Chapter 1: Introduction

My name is Jack Lostridge and for years I lived in the quiet little Appalachian town of Mountain View. I spent my whole life there - born in the little hospital, went to school here, got a job there. The same with all of my friends. Most folks accepted this as the "way it should be." I was ready for a change. One day I got my wish.

I worked at a quiet little place called Victory Station. Once you drove through the gates and got past the armed guards, it was actually kind of pretty, in a Cold War-concrete kind of way. If you've ever seen pictures of the Maginot Line, that's what Victory Station looked like. Beautiful green scenery dotted with dark brown concrete tumors.

You see, Mountain View was tucked away in the beautiful green hills of Virginia, isolated from the rest of the world by winding roads and the fact that nothing ever happened there. The only reason the town existed at all was the once secret complex of bunkers the government had built and inhabited from WW II through the Cold War. During the Cold War, everyone had known that something was going on "round Victory Station." Anyone foolish enough to ask too many questions got visited by men in suits. Government agents, just like in the movies. The smart ones got quiet, the others weren't seen again. Rumors flew about people reading the mail and listening to telephones, but the Mountain View folks were patriotic Americans and they believed that this was their part in the war against Communism. They endured what inconveniences there were as badges of honor.

The government sold the bunkers to a private salvage firm a few years ago. The only problem was that certain records and blueprints were missing, meaning that before salvage crews could dismantle and retrieve equipment, "scouts" had to explore the dark passages and map out the extensive complex. That's where I came in.

After graduating from the local college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I did the same thing everyone else did and got a job at Victory Station. The idea that I got paid to crawl around a super-secret government bunker complex finding the lost treasures of some mad scientist was exciting at first. I made- believe that I was Indiana Jones. The money wasn't bad either. But after awhile, it got to be like any other unskilled job - menial and routine.

To make matters worse, I worked with complete morons. One week last fall, Sam "Kiss Ass" Parker reported me to the boss for smoking inside the bunker. Ordinarily this would have gotten me a slap on the wrist, but Sam made sure our boss George heard about my "safety violation" in front of a crowd. I got chewed out and put on "scout" detail.

Scout detail was where people got sent down into the bunker ahead of the salvage teams to map the lower levels and find areas that might yield high value items. Any excuse to not see Sam's face might have been viewed as a reward but scout detail was the company's way to get rid of troublemakers. Scouts worked in the dark, climbing down questionable stairs, exploring what might be booby-trapped rooms. All for less pay. What a deal.

So after Sam shafted me, I got assigned to scout out area K322 in bunker 7. I punched my time card, picked up my gear at the admin area, and hopped on the shuttle bus. I parked my 60 pound backpack next to me and sat back to enjoy the ride. Scouts carried everything with them: oxygen, acetylene, explosives and more. Everything you needed to open doors and cut through locks in the depths of deep, cold, concrete hole.

As we rode up the road I saw the entire complex. There were twelve bunkers in all at Victory Station, spread out along the narrow valley. Some were built back into the hills, like reinforced concrete caves. Others were low green mounds that looked like perfectly symmetrical hills. Tunnels interconnected them all, making the entire complex a gigantic rabbit warren.

Number seven was one of the big caves, so I entered through the airlock and signed in. The guards didn't even look at you on the way in, they were more interested in people trying to smuggle things out. I couldn't imagine what you'd want to steal from this place. Most of what we salvaged was wire or pipe and the company only got a few dollars on the ton, so petty theft was unlikely.