Haven's Deep
A Trauma Tale
It’s a face from a nightmare. Wild with a greasy grey-haired halo and skin the colour of rust. Two bloodshot eyes glaring out of slits, and a nose much like my own, except it had lost more fights. Beneath the nose, a broad mouth was snarling with teeth bent every which way. Or maybe it was a grin.
‘So I’m not in heaven.’ My voice is hoarse and weak. And my head beats like a drum.
The grin widens.
‘You ain’t ever going there, but it ain’t the other place either.’
I remember that lazy drawl, a rumble from the low keys on the piano.
‘Wolf!’
Wolf-man Ripley got his name from his lifestyle and family. George Ripley had picked up a wolf cub when they were both young. George had called him Dog and brought him up as one. That pup led to more wolves over time, and at times George had his own small pack. Sometime in the past, there had been a blurring of identities, and his old wolf, now long gone, had become more domesticated as Wolf-man Ripley became more feral, so where Ripley ended and the wolf-man began became increasingly hard to see.
It became more comfortable for everyone for George to move out of town, so he’d built himself a cabin on the wooded hills out Tarkena way, just before the mountains take flight. That was some days distance from civilisation, which suited everyone. Something about George and his lifestyle attracted young women, and he was not lonely for long when he was younger. Semi-feral young women used to shack up with George for a season or two, then come to their senses.
‘Who else were you expecting, Tommy? Only kin you got.’
Yes, he’s my brother.
‘How long, Wolf?’
‘Nine years or five days; depends what you are asking about.’
‘Five days! Dammit, help me up.’ I try to rise, but this drum in my head starts to beat out the band. George puts a hand on my shoulder and eases me back down.
‘Easy, fella. What you can’t see is you have eyes like a raccoon’s and a turban on your head. You got whacked good. Is it true you got beat up by a little bitty girl and an old crone? I find that shameful, Tommy.’
‘Poison in the coffee, George.’
‘That dog don’t hunt. Not in the version I’ll be telling folk.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Gone, Tommy. Left you for dead on that old girl’s floor. No civilised folk in Haven. This town needs a decent lawman.’
‘You don’t understand. There’s a bunker under Haven that...’
‘I know all about the Oli, Tommy. Your sorcerer’s apprentice has been rounding up the troops and briefing them all while you’ve been luxuriating in this very comfortable bed. Capable young dude, deputy Sam. Takes after me I reckon.’
‘You bought your wolf?’
‘Chewie’s a hound, Tom.’
‘And I’m a girl guide.’
‘Don’t even fight like one.’
Coot’s shack is a charcoal shell open to the rain. Her precious pictures are ash on the floor. Her books, a charred wall. Either would make the old woman cry. I wanted to wring the old woman’s neck. But the fire was what had saved me. Sly of all people saw the smoke and raised the alarm, otherwise I may not have been found for a day or more. Might not be here now, kicking over the traces. All that’s left of Coot’s map is the bottom left corner outlining Haven cooperative’s position in the state. In any case, the map was a lying bastard, just like its owner.
‘Guess you just never know folk, Boss.’
‘That’s a thought worth keeping, Sam. You done fixing that powder I asked you for?’
‘The Thermite? Sure, boss, pounds of it.’
‘So you worked it out.’
‘Weren’t hard. Explosives aren’t your style, boss, but a long, hot burn sure is.’
Sam has a grin as wide as the horizon.
‘So we’re gonna bust in, Boss?’
‘Damn right, deputy.’
‘Just how many of these doors are there?’
Wolf-man Ripley is looking up at the slabs of steel at the bottom of the ramp. The doors are lit by the lights from the cruiser, headlights and the spotlight which Sam is using to scan the door seams like I asked him. They look more corroded in the bright light, rust scabbing their surface with flakes of rotten steel. You could drive a semi through with room to spare, which is why there are ladders roped to the top of the cruiser.
‘Sixteen; if the spacing between them is the same, which is not guaranteed.’
‘A good few tons each.’
Gnarly Joe Pepper is the fourth member of the posse. He didn’t want his children getting anywhere near the Oli, which I appreciate. He brought his cannon of a pump rifle with him, which might be useful if it fired. He rolled his own powder, which could throw up some surprises whenever he fired it.
‘You reckon you got enough thermite?’
Looking up at the wall of steel, not knowing how thick it was, that was a fair challenge.
‘Only one way to find out, Joe. Sam, aim the spot halfway on the centre seam and get yourself a ladder.’
‘Me?’
‘Tom’s already had his head beat in and my knees are too old to climb.’
‘And you’re the expendable one. That’s what deputy means, son.’
The thermite blinds everybody, brighter than a small sun. Some drips from the clay shell packing the powder tight to the door, seams of molten steel running down the surface. It hisses louder than the turbine of the buggy, sputtering and popping sparks in a shower. Sam is a frantic puppet silhouette dropping down the ladder and rolling out of the shower. He scrambles on all fours to get to the cruiser, using words I didn’t think he knew.
‘… NOT doing that AGAIN!’ He finishes beating at his clothes. There is the stink of singed hair, fright, and bad temper from the boy. There is the dull ring of something heavy hitting concrete over the hissing of the thermite. There’s nothing to show this side of the door. Something really heavy then, to be heard through all that steel.
‘Could be third time’s the charm, son,’ Joe advised.
It was.
The hole in the door was only about a foot and a half in diameter (if a drooping pear shape could have a diameter), and the four-inch thick steel burns your skin if you aren’t careful, but the bonus was the other side of the door was a lava-encrusted bolt that the Thermite had eaten through. I hauled upon the steel beam and eased it through the hole and raised my arm. The cruiser winch whined to take up the slack on the hawser until the beam flattened out against the other side.
I got back down the ladder in silence.
George was back with Chewie, the huge creature’s eyes wild yellow in the reflected light. The wolf seemed more massive in the dark. Everything seemed more massive in the dark. Way overhead in the slot of sky visible from the bottom of the ramp there were an arc of stars, a patch of The Chaff. I was laying a big bet that the Oli still slept like mortal men, but there was no guarantee of that. And despite their fear of intelligent machines they may still have dumb ones on guard. I guess everyone was having similar thoughts. It was awful quiet.
‘It’s open damn sesame time, Tom.’
There are times my brother says incomprehensible things.
The cruiser’s tyres spin, squealing like pigs and stinking up the air with burnt rubber, but those doors are not moving any further. I raise my arm, and Sam stops the cruiser wasting more tyre. When we are done choking and can see again; it is clear a foot is all we are going to get.
Joe and Sam join me at the gap in the door. There is enough room to squeeze through, but the cruiser is not an option.
‘Go get George, Sam. Tell him I don’t reckon Chewie is coming with us.’
‘You still going in, Boss?’
‘We are, Sam, yes.’
I don’t blame the boy. There is nothing behind that gap in the door, just cold air. Maybe there’s a floor. Maybe there’s the free fall of an open shaft. It’s as silent as a grave and twice as cold.
‘I’ll load up some gear, Tom. What are you waiting for, deputy? Got something on your mind?’
Joe pushes Sam in front of him as he walks back to the cruiser sitting aslant on the ramp.
Chewie makes it through, more afraid of losing his master than he is of the dark beyond. The huge grey creature whines and sulks low to the floor, winding itself around my brother’s legs. I can’t say I am any more relaxed myself.
‘Curves down and around looks like. Makes sense if you got a truck and trailer. Spiral ramp.’
‘We going down in the dark?’
‘What about your lil’ ol’ dog, Wolf?’
‘Can see more than us and has a damn sight better nose. Chewie’s a good boy, he’ll follow me anywhere.’
‘Let’s quit stalling then.’
The spiral goes on forever, drilling down into the earth. It’s only a small gradient but it’s not a natural way to walk. And the sound is wrong as well. Our footsteps echo away, making us sound like an army on the move, so much so that I can’t help looking behind from time to time, just in case we are being followed.
Conversation died out a couple of hours ago. And yes, I do mean hours. Sam gave up counting when Gnary Joe chewed on him for being a fool. He got to one-three-nine before he took the rough advice. Wolf stopped joking about the amount of dirt over our head. And the need to walk back up the slope.
And it got warm. Then hot, which feels all sorts of wrong, stirring all sorts of old-time religion whether you believe or not. I am sweating by the time I order a long rest some four hours into the descent, and we sit down on the cold concrete floor in the dark by the inner wall, resting up against it at first, then one by one we lay back onto the floor.
‘Just how deep does this damn road to hell go, Tommy?’
‘We’ll know when we get there, Wolf.’
‘Always were a stubborn son of a bitch.’
We lay there in the dark on the concrete floor listening to the panting of the wolf.
‘What about defences, Tom? I don’t want to walk into one of their killerbots.’
It’s a good call. There are legends that became stories to scare kids into not straying far from town, but like all kids’ stories, there is a razor’s edge of reality in each one. A bloody, sawtoothed razor’s edge. There had been terrible weapons coded by cruel sons of bitches who built horror into people’s ending as a deterrent. Sadists should never be allowed to engineer engines of death, not in a civilised world. There are concrete reasons for the end of the world being called the Trauma. The entire human race had been traumatised.
‘They didn’t expect anyone to get through those doors. They were blast doors, opened out, not in.’
‘How’d you know that? You one of them, like Coot?’
‘Normal times that would lose you some teeth, Sam, but I’ll let it pass. The doors were hinged to open out. You’d have seen that for yourself if you hadn’t been so afraid of the dark.’
I ignore my brother and Sam snarling at one another.
‘Why do you think we might meet defences now, Joe?’
‘Too damn hot, Tom. Goes any lower, people will fry.’
I am glad someone is still thinking. It’s midsummer hot down here. Despite Joe ordering Sam to quit counting, I had been trying to keep track. We must be all of half a mile underground by now and I have lost pounds in sweat. We must be near the end. If there were going to be any killing machines we’ll hit them soon enough. I can’t see anyone’s faces but some of the sweat smells a lot like fear. Not that I smell so heroic.
‘Joe’s right. We can’t all blunder into any machines. You all rest up here and I’ll see what’s ahead. If I am not back in…’
‘Hold up, trooper, you ain’t going to steal all the glory. We’ll rest up a bit but then I’ll come with. That way if one of us gets messed up, the other one can come warn Joe and Sam.’
‘I’m the only one brought a gun big enough to stop anything, Wolf.’
‘If it fires. If it doesn’t blow your own head off.’
‘You are NOT all leaving me on my own.’
‘Looks like you lost the vote, Sheriff.’
‘Let’s at least rest up a while. Is rebellion happy with that?’
Damn echoes mean it’s not long before they realise I don’t abide by democracy, not when it’s my job to keep folk safe. I thought I was being quiet enough but seems not. Chewie catches up with me first, Wolf sent him to fetch maybe? The huge panting creature noses my leg good and hard to make a point and rumbles a growl. I chance a hand to touch his fur and I get my whole hand back, which the cynical part of me is surprised by. I can hear footsteps hurrying behind me. Distant, but they have a hustle on.
I keep going. Hair on the back of my head prickling. Head full of steel bladed horror. Shaking like a pig in an abattoir. Breathing hard. Then Chewie takes off, bursting past me in a scrabble of claws on concrete. Not a sound otherwise. I can’t decide if I should up my pace or wait until I hear something hideous from below—some mix of machine and terrible animal suffering, but I am damned if I can stand these images in my head, so I start to run.
And then I scent it too. And it’s the maddest smell. A shock. Maybe a hallucination. But it grows as I run down the ramp, my footsteps echoing loudly, joined by others further up the ramp. And I can begin to make out the floor and walls of the ramp, not in my imagination, conjured by the echoes and the feel of the curve of the wall, but the pale grey of poured concrete. And the light grows as the smell deepens and, of all things, Wolf’s giant dog howls like the wolf it is and that sound is eerie and deep and stirs my fear.
And then I round the final curve in full light and see…
No, this can’t be real.
This is impossible.
What a cliff hanger!!!!!