"Just how big is this storage room you keep talking about?" Roark asked.
Sawyer nodded his head toward one of the corridors. "Come on, I'll show you." He grabbed another lamp off the hook by the entrance to the corridor, lit it, then handed it to Roark. "It gets pretty dark down there."
He led them through the corridor then down a couple of flights of stairs. When they reached the right floor, he pointed to a set of hangar doors. "There's a tunnel on the other side of those doors that leads to one of the exits I blew up. I think they used that entrance to bring the supplies inside in trucks."
"They needed trucks?" Dahl asked.
"It's a big storage unit." Huge. Sawyer was pretty sure they were all thinking of small storage rooms back at Mesa Verde. They were not thinking of the massive excess the government was so notorious for.
Sawyer led them down another corridor. When they reached what looked like the end of the corridor, the others glanced around in confusion.
"I don't get it," Roark said. "Where's the storage unit?"
"Behind here." Sawyer reached back behind a large metal—steel, not iron—shelf and released the latch before pulling the entire structure—shelf, totes on the shelf, and the wall behind it—out of the way, revealing the blast doors hidden behind it.
"Shit." Dahl chuckled. "I never would have known that was there."
Sawyer smirked. "I told you I'd been busy."
"I guess," Dahl replied.
"I didn't want to fully shut the blast doors because I wasn't sure I could get them back open again. I also didn't want a bunch of scavengers finding this stuff if they found a way into the complex. This was what I came up with."
"It works, man. That shelf thing looks as if it was always there."
"That was the idea." Sawyer pulled the blast door open then waited.
"Holy shit!" Dahl gasped. "You said there were some supplies, but this is insane."
Dahl was right. The storage room inside was nearly two stories tall and lined with metal shelves on one side. Nonperishable foods and supplies were stacked to the ceiling on those shelves. Pallets of supplies were lined along the other side. It was as long as a football field.
"Jesus, that's a lot of stuff," Roark remarked.
"There was more, but I've kind of been dropping supplies at the gates of some of the settlements that needed extra stuff."
Sawyer's cheeks heated up when everyone looked at him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced away. "I figured there was plenty to go around, and it didn't make sense to keep it all here for myself."
"How are you doing that without anyone seeing you?" Roark asked.
"Honestly, most of the settlements around here don't have that good of patrols after dark. It's pretty easy to sneak in, drop something by the front gate, then sneak back out again without being seen." He shrugged as if it was no big deal. He knew it was, but it wasn't like he had a lot of say in it. "It kind of makes sense with the mechs mostly only hunting during the daytime."
Roark stilled. "What do you mean they only hunt during the daytime?"
Sawyer frowned in confusion. Roark should know this. "Mechs tend to stick to the daytime hours to hunt for iron. I mean, they come out at night occasionally, so you should never let your guard down, but it's safer to move around at night than it is during the day." He squinted at Roark. "How do you not know this?"
Roark glanced at the others for a moment before looking back at Sawyer. "I guess I never noticed it."
Huh.
"Yeah, they tend to hunt more during the day than they do at night." He gestured back the way they came. "If you guys are hungry, I have some stuff set up back this way."
"Twinkies?" Frankie asked eagerly.
Sawyer chuckled. "A few."
Frankie shot his fist into the air. "Yes!"
Sawyer shook his head, amused by Frankie's exuberance, as he led everyone out of the storage room then closed it back up again. He tried to make it a habit to close it up every time he left just in case someone got into the complex somehow.
