Eagle one, p.8
Eagle One, page 8
part #2 of Bugging Out Series
And that’s when I understood. Or began to understand.
“You buried this,” I said.
Jack smiled with pride. My eyes almost bugged at the shelves running down each side of the space, neatly wrapped cuts of meat stacked in every available space.
“If you’re going to build a freezer, underground is the place to do it.”
His explanation was spot on. But it didn’t fully assuage my wondering.
“I’ve got two industrial chillers in the back,” he said, pointing. “Air exchange vents come up in the hollows of some trees out the back side of the hill. Power comes from the windmill, and a solar array I’ve got out on the field behind some trees.”
“Batteries?” I guessed aloud.
“Plenty to run things for a couple days at least, and through the nights. But there’s almost always wind. And the units I put in are the most efficient you can get. The best that dirty paper could buy.”
I chuckled, recalling my own spending spree after Neil’s warning. When I’d accepted the reality of what was to come and liquidated my business credit to provision my refuge. I’d had the advantage of some inside information to allow me the luxury of preparing. In a similar way, Jack Miner had been clued in as to coming events.
“How’d you know to do this?”
He thought for a moment. As if he’d already discarded that moment of realization.
“I’m not sure. My son JJ and I were hearing a lot from cattle ranchers in Brazil. They were slaughtering their herds when the grass went bad. The price to buy feed went through the roof. We knew if it spread up here, it’d be too late to...to manage the loss.”
I looked over the supply of beef crammed into the space, easily enough food for years.
“You slaughtered your herd,” I said.
“A good portion of it. The rest we traded, sold. That allowed us to prep this freezer and lay in a supply and make it as invisible as possible. So that anyone chancing by here would see nothing special once we left.”
“Left?”
“We have this place, a couple farms in the Midwest. We decided that back there would be the best place to ride out the beginning. Maybe the whole thing. We just didn’t know how long it would last.”
“No one did,” I said.
“A few of us, at least, saw enough to hang on. To keep on...”
“Fighting,” I finished the statement for him.
“I was going to say living, but those seem to be the same thing nowadays,” he said, looking up and out the door. “Those fools in the truck wouldn’t listen. They tracked me from town, I figure. Saw when I arrived, waited a few days, then decided to pay me a visit. I told them to stay back. They decided not to.”
“You have some good defenses set up,” I told him, realizing now that the distant boom we’d heard the night before was the makeshift mine taking out the truck encroaching on the man’s property.
“JJ’s doing,” Jack said. “He figured we might need some protection beyond just the guns.”
“Can’t wait to meet him,” I said, and knew immediately from the look on Jack’s face, and his lack of any immediate response, that I’d broached a subject fraught with pain. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. He’ll find his way back here. He will.”
They were hopeless words of hope. The kind any father would speak.
“Jack...”
“Yes?”
“Why did you trust me?”
His face shrugged.
“Why did you trust me?”
I had about as good an answer as I imagined he did.
“I had a feeling,” I said.
“Me, too. Now, do you have some way to signal your friends?”
“I do.”
“I’ve got steaks already thawing for the next few days,” Jack said. “Why don’t you go tell them to join us for a proper meal?”
I smiled, then, with probably too much haste, left the confines of the freezer and walked a few yards away and drew my pistol, firing a single shot into the grey sky.
Sixteen
We ate in silence. Not because of any sense of discomfort with our host. We simply hadn’t eaten this well in more than a year.
“I can’t begin to describe how incredible this tastes,” Grace said.
“It is soooooo good,” Krista agreed, cutting another bit of steak off and forking it into her mouth.
I cut into the perfectly cut and exquisitely grilled piece of meat. A rib eye, it was, and my knife sliced into its tenderness, juices flowing, separating another piece that my fork stabbed and slipped into my mouth. I savored the taste, the texture, the memory brought forward from a past I’d known as lost. All thanks to one man.
At the head of the table, Jack Miner sat, taking in the sight of four relative strangers basking in his hospitality. I glanced up from the rib eye I was devouring and noted the look about the man. A smile was plain on his face, but it was subdued, like a light dimmed. He caught me looking and the expression brightened a bit.
“This feels almost normal,” he said, lifting his glass of cabernet and taking a small sip. “Like life used to be. People around the table. Eating. Talking. Well, more talking usually, but...”
“We are ravenous guests,” Neil said after a swallow.
“I’m glad for the company,” Jack said, the truth in his words impossible to miss. “Just the presence of others is so...odd. And realizing that that’s odd makes you understand what we’ve lost.”
Grace paused her enjoyment of the meal as Jack spoke, sensing the tinge of melancholy creeping into the conversation, and noting his gaze settling on her daughter, regarding her fondly, like a memory he feared might fade. My fork and knife stilled, too, as did Neil’s, the both of us picking up on what Grace was watching.
After a moment, Jack noticed the attention he was generating. He looked among us and smiled an apology.
“My granddaughter loved coming up here to the ranch,” he said. “My daughter Frannie’s little girl. A couple years younger than this fine young lady here.”
Krista smiled with a mouthful of steak and kept eating.
“You don’t know what happened to them?” Grace asked, the query offered gingerly, with the expectation of an answer that, at the very least, would be born of uncertainty.
“My son, JJ, he was going to fly down from our Minnesota place to pick them up,” Jack explained. “We, my son and I, we were hunkered down at the northern property. His sister refused to leave with Jill, my granddaughter, unless her husband would come. But he thought he could ride it out down in Louisiana. They had a shrimping business there. I guess he thought the sea would provide for them.”
“Did it?” Neil asked.
Jack shrugged, a painful acquiescence to the unknown.
“Neither my son or I had heard from Frannie since a few weeks after everything went to hell. We waited at the Minnesota place, hoping she’d make her way there with her family. She knew we would wait for her. Until we couldn’t wait anymore.”
The last statement he spoke like a man who’d surrendered the whole of his being, his soul, in some act fouled by the stench of personal failure.
“I should have never let her stay down there,” Jack said.
“She’s a grown woman,” I said. “With her own family. How could you make her do what she didn’t want to do?”
He had no answer to that.
“Our supplies were down to almost nothing,” he explained. “JJ said we had to fall back to this place. If our little camouflage job did its trick, and if the chillers held out, we’d have enough beef to carry us through a couple years, at least. That and some other stuff we buried. Those peas you’ve got aren’t half bad for being dehydrated and left under a few feet of dirt for the better part of two years.”
“They’re delicious,” Grace said.
Jack smiled at the kind words, his eyes beginning to glisten over the expression.
“My granddaughter loves peas,” Jack said. “I hated peas when I was a kid.”
He reached up with his napkin and wiped his eyes.
“You said he flew down,” I said. “You had a plane?”
“Two,” Jack corrected. “I flew here when he didn’t return to the Minnesota place with the others. I thought they might have had to make the flight out here instead. But they weren’t here when I flew in. And there’s no going back. Not enough fuel.”
I looked to Neil, thoughts churning behind his eyes. The same thoughts as mine, I suspected.
“You have a plane here?” I asked.
“At the field in Kalispell,” Jack answered.
Again Neil and I exchanged a wondering, obvious look.
“You fellas fly?”
I shook my head and tossed a thumb Neil’s way.
“I started lessons a couple years ago,” Neil said, discounting whatever thin ability he might have. “I never even did my solo.”
Jack nodded at that and sipped his wine again, thinking.
“Why is it you’re leaving your place?”
“We’re going to Eagle One,” Krista said after a quick swallow.
Jack puzzled at the answer.
“It’s someplace to the west,” I said. “It may be the place to be.”
My attempt at explanation only seemed to deepen our host’s wonder. I delved further into the reason, telling him of the radio broadcasts, and food caches across the country that people were guided to, and why we were setting out now instead of the spring.
“A helicopter,” Jack said after hearing of the attack on my refuge, no question in the words whatsoever.
“It nearly killed us,” Neil said, then he looked to Grace. “She saved our lives. Put two rounds into the cockpit. Took the pilot out.”
“My grandfather taught my mommy to shoot,” Krista said, beaming.
“Is that so?” Jack gave Krista a wink, then looked to me. “You know, when I was flying in earlier in the week, I saw a chopper on the ground down south of Flathead Lake. Looked like a makeshift landing pad, with a whole bunch of trucks and dozens and dozens of people around it.”
“Everything painted black?” I asked, and Jack nodded.
“I’m not sure, but they might have taken some pot shots at me,” he said. “I saw a few flashes and didn’t hang around to see any more. Headed straight for Kalispell and landed. Found a hangar that was still standing—several weren’t—and nosed in. Snagged myself a pickup and made my way here.”
“South of the lake,” Grace said, worried. “That was the way we were going to go to reach the interstate.”
Jack took in the sudden concern that volleyed silently between us.
“That was your plan? To catch I Ninety?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed, fixing on my friend next. “But there were bridges out. That’s why we came this way.”
“Those downed bridges might have saved you,” Jack said.
“The roads west of here don’t look promising,” Neil said.
“Roads don’t seem like they’re going to be viable routes in any direction.”
The implication of my addendum was plain to Neil. And to Jack.
“You’re welcome to my plane,” he said. “Don’t know how far you can make it on what’s left in the tank.”
Neil looked between us all, incredulous and resistant.
“Wait a minute. You heard me say I’ve only had a few lessons, right?”
Krista focused in on the brewing disagreement, eating as she watched.
“Neil,” I began, “you said yourself—we’re just about out of options.”
“I’d invite you to stay here,” Jack said, “but I doubt you’d take me up on the offer.”
“We need to make it out west,” I said.
“We have to try,” Grace said. “Right, Neil?”
The weight of our ability to pursue that goal had just shifted entirely onto my lifelong friend. He considered the necessity, the challenges, the chances of success. None of the negatives outweighed the reality that we simply had to get to Eagle One. The hope he’d professed to me so long ago now lived there. At least for me, it did. It was a somewhat irrational expectation that a place we knew nothing of, with people we knew even less of, had become some sort of touchstone. But it was.
“We don’t even know where to fly to,” Neil said.
“Biggest city to the west is Seattle,” Jack said. “Decent chance of people hanging on there. That could be a good thing, or a bad thing.”
“Depends on the people,” I said, and Jack nodded.
Neil thought for a moment. This leg of our journey was becoming his responsibility. Decisions were on him to make.
“We have to start somewhere,” Neil said. “Seattle.”
Jack seemed impressed that we weren’t anguishing over minutiae. There was a point on the map, and we were going to aim for it.
“Do you have maps?”
Neil and I looked at each other, each giving Jack a shake of the head.
“There’s no navigation,” Jack Miner told us.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“GPS is gone,” he said.
“I had a handheld unit that was functioning six months ago,” Neil said. “It broke, but the system was fine.”
Jack nodded and sat back. He poured himself some more cabernet.
“It was working four weeks ago when I was back in Minnesota,” Jack told us. “But when I tried to log a flight plan into the computer to head out here, it couldn’t find any satellites.”
The other beacons we might have depended upon, beamed out from ground-based transmitters, had been long silenced through lack of maintenance or operator presence, existing only now as bulbous, wasting radomes and rusting antenna towers. But the Global Positioning System, its satellites not dependent on earthbound power, should have been invulnerable to what the blight had wrought. Apparently, it was not.
“Could it just be your plane’s receiver?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Jack allowed, but without conviction. “Or maybe someone shut the satellite array down.”
Shutting down an entire constellation of satellites, each more than 20,000 miles into space, seemed an act lacking any rationale.
“Why do that?” I asked. “And who could?”
“Normally, someone in the department of defense,” Neil said. “But we left ‘normal’ in the rearview over a year ago. As to why...to make it harder for people to find their way.”
If some bit of government still functioned, in some sealed and supplied bunker somewhere, it was possible they could have shut the entire GPS system down. Elements of the old organs of state had already shown a desire to restrict movement. Maybe this was just another example of that.
And I had an idea why.
“Eagle One,” I said, my wondering thoughts reaching an inevitable conclusion.
“All those transmissions,” Grace said, chiming in. “If we heard them, and others did, then the people who could shut the satellites certainly would have.”
“You know,” Jack began, “it could be that there’s a valid reason not to head for this Eagle One place.”
“What if there actually is a valid reason to keep people from looking for this Eagle One thing?” Jack asked, looking to me.
“Valid as defined by the people who abandoned every citizen under the rank of governor or four star general when this started?”
We’d considered the likelihood that some power, somewhere, was trying to keep us, to keep anyone, from finding and getting to the elusive and enigmatic place we’d come to know through the airwaves. The jamming of communications at my refuge. The helicopter attack following that. If the disabling of the worldwide GPS system was just another part of that effort, it would make sense. And, as the earlier acts had done, it only hardened my resolve to actually reach Eagle One.
“I’m not trying to dissuade you,” Jack said. “It’s just that, you’ve got precious cargo to think about.”
We looked to Krista as he did.
“I understand your concern,” I said, trying to walk back the slightly harsh delivery of my previous statement. “But she’s one of the biggest reasons to do what we’re doing.”
Jack understood, nodding.
“Gotta keep fighting,” he said. “The good fight.”
We were going. No matter what. But doing so, under the situation Jack had clued us into, wasn’t going to be as easy as it might have.
“How will we navigate?” I asked. “Without GPS?”
“I’d recommend getting some good maps that cover your route. Navigate by highway.”
“Any place at the airport to scrounge what we’ll need in that department?” Neil asked.
Jack shook his head.
“If there was, it’s been looted to the floorboards,” he said.
“Library,” Grace said. “City that size has to have one.”
“Not many people stealing books to stay alive,” Neil said, agreeing.
That was one obstacle mostly dealt with. There was still another.
“How much fuel was left?” I asked Jack.
“Not a whole lot. Probably enough for two, three hundred miles. I carried cans of extra in the cabin to get me here.”
“Three hundred miles won’t get us to Seattle,” Neil said.
“It’ll get us over the mountains,” I reminded him, then looked to our host. “Are you sure you want to give us your plane? We can never repay you.”
The man fixed his gaze once again on Krista, carving down the last of her steak into bite size pieces, chewing and savoring every last morsel. He sampled it like a living memory, his own granddaughter having sat in the same spot before, doing exactly what our tiny traveling companion was.
“You already have,” Jack said, then stood from the table and walked into an adjacent room, returning a moment later with a single key in hand. “She’ll serve you well.”
He held the key out to Neil. My friend took it.
“I locked the door,” Jack said, chuckling lightly at himself. “Can you believe that?”
Krista reached to Grace and tugged at her sleeve.
