“Not that we can tell, ma’am.”
“So what is the problem? She decided to destroy the specimens. Is this such a big deal? Is she not in charge here?” Omar may have lost his ethnic accent but he found another accent, one of defensiveness.
The doors to the elevator opened. The Colonel motioned them inside and pushed a button for Sub-Level 6.
He said, “You have to understand, doctor, your wife oversaw most of these things. She knew how hard it was to get them. They were a gold mine of information to her.”
Lori broke in, “Did anyone try and talk to her?”
“That’s the problem, ma’am.” The elevator hummed and descended into the bowels of the facility. “Security and some of the techs tried to intercede. She grabbed a pistol from a weapons locker and forced every one out.”
“No, no, there is a mistake,” Omar said. “Anita is a peaceful woman!”
The doors to the elevator slid open to a large, white, round room filled with monitors and sealed doors. A group of security guards, workers, and researchers stood in the area like a bunch of high school kids forced outside by a fire alarm.
The Colonel said, “As far as we can tell she’s exterminated every specimen in one whole cell block. We shut the bulkheads down so she can’t get out. With that gun-well, I didn’t want her to hurt anyone or for us to have to hurt her. Then she asked for you, Dr. Nehru.”
“For me?”
“Actually she asked for The Emperor first. We told her he was far away at the front. Then she insisted to see you.”
They stopped near one of the closed doors. It resembled a submarine bulkhead except larger and painted white.
“You’re not going in there alone,” Lori jumped.
“Yes I am.”
The glow of spinning red warning lights bounced across the walls in a slow parade of flashes. Big glass panels-like giant aquariums-lined one wall of the long, wide hall. The other side of that hall contained lockers and monitoring devices and scientific equipment.
Omar walked through the patches of light and dark created by the lack of main power in that section. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight. To calm his nerves he fumbled for a cigarette which he hurried to light.
He had toured Red Rock with his wife once before. In his nightmares he often saw an ‘incident’ inside the high-tech dungeon. He thought of Skip Beetles and Crawling Tube worms slipping free of their bonds and running roughshod through the underground levels. In all those nightmares, however, he never imagined his wife to be the monster running loose.
He passed the first of the containment cells. Beyond the glass doors he saw a burned pile of ashes. The smell of charred flesh-of some kind or another-lingered.
“Anita?” He realized his call sounded more a whisper. “Anita? It’s me, Omar.”
He spied a shadow move behind an overturned table. He could not tell-not at first-if that shadow belonged to his wife or one of the horrors inhabiting that vile place.
“Omar-Omar?” Her voice suggested she did not trust her ears.
He jogged to her. Anita Nehru lay with her knees pulled to her chin and propped against a side wall below a fire extinguisher. She had positioned herself just inside a rim of darkness as if hiding from all she had done.
“I’m here, Anita.”
He snuffed his cigarette on the floor and knelt. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw deep bags under her eyes and her hair bundled in tangled mess. She lazily held a pistol in one hand. In the other she clasped a bundle of notes and papers.
“It’s you. You came.”
“Of course.”
She smiled briefly then her eyes stared beyond him at some sight visible only to her eyes. He easily removed the pistol from hand and slid it out of reach.
“I want to go home, Omar. I want to leave this place.”
“Yes, of course. This we shall do. Come along, right now.”
She appeared ready to move but stopped as she remembered something. Her eyes glanced around at the now-dead containment cells. Then she became conscious of the notes in her grasp.
“Wait, Omar, listen to me. I did all this-I did it all for a reason.”
“I am sure. But let’s talk of this when we get home.”
She grabbed his arm and said, “Listen, Omar, I understand now. Do you hear me? Trevor has to know. He has to know that we never had a chance. All of the guns and the armies won’t be enough, Omar. We never had a chance!”
“Anita, come home with me.”
“All these years down here-these things have gotten inside my head. I’ve studied them under a microscope, in the lab-most of them are just animals like what we have here on Earth-just a little different in how they look. That’s not important. But the others-I have watched them one little piece at a time. It’s been like a puzzle-coming together. No-more like coming into focus. I can’t explain it, but I know now. I know why the others are so different.”
“I’m sure they are,” he reached under her shoulder as if to lift her to her feet.
She burst with a shout that caused him to lose his balance and fall backward onto the floor.
“GODDAMN IT you have to hear me, Omar! You MUST listen to me. Trevor MUST listen. You have to tell him. I can’t go-not like this-but you have to. You must tell him!”
“Calm down. We will send a message to him.”
“NO!” Then calmer, “No. You will go to the front and tell him yourself, Omar. You will tell him what I have learned.”
She stared at him with hard eyes for a long moment, and then collapsed into sobs as the weight of her work, of her life in the dungeon, of the truth she had learned, came falling hard on her shoulders.
He whispered in her ear, “What has this place done to you?”
“I know, Omar,” she answered by telling him exactly what the horrors at Red Rock had finally taught her. “I know why the universe is empty.”
4. Spoilsport
In the world before Armageddon, Wichita, Kansas earned the nickname “Air Capital of the World” due to the volume of aircraft manufactured in the vicinity as well as McConnell Air Force Base, one-time home to the 22 ^ nd Air Refueling Wing.
A small military contingent of Kansas National Guard and Air Force Combat Controllers kept McConnell operating during that first summer of the initial invasion. They flew re-supply sorties across the country, even topping the tank on Air Force One in late July. Eventually they lost contact with the President after his return to Cheyenne Mountain and the orders-as convoluted as they were-ceased.
Eventually those who survived faded into the countryside.
Then The Empire and Trevor Stone swept west, returning life to the Great Plains, reopening the old Union Pacific rail stations, and pumping new life into McConnell AFB.
The new normal, however, lasted only a few years.
As Trevor Stone exited Eagle One and walked the tarmac on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 19 ^ th, he knew Wichita was dying again. He could see it in the panicked expressions of the soldiers and civilian workers hustling from shuttle buses to commuter jets. He could hear it in the constant roar of outgoing aircraft filled with evacuating equipment and personnel.
This scene of panic at the air base repeated across Wichita. With rail transportation seized for military use, the civilian population became refugees. Horses and carts and the few cars that could find gasoline formed a snaking line out of the city.
Many of those civilians belonged to the ‘groupies’ who traveled with the military formations. These were the spouses and children, friends and relatives of the warriors. Now those loved ones were abandoned as the soldiers and airmen left via rail or plane and their families resorted to more perilous modes of escape. As a result, the desertion rate among the armed forces spiked.
Just as victory after victory during the early days birthed a seemingly insurmountable momentum, defeat after defeat accelerated the downward spiral.