Secrets of Liberty Mountain (Final)

?Five-pound bundle of a hundred identical sandbags,

?One each, five-ounce packet containing three folded Mylar, Aluminum space blankets

?25 feet of paracord

?eight each: adjustable carbon fiber tent poles (14 ounces)

?One Multi-Purpose, Multi-tool Military style Folding Shovel (with gloves), 32 ounces

Actual construction was a fairly simple affair: Dig, put the contents into sandbags, stack into walls, cover top opening with a latticework of rods, waterproof with Mylar space blanket(s), mask it all with pine fronds and local flora. Add a sleeping bag and "poof!" We had one bedroom phone-booth.

We smiled at our handiwork. While the resulting structure might not have been pretty enough to grace the covers of "Better Homes and Bunkers," it at least had heat, water, illumination, and power. Not bad.

At two-and-half pounds, the hundred-fifty-watt-hour battery was kept charged by a small fourteen-watt solar panel. Rainwater runoff from the roof provided drinking water.

Inspired by the Silver Fire product line, the Sisterhood's homemade copycat survivor stove produced an abundance of warmth for cooking and comfort. Reverse engineering is stealing from one. Research is stealing from many. The sisters scienced the shit out of the subject before designing a virtually smokeless unit with multiple combustion chambers.

The Society had little regard for intellectual property or the little "c" with a circle around it. Find the best, copy it right, and leave the rest.

~~~

"Ho, ho, ho, we got the decorations," I laughed as I connected the last string of twenty-five LED Christmas lights to the collector's battery. The strand of night vision friendly crimson bulbs drew two-point-four watts and bathed the interior of our sandbag bungalow with a sinful shade, worthy of only the best brothels in Saigon. Brain farts are like that. Triggered by smell, sound, or something, they pop into thoughts uninvited.

"Every day will be the same as the last, except for one," I mused aloud as I took a puff.

"Why would that day be different from the rest?"

"It's the day with no tomorrow. The day we die," I extinguished my cigarette.

"That's a kinda half-empty way of thinking. I prefer to think every day if the first day of forever."

"Perhaps the container is twice the size necessary." I reached down and pulled a six-ounce metal flask from my kit.

I unscrewed the cap and filled it with a shot of the Sisterhood's best.

"Drink up and savor the moment," I whispered to Belinda as I passed her the brandy.

Belinda's eyes shifted. "I bet you say that to all the girls," she said with a coy smile as she took the beverage from my hand, closed her eyes, and downed it in a gulp.

"Only the ones who will listen," I answered as I refilled the cap. I never intended my remark to be taken that way. But then again, who knows? I returned her smile with one of my own as I raised the spirits in salute.

"A toast to yesterday's tomorrow," I took a sip and gave the remainder to my partner.

"You mean today?"

"Exactly," I beamed.

"Yesterday we are memories. Tomorrow we are dreams. Today, this second, this slice of now is the only instance we are alive. Bliss resides in the moment," I said as I looked into her eyes.

"What is your pleasure?"

"Another, please," she said.

"How many shots are left in the six-shooter?" she pointed to my flask.

"Two gone, four to go." I replenished her cap.

"Fire in the hole," she tittered as she lifted her head back and drained the drink in a single swallow.

"Another?" Her eyes watered as she wiped her lips with her hand and held out the empty.

"Frisky?" I teased as I poured her another drink.

"Nope. Maybe. I'm thirsty," she said between sips as she devoured the drink.

"Whew! Hot in here." Belinda stood and undid the buttons of her flannel shirt. She wore nothing underneath. Casual nudity among the ladies of Liberty was an everyday occurrence, nothing personal. I had grown used to the scenery. Age and bad eyesight blurred the finer details. Within the confines of our tiny bunker? The view was seductive.

"Just the way I like it," she squinted as she opened the stove's door and threw another chunk of wood into the fire chamber.

"Help yourself," I handed her my flask as I rose to my feet and wiped a trickle of sweat from my cheek. I took off my jacket and retrieved my field expedient hash pipe, and stash, from the side pouch.

The brass artifact from the Vietnam War was a GI gadget and a testament to a soldier's ingenuity. It had been built by Paul Lavoy, the same guy who had crafted my beaded Vietnam Service necklace. He created the contraband device when he was a grunt in the war, by fitting a quarter-inch elbow into a three-inch length of pipe covered by a snippet of three-eights hydraulic tubing.

I removed my tunic and took a seat on the platform and packed my pipe with a pungent pinch of the sister's homegrown cannabis.

"Care for a toke?" I inquired as I applied the lighter's flame and inhaled a fragrant blend of skunk-stink and cherry blossoms. Nice and smooth.

"Don't mind if I do," Belinda took the offering from my hand.

"What's it say?" She examined the inscription engraved in itty-bitty letters on the stem; 'Mort. N'ayez pas peur.'

"French for, 'Death. Be not afraid,'" I guffawed, "The bravado of youth."

"Fear, I have none. I will never experience death," Belinda said with a smile as she looked me in the eye and took another puff from the pipe.

"There are no exceptions to the laws of life. We all die, sooner or later," I mirrored her unblinking gaze with one of my own. What secret did she possess which I did not? I wiped my hands on my trousers.

Without breaking eye contact, she moved backward a half-step and took a drag.

"When I breathe my last," she said from a glowing cloud of reddish mist as her stare softened into a smile.

"...and, in the unlikely event I am aware I am no longer alive, I will know I am still here," she blinked her eyes wide as if surprised.

"I have simply changed form," she said with a wave of her arm. The monochrome glow of ruby red washed color from vision and left us stranded in a world of strawberry highlights and rusty shadows.

She puffed silently for several moments before continuing, "I am not dead if my identity continues. I am still alive, at least the part of me which counts. My mind, and spirit." she touched her hand to her forehead before resting its palm over her heart.

"And if I die and that is the end?" she moved her hand to my arm and sniffed, "Then I will no longer exist. I will be what I was before I was born, an echo of creation."

"What about judgment? I asked as I glanced upward.

"Precisely what is it that shall judge me?" She grinned as she unbuttoned her blouse and brushed a few strands of hair from my face.

"And by what will I be judged?" She blushed with a sideways smile as she grazed her breast with her hand.

"I don't know the answer. I have faith no one else does either," she unbuckled her jeans.

"If there is an author, then the laws of her wonders are her commandments, written in the universal language of the cosmos: Science." Belinda winked as she unzipped.

"Like the Law of Gravity," she relaxed her fingers. Her pants fell to the floor.

"In reality, we trust," She kicked her slacks across the dirt and smiled as she beckoned me to rise.

"I thought you didn't like men?" I took her hand and pulled myself to a standing position.

"As a rule, I don't," she frowned and narrowed her eyes.

"New times require new rules," she said softly in my ear as she tugged at my belt buckle.

"Undress. We'll explore the boundaries of our new relationship." Her raspy voice was more a command than a suggestion.

"Out of courtesy, and if you don't mind me asking, what were the borders of our old partnership?" I wondered as I stripped. She hated me. I disliked her. Nothing complicated. Our mutual disdain had been our common bond. It wasn't anymore.

"Speak truthfully so that I may better know your mind," I invoked the sisterhood's call to communicate clearly and without deception,

I let my question hang in the air as the silence stretched beyond awkward. I refused to say more until my question was either answered or officially ignored. I fumbled for my lighter and fired up my pipe. The strobe white spark was blinding.

"Your arrival was unwanted. I spoke the truth when I testified against your presence. I did not want you in my home. My sisters felt otherwise. May I have a hit?" She took my pipe and lighter from my hand.

"SkyFire happened," she said as she clicked the torch into a blaze. "Nothing is now what it was before. Where do we go from here?" She sighed deeply and placed the pipe in my hands.

"Frosty, my beautiful partner," I stroked her wrist and held her hand, "Are you as turned on as I am? We are not enemies. At least not any longer." I gave her hand a double squeeze. "I would rather be your friend."

"What kind of friend?"Belinda's replied cautiously as she gave me a curious look.

"You tell me. What kind of friend do you require? I have affection for you. I want you to be happy. What is your pleasure?"

"Honestly? I don't know. You're sorta like the sexy grandfather I never had. My Gramps was a prick like his dad."

"Does it bother you if I touch you?" I rested my hand on her thigh, a few inches above her knee.

"Yes. Not as much as I think it should. I like it

"Okay, that's one boundary. Where's the next?" I looked into her face.

"It would be my thrill to bring you joy," I said as I gradually moved my hand northward. Her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

"Please. Allow me to delight in your pleasure," I leisurely caressed and massaged the skin beneath my fingers as my eyes listened to the song rising from Belinda's body. Each shimmy, blink, twitch, quiver, and breath sang a different melody of arousal or caution. Caresses yes. Kisses no. Hugs, okay. Maybe.

"Do you like this?" My exploring fingers found the little man in the boat. Time to fish or cut bait.

"Oh!" My partner gasped as she held my hand in check.

"What do you want from me?" she questioned and squeezed my fingers in her grip as her puzzled eyes searched my face for my response.

"Nothing but the gift of your pleasure," I held my hand motionless and relaxed my arm. I would cross the last boundary only by invitation. "What is your desire?" I smiled.

"I would love you to complete what you started." She slacked her grasp and licked her lips.

"Very nice to feel something down there besides my own fingers. I'm between relationships."

"I know the feeling. That's what friends are for," I whispered as she guided my hand toward the gates of heaven.

"Make haste slowly," I said as I helped her to her knees and lowered her back on the sleeping bag.

"Savoring the moment," I leaned forward and boldly explored a deep and sunless sea. Star Trek meets Xanadu.

Chapter 44

"Okay, my turn," I chuckled as I picked up the fat cigar-sized joint of the Sisterhood's weed.

Possession of the cannabis talking stick authorized the owner to speak without interruption. I inhaled deeply and gave the blunt to Sheila and took my place in our naked Truth or Dare fireside chat.

"Please be honest. What do you believe?"

The commander's theology drifted all over the map from Pagan to Puritan, seasoned with native lore and eastern thought. Pinning her down was like trying to nail water to the sky.

"Don't fuck over your neighbor," she laughed as she waved my smoke-ring to one side. "That is the long and short of the Society's code: 'Fear is the father of all lies. Therefore, strive to be truthful and kind to all you meet. Do not be cruel. Treat friends and strangers with respect, dignity, and compassion, especially if you think they are undeserving." Sheila recited the oath I had taken a lifetime ago.

"And it goes like this," she said as she squatted and slipped another log on the fire, "terror disrupts our thoughts and diminishes our vision. Falsehoods clutter our brains with untruths we are forced to remember lest we are discovered to be deceitful. Do not be unnecessarily deceptive. Dignity is the acknowledgment of the other's humanity, respect is your acceptance of their right to exist. Compassion is a reminder to be kind rather than callous when you engage with people, be they friend or foe. Beyond that, I will say no more. If you live by this standard, I welcome you in peace and invite you to share with me the fellowship of our minds so we may better know one another's spirit."

She kissed my cheek and exhaled smoke in my face.

~~~

Like fence posts whizzing past on the highway, the days after SkyFire blurred together like shadowy spots on moldy bread. It was an extinction level event on multiple fronts.

For the dinosaurs of national governments, it was the end of days. All politics are local and no one gave a rat's ass about partisan policies when enemies were at the gate. For empires of affluence, it was game over in spades. The economy lay in shambles. Money was worthless. My grandmother used to tell me, "A poor man is only a rich man with no money."

Poverty was the rule unless you stood on your own property with a wad of cash in your kit. The ATM and credit cards stuffed into wallets were useless pieces of colorful trash connected to someplace on the dark side of the moon.

For the gods of electronic media and the tyrants of internet kingdoms, there would be no tomorrow. Castrated by nature's guillotine, the pricks in charge were shafted. Electrical dysfunction rendered impotent their capacity to seduce us for profit.

The airwaves once awash with data, red and blue hues of real and fake news, bizarre conspiracy theories, and weird views no longer belonged to the mighty. Anyone with electricity and a transmitter could be a player. For the rest of us addicted to reality through online social communities, television, and cell phones, it was cold turkey. There would never be another fix.

~~~

"Mable, say again, over." Sheila's eyes widened in alarm as she increased the volume, "Shh!" she hissed with her index finger to her lips in the universal call for silence. "I say again, Mee-Zells. Little red bumps. We have twenty-seven confirmed, three fatalities, six in critical condition."

I winced as a chill crawled over my memory of childhood afflictions. In the days before vaccines, I inherited my immunity the old-fashioned way. As a charter member of the Malady of the Month Club, I endured mumps, measles, chickenpox, ringworm, pinworms, and a host of parasites and infections. My brother survived Polio.

"Our prayers are with you, Mable. Is the outbreak under control? Over."

"Negative, Liberty. It is not."

"Meeker, what is your status? Over.

"The Mayor has declared a public health emergency. We have ninety-seven in quarantine at the hotel. Active cases being treated in middle school. Flu is hitting the infected hard. We have no antibiotics. Battery low. Shutting down. Out."

"Mable, repeat, our prayers are with you. Tune-in at the top of each hour when you can. Take care. Out." The Commander blew a kiss as she scribbled something on her notepad. "Martha, please apprise Wendy and the medical team of the situation in town. Give her this. We'll be meeting about Meeker...." Sheila paused and frowned at the clock, "...be back here in forty-five minutes," she said as she ripped the sheet from her pad and presented it to the Queen of the Kitchen.

"Belinda and Sky, saddle-up for a recon mission. Take the bikes and the drone. Pack as many spare batteries as you can. We need high-def recordings of the town. Focus on security and conditions on the ground. Still, capture points of interest. Brenda, can you give 'em a hand with their kits?"

...

"How ya doing, Wolfie?" Belinda teased and dismounted from her Onex bike, and stretched her arms, and rubbed her behind, and sighed as she worked the kinks from the trail out of her backside. She gave me an almost sympathetic grin before she held the binoculars to her eyes and scanned the route forward.

"Never better," I lied as I wiped my black bandanna over my face. Two hours of almost nonstop riding. Old soldiers never die, we just wrinkle away.

"We should be able to see the town from the top of that rise," I said as I straddled my motorbike and pointed toward the spot where the path passed over the crest of a sun-drenched ridgeline about half-mile distant. "I'll set-up and put this guy through his paces. I haven't flown since SkyFire, and I would feel better with a practice run."

We weren't exactly racing, but I was trying not to come in second as we dashed for our destination. Frosty finished first. Her eyes widened as she stared at the town, and her mouth formed a perfect circle as she smeared the syllables of two words into a single long howl of horror.,

"Holyshit!"

Meeker was, in a word, a mess. Ashes and ruins slashed across the pristine patterns of streets and buildings in a dance of random destruction. The same pulse of power which ignited the motors in our refrigeration units had run riot with the village's appliances as miles of wound copper wire converted the influx of energy into a core- melting heat.

I shuddered in sympathy as I focused my field glasses on the village in the valley. I could only imagine myself in their place on that night: trapped between a blazing sky and a burning town with nowhere to run and no place to hide.

I moved next to Belinda and held my arm around her shoulders as we shivered together in the charcoal flavored sunshine. Since our sticky encounter with Fitzwater's band of bonded brothers, I studied every aerial photograph of the town. Basic paranoia more than geography guided my curiosity.

Tucked into a pocket of high ground between two steep ridges, just north of the White River, the compact and well-planned town of Meeker spread out before us like a charred chessboard.

"The weather is ideal for a flyover, the sun is almost directly overhead," I said as I glanced upward and squinted into the cloudless blue sky.

I slid the Quadcopter from its custom carry case and gave the mechanical marvel a quick inspection. All systems were good to go except for one small problem: I couldn't see shit.

Our nearly treeless vantage point provided little refuge from the sun. The itty-bitty black plastic sunshade did nothing to prevent the glare of sunlight from bleaching detail form the drone's handheld instrument panel.

Time for Option B. I removed the VR goggles from my backpack and plugged the connecting cable into the control panel's USB port and adjusted the straps. When the fit was comfortable and snug, I tapped the power switch. My point of view instantly changed as I became the aircraft and was no longer me.

The onboard Hasselblad camera produced lifelike high-quality 4K videos, breathtaking and razor sharp with crisp, vivid colors. The effect was a bit disconcerting. Whereas a moment ago a moment before I had been staring at the device, I was now me looking back at me without a pixel in sight. I shook my head and the image in the mirror nodded in reply.

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal,"

Swallowing hard, I snickered as I sank to my knees and lay prone as I hugged the rocky soil and looked around. A slight buzz leftover from a sunrise bowl gave the display's reality a virtual kick. I'm not scared of heights as long as there was a railing between me and the scenery.

Vertigo and mountain crests have a mutual animosity and there's no sense in testing gravity.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," Belinda giggled and minked the voice of the crazy computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey as she fired-up the little drone's four engines and launched my POV into the air. The shrill whine of quad's electric engines quickly faded to a whispering silence as the tiny craft soared into the dazzling blue sky, its battleship-gray pastel undercarriage blending into invisibility with the heavens.