Juana

After staring uselessly at Albert Pike’s whiskers for a few minutes, Juana took a look around the little park. It was shaded and difficult to see the streets, though she could hear the festivalgoers. There was a small caretaker’s lean-to against the wall of the brick building that made up the south edge of the park. Juana could see where a lock was supposed to go on the lean-to’s door, but the rusty hasp was open.

The door was warped and groaned on its hinges as Juana muscled it open. Dust motes skirled through shafts of light from cracks along the walls and nailholes in the tin roof. The floors were sandy and dry; doodlebugs had made their little pits. As her pale eyes adjusted to the darkness of the shed, Juana began to be able to discern more than shapes and dust motes. A jumble of long-handled tools leaned on one another in a corner, dried red clay dirtying the floor beneath them. A long workbench was pushed against a door in the brick wall. Dust was thick on trowels, tacks, flowerpots, seed packets and the other clutter on the bench, undisturbed except for the occasional mouse tracks and pellets.

Juana sighed and looked hard at the door in the brick wall. The door was old – grey paint peeling from grey wood. There was no knob. All Juana would have to do would be to pull out the table far enough to open the door. Juana felt like an animal stealing bait from a trap. The things on the tabletop rattled and shook as she pushed one end through the sand. The workbench had been holding the door shut. It swung right open, gravity holding the door at a ninety-degree angle from the wall.

A cinder block below the door served as a step into the building. Juana climbed inside, pausing with a hand on either side of the doorframe to get her equilibrum. The cracked concrete floor was at an angle; she understood why the door hung the way it did. The room the door had opened onto was a closet with a fun house floor. On the far wall, Juana could make out a ladder shining in the darkness.

Still leaning on the doorframe, Juana pulled a small case out of her satchel. She thumbed it open and withdrew a fluid-filled vial as long as her palm was wide. She removed a pellet from a compartment in the case and returned the case to her satchel. She unscrewed the plasteel cap and dropped in the gel pellet. After firmly replacing the cap, she shook the vial vigorously. After a few seconds, the vial began to emit a bright phosporesece.

Keeping one hand on the wall for support, Juana went over to the ladder and looked down the narrow shaft. The shining steel rungs disappeared into darkness. Juana dropped her vial light. It bounced off the steps and walls several times before landing far below. The reverberations made Juana wince. She was not being very quiet. If anyone was waiting down there for her, they knew she was on her way. Juana stepped onto the ladder and started down the shaft. She felt a little better when she realized she could lean back and rest against the wall if she needed to. Juana did not mind tight spaces; quite the opposite, they made her feel relaxed.

After about ten minutes of climbing, the vial light was suddenly beneath Juana’s feet and the wall was disappearing behind her. There was barely room to turn in the elbow of the shaft. Juana clipped the light on a cord she wore around her neck and started foreward, stooped over and crabwalking. Thankfully, the tunnel was shorter than the ladder and Juana found herself in front of a small blast door. The bricks around it were the same color as the ones that paved the streets above. The moment the compass and square symbol engraved in the door was visible in the phosphoresecent murk, Juana knew that Albert Pike was a man from before the End Times.

Juana opened an acess panel beside the door and keyed in the four digits written above the keypad. She heard a hiss as the hatch released and the door rose on pneumatic lifts. She wriggled through the blast door on her belly and pulled herself into a room walled in stainless steel. Then she saw ducts leaving the low-ceilinged room. When a fan kicked on in a passage to her right, Juana realized that she was inside an air system. She tucked the vial light into her pocket. Once her eyes began to adjust, she realized that she could see light coming from some of the ducts. She chose the one closest to her left and found herself at a wall vent that needed a clean filter. There was a latch to open the vent from the inside, and in moments Juana was standing in a kitchen blinking.

“Oh dear. A back door visitor. Simply no one has come through the back door since Uncle Chester’s time.”

Startled, Juana gaped at the man. He looked to be just a little older than she was, with an unlined, narrow face, high cheekbones and dark eyes. He was in a fuzzy robe, a bottle in one hand and a towel in the other. Helen would kill for those shoes, Juana thought, eyeing the man’s clogs. He seemed to be adept at carrying on a conversation with himself. Juana glanced around the kitchen and saw no one else.

“We’re going to need another bottle of wine,” he declared and opened an upright electric cooler. “Come on now, what’s you’re name? Mine’s Edgerinn.”

“I’m Juana.”

“Juana. That’s nice. Has a bit of a Mexican feel to it, but that’s to be expected. You gotta sister named Maria?” He giggled and held a wine bottle in each hand.

“I don’t have any siblings.”

“Well, you must be here for a reason, Juana, or you wouldn’t have used the back entrance. Let’s discuss it in the spa, shall we? I was just headed there for my morning soak. Get the door, won’t you Juana?” Edgerinn nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen door. Juana stepped through and held it open for the wine-laden man.

Quite baffled by her reception, Juana followed him through a couple of hallways, passing closed doors. “I’m looking for a connection to the Link-Beam.”

“Link-Beam? Hmm… sounds like something in the terminal. You know, we’re already right here anyway. I’ll have my bath later.” Edgerinn flipped open a panel beside another door and punched in the same keycode Juana had used to acess the blast door. The door hissed open and revealed a room full of monitors, keypads, and electornics Juana had no names for. Only two screens in the room were lit: the large central screen and a small one to the side. Both showed the same image.

“The masons weren’t computer whizzes, but they could afford to hire them. What they did know was how to build something that lasts hundreds of years. A handful of the folks that live topside are descended from the original masons that built this vault. Me, of course. All of the caretakers have been descendants of the masons. I’m actually the first one who wasn’t a member of their little organization. Uncle Chester was the last one, I’m afraid. And there just wasn’t anybody left who wanted the job, except me. So here I am, taking care of all this as best as I can. . .”

Juana sat down before the smaller monitor and tried to access the system. The setup was similar to the one at the White River Shelter, right down to the remote sensor below the screen. The system had many programs installed, though they were extremely dated. The antique googler worked fine for what Juana wanted. She was searching to refrences of coordinates for the Link-Beam.

“Make yourself at home. You need passkeys or anything and we’ll have to find the little black book. Though I haven’t seen it in ages. Don’t mind my babble. You must understand that I don’t often get a real live person to talk to down here.”

So far Juana had only been asked for one password. The door code worked fine. It was easy to remember and seemed to have unlocked ninety-eight percent of the system’s programs.