Page 54 of Crimson Moon Falling

“Yes. We’re about a mile southeast of the target.” We activated our com-links.

The forest was dense, and we moved in a loose formation. Parker and Freda took the lead with Bart and Cora in the middle, and Malcolm in the rear. The hellhounds went ahead, appearing and disappearing among the trunks like smoke, with Mangus circling back to check on me.

The forest slowly fell silent. No birds chirping or squirrels chittering. We reached the coordinates twenty minutes later, and I noticed a shallow depression in the forest floor, but there was nothing else there. No structure, or ruins, or even a clearing. It was unremarkable in every way except the depression.

I stood in the center of it and turned in a slow circle. “This is it. These are Viggo’s coordinates exactly.”

“I donna see anything here,” Malcolm muttered.

“There has to be something here, we just can’t see it yet.” I pulled my pack off and crouched, pressing my palm flat against the ground.

Parker looked around. “I say we spread out and look for anything that breaks the natural pattern or looks manmade. Check for depressions in the soil or disturbed vegetation that hasn’t grown the way it should.”

The group fanned out, but I stayed where I was. The implant sharpened my focus like a magnifying glass, making everything easier to read. I sent tendrils into the forest floor because whatever was here had to be underground.

Sweat ran down my back and a headache started to form. But I finally picked up something. A deep, low thump from somewhere below and to the north. The rhythm was too regular to be geothermal.

Following the vibrations, I moved in a slow line, and the pulse grew more pronounced. I was a hundred feet from the coordinates when my foot struck something solid that didn’t give. Beneath a thick tangle of deadfall lay a large metal plate.

“Parker, I found something,” I murmured into the com-link, keeping my voice low.

He was beside me in seconds, then Malcolm. Together, we pulled the fallen limbs clear; someone had likely added them to the camouflage. The plate was about five feet square, mounted flush with a recessed pull handle. I realized it was a hatch.

Parker crouched next to me, studying it. “Can you sense any energy from the handle?” I carefully touched the metal, but the vibrations were minor and felt years old. Relief flooded me.

“No one’s touched this in a while.”

Malcolm eyed me. “You can tell how long it’s been since somethin’s been touched?”

“It’s not exact.”

He shook his head ruefully. “You never cease to surprise us.”

He and Bart worked the hatch open. It was heavy, military-grade steel, the underside thick with rubber sealing gaskets that had dried and cracked with age. Cold, stagnant air wafted up, smelling like dirt and concrete.

Below us, a metal ladder descended into darkness. We pulled out our headlamps and switched them on. My beam caught the first ten feet of the concrete shaft, showing water stains and wide, bolted rungs going down another twenty feet to a flat floor.

Freda and Bart stood guard while the rest of us took the rungs down to check out the bunker, or whatever it was. The hellhounds stayed at the surface, but Mangus whined as we descended into the darkness.

The space opened up beyond a blast door into a wide, low corridor with overhead caging that had once held fluorescent tubes, most of them dead and broken. The concrete walls were water-stained, and the construction was probably Cold War-era, built to withstand a nuclear blast. We were standing in some kind of bunker.

A thick bundle of zip-tied cable ran the length of the corridor, and ventilation units had been retrofitted into the concrete walls, the new metal shiny against the concrete. There was power and ventilation down here.

“Someone plans to use this facility,” Cora murmured quietly, speaking for the first time. Her voice was flat, but I felt her anxiety. She didn’t seem to like subterranean spaces either.

Malcolm stopped at a small black dome mounted at a junction in the corridor, barely visible against the ceiling. He studied it for a moment, not touching it. It was a security camera.

“This is active infrastructure.” He pointed to the cable routing, then to another camera angled to cover the corridor’s approach to the blast door.

I nodded. “This wasn’t cobbled together. Someone is surveilling this Cold War bunker.”

“Looks like they’re motion-activated. We need to pull back and figure out how to get in without triggering them,” Parker muttered.

We climbed back up and moved fifty feet back into the trees. No one spoke for a few moments as we stood in the shadow of the pines. Mangus pressed against my leg, his warmth soaking through my clothes. I reached down and scratched his scruff as I sent a few vibrations outward in a slow, careful sweep. I didn’t sense anyone, but I could only go so far.

I turned to Parker and shook my head as Malcolm watched us communicate. “The cameras were off,” Malcolm murmured.

He’d crouched against the base of a thick-trunked pine, elbows on his knees. “I’m thinking the bastards haven’t gotten this one up and running quite yet.”