Nuclear Ghosts: Haunted Wastelands Series Book 2

Prologue

A breeze in the Mojave sounded like a distant waterfall. When the wind kicked up and there was so much open space, it became a roar. It rose and fell like waves, and the faint pattering of sand against your clothing and flesh was the only variation you’d hear, like a bit of texture added to the smoothness of nature’s aggression.

Harland Supp turned away from the wind. The night was cold again, a contrast from the day’s heat, but dry. The mixture of dry air and dust stung his eyes, and he found that some nights left the corners of his mouth and nostrils caked with little balls of mud from it.

He and Ryne McKendry had guarded Bunker 7 for nearly three months. A full twelve-hour shift every night, in the dark, and in the middle of nowhere.

The two men barely spoke for the first two nights. They had been ordered not to. Harland didn’t know McKendry, so the two had no reason to speak about anything. On the third night, Harland accidentally dropped his thermos of coffee in the sand and cursed much louder than was necessary. It didn’t matter: No one else was around for miles.

McKendry offered Harland a Pepsi. It wasn’t coffee, but he always brought three with him, and Harland was glad to have something. They both had water, but it was nice to cut the monotony with some flavor. It was impossible to avoid a mouthful of dust by the end of the shift, and the taste was not desirable.

From that day on, the two engaged in normal workplace small talk and then friendlier banter. It was clear that no one was monitoring them or checking their work. There were no functional cameras outside of the bunker, and their guard station was little more than a glorified box with a toilet and a sink inside.

Neither knew why they were guarding the bunker, what was in it, or who owned it. The Nevada National Security Site was an alphabet soup of jurisdiction. The Army covered some spots and the Air Force others, not to mention the U.S. Geological Survey, the Department of Energy, the Atomic Energy Commission, and probably a handful of others. Not that it mattered. A job was a job.

They were on a six-month contract, and it was a hell of a thing to work twelve hours a day for six months straight, but the money was absurd. He, so far, had made more standing in the desert talking with McKendry than he had in two full years at the best job he’d ever had previously. He was not complaining at all.

Harland and McKendry were armed. Harland had never had to kill anyone, but he had been fired upon and returned fire. He’d served two tours in Vietnam. He would not hesitate to use a weapon if it came to that. But in three months, they hadn’t even seen a coyote, let alone a human. They didn’t even get lizards.

McKendry was cagey about his military history. He hadn’t served in Vietnam, but he said he had been out of the country until seventy-three. He had been back less than a year when he got the job guarding Bunker 7.

For three months, nothing at all had happened at the bunker, and then, that morning, they had been informed that a VIP would arrive during their shift. All they had to do was make sure he got safely into and out of the bunker.

“Like a doorman?” McKendry reviewed the orders on site.

Each of them had the paperwork hand-delivered to their homes by a nameless man in a suit that evening before their shifts started.

“We’re doormen,” Harland agreed, his back still to the wind.

McKendry chuckled and shrugged.

“What do you think is going on down in there?”

“Nuclear stuff. Spy stuff. Hell, I don’t know,” Harland replied.

He’d thought of it before. They did all kinds of nuclear tests out in the desert, and he’d heard they had been doing them since the 1950s. They had to keep up with stuff so the Soviets wouldn’t get ahead. That made sense.

“Never seen any tracks in or out of here, is all,” McKendry said. “No one comes here but us.”

“Yeah.”

Harland had noticed that as well. There was no day shift that they relieved, nor did any take over for them in the morning when they left their posts. It was the two of them and no one else.

It was closing in on three in the morning when a new sound cut through the moaning of the wind in the dark desert. Harland and McKendry were alert and ready for it as a pair of headlights appeared on the horizon.

The men waited, rifles at the ready, as an Army Jeep approached, hitting every bump and stone in the desert along the way as it approached the bunker.

The Jeep slowed to a stop just a few yards from the men. The driver was alone and got out slowly, using the frame of the vehicle to support himself. He wore a polo shirt and khaki pants, no sign that he was military or government. His hair was cropped short, but Harland didn’t think he was in the service based on the way he carried himself.

The stranger was pale and had deep bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days. “Is the door unlocked?” the man asked. He sounded out of breath and gruff.

“No,” McKendry answered. “We don’t have access.”

The man at the Jeep sighed loudly, almost forcing out a laugh, and shook his head. He reached back into the Jeep and pulled out what looked like a jewelry box or something used for keepsakes. Dark wood, bigger than a shoebox, and heavy, judging from the way the man held it.

He grunted, holding it at chest level and walking toward the two guards. The strain of carrying the box seemed to hit the man immediately, and Harland saw he was tensing, holding his breath as his face flushed red in the glow of the Jeep’s headlights.

“You need a hand?” Harland was unsure if the man was supposed to be referred to as “sir”.

“No,” the man snapped breathily. “No one touches it. Just get the door.”

“The door’s locked.” McKendry gestured with his thumb to the bunker. “We’ve never been inside.”

McKendry approached the bunker door. Bunker 7 was little more than a slanted stone wall that vanished into the sand, with a red, steel door in the center of it. It was slightly larger than their guard station. The door must have led to a set of stairs because there was no room for anything inside the tiny structure aboveground, but that was all Harland or his partner knew.

McKendry grabbed the handle on the door and pushed it down. The mechanism inside crunched and squealed, and the door pulled open in his grip. He looked at Harland, stunned by the revelation, and Harland shrugged.

The man with the box stumbled a couple of paces from the Jeep and stopped, half-crouched and hugging the box like it was the most precious thing he owned.

“Sir,” Harland said, stepping toward him.

“Back up!” the man demanded.

He breathed heavily, straining even more now, and straightened. A drop of blood hung from the man’s right nostril, dangling precariously until he took another unsteady step, and then it fell onto the sand. Another followed, and then another, and soon, a full nosebleed ran openly from both nostrils.

“Hey, pal, your nose is running like a tap.” McKendry grimaced slightly.

The man looked confused and then looked down. Blood had splattered against his hands and the box he clutched. As Harland watched, the blood on the box dried out, darkening and sticking to the wooden surface.

“Doesn’t matter.” The man leaned his head awkwardly to the right so he could wipe his nose on his shoulder. “Let’s go. Quickly.”

Harland didn’t want to get any closer to the man, but he walked at his side like an official escort. The man groaned and wobbled suddenly, falling to his knees as he lost his grip on the box. It tumbled from his hands, and he nearly went face-first into the sand, catching himself on one shaky arm at the last moment.

“Sir, you need medical attention,” Harland said.

He had no idea what was wrong with the man and hoped it wasn’t contagious.

“I’m fine.” The man struggled to get the words out and coughed hoarsely. His body shuddered and blood splattered his hand from the effort.

“I—”

He tried to speak several times, to stand or even move, but the coughing took hold. Harland had no idea what to do. He knew basic field medicine, but that was for injuries. He could handle cuts, breaks, and even a bullet wound in a pinch. Whatever the man was dealing with was beyond his knowledge.

“Call it in,” Harland said to McKendry.

They had one walkie-talkie between them that neither had ever used. It was strictly for emergencies, and they had been warned to only use it in a life-or-death situation. Harland assumed this was such a situation.

“Base, this is Bunker 7. We have a medical emergency,” McKendry said into the walkie. He removed his finger from the button, and there was no reply, not even static.

“Base?” he said again, tweaking the volume. Still nothing.

McKendry cycled through the channels as Harland got the man on the ground to lay on his side.

“This thing’s got no signal,” McKendry said.

“The box,” the man finally said forcefully, struggling against Harland. “Give… me…”

“The box can wait—” Harland began, leaning over to pick it up. He grabbed the sides of it and lifted. It was heavier than he expected, but it was also upside-down. The lid popped open, and a human skull rolled out into the sand.

The stranger was still trying to stand when McKendry dropped the walkie.

“Harland,” he said softly.

Harland watched as the skull began to glow. The light was soft at first but grew steadily brighter.

The stranger flopped onto his back, his eyes wide with terror as the light bathed them all, now as bright as a bulb.

“Run!” he barked, blood and spit streaming from his lips. “Run, goddamn you!”

Harland winced and dropped the box, lifting his arm to shield himself from the ever-brightening light. It burned his eyes, and he could barely see as he turned away to find some relief.

McKendry cried out in pain, and an instant later, Harland felt a searing burn along the bare flesh of his arm and the back of his neck. He shrunk away from it to conceal himself, but soon, it was across his body, even beneath his flesh.

The stranger was screaming. McKendry’s howl was like an animal, and Harland ran. He stumbled, his boots melting from his feet and flames licking along his back as his clothing ignited. He felt his flesh cracking and burning down to the muscle.

He fell to the ground in agony, unable to do anything but scream into the dry, dusty Mojave as his flesh and muscle and finally bone was scorched to nothing.