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The fire directed at the kitchen area stopped and Dianne used the opportunity to poke the barrel of her rifle through a gap in the splintered boards and fire back. The fire was mostly blind, though before she emptied the entire magazine she heard a cry of pain and withdrew, satisfied with at least wounding one of the attackers.
Wounding one of the six would only go so far. They were spread out, had apparently brought enough ammunition to keep up a continuous stream of fire for an extended period of time and had the advantage over those in the house. As Dianne ejected her spent mag and felt in her pockets for a fresh one, the memory of being dragged off by Nealson’s men flashed across her mind. It was immediately followed by the remembrance of Jason, Mark and Tina not being taken because they had managed to slip away into the basement and escape through the tunnel.
The tunnel. She looked over at the kitchen, where the door to the basement was closing and then looked upward and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Mark! Jason! I have to run an errand!”
***
“An errand?” Mark’s eyes widened as he looked over at Jason. “What’s she talking about?”
“No idea,” Jason shook his head before taking a few more shots at a target moving through the woods. “Your mom’s a smart woman, though and it sounds like she’s got a plan up her sleeve.”
Mark stood up from where he had been hiding behind a dresser and pulled back the bolt on his rifle. He inched along the wall before holding the gun out at arm’s length and firing blindly out into the drive. The recoil from the rifle was strong, but he managed to keep a grip on it as he tried to find a target without taking shots himself. Two of the rounds smacked on metal and glass instead of the gravel drive, and though he couldn’t see it, he had driven back two of Nealson’s men who had been gearing up to make a run for the front door of the house.
“Whatever she’s doing, I hope it works.” Mark squeezed back into his spot behind the dresser and flinched as more rounds came through the window. He fumbled with the magazine on his rifle as he tried to keep a calm, stoic face, but Jason could see quite clearly that the teen was terrified beyond belief. Terrified for his family, for himself, for what had happened and what could happen in the near or far future if they managed to survive that long.
“Chin up, lad.” Jason smiled at Mark from across the room. “We’ll get through this.”
***
“Move, move!” Dianne practically flew down into the basement, breaking every rule she had set for the children when it came to how to travel safely on staircases. Tina, though still in pain and unable to move for fear of hurting herself, watched Dianne with eyes that were still sharp and focused.
“Dianne.” Her voice was soft, but still possessed strength.
“Hm?” Dianne didn’t look back at Tina, too focused on unlocking and removing the chains around the tunnel doors.
“Be safe out there.”
Dianne pulled open the doors and took a few steps down before turning and nodding at Tina. “I will. Sarah, get them into the tunnel and then lock it behind you, okay? Don’t come out till it’s all clear.” With a final, loving look at Jacob and Josie, Dianne descended the rest of the stairs and took off at a run down the tunnel.
Chapter 17
Mount Weathers
Outside Washington, D.C.
“It’s no good, Captain.” The uniformed officer was breathing heavy as she took off her jacket and wrapped it around her waist. Beads of sweat ran down her head and neck, though the cold weather and sharp breeze were helping to alleviate her discomfort.
“Hammers give out again?”
“No, they just won’t budge anything. Whoever designed these doors wasn’t kidding around.”
Captain Lance Recker took a bite out of a stale energy bar and chewed slowly as he sat on the hood of a squad car. He and a couple dozen other officers were scattered around the entrance to the Mount Weathers bunker, which they had been trying to break into for nearly two days. The heavy equipment they brought from the city—the equipment that he had been sure would make short work of the bunker doors—had been thwarted by the thick, impenetrable steel.
A few of the officers stood around near the doors, pointing at the seams and mechanisms as if they could divine some way of opening the place up. Recker had seen enough to know that there was no way they would be getting through, not unless whatever had sealed the place up released its hold.
“Without power, how long do you figure they’ve got in there before the air goes bad and they all start suffocating?”
“Dunno, Captain. Can’t be more than another day or so at the most. There’s nothing we can do for them. All the vents we’ve been able to find are closed up and we can’t get those open, either. I hate to say it, but it’s possible that everyone inside is already… gone.”
Recker finished off his energy bar and slowly stood, picking up a medium-sized stone from the ground in front of the car. “We went through all this work to rescue them, brought in all the heavy equipment we could find and that’s it? We get nothing?” He chucked the stone in a high arc over the heads of the other officers, then turned away before it bounced off the bunker door with a low, metallic rumble.
Recker was about to get another energy bar from the back of the car when he stopped, realizing that the rumble from the stone’s impact wasn’t stopping—it was growing louder. He turned with the rest of the men and women there with him, watching as the mechanisms for the door began to move as they slowly moved the locks out of position.
“What the…” Recker stared at the door, taking a few slow steps toward it along with the rest of the officers. When the locks finally finished moving, a siren began to sound and Recker’s eyes opened wide.
“Get those cars back! Get the backhoes and bulldozer out of the way!” The officers scrambled to move under Recker’s order as the doors to the bunker began to slowly swing open a moment later. Figures began emerging out from between the double doors, waving their arms and stumbling as they tried to shield their vision from the intense sunlight after so long underground. Recker ran forward and caught a woman wearing a sweat-stained skirt and blouse as she tripped and nearly fell, easing her to the ground as she screwed her eyes shut.
“Medics, spread out! Help these people now!” He looked down and spoke softly to the woman as she gripped his arm. “Ma’am, it’ll be okay.”
