On the outskirts of Tupelo, Verdancia, two days later
Sunlight filtered through the branches, warming Lark’s face. Leaning against a magnolia, five minutes from the Jeep and cargo truck, she watched Diego and Captain Luke argue over how to breach the steel vault door. They’d found it sunk into a hillside, buried in bramble. Nearby stood the bones of a ramshackle old farmhouse—once a grand plantation, now strangled in vines, its porch caved into rubble. Beyond, fields of cotton, corn, and soybeans stretched wide.
An ancient farmer in overalls and a straw hat, half a week’s stubble bristling, stood across from Lark with a corncob pipe clenched between yellowed teeth. He talked around it. “This was the old Culpepper place back before the commotion. They owned all the land as far as you can see—agribusiness. Culpepper said he was buildin’ this bunker just in case, but I never knew if he did or didn’t ‘til now.”
“Do you remember before the war?” Lark asked. She wondered if his stories lined up with Gramma’s.
“Better than I remember what day it is.” He plucked the pipe from his mouth, pinching it between bony, arthritic fingers. His white-whiskered jaw worked for a minute as he gazed at a blue sky.
“No bombs ever dropped ‘round here,” he recalled in a raspy tenor. “One day the power went out, and it ain’t come back on since. Folks with solar panels had electricity—some of ‘em for years before the parts broke down. People were beside themselves with worry, frettin’ about their kin in far-off places. Vehicles quit workin’ and us farmers had to go back to the old-fashioned way of doin’ things. Those first few years were like havin’ one hoof in the mud.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Most folks acted like corn after a hailstorm—all beat down and pitiful, bless their hearts. Not much has changed, far as I’m concerned. I miss Coca-Cola, though.” He replaced his pipe, puffing a swirl of smoke.
A loud report sounded, accompanied by a miniature smoke cloud. “Got it!” Diego called. Lark figured his “blow the lock” method won out.
“Nice meeting you,” she said to the codger and hurried to the entry with Luke and Diego. Wes and Skye crowded in, their expressions eager, while Harlan had drawn the short straw and waited by the vehicles. Visions of vast stockpiles of medicine and ammunition ignited her anticipation. The two brawny men shoved, the door creaking as it grudgingly inched open. With a loud scraping noise, they threw it wide. Peering between their shoulders, she spied a dark tunnel.
“I’ll go first,” the captain declared, flicking on a flashlight.
“Sorry, rookie.” Wes grinned as he edged in front of her. “Age before beauty.”
Lark shot him a sarcastic look, taking a step back to avoid being plowed down. “I doubt you’re older than me.”
“Yeah, but it’s the rules,” Skye said with a playful wink, as she also moved in front of Lark. “Whenever something fun happens, new guys go last.”
Supposing that was fair, Lark tried to be patient, hoping the vault would be large enough for them to all fit. One by one, her team members descended into the unknown.
Lark followed closely behind Skye, letting the lieutenant’s beam shine around for them both. A steel culvert pipe about a meter and a half across led down five metal steps into a much wider chamber than Lark expected. This was no prefab vault, but a home-built job with concrete block sides and a cement floor. A wallof stale, sour air hit her nose. Flashlight beams swept the space, illuminating a living area and extensive rows of pallet racks.
“Don’t touch anything yet,” Luke called. He shone his light on a jagged crack in the concrete and the moisture beads clinging to the ceiling. “There’s probably mold.”
“Ah ha!” Wes announced in triumph. “Let there be light.” Electric lights flickered on from fixtures overhead. He shrugged. “Too tempting. This place runs on an old compact nuclear cell—rare and hard to find intact. I’d have to run a few tests, but this one looks like it could power the entire Capitol Building for decades.”
“I don’t see any Culpeppers around here, dead or alive,” Diego mentioned. “Reckon we’ll take that back with everything else.”
Sure enough, Lark saw no skeletons or preserved bodies in the shelter. “I wonder what happened to them? If they moved back to the surface, why leave all this behind?”
“Don’t know,” Skye answered as she ran her finger across a shelf, carving a deep path in the pervasive dust.
“Someone planned to take refuge here,” Luke said, pointing to a bathroom, complete with toilet, sink, and mini shower. “They’ve got an air filtration system—top of the line.”
Lark noted a couch and chairs, a small table stacked with board games, and fold-down bunks lining part of a wall. The shelves held sealed ten-liter buckets of rice, beans, popping corn, wheat, macaroni, and smaller containers of salt, freeze-dried fruits, vegetables, chicken, and ground beef. Shrink-wrapped boxes of meal packets sat beside jars of pickles, honey, and jam.
“Would you look at this?” Wes exclaimed. Lark peered around the long center aisle of shelving. Wes pointed to rows of white PVP tubing positioned one above the other. She ambled over for a closer look. “It’s a hydroponic gardening system.”
Under the bright lights, Lark noticed decayed leaves sticking out of holes in the piping, buckets of murky water with tubing at both ends. “They weregrowing fresh greens to eat while down here.” Curiosity gnawed at her.All this sitting here, untouched, unused.
“I found some ammo,” Diego reported. “Two cases of .22 bullets and one of 9-millimeter. They also left behind a rifle and pistol to go with them. They need cleaning but appear serviceable.”
“Not much in the way of medicine,” Luke said, disappointment tinging his voice. “A couple of first aid kits. Some expired pill bottles.”
“Well, here’s the motherlode!”
Everyone shifted their attention to Wes. From the back corner, he wheeled out a pallet jack stacked four high with shrink-wrapped toilet paper. Diego doubled over laughing.
“Hey,” Skye commented. “They didn’t want to run out.”
The powdered milk cans had been compromised, water purification tablets ruined, face masks and gloves crumbling with age. The cans of soft drinks the old farmer would have loved had burst from the heat and leaked sticky substances all over their shelf.
