Plague (Gone 4)

“Yeah. I remember where it is,” Dekka said. “We just don’t go there.”

It wasn’t far to the shack. Or more accurately the few charred sticks that marked Hermit Jim’s shack. Sam pulled out the map again. He measured with his fingers. “It looks like six or seven miles to the lake. I guess we’ll all get a drink when we get there.”

The Santa Katrina Hills were on their left now. They were bare stone and dirt, and some of the rock formations looked as if they’d been shoved right up out of the earth, like the dirt was still sliding off them. Off to the right there was the taller mountain, and the cleft in that mountain, which hid the ghost town and the mine shaft.

None of them spoke of that place.

It was an hour’s thirsty walk across very barren land before they reached a tall chain-link fence. The dirt was the same on either side of the fence. As far as they could see there was nothing that needed fencing.

There was a dusty, rusty metal sign.

“‘Warning, restricted area,’” Jack read aloud.

“Yep,” Sam said. “We are subject to search.”

“How great would it be if someone did come and arrest us?” Dekka said wistfully.

“Jack. Rip down the fence.”

“Really?”

“The barrier’s that way.” Sam pointed. “We should hit the barrier and follow it to the lake. And like Dekka says: if there was anyone around here to arrest us, it would be great. They’d have to feed us and give us something to drink.”

Sam wasn’t sure quite what he expected to find at the Evanston Air National Guard base. He wasn’t s

ure quite what he’d been hoping for. Maybe a barracks full of soldiers. That would have been excellent. But failing that, maybe a giant tank of water. That would have been nice, too.

What they found instead were a series of underground bunkers. They were identical on the outside: sloping concrete ramps leading down to a steel door. Jack kicked the first one open.

Sam provided illumination. Inside was a long, low room. Completely empty.

“Probably kept bombs here or something.”

“Nothing here now,” Jack said.

They opened four more of the bunkers before admitting that there was nothing to be found.

Wandering through the bunker field they came upon a truck with the keys in the ignition. The battery was dead. But there was a liter bottle of Arrowhead water, half full.

The three of them rested in the shade of the truck and shared the water.

“Well, that was disappointing,” Sam acknowledged.

“You wanted to find bombs?” Dekka asked.

“A giant supply of those meals soldiers eat, what are they called?”

“MREs,” Jack said. “Meals ready to eat.”

“Yeah. Some of those. Like, maybe a million of those.”

“Or at least the truck could have worked so we could drive and not walk,” Dekka grumbled.

They started walking again. Already the half liter of water seemed like a distant memory. They began to notice the blankness of the barrier looming ahead. It rose sheer from the sand and scrub.

“Okay, so we hang a left. Let’s go find this lake and get back to town,” Sam said.

They kept the barrier on their right. The terrain was getting more difficult, with deep gullies, like dry riverbeds, cracks in the desert smoothness.