The wall was far thicker than any tomb needed. If our line had been off by even a little earlier, we would have punched through. Before I could think further, the remaining section gave way. The thing vaulted straight out, landed on the concrete floor, and moved faster here than it had in the tomb.
Carter swore and started to lift the crate again. I stopped him and told him to move. We turned and ran. The corridor was wide and straight, wide enough for vehicles, with nothing to break the line. It was faster. Every time it hit the ground it closed the gap. At the end stood a heavy steel door hanging half open, like the entrance to a blast-rated storage bay. The hinges were rusted, but it wasn't locked. We charged through. All three of us hauled on it. Metal screamed against metal. It barely moved. We threw our weight into it and got it shut in the instant it reached the doorway. A few seconds later came a dull impact. The door shuddered, but it didn't give. Whatever it was, it couldn't tear open reinforced steel.
At least for now, we were still alive.
I sat on the concrete and dragged air, sweeping the flashlight around. The storage space was enormous. Faded military numbers were stenciled on crates. Sealed containers and oil drums sat on metal racks. The air was dry, clean of the tomb's rot. From the direction and distance we'd run, it hit me that the mountain had been hollowed out into a complete underground facility. The tomb had only been sharing a wall with it. This wasn't a temporary job. This was a structure built for war. Who built it didn't matter. What mattered was that we were trapped inside, and it was still outside.
We'd already taken the goods. Regret didn't buy anything now. I stood and waved them deeper in, saying a facility this size wouldn't be an empty warehouse. There would be weapons. If we couldn't outrun it, we needed something more reliable than entrenching tools.
Carter flexed his injured hand and frowned at me. "You really think they parked tanks down here?" I said even if they had, anything that sat underground this long would be dead anyway—rubber gone, fuel lines cracked, engines rusted into solid iron.
The passages ran through the mountain in a grid, too regular to be a natural cave, engineered on purpose. We stayed close to the wall as we moved, careful not to lose direction in the layout. The arched concrete ceiling was thick and sound; when the beam swept it, I could see cable conduits laid along the curve and recessed mounts for emergency lights. Everything was dead, but intact—if we found the generator room, we might get lighting back. After a stretch we found a facility diagram on the wall, yellowed but still readable, labeled with the main corridor, ammunition section, equipment storage, generator room, barracks, fuel storage, and drainage. The complex ran three levels deep, tight and deliberate, far beyond a basic supply cache. I pulled the map down and folded it. Back in the engineer units, I'd worked jobs like this. A map in hand beats wandering blind.
"Where's the nearest way out?" Erin asked.
I checked bearings and told her it wasn't far, but I couldn't say whether it had been sealed. Carter slowed, lowered his voice, and said, "James, I just thought of something. The thing that tore the mule open last night probably uses this place as a nest. We're walking these corridors—one turn and we could run right into it. We need weapons first." There was no joking in his tone. His eyes were sharper than usual, and the air seemed to sink with the thought.
"You're right," I said. "Don't wait for it to come looking."
We picked up speed. On the right we soon saw rows of stacked crates, faded lettering sprayed on the sides: U.S. Army Ordnance. Carter pried one open. Inside, M1 Garand rifles were laid out in order, metal parts coated in preservative grease, stocks intact, no obvious corrosion. He grabbed one, racked the action, and said it would run. I took one too and sighted down the corridor. The weight was steady, the balance familiar. I lowered it and said, "Eight-round en-bloc, semi-auto. Good enough on people. Maybe not enough for it."
Erin found sealed ammo in another crate and pulled out a few M1 Carbines. Farther in was a crate of M2 fragmentation grenades. Carter hefted one and said at least it would slow it down. Deeper in the weapons area we found a few BARs and several Thompson submachine guns, ammo crates stacked beside them. The air smelled of oil and metal—dry, sealed, nothing like the tomb. This place had been preserved shut for years. We split the load fast: each of us took a primary weapon, then enough ammo and grenades to matter. I told them not to put all their faith in guns. If this was an ammo depot, there would be heavier explosives too, and if the exits were sealed, we might need to make a bigger kind of noise. Carter followed my flashlight toward deeper stacks marked with bold explosive warnings. He didn't speak, but his face said he understood.
Erin watched me set the rifle back in the crate and asked why, if it looked solid and powerful, I sounded like I didn't want it.
Before I could answer, Carter cut in, telling her not to listen to me—army guys get spoiled on semi-auto fire and turn picky about old rifles—and saying if that thing caught up again, he'd like to see whether I could still solve it with "skill." As he talked, he dragged out an ammo crate from the bottom row, cracked it open, and found cartridges stacked in neat rows, wrapped in oiled paper, dull yellow under the beam.
Carter grew up hunting with his family. He wasn't new to firearms. He hadn't used this exact model, but the logic carried over. He started loading and chambering smoothly, then lifted the rifle and pointed it at me in a casual gesture. I pushed the muzzle away at once and told him loaded guns don't swing around, muzzles never point at your own people, and it isn't a joke.
I told him it wasn't that the Garand was bad. It was wrong for an enclosed facility. The round had too much penetration; at under fifty meters it could punch through a target and keep going, and this place was steel and concrete everywhere. A hit on metal could throw a ricochet, and in tight corridors that was a bigger hazard. Carter thumped his chest and said his aim wasn't going to wander. I cut him off and said this wasn't a range. The environment was the problem. Old weapons also fail more easily. There was no reason to carry that risk.
We kept digging through crates and found more Thompson submachine guns in a row marked U.S. Ordnance, with cases of .45 stacked beside them. Heavy receivers, solid wood stocks, compact build—better for close work than rifles. Erin asked what model it was. I pulled the bolt and checked, told her it was a Thompson, and said it would be far more reliable up close. I told them to set the rifles down and take these.
Erin wasn't fluent with the controls, so she held the flashlight while Carter dragged out magazines. We sat on the floor and started loading, the resistance of spring and steel returning as a familiar pressure under my thumbs. As I pressed the last round in, Erin reached out and tapped my shoulder. Her voice dropped low. She said she thought she'd just seen a figure run past behind me. I looked up at her.
"What figure?"
"Like a little girl," she said. "Small. Just flashed across that corridor. No footsteps."
A child down here was almost impossible. The facility had been sealed for years, and the corridors were quiet enough that even echoes arrived late. We'd all been crouched loading mags. Erin was facing me, her light spilling over my back. I turned and swept the beam behind me. It was a T-junction, the far end black, empty.
"You sure it wasn't shadow?" I asked.
Erin didn't answer right away. She stared into the darkness and said she knew what shadow looked like. That wasn't it. The corridor went quiet again.