Chapter 43

“Well, that should do it. Time check,” Belinda wiped sweat from her brow with her drenched t-shirt and braced her entrenching tool against the entrance of the newly constructed “bunker-in-a-bag.”

Unless you were part Mountain Goat, the winding ridgeline trail was the only drivable and walkable unbroken overland route from town to our base. Before SkyFire, arrays of remote sensors and wireless cameras guarded the pathway to the Society’s home. The sun pulled the plug and left us blind. Our mission was to fill the gap with a concealed guard post.

Our building project had started life as a bad joke. I was helping Sheila do an inventory of strange and obscure supplies. Stuff ordered over the years but never used.

I opened a dusty storage locker to find it filled with hundreds of bundles of self-sealing sandbags.

“Great, a box of instant bunkers, all we gotta do is add sand,” I quipped.

Instead of laughing, Sheila took notes and made a list. An hour later, she had assembled all the tools and equipment required to quickly build a fort in the field. She called the kit a bunker-in-a-bag.

Sheila tasked my partner and I with operationally testing the idea after Belinda volunteered us to do a proof of concept deployment. The place of Darlene and Alice’s liberation was the Group’s location to construct the colony’s first permanent outpost, “Camp Sticky Fingers.”

With an eye toward history, I sketched a map in my journal. I gave the nameless landmark the new title of ‘Reunion Point,’ cartographer’s get naming rights. One of the perks of the office.

“Four hours, thirteen minutes,” I replied as I checked my watch for the time and recorded the same in my field notes. “Sheila should be pleased. She didn’t think we could finish in less than five hours,” I said as I took a pre-packed pot pipe from my pocket and held it high.

I tilted my head to one side and gave the Frost Queen an inquiring look.

“We’ll smoke to success after we clean-up and do a concealment check.”

The hidden sandbag structure carved into the leeward side of the ridge’s crest was more shelter than a camp. The foot-and-half of roofline visible from the direction of approach had been carefully contoured and camouflaged to appear, at a distance, to be nothing more than another random rock formation. The bunker’s eight-inch high observation window lay in the shadowed recess of the largest nook and cranny, a micro-cave, width about eighteen inches, and a foot deep. Invisible in plain sight.

Sheila christened the innovation, “bunker-in-a-bag” because the entire ten-pound kit fit into a ten-by-fourteen inch olive drab sandbag. Each bag-of-bags contained:

- 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 relatively simple affair. We dig out the dirt, filled the sandbags, and stacked them into walls.

Next, we covered the top opening with a latticework of rods. We waterproofed the roof with Mylar space blankets and masked 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 attractive 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 small “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. Sinful shades of red, worthy of only the best brothels in Saigon bathed the interior of our sandbag bungalow in a rusty shade of lust. 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 squinted. “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 yah got left in the six-shooter?” she pointed to my flask.

“Two gone, four to go.” I replenished her cap.

“Fire in the hole,” she snickered as she lifted her head back and drained the drink in a single swallow.

“Another?” Her eyes watered as she wiped her lips with the back of 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 lousy eyesight blurred the finer details. Within the confines of our tiny bunker? The view was seductive.

“Just the way I like it,” she smiled as she opened the stove’s door and threw another chunk of wood into the fire chamber.