“As a member of the CIA and military, I had to have a way to communicate with the government,” Marlon said again. “A foolproof way. A way that wouldn’t be vulnerable to anyone cutting the wires that led to the town. A way that wouldn’t be vulnerable to anything going wrong with the larger electronic grid.”
The men stared at him for so long this time that I finally lost my patience with the entire situation. I wanted to get this done. And I wanted to see with my own eyes what Marlon was talking about.
“Let’s go,” I told him quietly. “They’re not going to believe you until you show it to them. And the longer we stand out here discussing it, the more time Randall and his goons have to accidentally happen upon us.”
Marlon met my eyes, nodded, and started walking quickly toward the town. “Follow me.”
I turned back to the group of men. “Right, we’re going to be crossing a clearing, and that means we can’t all go at once. Two by two, and keep your guns at the ready. Walk normally, don’t try to be sneaky and don’t try to be quick. Quick or sneaky looks unnatural, so anyone watching will be more likely to see it. If you see any movement in the town, tackle them, cover their mouths, and then use your gun to knock them out. No firing. No unnecessary noise. I’ll cover you from back here. Got it? Go.”
I watched as the men broke themselves into couples and started striding across the large, open patch after Marlon, who was now standing up against the outer wall of the school house, looking back at us. I organized from the forest, telling the men when it was safe to go and keeping an eye on the rest of town, watching for anyone to suddenly materialize there with a gun.
After several minutes, I realized that this was going to take far too long.
“Four by four,” I muttered to the group, increasing the number of men who would walk together.
I cast my eyes back toward the town and kept them there as the remaining men made their way into the open and toward Marlon. As the lookout, it was my job to be the eyes and ears and protection for the group. It was my job to see anyone who shouldn’t be there and take care of them.
True, we weren’t supposed to be shooting. But I’d made sure that my gun had a silencer on it, just in case I had to.
30
The moment we were all sheltered behind that outer wall of the school house, Marlon took out a minuscule flashlight and started searching the base of the wall, walking back and forth with his nose down like he was some sort of hunting dog.
I joined him, wondering what the hell he was doing.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Do you not know where to find whatever it is you’re looking for?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve never actually accessed it in this way,” he hissed back. “This wasn’t exactly meant for this purpose. But it’s our best bet for getting into town without being caught. It’s our best bet for taking them by surprise and getting our town back. Ah. There it is.”
He doubled down and yanked at something I couldn’t even see and some sort of door started to crack open at the bottom of the wall.
“Help me with this,” Marlon muttered, trying desperately to clear the snow from around the bottom of the door. “We have to get this open, and the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get out of the cold and on our way.”
“And the sooner I can stop worrying about getting caught,” I answered, moving quickly to start scooping snow away with my hands. I had on the thickest gloves I could manage, and they were waterproof to boot, which made them perfect for things like moving snow.
In the past, I’d worn them whenever Sarah and I decided to built snow forts, igloos, or snowmen. Now I wondered if we would ever do anything that normal again.
We definitely wouldn’t if we didn’t get through this door and into the tunnel Marlon had promised us, and the thought made me put even more effort into moving the snow.
It took us about five minutes to clear out enough that he had room to drag the door open, and once he did that, we both tipped down and forward, our eyes on the blackness in front of us. Marlon slowly reached out with his flashlight, and I held my breath, trying to guess at what I’d see when the light infiltrated the gloom.
To my surprise, it was a fully formed tunnel. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. The thing was… well, it looked like an underground drainage pipe, more than anything else. The walls were made of concrete, and it was neat and very tidy. Small, certainly, and we’d have to be hunched over to get through it.
But it was clean and dry, and, from what I could tell, safe.
There was also a ladder leading straight down into it from the door we were currently looking through, and it didn’t take a genius to guess that we were going to be going down that ladder.
I backed out of the opening and looked at Marlon. “Is there room for all of us down there at once?” I asked.
He nodded. “There is, though it’ll be tight. The main control chamber is right underneath us, so there’s a larger room where we can group together. The tunnel is smaller. We’ll have to go one at a time. But it’s a hell of a lot safer than going above ground.”
“Right.” I turned to the people around me. “Okay, everyone, we’re going down. Marlon will go first with the light. Everyone else, follow one-by-one, and do it quick. I want to get out of the open as quickly as we can. Once you’re at the bottom, move as close to the walls as you can, and wait for my orders.”
The people shuffled forward and were descending the ladder in no time while I did the same thing I’d done in the forest: keep my eyes on the buildings and alleys around us and my gun at the ready, in case someone showed up to interrupt us before we were finished.
When it was finally my turn to get down the ladder, I took the shortcut, grabbing the outer bars with my hands and squeezing them from the outside with my feet, and sliding right down rather than using the rungs.
No, I wasn’t showing off. I just wanted to get this show on the road.
When I got to the bottom, I found a nearly packed room that was already growing stuffy with the presence of too many people. Marlon was standing right next to the ladder, waiting for me, and grabbed my arm as soon as I landed.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked.
“The tunnel they built for the wire to my communication device,” he said, dragging me toward the start of the tunnel.
I paused for long enough to give a few short commands to the people of the town—move quickly, don’t make any noise, keep your heads down—and then I followed him into the narrow gap, bending over at the waist so that I would fit.
On the bottom of the tunnel, I could see what looked like a very standard cable pinned to the ground.
“How the hell does this work?” I asked, frowning. “They built an entire tunnel just for this cable?”
“Had to,” Marlon threw back at me. “We needed it to be completely secure, and that meant no one else could have access. And we needed it to keep working even if the energy to the town was cut. Or if something happened to kill any electrical circuits in the wider world.”
“But if there was an EMP—”
“The tunnel is protected,” Marlon interrupted.
I breathed out in sheer appreciation of the amount of thought that must have gone into this construction. “You have a Faraday cage,” I said, all admiration.
“Precisely. It’s outside these walls, and means that there’s double protection for the cable. Which means my communication device—”