Fear (A Gone Novel)

Outside

SERGEANT DARIUS ASHTON was very good with a truck engine. This did not mean he was necessarily good with an air compressor. But his lieutenant said a mechanic was needed at a site around the far side of the dome.

"That's the air base, Lieutenant," Darius protested. "They don't have an HVAC mechanic over there?"

"Not one with your security clearance," the lieutenant said.

"A security clearance for an air conditioner?"

The lieutenant wasn't a bad guy, young but not arrogant. He said, "Sergeant, I would have thought by now, with your long experience in uniform, you'd know better than to expect everything to make sense."

Darius couldn't argue with that. He saluted and turned on his heel. A cheerful female driver, a corporal who knew the drive well, was waiting behind the wheel of a Humvee. Darius loaded his tools in the back. How was he supposed to know what to bring if he didn't even know what he was supposed to be fixing?

The corporal had done a tour in Kabul, something she and Darius had in common, so they talked about that on the long, circuitous drive. And they talked about this supposedly great new Cuban pitcher who had reached the United States on a raft. The Angels were going to sign him.

The drive went up the highway, then onto a series of gravel side roads. There was another way to reach the Evanston Air National Guard base, but it would mean going all the way to I-5, then back south. This path was bumpy and dusty but it was quicker.

Much of the drive was within sight of the bowl. Darius had gotten used to it. Ten miles high, twenty miles across. It looked like someone had dropped a small, smoothly polished moon down on the Southern California coastline.

But there was no crater, no fracture lines. It hadn't landed; it hadn't exploded; it had just suddenly existed. A gigantic terrarium.

"Been here long?" Darius asked, nodding at the dome.

"Just transferred in last month," the corporal said. "I saw it on TV, like everyone else. But it's something in person."

"It is that."

"Weird thinking there are kids in there."

They pulled up at a facility that had obviously been recently built. It had all the usual obsessive military neatness and order. A dozen buildings in ruler-straight rows. A barracks, an officers' quarters, a number of command trailers, a communications building bristling with dishes and antennae.

The base was a hive of activity. Men and women bustling back and forth with very busy expressions on their faces. No one was lounging or grabbing a smoke or chatting on the phone. There was a self-conscious sense of Very Important Stuff Happening.

The facility was ringed with chain link topped with extremely serious-looking razor wire. The gate was guarded by unsmiling military police. IDs were checked against a manifest showing that yes, they were both expected.

One of the MPs accompanied them to one of the trailers. The corporal peeled off and Darius stepped into a blast of air-conditioning.

A sergeant asked him again for his ID. Then he handed Darius a paper to sign. The paper required him to reveal nothing of the purpose of his visit, of the existence of the facility, of the work there, of any of the personnel assigned there.

There was a great deal of official-ese and some decidedly threatening language. "You understand, Sergeant, that you are governed by this security protocol?"

"Yes, Sergeant. I do."

"You understand that any violation will result in criminal prosecution?"

The word "will" had been emphasized, and not subtly.

"I believe I'm getting the message, Sarge."

The sergeant smiled. "They keep a very tight lid. Report to building oh-one-four. Your driver will know where it is."

The driver did.

Building 014 was half a mile from the rest of the camp, which put it a full mile away from the dome wall. It was a vast, hangar-style tin structure. Huge and imposing. It was painted the color of the surrounding desert.

Darius hefted his tool bag and was met at the door by an MP. One more ID check. Then Darius stepped inside the hangar.

What he saw made him stare. A half dozen trucks filled with dirt. A tower that looked like it had been assembled from leftover bits and pieces of a suspension bridge or maybe the Eiffel Tower.

The MP took him to a civilian in a construction worker's helmet and handed him off. The civilian shook his hand and identified himself as "Charlie. Just Charlie. Sorry to drag you out here, but our head HVAC mechanic is on maternity leave, and her assistant managed to break an ankle surfing. You're not claustrophobic, are you?"

The question surprised Darius. "Why?"

"Because we are going deep. The unit we need you to look at is a blower at kilometer six."

"What's that mean?"

"It means we're going two miles down, my friend. Two clicks straight down and four clicks south. Kilometer six."

Darius felt cold. "That would put you ... up against the dome. Why... I mean, what..."

Charlie shrugged and said, "My friend, the first thing you learn working here is don't ask questions."

The elevator ride down seemed endless. And yet quicker than the narrow-gauge train that carried Darius along an impressive and oppressive tunnel, wide enough to accommodate two rail lines with space on either side. The tunnel was shored up at regular intervals with railroad ties.

Kilometer six turned out to be a cavern bigger than the hangar. The far end was formed by the barrier. Here it was black, not pearly gray.

"It was good luck finding this cave," Charlie said. "Would have been a long, hard job carving it out. You know, usually we'd have a hundred guys down here. But as you can probably smell, the air is getting a bit thick."

"That's why I'm here, right?"

In the cave stood a tall scaffolding tilted at a strange, Leaning Tower of Pisa angle. Darius knew enough about machinery to recognize a drilling platform.

From this spot they were drilling farther still, down below the dome. Not a tunnel for humans. Just a round shaft into which a bomb could be lowered to the lowest point beneath the dome.

Charlie must have seen the look in Darius's eyes. He gripped Darius's arm and pulled him aside. They were alone, but Charlie whispered anyway. "Okay, you're not a fool. You know what's going on here. But you need to know that security watches everyone who comes in or out of this place. I mean, from now on your cell phone will be monitored, and your room may be bugged. Word to the wise."

Darius nodded.

"What really happened to your HVAC guy?"

Charlie laughed mirthlessly. "Opened his mouth in a bar. Thirty minutes later the FBI picked him up as he was getting into his car."