There was a time - long ago - when I was considerably "heftier" than Bill. I had a significant spare tire and Bill had a thin...almost skinny...profile. Father Time changed all that. Now I am Stan Laurel and he is Oliver Hardy. Better yet he is Burl Ives and Raymond Burr (combined!) after an all-nighter down smorgasbord boulevard.

         I recently told Bill that whenever I looked at him I was reminded of Atlas holding up the Globe. "I really remind you of Atlas?" he asked. "No!" I replied. "The Globe."

         My only reason for detailing Bill's physique is to provide a partial background for what happened next during our whirlwind tour of The General's Bunker.

         The Whirlwind Tour

         The General gave us no reason as to why the hurry - and we did not ask - but our tour took place on the run. We made lightning-fast rounds through bunk rooms 1 and 2, the briefing room, and the tactical room. In that order.

         It was amazing to watch The General navigate the corridor (Main Street), doorways, niches, and crannies of the complex. For all his bulk he was like a fish in water. Bill, on the other hand, was huffing and puffing like a Big Boy Locomotive by the time we reached tactical. He was the fish in the tree.

         "Your friend isn't in the best condition," The General said quietly. We were standing just within the confines of the tactical room and Bill was leaning/hugging the doorjamb.

         I had to be honest. I said, "Bill adheres strictly to three main food groups: tacos, tacos, and tacos."

         The General considered for a moment. "We still have a lot of ground to cover," he admitted. "This level is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Perhaps we should let him go back to the bunk room. He needs rest. In the meantime you and I can continue..."

         Bill suddenly began croaking and sputtering. He lurched away from the doorjamb and began shaking his head in a very negative manner. The sweat from his brow - sprinkling us - was reminiscent of a tropical rain. He was pale as a ghost.

         "Dude!" he breathed. "I'm okay! I'm with you! I'm okay."

         Nevertheless we forced Bill to lean against a wall and catch his breath while The General showed me around.

         "Most of the hardware in this room is of alien technology," he told me. We were standing over something the size of a billiard table. The General flipped a switch and the billiard table became a huge monitor/radar scope that faced the ceiling. An image began to form.

         

         "I can tell you for a fact that this device was constructed entirely on our own earth," he told me. "But even so it is 100% alien technology." He reached out and caressed the shining surface of the picture tube. "Don't be fooled by its appearance", he continued. "It is not glass as we know it. The picture tube is not hollow like our own. It is a solid material much like a diamond. The image you see is not the result of electrons painting on a layer of phosphorescent material. The image is more akin to a holograph that layers itself between the surface of the "tube" and the retinas of whomever is within 2.5 meters of any given edge of the screen."

         The General realized that I was lost.

         "It's a security feature," he added. "A man has to be within 2.5 meters of any portion of the screen in order to see the display. Otherwise there is no emitted light pattern for the retina to detect."

         I was now staring intently into the screen image. What I was looking at appeared to be a color satellite image of Southern California. Centered on the screen was the Mojave Desert. I was at a loss for words. The picture was so perfectly crystal clear as to be beyond imagination.

         The General smiled.

         "You think that image is spectacular?" he bellowed. "Hold onto your hat!" He then advised me to reach out with both hands and steady myself against the side of the monitor. I did. Then he flicked another switch.

         The image became perfectly three-dimensional. Reach out and touch-type perfect. Beautiful. I must have held my breath for several long moments because suddenly I was gasping for air.

         "Don't let go of the monitor," The General said. "Here's where the fun begins..."

         Suddenly the image zoomed upwards. Southern California rocketed at me. I actually ducked and nearly fell backwards. I could hear the General chuckling. Again I focused on the screen. We were approaching a layer of cloud. Suddenly gray filled the screen. Then it vanished and the surface reappeared. We were still zooming. For a brief second I could not tell what I was looking at. Every part of the image - except for dead center - was radiating outwards too fast for my humble mind to categorize. This was a particularly disconcerting feeling - for with it came a touch of dizziness. My hands instinctively gripped tighter to the monitor. Again I heard The General laughing.

         The zoom stopped. I had to blink a few times to recover; in doing so a drop of sweat was dislodged and rolled down my cheek. I wiped at my eye with the back of my hand and realized I was soaking wet. I peered again at the monitor. What I now saw was a dirty gray background diagonally bisected by a dirty yellowish-white band.

         The General carefully extended a hand and caressed the image again. "Gosh! That was fun," he said. "The only other living person I've shown this to was Smith - oh - three years ago. He passed out and bashed his head on the floor. I ended up putting twenty three stitches in him."

         I took a deep breath. "No grudges," I told him. "I love a good roller coaster." By this time I was peering at the screen again. "What is that?" I asked. "Malfunction?"

         The General told me to look a little closer. With a finger he pointed at a faint but darker smudge that crossed over part of the yellowish-white band. I squinted hard and screwed my eyes in and out a few times. The dark smudge began to look like the skid mark of a tire.

         "Just west of Ludlow on old Route 66," The General whispered. I could tell that he was just as much in awe as I was. "Center yellow divider is six inches wide. If I had the proper forensic knowledge I could tell you what make of tire and probably the weight of the vehicle wearing them; which direction it was traveling and how fast."

         

         I told The General that it was the most incredible photograph I had ever seen.

         He looked at me as if I had muttered the Evil Word.

         "Photograph?" he boomed. He flicked another switch and the picture zoomed outwards - slowly - for what must have been six or seven hundred feet. There was now visible a significant length of Route 66. I could see a 16-wheeler moving northwest. "This is a real-time image son!"

         I guess I must have had a "you're full of the brown stuff" look on my face at that point because he immediately went on the defensive and rearranged his phraseology.

         "Okay," he said. "Uh - so it's not a real-time image per se. Quite frankly we are not sure how to describe the effect. It is a combination of many data sources: it is part raw image from a geosynchronus USGS bird, part standard database, and part - here's a term assigned by the geeks who evaluated the device way back when they had their opportunity - dynamic layer database. What you are looking at is a composite of multiple layers - I understand there to be in the neighborhood of 300 - of dynamically updated real-time data culled from several hundred thousand "eyes and ears" scattered about Southern California.

         He paused then and swallowed hard a couple times. I could tell he needed to wet his whistle. Was there a mug of hot Postum in the near future?

         He continued. "Incorporated in the composite is - of course - a satellite image and 3D relief information. But there is much more than that: weather information including micromillibar pressure data, air movement, temperature to plus or minus .5 degrees Fahrenheit, and humidity. There is also precise real time data regarding airborne contaminants to include noxious gases, every type of dioxide imaginable, and radiation levels.

         He paused for a moment to catch his breath then signaled me to wait where I was. He trotted off into a back room. In the meantime I peered across the room to see how Bill was doing. He was prone on the floor, snoring quietly.

         "Miracles do happen," I muttered.

         The General returned within thirty seconds with two steaming mugs of Postum.

         "Where was I?" he asked.

         "Leading me to doubt your sanity," I replied.

         "Oh yes," he said. "Of that I am sure. I have my own doubts as well. I've learned to live with it."

         

         We had spent quite a bit of time admiring the tactical room's monitor - perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. All of a sudden it was as if The General had just realized this fact. In no time we had rousted Bill, got him to his feet, and were running up (down?) Main Street again.

         "What did I miss?" Bill croaked out as he thundered down the corridor.

         "Postum!" I cackled. I can be very witty at times.

         Moments later we were inside the Chem/Bio Warfare Gear room and Bill was hugging the doorjamb again. He was puffing at a furious rate. As I watched he slowly slid down the doorjamb until his butt hit the floor. He did not move after that.

         I turned toward The General with the thought of suggesting that we drag Bill's carcass back to the bunkroom - whether he wanted to go or not - but when I saw the expression on The General's face I clammed up. He was frozen into a physical position that had fight or flight written all over it. On his face was the look of pure terror and huge dollops of sweat were running down his cheeks.

         "Great!" I said. "You're both wigging out on me."

         But The General's little seizure did not last long. In a moment or two he began to breathe evenly and shift his eyes about. Color returned to his face. He looked at me and winked.

         "Oops!" he breathed. "First time in this room." He slowly turned his head around, focusing on his surroundings. "You see I have this little phobia regarding deadly bleed-from-all-orifices/lungs-fill-up-with-snot/innards-turn-to-bloody-slime chemo and bio toxins." He looked at me apologetically. "My grandfather served in the Great War - in the trenches. He personally knew a couple guys who died in pools of mustard gas. He used to tell me stories about those poor fellows late at night. He excelled at lurid description. As a kid I really didn't understand it all and thought old grandpa was yanking my chain. He did that a lot. But after I'd joined the service I found out that such horrible weapons actually existed."

By now he was relaxing and looking about excitedly.

         "Well," he said with a forced smile. "We're not leaking bloody goo from our eyes yet. Guess we'll be okay!"          

         There were several items of interest in the Chem/Bio room: a minimally detailed schematic of the complex we were in, a yellow plastic dumpster sitting in a pool of thick green ooze, a very substantial inner door, and two 'Chem/Bio' armored suits. The suits, metallic-looking and ominous, stood flanking the door. We took a few tentative steps toward the armor.

         "I've seen these suits before," the General told me in a very hushed manner. Even though he was back in the real world and maintaining an aura of calm, I could hear the tension in his voice. "I have photos from the Radium League Universe of diving suits that look a lot like these. Very similar. The technology behind both is obviously parallel."

         Abruptly The General strode to the inner door and rapped on it with his knuckles. He quickly stopped, wincing in pain.

         "Solid steel," he said. "This is the first door I've found on this level that has no immediate means of access."

         As I watched he carefully ran his hands and fingers over select surfaces of the door. I guess I snickered or something because suddenly The General was in my face and glaring madly. "What's so goddammed funny?" he hissed.

         The tip of The General's nose touched my own. His eyes burned fiercely. I trembled.

         "I'm sorry," I finally squeaked. "Meant no offense. I'm tired and this place gives me the creeps."

         The General withdrew, his face now pale. "Sorry," he apologized. "You and me both! This is the one accessible room in the entire complex that I've not been in. I've already told you why. If I had known about the existence of the inner door I could have brought along a special tool that sometimes works. I feel like a damned fool. My fault."

         "What kind of tool?"

         "Dynamite," he replied.

         He quickly turned away from me and motioned at the armor. My eyes followed.

         The General moved to the nearest suit and rapped on its chest.

         "It's some sort of plastic," he said, pulling a Bowie knife out from under his shirt. With a grunt of effort he tried to score the plastic material with the tip of the blade. He jabbed at the suit several times. The knife simply skittered across the skin of the suit with no effect. He nodded. "Standard Radium League body armor material," he announced. He then shifted his gaze at me. "This stuff will stop an armor-piercing fifty-caliber round."

         He then turned his attention to the schematic.

         "This," he said quietly. "Is news to me." He placed the tip of a finger on the first level of the complex. "We're here in Complex 3: Blue Level - sixty feet below the surface. Since my quarantine at this complex I've been down into Purple, Green, and Tan. I've also been down into the tunnel system below the complex." He slid his finger downward until it rested upon the lowest level. "But never in all these years have I come across any reference to a Gray level - the elevators certainly are not programmed to stop there."

         Now he placed his finger on the tunnel array below the complex.

         

         "Like I said: I've been down here too! I've followed the north tunnel all the way to its termination. It ends at Complex 7 which is directly below the town of Essex. There's actually an access that leads up into the Essex Post Office. The west tunnel leads to the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base. There are other - lesser tunnels - which branch off the mains: some are blocked and some appear to be dead ends."

         I asked the obvious. "What about the others? Complexes 9, 11, and 13?"

         But The General didn't answer. He was on his hands and knees near the yellow dumpster and was inspecting the green ooze. As I moved closer I could see that he was performing the Bowie knife test on the slime.

         "Same result as with the armor," he told me and tucked the knife back under his shirt. "I'm wondering if this is some sort of encasement material..."

         At that moment something beeped.

         "What was that...?"

         With a curse The General pulled something that looked like a pocket pager out of his pocket. I could see an LED flashing ominously.

         "Dear Lord!" he said quietly. "Someone has re-activated the security net!"

         This did not sound good.

         The General was back on his feet again.

         "Where's your friend?" he shouted.

         I turned toward the doorway. Bill was gone.

         Bad Vibrations

         Two hours later I heard the sounds of gunfire. Three rounds in quick succession and then a fourth. After that all was quiet. I took a deep breath, did my best to relax, and then settled back into my little corner of the darkened Chem/Bio room where I'd been commanded by The General to wait - or else.

         The waiting was terrible but the "or else" had forced me to live up to it. The General could dredge up a very persuasive attitude when needed. After realizing that Bill was missing it had taken him only a fraction of a second to come up with a plan of action. What the plan entailed I didn't know. But part of it was me waiting in the dark.

         At three hours I had just about made up my mind to venture out to see what was up - regardless of the threats The General had made with his Bowie knife - when there was a thump outside the door and Bill and The General eased in.

         "Watch your eyes," I heard The General say. Then the lights came on.

         After a momentary bout of blindness my eyes re-adjusted. What I saw was The General, swaggering like John Wayne, and Bill, covered head to toe in blood. Both carried a .45 in each hand. The General had the Hornet Plasma Pulse Rifle slung over a shoulder.

         "What's up?" I squawked.

         The General handed me a .45, butt first. "Careful!" he said, "It's ready to go."

         I instinctively popped out the clip and then peeked into the breech.

         "What's up?" I said again.

         "Dude..." Bill yammered, "I screwed the pooch!"

         I then looked closely at Bill or, more precisely, at the blood stains that covered his upper body. The blood was the wrong color and smelled funny. Then I began noticing the ruptured plastic squibs affixed to the underside of his shirt.

         I looked at The General. There was a twinkle in his eyes.

         "Don't worry son," he told Bill with a smile. "It was a small pooch!"

         The General then looked at me. "Your buddy here decided to go take a leak while I was playing mumbly-peg with the body armor," he said. "He scampered down Main Street and entered the Infirmary." He reached out and gave Bill a hearty slap on the back. "I have to give him credit: he actually used a portable urinal instead of pissing in a corner."

         Bill's eyes were now downcast. He looked pretty insecure.

         "The bad thing happened when he set the filled urinal down upon a security console and it tipped over, flooding the console and shorting the power. That set off the security net. When the net activates all video recorders on the level go active - overriding my settings - and real-time images are transmitted out to the bad guys."

         Bill was now trying to make himself very small. It did not work. The General slapped him on the back again. "Atta boy!" he laughed. "Feeling like a bottom dweller yet?"

         The General looked at me and continued. "I managed to walk steadily from the Chem/Bio door down to the Infirmary. It wasn't easy. I wanted to run. There's a camera out there that followed my every move. Once inside the Infirmary I was able to settle your friend down and lock him in the surgical suite..."

         "You hit me on the head with the urinal!" Bill hissed quietly.

         "At least it was empty!" The General barked.

         I have to admit that I broke out in a belly laugh. A good Two Stooges routine will always do it to me.

         "I left the Infirmary quietly," The General resumed, "Putting on a little act as if searching for an intruder. I went down to Tan Level and put together some equipment for a little charade. From that location I was also able to put the whammy on select video cameras. Don't ask me how...that little secret is part of what's kept me alive all these years."

         The General was becoming highly animated now. As he talked he physically acted out the part he was describing. "I was able to get back to the Infirmary along an unobserved route. I told your brain-dead bud exactly what he was going to do and why it was going to save his life. I dressed him up with electrically controlled squibs filled with faux blood and blew him away with .45 caliber blanks just outside the dining hall - right in plain view of camera number twelve." At this point he was pointing two imaginary guns at Bill and pulling two imaginary triggers. He pulled twelve times. The General was breathing hard.

         Bill, also enmeshed in the retelling, was down on his knees; head bowed forward, hands clasped behind his back. He sobbed loudly. "He made it look like an execution type thing..."

         The General pulled out a hanky and swabbed at the sweat popping up on his brow. "God I love my job!" he cried.

         Bill was up on his feet again. He was sobbing and rubbing at the top of head. "It was stainless steel," he moaned.

         The General strode over to me, grabbed my right arm and pulled me aside. "I drug his body out of sight of the video camera," he whispered into my ear. "I have to admit he played dead pretty damn good. I used a comm unit in the dining hall to notify my pals back in DC that the intruder had been terminated. We then took a roundabout route back to the Infirmary and, thus, back to here - avoiding all live video cameras. Smith will have a body to turn over to them when - and if - they see fit to check my story."

         I didn't dare ask him about any body that Smith might have. Instead I eyed the Hornet Rifle strapped to his back and asked, "What’s with the heavy equipment?"

         The General looked at me and then at Bill. He shook his head and his voice went low. "Because I don't for a second think I pulled the wool over their eyes. Maybe just slowed them up a tad."

         Bill was still rubbing at his head. "You think you could have just thrown it at me?"

         The General smiled and pounded him on the back again.

         "We gotta get out of here," he said. "Bad guys will be descending on this place any minute and they're gonna be looking to make us very dead."

         On the Run

         About 1500 feet down the tunnel that leads to the town of Essex there was a sharp booming sound behind us followed by a wall of air pressure that nearly knocked us on our butts. Dust and dirt on the floor of the tunnel jumped up three inches into the air. There followed the buzzing sound of angry bumblebees, all around us, and then the rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire. The next thing I knew I was chewing on a rock hard surface - at least until the moment I slid to a stop on my face. The weight of The General's arms kept me pinned down.

         "Stay the hell down!" I heard The General say.

         I managed to twist my head to the right in time to see him unsling the Hornet from his back and point it in the direction of the gunfire. For a fleeting second I noticed that he was wearing something like an arc welder's helmet, shield down. Then all went blinding white and I passed out.

         

"The smoking lamp is lit," a voice said in the darkness.

         Something cold and wet and drippy was resting across my upper face. Water was running into my nose and ears. I grabbed the object to toss it off when I realized it was a leaky plastic bag filled with ice.

         "You might want to consider leaving that little remedy in place for awhile," I heard The General say. "You looked into the face of hell and your retinas are a bit well done."

         "Dude!" I heard Bill say. "You got an eyeful of a prolonged energy blast from that Hornet rifle. The beam is brighter then the sun!" He ended his statement with a merry chuckle.

         I sat up and tossed the ice pack aside. "Is it worse than getting thwacked with a urinal?" I asked.

         He immediately shut up.

         I then caught the succulent aroma of a pork roast. I realized I was starving. "Gosh that smells good," I said. "Turn on the friggin lights so I can see the food."

         There was dead silence.

         "Well how can I eat with the lights off?" I demanded.

         I felt a hand settle on my shoulder. It was the General. "The lights are on," he told me. "But your eyes got a little fried when you looked into the beam of the Hornet. Nothing to worry about. In a few hours they'll be heading back to normal. You're just going to have to rest them and relax for a little while." I felt the ice pack press against my eyes again.

         I was growing impatient. My stomach was demanding attention. "Okay! Okay!" I cried, pawing blindly at the ground around me for my plate of food. "Just give me a plate and I'll eat with my hands..."

         "Son," The General said. "The only food we got is a bag of MRE's. What you smell are the three unlucky devils I partially vaporized with the Hornet."

         My hunger quickly dissipated. I went back to sleep.

         

         Six hours later I awoke with a miserable headache and a sharp, burning pain in my eyes. I rubbed at them and immediately the headache and burning pain doubled in intensity.

         "Whoa!" came The General's voice. "Don't rub. Let me put some drops in those eyes."

         I felt him get a death grip on my head with one arm and then there were fingers prying my eyes open. First my right eye was raped, and then my left. "Give it a second," I heard The General say.

         It didn't take that long. The pain in my eyes was gone - although the headache remained.

         "A simple anesthetic," The General said. "A derivative of exacaine. Now open your eyes."

         I did. I could see again. The world was once again whole. Then my eyes focused on the hot mug of Postum The General was holding out for me.

         I realized we were still in a world of hurt.




TO BE CONTINUED