Chapter 38
When they got back to Tondc, they saw the hundred hurriedly packing up the tents and their belongings. They raced over to Anya.
"What's happened?" Adara asked.
"The maunon have been spotted southwest of us, 3 miles away. They have guns and wheeled transport. We are moving your people to the east. You need to take them somewhere east of here to keep them safe. The maunon must not know you have been here. You must flee to save yourselves!"
"Monroe, go pack your things - mine too, please - then make sure that everything from the tent has been picked up. We can sort things out later. Not one item is to be left behind, understood? Next, make sure that all the tents are cleared and items picked up." Monroe nodded and raced off. "Murphy, start gathering them up and get them moving towards that station we found. That should be far enough away for now." Murphy also nodded and moved off.
Adara moved to Anya.
"Can you spare some shovels? We need to dig out the station so we can get into it and hide there." Anya nodded and told Tomac to get them and then lead them back to where they wanted to go.
"Mochof," Adara said.
Anya nodded and kept on sorting through weapons.
Adara looked around. "Where's the Commander?"
"Scouting the maunon. We do not know how they knew to come here. They have not been here before. It is too far away from their mountain." Adara thought about that, then suddenly blurted out.
"Cameras!"
"What?" said Anya, pausing in her task.
"They must have cameras around here someplace." Adara looked at the surrounding land. "Up in the trees, most likely."
"Cameras?"
"They're small machines that can see you. They relay those pictures back to the mountain and they can see where you are and what you are doing."
"Jok!" Anya swore.
"Yeah, fuck!" agreed Adara. Anya looked around and spotted Artigas.
"Artigas! Go warn the Commander that the maunon knows where they are and that they can see the Commander!" Artigas ran off. Tomac came back with the shovels. "Tomac, change of plans, take charge of the first group of warriors. The maunon can see every move we make. Take your group to the south as if you were going hunting. Swing wide around the back of them and start looking for their seeing machines." Anya looked at Adara. "How big are these things?"
"Small, very small," said Adara, using her fingers to indicate small sizes instead of both hands. "Most likely, they will be about the size of…" Adara trailed off, looking around for a size comparison. She saw a stone roughly the size of the small cameras from the Ark. "...this. They may be smaller, but roughly this size." Anya and Tomac looked at the pebble, both surprised at how small it was. No wonder they didn't see them when they climbed the trees.
"Tomac, check every tree and every branch you can. It's going to take awhile to clear them.
"The camera can only see what's in its view. If you smear the lens - the seeing part - with mud, then all it can send back to the mountain is mud," said Adara. Anya and Tomac grinned.
"Do it," Anya commanded. Tomac nodded and moved off.
"You could send out scouts to the north to look for cameras too," Adara said, she was in thoughtful mode and staring at the ground as she thought. "We could use a couple of tree climbers ourselves. The problem is how far did they put their cameras? How did they get their people past the Trikru? Were they put there before Tondc was built?" Adara was talking aloud, but mostly to herself, trying to sort out the questions. She had no answer to any of them. Anya looked at her in wonder. These were questions she needed to ask as well. The leader of the hundred was looking more and more like a leader should. Anya was amazed at how fast Adara had come up with those questions. Maybe it was because she was more knowledgeable about tek.
Murphy came up to her.
"We're all ready to move out."
"Okay, get them started and then lead the way." Murphy raced off. Adara looked at Anya. "May we meet again," she said and then moved off towards her people.
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The trek to the station took several hours and night was falling when they got there. Two of Anya's people had volunteered to go with the hundred and were right now hunting for supper. Octavia said she knew the area and with Miller and a few others for protection, she and a crew went to get fresh water.
Adara had put Murphy in charge of security with Atom as his second, so when the hundred started putting up their tents, several of the ones training to be fighters were put on guard. Raven had made sure that the radio was turned off and not able to receive so that no unexpected message from the Ark would give away their position. Harper and a guy called Johnson were busy digging a small fire pit in the ground. They knew that an open fire would give them away, so they decided to cook the meat in a hole in the ground and put one of the tents over it while it cooked.
When the Trikru came back, they had caught a deer and six rabbits. They had dressed them out away from the camp. When they got back, they quickly surmised what the hundred intended and stripped the flesh off the bones, they placed them in several pots they had brought along and when the fire was hot, placed the lidded pots on the hot logs and the hot stones that lined the pit and then covered the whole thing up. They explained that the logs and stones would cook the meat and this way there would be no telltale light.
It took several hours and it was fully dark when everyone got something to eat. Murphy worked out a duty roster for the sentries for the night. Everyone on the list took a two hour shift then woke the next person to replace them. Adara was no exception. She took her turn looking out into the darkness.
xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx
In the morning, the younger kids were complaining because they had slept on their bags instead of in them and they were cold. Atom told them to stop whining and to get on with their morning tasks.
When they had eaten, Adara, Clarke, Monroe, Harper, Raven, Octavia, Murphy and Atom had a meeting to decide what to do with the kids as they couldn't let them wander. They needed to keep them busy. Monroe would be in charge of a group that cleared the area of any deadfall and piled them up for use as firewood. Harper would take some youngsters and forage for more foodstuffs within sight of the camp. Atom was in charge of the sentries around the camp, Octavia would teach some of them how to move quietly through the woods, again within sight of the camp and the rest would help to excavate the station.
The ground was fairly easy to dig into, though making sure that the workers put the soil into a mound on the other side of where they were digging had to be explained to them. Some of them were just flinging the soil around without looking and making others have to dig it out again. They worked in shifts of about half an hour each. They made good progress down to about three feet when suddenly Connor's shovel hit something hard. He thought it was another stone so he carefully moved his shovel to the side and dug down until he could get his shovel under the stone and remove it. He hit something hard again.
"Hey, I keep hitting something solid. I don't think it's another stone. It sounds different." Adara and Murphy came over and had a look.
"Connor, get in the hole and try to scrape some of the soil back," said Adara. As Connor got in the hole he carefully put one foot on the hard object and found that it appeared to be level. He experimented by bouncing on the one foot, keeping both hands on the rim of the hole for safety. Nothing happened so he put his other foot down too. Again there seemed to be no give in the ground underneath the object. He gently bounced up and down and when nothing happened that time, he jumped up and down twice. It was solid. He took his shovel and started to clean the surface. He pulled back the soil to the edges of the hole and there was no edge to the hard surface.
"Think this could be the roof?" he asked.
"Could be," said Adara. "Alright, back to digging. I want this hole widened until you come to an edge. Don't get in the hole unless it's been tested. You all saw how Connor did it. Do the same." They got back to work. After a break for lunch, the workers returned to the hole which had been widened considerably.
"How big was this building?" asked Murphy, as he took his turn with a shovel.
"Don't know, but it would have to be big to hold a train and its carriages." replied Adara, as she stood to the side and used her double vision to estimate how much more they needed to dig. "Deek, the corner of the building is about a metre to your left. Can you widen it out until you get there, please?"
"Yeah, no problem," said Deek, getting to work.
"Murphy, when he gets the corner cleared, he'll be on the front of the building. The building has columns - had columns? - along the front. There should be two columns right beside that corner. I want you to get some of those vines we've seen and make ropes from them. We need to be careful when digging out that front." Murphy nodded and handed his shovel to another, who took over digging. Murphy grabbed several of the unoccupied kids and went to gather vines.
"How far down to the ground level," asked Miller.
"At least thirty feet." stated Adara.
"Thirty feet!"
"Yeah, I'd say that this city was a primary target and got a direct hit. The amount of dirt and debris those bombs created have covered most places near the bomb sites in a layer about thirty feet deep. Remember what I said about how far down the old ground level was? Easily 15 plus feet deep at the Lincoln Memorial. Well this place is nearer the whitehouse. It would have been buried even deeper."
"We have to dig it all out?"
"Hope not. I was thinking we dig until we can find a way in. A window or maybe someway in from the roof." Miller nodded and looked up suddenly, only to see the hunters returning with their supper.
"I'll go help them skin and prepare supper. I've got the night duty tonight. I think I'll get some sleep before then."
"Okay. Thanks, Nathan." Miller nodded and walked away. Adara watched him go. She really had a reliable core group who helped her lead the hundred.
"Got it," Deek called out.
"Careful on that edge, Deek, it may not be safe." Deek nodded as he modified his digging into more cautious scrapings. Adara looked at the ground below them in this time.
"Alright. Everyone down there, move to the other side. If the soil gives way there, you could be buried." She watched as they moved away, taking their belongings with them. Adara realised that she had not taken an inventory of what they had pulled out of the dropship. She would get Raven onto that. Raven had a good head on her shoulders and would figure out what was useful to whom.
Just then, Murphy came back with the vines. He went up to the top and tied one around Deek's waist and gave it to several people to hold.
"If he goes over the edge, hold the vine and make sure he doesn't fall any further." Connor nodded and took up the anchor position.
"Jones, go be a lookout for Deek, if he falls, sing out," said Murphy. Jones nodded and headed off to a position along the edge of the roof, but far enough away not to interfere with Deek's work. One corner of the building was now exposed and the faint outline of a figure could be seen. It was standing on top of a column but Adara couldn't make out what it was supposed to be. As Deek stuck his shovel into the soil just in front of the column, it gave way and a lot of soil fell to the ground, exposing even more of the column, but more importantly, a hole.
"Deek, stop!" Adara shouted. Deek's head appeared over the edge and he gave her a thumbs up as a signal that he heard her. "There's a hole opened up behind the columns. That's the way in. We need to be careful when we move more soil. I don't want that hole to be filled with crap we'd have to dig out again." Murphy's head appeared this time.
"I'm coming down to have a look," he said, and promptly disappeared.
When Murphy arrived and looked at the hole, he whistled.
"That's still a long way up."
"I know. I was thinking about clearing the edge above the hole and seeing if anyone was skinny enough to be lowered down and take a look inside. Yes, I know it'll be dark, but if we rig up a torch, it should give whoever goes a look."
"Yeah, that might work, or it might send crap into the hole."
"Yeah, I know, but I can't think of a safer way of doing it. Any ideas?" Murphy thought for a few minutes.
"None, actually. I can't think of a better way."
"Alright, who's up there now?"
"Drew, Jill, Monty, Atkins and Del. None of those are on the rope."
"Good, Drew and Del." Adara called. Heads appeared beside Deek. We need to clear off the edge above the hole. Move to your right until I tell you to stop." They nodded and carefully got up and moved off. Every now and then they would put their heads out to see Adara as she used hand signals to indicate left or right. They moved until she put her hand up in a stop motion. "Drew, stay there, Del move about three steps to your left." She watched as he did that. "Stop there. That's how much you need to clear above the hole. Deek, move back and untie yourself. Tie it around Drew, he'll do the first part."
They excavated the edge in turn until it was completely uncovered above the hole.
"Murphy, who's strong but skinny?"
"Sterling? Maybe Porter?"
"Get Sterling. We'll lower him down to have a look." Murphy went off to get him and to make a torch. He came back several minutes later with a handlight that had been hastily packed in the dropship.
"Found this. Sterling's at the top getting the rope tied to him."
"Good. Go give that to him and then you direct the others when lowering him."
"Got it," said Murphy moving off.
A few minutes later, Adara saw Sterling slowly being lowered towards the hole. She heard him directing Murphy to where he needed to be. Sterling was in mid-air, looking for a hand hold or a foothold so that he wouldn't spin. He found one and steadied himself. Turning on the light he looked around the hole first and then pulled himself forward.
"There's a huge gap behind this dirt!" he called out. "I can see the door to the building, there's no dirt piled against it. The windows are smashed on the left side, but intact on the right. The doors are open. I can't see much more than that!" Sterling looked under his arm towards Adara. She signalled that he was to be lowered to the ground on her side of the dirt. When he reached the bottom, he untied himself and came over.
"It's fairly clear at the moment, but if we're not careful in removing the soil, it'll all tumble into the doorway and windows."
"Is there any way we could get in without moving too much dirt?" she asked.
"I don't see how. We don't know how stable it is," said Sterling, thoughtfully.
"Okay," said Adara, sighing heavily. "We'll do it slowly and carefully and hope we don't cause too much mess as we go." Sterling nodded. "Let's get something to eat and a good night's sleep and we'll get back to it in the morning," she said to Sterling, patting him on the shoulder as she passed.