Chapter 3

We had to turn the Dish side ways to get it through, once the hatch was opened. On the other side, I found we had another tunnel to walk through. This one was not huge and roomy like the one I came down in. No this was just big enough that I could walk without ducking my head. I could touch the sides without extending my arms. Two people could pass each other, but not by much.

There was no lighting, so we carried flash lights. Every so often in our walk down the tunnel, we came to another hatch. These were also steel, but opened differently than the one we entered through. It had swung out on large hinges, while these we passed, didn’t have that feature. Greg kept shining his light on the numbers stenciled on them, and kept going. Finally we came to a hatch and Greg stopped. I assume this was the one we were going to open, so I set down my load of tools and parts.

“7B, this is the one Robert. Make sure you get the breather on right.” Greg referred to the OB” that we each had strapped to our chests. AGet it started and we will wait here a few minutes just to make sure it’s working.” He watched me, as I put the mask over my face and adjusted the straps. Nodding his head after looking me over good with his light, Greg put his on, and we switched the OBA’s on. Oxygen Breathing Apparatus, was what the letters stood for. I had to watch a video of it being used, just before we set off on our repair journey. I didn’t care for the smell of the canned air and rubber fittings, but I figured it would keep me alive and that was good enough.

To open the door, Greg inserted something that looked like a tire Iron and gave a few hard tugs. Together both of us, pulled on the iron and it slowly turned in the slot. “One more time.” I heard Greg’s muffled voice through the mask. “gain we pulled after Greg reinserted the bar, and it came easy. AThat is the lock.” Greg muffled “ Now we can slide the whole thing back.” Reaching up to some hand holds, we both physically pulled the door sideways and it slowly slid into the wall. All I saw behind the door was a round metal shaft that disappeared into the overhead. I couldn’t see any way inside it, no door or even anything that looked like it could be opened.

Seeing my concern, Greg smiled and nodded over to the side where I saw hand crank and steel wire going up through and block and back down, ending in with a hook attached to it. “Take the hook and attach it to that ring on the side there.” He pointed on the side of the shaft. I saw the ring and put the hook on it like I was told. It was then that I realized that the shaft had a bottom section that was larger than the upper part. Greg, attached another hook on his side and went to the crank assembly. “Together now, we turn the cranks and it will lift this bottom ring.”

We started cranking, and the steel wire, began winding up on the spool. It came tight and with more effort, we continued turning the cranks. I noticed the Metal bottom starting to slowly lift and slide up the steel tube. Greg kept cranking and saying muffled words of encouragement. The Large metal belt slowly raised until it exposed an open hatch. Through it I could see into the Metal shaft. There were rungs going up the inside, and I figured it was the way out. Finally. Gathering up our parts and tools, Greg put them into a large canvas bag that he’d brought, and then attached a rope to it.

“When we get to the top, we’ll pull it up.” He said, referring to the bag. Having said that he started climbing the rungs. I followed after, trying to stay to the side so as not to have that damn rope he was dangling, slap me in the face. We got to one level, where the shaft was suddenly a lot wider and had a platform to stand on. “Were at ground level now.” Greg muffled again through the OB”. AWe’ll pull the bag up now and then go on up to the next level.”

I could see hatch right beside us and wondered why we couldn’t just go out through it. Greg, gave me a look of discernment, that I could see right through the mask. He motioned to my shoulder and I looked to see my personal Geiger counter with the needle bouncing around the yellow. It was still a ways from the red, so I wasn’t worried yet.

“Flick the switch, the little button and you can hear the crackle of the atoms.” he said. I looked and pushed one of the buttons, and discovered it was the right one. The gadget started giving out a static like beat, and Greg informed me, that was the radiation. “There probably is a lot of radioactive dust out there. No need to expose ourselves to that.”

“What about up there. There’s bound to be dust there.”

“Yeah, but again, maybe the wind has blown it off. Anyway, that’s where the work is, and were pretty safe. I just don’t want to risk stepping out of the circle, so to speak.”

We pulled up the bag, and after resting a bit, cause the bag was heavy, and I am sorely out of shape, we continued our climb. It was only a hundred feet or more, but at the fifty foot level, Greg ran out of rope so we had to pull the bag up again. There was a bit of a cat walk around the inside of the round silo like structure. On that we set the bag, and after another rest, we continued the climb again.

Finally we came to a flat ceiling and through a round hole we pulled ourselves through. Now I could see what it was we were going to do. I was standing in a round dome covered room. The room was filled with several aerials of different heights, along with three different dishes. Each pointed in a different direction. The dome was damaged, as a large chunk was taken out of one side. There was debris from the dome and some other, from what or where it came, I couldn’t tell. Once we came through the hatch, Greg turned off his light and told me to do the same. It was still dark, but we could see well enough from the glow in the eastern sky. Greg remarked that at least the sun was still coming up in the East.

Greg took a good look around and said that everything looked like it was still here. Course a couple of the dishes were torn from their settings and the frayed electrical wires were dangling unattached. As it was still too dark to see any detail, we waited for it to get lighter. Greg cautioned me from standing too close to the damaged part of the dome, lest some early riser should spot me. I didn’t figure there was much chance of that. I wanted to see what the world looked like out there.

The clicking of the Geiger Counter, was a steady sound. I checked it, and saw that we were still in the safe part of the scale. I could see a lot of dust back where most of the debris had fallen. But I was told as long as I didn’t breathe any in, or get it on my skin, I would be alright. So I edged closer to the large hole where the dome was missing some of it’s shell. One thing that I had been wondering about, was what kind of tower we were in. I saw from the several same shaped buildings, that we were right next to several silos. The tower was disguised as a grain silo. The dome hid the array of antennas and was of some thin material that allowed signals to pass through. I thought, ANo wonder I never knew anything about this, set up. The government or whomever, went to a lot of trouble to keep this all secret. I wondered how much more was still a secret from me.

Keeping back some, I figured I was safe from being spotted by anyone on ground level. A look along the ridge to the east and the rising sun, I could see the stubs of broken trees with their tops missing. The blasts had hit hard. Slowly as it grew lighter, I could see some of the town. It was hard to pick out the buildings, as I had never see it from this direction before. I couldn’t see the steeple of the Church on Main street. I was pretty sure I was looking in the right direction, but wasn’t positive. I did notice a dark smudge to the north, and figured it to be smoke. The one thing I didn’t see was lights. Not one electric light or lantern of any sort.

“We better get to working.” Greg said right beside me. He too was looking around, and the somber tone of his voice said more than his words. The light was beginning to reveal that the standing structures were missing walls, windows, and roofs. Every building we could see in that early light was damaged to some extent. We couldn’t see a lot, but what we could, was bad.

The work went fast, and we replaced two of the dishes, and realigned the other. I did most of the nut tightening, while Greg went through with his wire repair kit, and reconnected things the best he could. The more we worked, the more we started sweating. The inside of my mask was starting to fog the eyepieces. Greg seeing my predicament just laughed, and I heard him say a few muffled words about not wiping the lens with something or other. I recalled seeing a cloth that was in the box with the mask. I suppose it was to be used to wipe the eyepieces and keep them from fogging up. Well that was nice to know, just wish it had been covered in the video.

We were finished, as far as we could tell. Whether anything was working, we would find out when we got back to the Bunker. Greg said to leave the tools, as this was where we would be using them if they were needed again. I also left the extra parts we didn’t use. No need taking them back down with us, for the same reason. So the trip back was faster, even with Greg having to help me find the rungs. With my vision all steamed up, he had to do a lot of seeing for me. Once I started down the rungs, I didn’t need any help. It was all feel any way, even if I could see. I sure wanted to take that mask off and clear the fog from the eyepieces, but didn’t.

Once at the bottom and back through the opening, we lowered the metal belt back down, covering the opening. I had to admire the contraption. The only way to open that portal was from the inside, or with a cutting torch. Before we entered the tunnel again, Greg pulled out a hose I hadn’t seen. Turning a valve and squeezing the nozzle, Greg aimed a wide spray of water at me. To say it took me by surprise is an understatement. Even as I was shocked by the cold water, I at once realized it was to wash the contaminated dust off me. So I slowly turned and let the spray wet everything down, and watched the water runoff my, as best I could through the fogged mask. Next I took the hose and washed Greg down. He had to do most of the turning as I could still not see through the mask well enough to see what I was doing. Finally we figured to have all the dust washed off. We hadn’t done much to get any on us, but we had been down on our knees several times fixing the Electronics and Dishes. There could have been some wind born dust too, but in our suit’s we couldn’t tell if there was or not.

Looking at the Geiger Counter, the needle was way back in the green. That was reassuring, and so we sealed up the room and slid the door back in place. Greg still had to help position my hands as we were not to remove the OBA’s as yet. We put a good strain on the bar, in tightening the lock back on the door. Again, there was no way that it could be opened from the outside, so we were pretty sure that no visitors would come from that way.

In talking with Greg as we trudged back the way we had come, he pointed out several places where a large concrete reinforced doors would be lowered if ever the entrances should be breached. Once lowered, there was a way to get them raised again, but as yet, he hadn’t found out how. I asked where the other hatches led too, the ones we passed on our way through the first time. Again, Greg said he hadn’t got to that part yet, and surmised they were just escape hatches or something like that. I made a mental note to find out what I could about this part of the Bunker complex.

When we finally arrived at the entrance to the sealed Bunker, Greg flipped open a small metal box and inserted a round disk. I expected something to happen, but for several minutes nothing moved. Then when I was about to tell him to take the disk out and jam it in again, there was an audible click and a short electric hum. A light blinked three times in the box, and Greg retrieved his disk. What happened next surprised even Greg. A sudden burst of water sprayed us both, and this time it was a large blast of water, that came from all directions. I guess they didn’t want to take chances on us doing a thorough job of washing ourselves. When the water finally stopped spraying we were dripping wet. The force had been so strong that I had to move my feet to keep my balance and not fall over. A voice came over a speaker that I never saw, but I recognized Carl’s voice telling us we could remove our masks now. I thought it was a damn good thing that I hadn’t done it before the high pressure water spray hit us. It surely would have done some damage to exposed skin.

Back inside, we stepped into a changing room and removed the suit’s. They were left hanging, so as to thoroughly dry and we went to the communication room to see if our repairs had done any good. My clothes that I wore under the contamination suit were damp with sweat, and turning cold to the cooling air. I needed to get back to my room and change into something else, even if it was those scrubs again. First both Greg and I wanted to see what if anything they were picking up from the dishes we had repaired.

There was quite a little crowd gathered around the computers, when Greg and I got to the Communication room. Miss Collins was there along with several of the women, the rest were still with the school girls, playing some basket ball, as I saw when passing through the Main Room. Dave Gumm was sitting at the consol clicking on different read outs on the screen. From the looks on the faces there was something being learned from all this.

“Well, do we have contact?” Greg beat me to the question.

“Yes, we have a station in the southern part of the valley. They report that several detonations occurred there. They also report a high level of radiation.” Carl answered, quickly. “We have some readings of our own, now that you got it all hooked up again.”

“Nothing like what their reporting down south, thank god.” Dave Gumm added.

“They must be very close to ground zero, to get that level of Radiation.” Carl worriedly shook his head. “We must be pretty lucky.” As he said that, I couldn’t help but think there must be hundreds of ground zeros, with all the detonations we’d felt.

“I don’t know about that.” Greg said, rubbing his face where the mask had left a crease on his cheeks. “From what we could see, there isn’t a building that hasn’t been damaged to some extent. Most of them look pretty bad.” Then seeing the concern look on Carl’s he explained that the dome was damaged and had a large section missing. “That was why we weren’t receiving anything. Just about all the gear was blown off the stands, and the dishes cut the lines to the rest. I think we got everything hooked back up.”

“Did you see anyone?” Miss Collins asked. Her voice betrayed her hope that other people were still alive.

This time I answered her, and told her it was too early, not light enough to see much detail. I had to admit that we didn’t see any signs of human activity. Not even a bird in the sky. Other than that dark plume of smoke, there was nothing happening in that early dawn. The fact that the Silo was so far from the town center, made it hard to see any activity. There could be hundreds of people scurrying about that we couldn’t see.

The readings were coming in from all the restored instruments. Carl was checking the dials mounted on the wall next to the line of computers. “Outside temp is 38`.” he sounded surprised, and checked the time. “ It should be warmer than that, especially this time of day.”

Dave announced that the wind was out of the south west, at fifteen miles per hour. It was obvious that they were more than happy that everything had been restored. I was surprised to see what they called the weather cam, was showing the sky to the west. I didn’t even know that there was one. I certainly didn’t see anything like that in the dome. Greg told me later, that it had to be hooked up some place on the outside. Which figured, as it couldn’t see out inside the dome. Greg had done a very good job of reconnecting all the wiring that had been severed. Now at least we could tell what was going on weather wise. The camera was good for seeing clouds but it didn’t reveal much at ground level.

“What about the civil defense bands.” Jim Christian suddenly spoke up. I had hardly noticed him, as he’d been hanging back from the center of discussions lately. There was Martin Block that hardly ever said anything, lurking with Jim. The feeling was, both men were closely alined in their thinking.

“Those bands are just recordings, repeating the same thing for the last half hour.” Dave told him and then adjusted the frequency. “Nothing from the other agencies either.”

“Have you tried any of the Citizen Bands?” Jim seemed anxious for some type of contact. Dave said that he hadn’t checked the CB channels and started switching things over to that frequency. Almost immediately there was the noise of many people talking over each other. Dave went down the list of channels until the signals got stronger and blanked out the more distant ones. Carl motioned for him to stop at one where there was a clear conversation going on between at least two people.

An older sounding man was telling how he and his family were barely surviving in their home made shelter. He had plenty of food and water, but the close confines of the shelter was getting to them. He didn’t have any way of knowing if it was safe to go outside or not. The other person responded that he and his family were doing okay. The gloom of only candle light was their biggest problem, but other than that they were okay.