Wasteware 02

02: The Bears Leave the Den

At 07:00 hours, on a slightly raised dais at the front of the Throne Room, Sean Arlis Reeves sat surrounded on both sides by two half-circle desks with touchscreen control panels. The Commander's imposing frame dwarfed the metal swivel chair he sat upon. His face, with its hard lines, looked out over his security team.

Even though he dressed like the rest of his team, in a standard black jumpsuit with creases perfectly pressed, he held himself with an attitude of a hardened leader. It was moments like this that the name behind the command center became clear. Going over the plan of action, he truly was a king on his throne.

Once satisfied that everyone knew their roles, he checked his equipment one last time. A well-oiled and maintained Desert Eagle sat on his left hip holster. Various necessities were stashed neatly into different pouches on his duty belt. Finally, his kit was completed with a Springfield M1A SOCOM II assault rifle hung across his chest.

Checks completed, he and the seven members of the breech team walked out of the Throne Room.

Reeves and Amaya nodded to each other as he left. Even though there could be danger outside and a possibility that the Commander would not return, there would be no hugs, no tears, no goodbyes. They knew their duty, but the nod said everything that would remain silent.

At 07:46, Reeves' voice crackled over the radio. "We've reached the main doors, switching on the video feed."

With a flicker of lights, eight screens that had moments ago been blank slates suddenly gave Amaya and Preston eight soldier's eye views of the main door. They watched through the monitors as Reeves walked up to a keypad next to the large door and flipped open its plastic cover. This, the least secure door in the building, was operated by a numeric key code. Each person with access to the outside world had their own 8-digit PIN number. When the lockdown of C block occurred, only two of those numbers remained active, Commander Sean Arlis Reeves, and his second in command, Joshua Gibbs.

"Inputting security code," Reeves narrated over the speaker.

Nothing happened.

The keypad should have flashed green and the motors to the door should have started whirring in their song of opening the way. Neither occurred. Nor did the number pad flash red, which would have indicated an incorrect data input. Absolutely nothing.

Preston spoke over the radio. "The keypad must be out, sir, we can send a team down to look at it, or we can try a manual override."

"We'll manually override, and if that doesn't work, you can send a team down while we head out the back," the Commander decided.

The screen showed Rivas removing a two-foot by one-foot section of metal from the wall under the keypad. The orange-tinted lights of the corridor reflected on the metal, bathing the room in the color of new rust. Amaya could see the same tangle of wires Rivas would be looking at in the newly exposed opening.

"Preston's looking up the schematic right now, sir," Amaya informed the Commander.

Preston started tracing a wire path on his computer screen with his finger. "OK, sir, right on the top left side of the compartment, you should see three bundles of wires. Behind the bottom bundle, there should be a plastic switch. You need to flip it into the up position."

As Preston directed, Reeves’ fingers aptly maneuvered through the collection of wires until they found what they were looking for. It was dark and difficult to make out on the screen, but a slightly distorted shape of a switch came into focus. Amaya assumed it was just a combination of the lighting and the angle of the view until Reeves confirmed the cause of the distortion.

"The switch is melted," he reported. Reeves pushed more of the mess out of the way, kneeling for a better look. "In fact, everything back here is melted. Send a maintenance crew down here to sort this out; we'll head to the back door. When we've surfaced and secured the immediate area, we'll swing around and try to open it from the outside."

With that, one by one, the cameras switched off. It would take about 25 minutes for the team to make their way to the door at the other end of the facility.

Preston was immediately on a different radio channel talking to maintenance, apprising them of the situation. "Yes, before whatever appliance the scientists want to be fixed, for fucks sake."

While Preston arranged for maintenance, Amaya lost herself in her own thoughts. What could possibly have melted the components of the door mechanism?' she asked herself. They had been reasonably sure a nuke hadn't dropped that close to the facility because no shock waves registered on their equipment during Cloud Cover.

There had been periods of extreme heat registered, but nothing hot enough to melt plastic through all of the shielding. If there was some kind of power surge, maintenance would have known about it and fixed the problem, or at least they should have.

As soon as he was off the comm with maintenance, she questioned him. "What do you think, Preston?"

"I think these maintenance guys need to learn about prioritizing," he responded with a slight irritation in his voice.

"No," she said. "About the switch, what do you think about that?"

"I think it's fucked."

She playfully rolled her eyes at him. "Well, that was informative. I meant, what do you think caused it? It's not everyday plastic just melts into blobs of goo and then re-solidifies. Especially in this temperature-controlled environment."

"I don't know, Amaya. The maintenance crew might have some idea after they look at it, but I don’t. Right now, it doesn't matter anyway. We're using the other door and should be focused on preparing for when the Commander calls back."

"Alright," she sighed, knowing he had made a good point. She prepared by looking up the schematic for manually overriding the rear door and the street maps for the back entrance. She wished for the days before being sent to Carbon Block. The technical packages she had for missions would have given them any exterior camera whether publicly or privately owned, and a network of satellites and drones for any dead zones. Amaya would have felt more at ease having a visual of the area where the team would emerge. Wishing wouldn't do her much, though. She would just have to trust the team's skills to keep them safe.

Static came over the radio, followed shortly after by Reeves's voice. "You two still awake up there?"

"Yes, sir," Amaya replied.

"Good, we're turning the video back on. We've reached the rear exit. Had a couple of nosey scientists ask where we were heading. Gave them some BS about needing supplies before we went up."

As Reeves talked, the 8 screens flickered again, showing the team standing around the rear door. This looked more like an actual door than the giant rolling mechanized beast at the front. Even though it resembled a door, it was still no flimsy thing to be trifled with. On the contrary, it was meant to be impervious to any number of attempts to open it improperly and designed to withstand a nuclear blast.

"OK, take two," Reeves joked as he once again flipped the plastic cover of the keypad. "Inputting security code."

At 08:36, the keypad turned yellow as soon as the eighth digit was pressed. Reeves then placed his right thumb over the biometric scanner and the keys turned green. Next, Joshua Gibbs moved forward to repeat the process. Once the keys blinked green for the second time, the sound of gears churning filled the room. The smaller blast door leading out of the Block lifted from its resting place.

Everyone was on the highest alert. Hodge and Rivas dropped to one knee, their assault rifles out in front of them, their eyes pressed against the scopes that would be set to night vision. They scanned the area in front of them as the door continued its upward ascent. As soon as it was high enough, the two men walked through. Each went in a different direction, checking the next room for any signs of danger. Amaya remotely changed the view of their cameras to night vision so she and Preston could monitor what was going on in the dark room. All 8 screens took on a pale green glow.

The back door opened to what the city planning department had marked as part of the sewer system. In reality, it was nothing more than a large cement room with a ladder at the end directly across from the door the men had just walked through. 100 yards up, and they would be inches from the outside world. At the top of that ladder, only a manhole cover would be between them and the red, or blue, sky.

The disadvantageous exit was a big reason Amaya wished for satellite or drone coverage. It's pretty challenging to make a discreet entrance when you have to lift up and slide a manhole cover out of your way. Even though no one expected danger close to the facility, preparing for the worst and praying for the best was Reeves's motto. So until proved otherwise, everyone operated under the unlikely assumption that hostiles could be in the immediate area.

"OK, folks, let's get to climbing," Reeves ordered and led the way up.

Up and up and up they went. Eight screens filled with the same view, each just a few feet above the rest. Each camera showed a different rung, a different arm, and the same cement wall just behind the ladder.

08:54, Amaya and Preston could tell that the Commander had reached the top before saying anything because all movement stopped on the screens.

"How good of an image are you getting from my camera Amaya?" he questioned.

"Not bad, sir, although all I'm seeing is the underside of a manhole cover at the moment," she replied to his inquiry, trying to figure out what his question was leading to.

"OK, let's try something. I'm going to feed this camera up," Reeves said as he directed the camera to a small hole in the cover, which allowed a person to pry the metal up from the street. "You'll be my eyes, Amaya. Check it out and see if the coast is clear."

"Copy that, sir." Apparently, wishing wasn't always futile. Ask for cameras, and ye shall receive. Reeves's screen blurred for a bit before emerging out of the hole and flooding the screen with intense white light.

"Ouch," Preston mouthed to Amaya and teasingly brought his hand up to his eyes.

"Switching back from night vision and I'll let you know what I see," she said, resisting the urge to laugh at Preston and shooting him a look of feigned annoyance. She accessed the camera control on the command screen and turned the night vision off. Again, the screen for Reeves's feed flickered as the camera re-initiated, this time in the standard video.

"Well, the blue's lost," she commented. "All I am getting is an image of the sky, sir, which looks very red but clear. See if you can adjust the angle of the camera."

This wasn't the most ideal equipment to be doing this with. Still, beggars can't be choosers, and Amaya considered themselves lucky to be having what they did. You had to look at life that way when the known world above ground had been incinerated in a nuclear fire blast.

Reeves twisted around the camera cord until it was at a better angle. It still wasn’t the greatest; most of the view was still sky. The bottom of the screen mainly displayed rubble. Huge chunks of gray cement with pieces of rebar sticking out at weird angles. Amaya slowly began to realize that it wasn't the camera angle that was the problem; it was the lack of anything blocking the horizon.

"Sir, which way is the camera facing?" she asked, half knowing the answer but needing confirmation.

"You should be looking at the office building," he replied. "What are you seeing?"

He was referring to the office building above the main entrance to C Block, hiding its existence in the lowest level of its parking garage.

What Amaya was seeing was that, in a sense. "What's left of the building, and it's not much."

The image on the screen did not fit the assumptions they made of what occurred at the end of the world. Well, you know what they say about assuming. "Nothing of interest other than that, sir. Why don't you rotate the camera around and give me a 360 view."

Reeves did, and it was more of the same. Further off in the distance, buildings were still standing, but everything in the immediate area had been utterly destroyed. It all collapsed into nothing more than boulders of concrete and glass pieces, which were reflecting the red of the sky and the sun like glinting eyes from demons of hell.

Like the eyes from her dreams, she shuttered for a moment, her arms prickling with goose pimples, bringing an odd look from Preston. She ignored him and the haunting memory, concentrating on the screen projecting Reynold's camera. There was no movement, no signs of life, nothing of tactical importance other than the fact that there was no cover. That would leave the team exposed when they exited the safety of the underground.

'Exposed to what?' she thought. That was still the question; without jumping into the fire to find out, there would be no answer.

"Looks good, sir," she said, giving the team the all-clear. They trusted she hadn't missed anything as Commander Reeves used his shoulder to push open the manhole cover from its secure bed in the asphalt. The first few moments were tense as all eight soldiers crawled out of the den and entered the world like bears coming out of hibernation. Reeves and his seven cubs began methodically searching and clearing quadrants outside the Block.

Preston and Amaya watched intensely, scanning all the screens, taking in the destruction, and looking for anything the team might have missed. Once the initial area, which covered the entire block, was called "all clear," Reeves sent Sable, Pritchard, Hodge, Rivas, and Hopkins to maintain a perimeter. Then he, Gibbs, and Boyer were going to try and open the main door from the outside.

Since the team split up, Preston and Amaya split the monitoring duties to match. He took the five men patrolling the perimeter, and she continued monitoring Reeves and his bunch.

As soon as they got close enough to the main door, all four realized they wouldn't be opening it today. The door was set in the parking garage of the building basement. Since the building had collapsed, too much rubble and debris fell on the door for it to open.

"We could always send maintenance out here to dig us out," Gibbs offered as a solution.

"Or make the test tube geeks get out here. They could use some good manly labor," joked Boyer. It was no secret he liked the scientists least of all.

Amaya remembered one conversation where he told her that the scientists creeped him out, running tests on rats and mice. He was convinced it was only a matter of time before they lost their minds and wanted human test subjects, and obviously, the sec force would be prime meat.

"You'd like to see your man Jace out here all sweaty, wouldn't you, Amaya?" Boyer continued.

"He might hurt his delicate hands," Johnston ribbed back to a round of laughter by the guys, including Preston, who appeared to be gloating as he monitored his computer screen.

"His delicate hands are seeing more action than yours," she replied, immediately followed by a round of "oohs" on the channel. "Don't you have a quadrant to secure so those scientists can head up there and get some readings?"

"Ya, ya, we’re on it," Boyer replied.

10:23, the team headed back to the rear door, which was about to be public knowledge, as Barnes led four scientists and all their equipment to the ladder. Once there, Barnes helped them carry their gear up the ladder, handed them over to Reeves, and returned to continue walking the grid.

Preston and Amaya continued watching their team, sometimes noticing as a scientist would enter the field of vision of one camera or another. They carried various pieces of equipment and cases filled with containers for collecting samples. Most of the equipment was unrecognizable to the two sitting in the throne room. But Amaya did notice the Geiger counter that Kevin Parker was carrying. She could see him popping in and out of the screens taking readings of different spots and materials.

Marc Stillwell was picking up all sorts of samples, from broken pieces of glass to melted plastic. Unfortunately, the scientists weren't mic-ed, so Amaya missed the question he asked Reeves and only caught the Commander's response. "The only organic matter you're going to find today is any dirt you can find between the cracks of the road."

Apparently, that answer didn't please the scientist as his muffled voice rose in tone. Finally, Reeves replied, "It's miles down the road before we get out of downtown, we haven't cleared that area yet, and we're not doing it today. You've got four city blocks to look through. Have fun."

Reeves waved his hand, signifying that the conversation was over. Amaya internally cringed at how the debrief would go tonight. She could practically guarantee an interruption from Ken Hollis, the head research scientist, the white coat counterpart to Commander Reeves. There would be a "civil" conversation about how the security team was trying to run the show and impeding their ability to "give humanity a chance at a better life."

Amaya had heard it all before. Reeves would counter with pre-apocalypse regulations designed to keep everyone safe. They would get things semi-smoothed over, and everyone would live happily ever after. As happily ever after two groups of people with vastly different mindsets could be trapped underground for an extended period with only each other as company.

The ongoing flash point for the friction was the events surrounding the lockdown of the Core during Cloud Cover. The Core of Carbon Block contained the areas where scientists worked with biological agents, mainly genetically modifying infectious agents into weaponized versions. When the facility locked down, so did the Core. This was intended to prevent biological agents from being used within the rest of the Block. After the security team cleared the facility, decisions about what to do with the Core had to be made.

The security team had no way to determine whether or not any of the scientists trapped within were cohorts with the unknown combatant. Combined with the potential for severe damage if something did get out, Reeves refused to input the security code that would open the Core. As a result, 14 people died locked within. The scientists saw it as murder. In their minds, the sec team willingly allowed their colleagues to die for no reason other than an infinitesimal chance that one of them was involved in the attack. Amaya always believed they had to intellectually understand that regardless of how slight, the consequences were too grave if Reeves misjudged. Emotionally they never forgave the security team for that decision, and a divide was born.

To say it was strained would be the biggest understatement since the war broke out. Communication and trust had fallen apart, just like the world.

Well, not everything had fallen apart, apparently.

At 13:24, through Kyle Boyer's camera, Amaya could see a geneticist, Leon Gruen, had stumbled across something interesting. He was speaking loud enough that Kyle's mic picked him up as he was excitedly relaying he had found a plant not two blocks from the front door, slithering up from a crack in the cement, half-covered by a fallen stop sign.

He showed it to Kyle, safely stored away in a sample container. It was a beautiful green, viney, leafy plant with large leaves that looked like chickweed. With that discovery, hope was fulfilled. Something was growing out there, which meant the world was not wholly dead. The earth had fought back, and she was winning, even if just a little.

Leon yelled something out, and the other scientists gathered where the plant was found, taking readings and measurements. The scientists were buzzing excitedly, sure to carry on into the night. Long after everyone was safely locked up inside the Block, they would run tests, crunch numbers, and comb through data.

Finally, at 16:00, under the relentless sun's heat, with scientific curiosities satiated, for the time being, everyone was eager to return to the block. That was where the real work and real discoveries could begin.