box yet, but I wouldn’t. It’s up to you.”
Harry tipped a corner of the box up, testing its weight. “It’s not heavy. You have no idea what this is or why someone wants it?”
“Absolutely no idea,” Emmanuel said, “but here’s what I think. No matter what is in there, it probably doesn’t have any monetary value in our current world situation. Even if it was gold,” he nudged the box with his knee, “and you’re right, it doesn’t feel heavy, what good is gold these days?”
“Seems unlikely that a cache of gold got hidden here of all places,” Harry mused. “Or anything else of any real value.”
Emmanuel shone the flashlight over the strange lettering on the side. Those letters looked like they should coalesce into something meaningful, but they didn’t. They weren’t obviously Chinese, Russian, Arabic or any easily recognizable language.
“More likely,” Emmanuel said, “it’s got some obscure part or metal or element that someone needs for something. Valueless to the prison but worth something to them.”
Harry scratched the back of his head. “I still don’t know how anyone would know it was here. But, it doesn’t matter. I have a hunch you’re right. If we opened it up, we probably still wouldn’t know what we had or why anyone wanted it.”
Allison put her foot on the box. “Before we go any further, I want to make sure we’re clear on things. We give you this box, then you take Harry and me to get him some medical attention.”
“That’s the deal, Emmanuel said. “After Nyx completes her part of the job.”
“What was that again?” Harry asked.
“There’s something—a meteor, we think—in a lake a few miles north of here. Nyx needs to dive down and retrieve some of it and take it with us. We’ll deliver it to the same place we’re taking you to get treatment.”
Harry and Jack looked at each other and grinned. “We know where that lake is. This time of year, you probably don’t need much equipment to find anything in it. We haven’t had any rain and it’s so shallow, you can almost walk from one side to the other.
That was news to Nyx, but it pleased her. “Whatever it takes. The only thing that matters is that I complete the job.”
Allison looked at Harry, who didn’t seem too steady on his feet. “Why don’t you go lie down and rest? Jack can take them to the lake.”
It was a sign of how he was feeling that Harry agreed without argument.
They carried the box upstairs and everyone peeled off their long-sleeved shirts and took the tape off the bottom of their pants.
“I don’t want to leave the plane sitting out like that,” Emmanuel said.
“Bring it around back,” Harry said. “We’ll open the big gate and bring it inside the wall.”
Emmanuel turned the plane around and taxied it to the back of the prison, where Rolls had opened the gate. Once inside, they loaded the mystery box onto the plane and grabbed the scuba gear. Emmanuel threw that in the back of Jack’s truck, and the three of them headed for the lake.
The road between the prison and the unnamed lake wasn’t really much of a road. It was more of a suggestion of a road. There were times when it wasn’t even that, really.
“Years ago,” Jack said, “this lake was deeper. I used to bring my bass boat out here and fish. The last time I came, though, there wasn’t even enough water to justify putting it in.” The pickup bounced over a deep rut in the road and all three of them came out of their seats. “That’s why the road’s in such rough shape now. Harsh winters and no one has bothered to maintain it. I’ll hold the speed down, or we’re all gonna need a chiropractic adjustment when we get back.”
After twenty minutes, they went around a bend in the road and there was the lake.
As Jack had promised, it wasn’t impressive. There was a line of trees and bushes that stood a hundred feet back from the water’s edge, showing that the lake had once been bigger.
Jack pulled the truck up to within twenty feet of the water and parked.
“It ain’t much, but this is it.”
Emmanuel pulled his phone out and GPS confirmed this was indeed the lake they were looking for.
“I’ll grab your equipment,” Emmanuel said. “I’ve got a wetsuit for you, if you want one.”
“I’ll take it,” Nyx said. “Not because it’s cold, but I don’t want any leeches to attach to me.”
Emmanuel handed Nyx the suit and she walked a few yards away to some obscuring bushes to change into it. It was a little oversized for her, but with no other wetsuit within easy reach, she made do. By the time she got back, Emmanuel had the rest of the equipment ready.
Nyx looked out at the lake, which was so calm, its surface looked like glass. “I’m not even sure I’m going to need all that.” She grabbed the mask but left the tank and flippers behind. Then she entered the water with the mask, snorkel, wetsuit, and water shoes on.
The lake was not big—just big enough to still be called a lake, probably.
Nyx waded out until the water was knee-deep, then took a deep breath and swam slowly across the lake, breathing through the snorkel.
Using this method, she swam from shore to shore, then moved a few feet to her left and used the same method to come back. She did that over and over, using a grid pattern to cover every inch of the lake.
Forty minutes later, she came back to where she had started. “I don’t see anything that looks like a meteor, large or small. There are rocks, but nothing of any size at all.”
“Want to try the tank?”
“Yes. Not sure what else to do. I wanted to try this way first so I wouldn’t stir up the muck on the bottom too much.” She stepped out of the water, put on the tank and flippers, placed the regulator in her mouth, and adjusted her weight belt.
She performed the same crisscrossing pattern as she had on the surface, but this time she did it keeping parallel to the bottom of the lake.
When she surfaced, Nyx shook her head in frustration.
“Wasn’t counting on this,” Emmanuel said. “I figured a big chunk of rock would be easy to identify.”
“Maybe it’s mostly buried,” Jack suggested, sitting on the tailgate of his truck.
“It might be,” Nyx agreed, “but if at least part of it isn’t sticking up, I don’t know how we’ll find it. You have an underwater metal detector hidden away in the back of the truck?”
Emmanuel shook his head.
“I was thinking of something like that,” Jack said, pointing.
Beyond the current edge of the water, closer to the tree line, was an oddly shaped rock.
Nyx hung her head, berating herself.
Where every other rock in the area had been worn smooth, the one that Jack pointed to had sharp protuberances.
Nyx took the mask, tank, and flippers off and put the water shoes back on. The three of them walked around the lake and knelt beside the rock. It glistened in the summer sun.
“This has got to be it.”
“Even ten years ago, the lake would have covered that,” Jack said.
Emmanuel hurried back to the truck and came back with a hammer, chisel, and a large rubber bag. “I think this thing is gonna crack wide open like an egg when I hit it.” He picked a likely place and delivered a small tap with the hammer to no effect. Then a harder one. Again and again, he hit the chisel with the hammer, but it didn’t even make an indent.
“I think maybe we’re seeing why they wanted this,” Nyx observed.
“If they’d let me know, I would have brought a jackhammer,” Emmanuel said. He abandoned the chisel and gripped the heavy claw hammer to get the most momentum. “Stand back a little. This might make the chips fly.” He drew the hammer back and slammed it into the rock with all his strength.
The hammer bounced off.
“It’s not that big, is it?” Jack said. “Maybe we can lift it out of there and I can bring the truck around. We can wrestle it up onto the bed and take the whole thing back to the prison.”
“Worth a try,” Jack said. The three of them leaned down and found a place to grip the rock. They tried to rock it back and forth, but it didn’t give an inch.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Emmanuel said, trying to catch his breath, “that this thing is like a glacier. Most of it is under the surface.”
“Too heavy to get into my truck then, unless we can knock it in half.”
“If we could knock it in half, we wouldn’t need to move it,” Nyx said.
