CHAPTER
30
COLE AND PULLER drove to Trent’s home in her cruiser.
She said, “I’m taking a shortcut. Cuts off a chunk of time but it’s bumpy.” She hung a hard right and swung onto a narrow road full of potholes.
It looked familiar to Puller. He gazed around and then saw why this was so.
“What the hell is that thing?” He pointed at the towering concrete dome over and around which trees, vines, and bushes had grown. He’d seen it on his way in here the first night, when he’d gotten lost.
“Folks around here call it the Bunker.”
“Okay, but what is it?”
“Used to be some sort of government facility. It was closed up long before I was even born.”
“But certainly the older folks in town know what it was. Some of them had to work there.”
Cole shook her head. “Nope. No one from Drake ever did work there, at least not that I know of.”
“I know the government is a financial black hole, but even D.C. won’t put up a facility like that and not even use it.”
“Oh, they used it.”
She slowed down and Puller focused on the stretch of houses he’d glimpsed the other night. In daylight the place didn’t look much different than it had at night. The houses were at least five decades old and possibly older. Many looked abandoned, but not all of them. They stretched over a web of streets, row after row. They reminded him of military housing. Each one looked the same as its neighbor.
“Are you saying they brought in people from outside the area to work the Bunker?”
She nodded. “And they built all those homes to house them.”
“I see there are people living in them still.”
“Only over the last few years. Economy cratered, people lost their jobs and their homes. These places are old and haven’t been kept up, but when you’re on the street you can’t be choosy.”
“Any problems? Desperate folks sometimes do desperate things, especially when they’re in close proximity to each other.”
“We patrol it pretty regularly. What crime there is has been just petty stuff. People mostly stay to themselves. I guess they’re grateful to have a roof over their heads. County tries to help them out. Blankets, food, water, batteries, books for the kids, stuff like that. We’re over here a lot telling them not to use kerosene heaters and crap like that in the houses for heat. And ways to keep themselves safe. Already had one family nearly die from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“And the government just lets you use the housing?”
“I think the Feds have forgotten it was ever even here. Sort of like the end of that movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. One more box in the warehouse.”
Puller glanced back at the Bunker. “When did it shut down?”
“Don’t know exactly. My mom told me it was sometime in the sixties.”
“And all the workers?”
“Packed up and moved out.”
“And the concrete?”
“My daddy said that was something to see when they did it. It’s three feet thick.”
“Three feet!”
“What my daddy said.”
“And nobody in Drake ever talked to these folks, found out what they were doing in that place?”
“From what I heard, the government supplied the workers with most of what they needed. And it was all guys, all of them in their forties and single according to my parents. Of course some would come into town on occasion. My dad said they were real tight-lipped about what they did here.”
“If they were in their forties back then, most if not all of them are probably dead by now.”
“Guess so.”
Puller eyed the Bunker and saw the rusted fencing with barbed wire topper that ran around the facility. In between the structure and the neighborhood was a stand of trees. Next, Puller shifted his gaze to a little boy and girl who were playing in the front yard of one of the houses. The boy was running around in a circle while the girl attempted to catch him. They both fell down in a tangle of arms and legs.
“You have kids?”
Puller turned to see her gazing at him. She had slowed the car to a crawl while she too watched the children.
“No,” he replied. “Never married.”
“When I was a little girl only thing I wanted to be was a mom.”
“So what happened?”
She hit the accelerator. “Life. Life happened.”