SHIFT: Book One: HORIZONS

Six: Mason

THIRTEEN HOURS TO RELEASE

MASON STOOD BACK and took a good look at their handiwork. He was underground in what used to be an old limestone mine. It had been abandoned almost a century before the Shift had taken place, but once humanity was situated within the bunkers and after exposure had begun a few years after, work on what was being called the Nevada Salvation was initiated. Fifty teenagers at a time between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years of age that were being sheltered in the Groom Lake bunker were assigned to Squad 3, the team of workers who were given the task of building a habitable place to live in once everyone under the age of eighteen was released into the dangerous new world, where they would attempt to survive and rebuild a human population on the planet. 

Of course, there was hope that similar projects were taking place at the hundreds of other similar bunkers that theoretically existed around the world. But with no means of communication with them, it was impossible to establish a planned and collaborative building procedure with any of them. 

It would be a miracle if the subjects at each bunker were even to survive on their own, let alone find the others if they had happened to have been released yet. 

Mason was almost eighteen. He was the oldest of the current Squad 3 and leader of it. After two hundred and sixty years of work with bare minimal tools and only the knowledge that could be crammed into the immature minds of the only eligible age group, the Nevada Salvation had finally been completed, and Mason Stolberg just happened to be the one in charge at the time. 

So he stood back and gazed happily at what himself, his workers and countless people before them had put unbelievable amounts of time and energy into building. 

They had created a masterpiece. They had turned an old limestone mine into a virtual underground fortress. Up to a thousand people could be housed comfortably within the giant, however only little over a third of that capacity would be filled. Unfortunately, when construction on the Salvation began, the number of people that were estimated to survive was a lot higher. Most of that population was either dead or missing after First Attempt took place nine years ago. 

But whether or not it was going to be as much of a life saver as it was originally planned to be, it was still a success as far as Mason was concerned. 

The structure was completely built into what was once Groom Mine. Being only about five miles north of Groom Lake, it was the closest mining site to the bunker. It was huge, taking up the entire inside of the shaft. There was one main entrance at the southwestern point of the mine, but it had three others at different locations. These weren't doctored up or really intended for use, but past Squad 3 leaders had decided to keep them open in the case of an emergency. 

Even after death, humanity is still trying to stay alive, Mason thought. But he didn't blame them. Nothing wants to die. 

Well, maybe the fly that keeps buzzing around his head does, but that's just a small exception. Mason admired the work. He was standing in the doorway to the main entrance elevator shaft, which was just one of the thousands of things in the Salvation that had been renewed. He looked out proudly at the hundreds of years of work that was now finally complete. There were quarters. There were working bathrooms. There was even electricity. 

Yes, there was electricity. They had been working for a few years at building and upgrading a vast supply of solar panels that could provide enormous amounts of electrical power to the inhabitants of the Salvation while also withstanding the drastic climate, high winds, daily storms and constantly changing temperatures. 

That was their biggest accomplishment. Had these "super panels" existed at the time that the original bunkers were being designed, humanity wouldn't be facing the current problem that was forcing the release of the children and adolescents so early. Those bunkers were designed to run off of the hard radiation that surrounded them since the bombings in World War Three, and there was confidence that this technique would supply them with crucial energy for close to a thousand years if needed. 

But they didn't think about how the new atmosphere and climate could affect the longevity of the radioactive materials, nor did they consider that by harvesting the radiation in the surrounding land, they were also very slowly cleaning it up, depleting their only source of electricity. 

But what do they say about assuming? 

Sadly, there was a whole lot of that when every calculation was being made in the microscopic window of just a few months. 

He was pleased with the work. If the designers were right, then the Nevada Salvation would theoretically be supplied with endless electricity, so long as the people living here maintained it and took proper care of the solar panels. 

Of course, Mason would be one of the people staying here, so he would make sure they did. After all, this was partially his creation, so it was his job to maintain it. 

The last and most important feature of the structure was the fact that it was underground just enough at its highest point to escape the deadly climate. Down here, temperatures would stay at a constant fifty-three degrees Fahrenheit without needing any assistance from the emergency air warmers and coolers. The inhabitants would also be able to quickly and easily enter and exit the structure, because of the minimal below ground distance of just a few yards at the location of the main elevator. A kid named Hector Ridge had been the last Squad 3 leader. It was his idea to add a few flights of stairs to exit along with the elevators just in case there was ever a malfunction. 

After taking a final look-over at the huge lobby, Mason pressed a button on the elevator's wall and the doors closed. As the shaft began moving up toward the surface of the ground, he started the electric dirt bike that he was already aboard. He checked his watch, a standard issue atomic thing that was given to each of the people that left the bunker every day to assure that they could keep track of time. The display read five thirty, which meant that the bunker would be opening in about thirty minutes and closing in an hour. The bunker was on the southwestern side of the lake, so there was a total of about nine miles of ground to cover before reaching it. The bike would only need to move at twelve miles per hour in order to be there when it did, however the bike could do close to twenty. He had time. 

The elevator slowed, and Mason had to squint for a few seconds as the light of the setting sun was filtered through the steel cage-like doors to the elevator. The doors opened, and before him were acres of overgrown, rural, grassy land, bordered on the north, west and east by the Bald Mountain Range and south by Groom Lake. The tattered dirt-and-asphalt remains of Groom Road passed along the border if the range and the lake, and continued out into the plains then into the vast desert that covered the southeast. A few lone trees were peppered across the prairie, and a few miles southwest of the lake were thick forests which bordered more mountains and the section of the field that contained the entrance to the bunker. 

Mason picked his feet up off the ground and accelerated the bike out of the elevator. He sped in the direction of the bunker as the automated door closed behind him and the device sank into the ground, wondering silently to himself whether or not he would ever make this short trip to the nuclear facility again. 

He didn't like the answer.