Omega Days (Book 3): Drifters by John L. Campbell Page B

eyes that caught and reflected their lights. The baby raccoon darted back out of sight.
    The women stepped back into the central corridor.
    The string of overhead lights running the length of the tube remained, but every fuel container had been taken. Pallets that had once held cases of dried goods, clothing, medical supplies, batteries, and flares now stood empty. No longer were there neat rows of toiletries and gas masks, flashlights and hand tools, spare radios and maps. A few clean air filters leaned against the wall by the air handler, but the portable battery-powered TVs and the sophisticated ham radio set were missing.
    The armory was bare. Empty weapon racks were bolted to the walls; vacant pallets sat on the floor. Whoever had been here had taken every rifle, every handgun, every last bullet.
    Skye hadn’t even bothered to look. She knew it would be empty, and in fact the armory was probably what had drawn the raid in the first place. Instead she conducted a more thorough examination of the two chambers toward the rear of the bunker, the pump room and the waste/toilet facilities. In here, behind the big unit that ground and pumped waste out of the bunker, presumably into a septic system, Skye found a small, circular steel hatch mounted in the wall. It had a wheel in the center—just like the hatches on the
Nimitz
—and a pair of deadbolts.
    “Ang, come in here,” she called. “What’s this?”
    Angie entered the room, knowing at once what her friend was looking at. “It goes to a tunnel,” she said, “an escape tube, sort of. You have to crawl on your hands and knees.” She squatted and pulled it open, a puff of cold air rushing into the room. A flashlight beam showed that it was dry and very long. The light was swallowed by the darkness. “It travels for half a mile, and lets out inside the far tree line.”
    “It was unlocked,” Skye said. “It only locks from the inside, right?”
    Angie frowned and nodded.
    “I want to check it out. Is that okay with you?”
    Another nod. “I’ll be okay. Don’t get lost, and be careful.”
    Skye said she would and disappeared into the tunnel, flashlight and rifle muzzle leading the way.
    Angie watched her go for a minute, and then went to the bunk room. She stood in the doorway, hand on the frame, her breathing rapid. Sporadic rifle shots came from outside, muffled by the still-turning rotor blades.
Carney cleaning up the dead,
she thought to herself. At last she entered.
    There would only have been her parents, Dean, and Leah. They would have wanted to stay close together, and her mom would have wanted Leah sleeping where Grandma could watch over her.
    Why are the bunker doors open? Why?
    Angie passed the flashlight over a room that had been lived in. Four bunks had tangled bedding, as if the occupants had gotten up in a hurry. She inspected the sheets for blood, found none. Then the beam fell upon a small blue blanket covered in puffy white clouds, balled up in a corner of a bottom bunk. Angie let out a sob and fell to her knees, clutching the blanket to her chest, burying her face in the fabric and breathing in the faint scent of her daughter. Then she began to cry.
    •   •   •
    S kye crawled. The tube was also made from ribbed steel, high enough to pass through on all fours, but she’d had to leave her pack behind. She didn’t want to try to push or drag the pack and handle the flashlight and her weapons all at the same time. Her hard plastic knee pads banged and scraped at the metal—crawling in just jeans would have really hurt the knees, she thought—and her flashlight beam wobbled across the metal walls. A half mile. There was no sense of direction or distance down here, so she couldn’t tell how far she had gone. It felt like forever.
    The beam of light swept over an object in the tunnel about thirty feet away and then quickly centered back on it. It was the top of a head, strands of thinning hair clinging to it, gray in the light and