The Bunker (musc)
by Jaypat
“Jeeze, can’t this thing go any faster?” I yelled.
“It’s a Jeep not a Maserati!” Jasper yelled back, pushing his glasses back up his nose. The Jeep was bouncing so much they kept popping off his ears.
“They’re going to catch us,” said Roy.
“What do you expect?” said Jasper. “They’re on dirt bikes. They have a decided tactical advantage.”
I looked behind me and out the rear window. Sure enough those bastards were gaining on us. There were at least six of them, racing toward us across the open desert kicking up huge clouds of dust in their trails. I could just make out Bobby Bishop leading the pack.
“How did they find us?” I asked no on in particular.
“Don’t you get it?” answered Roy. “They hunt us. We’re like their hobby or something. And now they’ve got us right where they want us: right in the ass end of nowhere. You can’t win against these guys. We might as well just stop now and get the beatings over with.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said, “they might not stop with beatings this time, Roy. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to die just yet.”
“I concur,” said Jasper. That was Jasper for you. I thought maybe under the circumstance he might start to talk like a normal human being, but no. Our lives were in danger and he still sounded like an encyclopedia.
Of course, he’d always talked like that, even back when I first met him in middle school. And I’ve got to tell you I was pretty lonely as a kid until I met Jasper. Growing up in a tiny hole in the wall desert town like Patch of Grass, Arizona, I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone like me. Then one day in assembly I saw Jasper checking out Jack Spencer and I knew; I just knew I wasn’t alone anymore. I mean I checked out Jack Spencer all the time. He was one of those kids who had just blossomed all over with muscle as soon as he’d hit puberty. All I got was a bad case of acne.
The next day I saw Jasper sitting alone at lunch. It was late fall and one of those rare days when you couldn’t fry eggs on the asphalt. Jasper, like most of the kids, was spending his lunch outside. He was positioned so he had a good view of the basketball court where Jack Spencer was shooting hoops with his shirt off. Jasper was staring.
I quietly sat next to him. I don’t think he noticed me until I spoke. “Pretty hot, hunh?”
“Yeah,” he said. Then he caught himself. But he was way too late, and I think he knew it. “I mean, he’s an excellent sportsman.”
“It’s ok,” I said laughing. “I think he’s pretty hot, too.” He looked at me uncertainly for a minute, probably trying to guess weather or not I was baiting him. But I had a really open, honest, and friendly face. I just didn’t do that kind of thing and I think it showed. Then he broke into a grin and said, “He has a magnificent butt.”
“Oh yeah,” I agreed, “damned magnificent.” And that was the beginning. Jasper and I became really good friends. But we both liked the jocks and neither of us was inclined that way. So, we never went much beyond a little experimenting.
Except, of course, for now, when we might wind up dying together.
“Where are you going?” I yelled at Jasper, as we raced seemingly uncontrollably toward a line of a line of rocky hills.
“Those prominences ahead show some potential,” he said.
“Potential for what?” I asked, “A blind canyon? A gully?”
“First of all, the ground is rock, so they won’t be able to follow us by our tire tracks. Second, we won’t be visible for several hundred yards like we are now. Then maybe we might be able to evade them. But out here, we have no chance.”
Ok, Jasper had good reasons as always. He was probably the smartest guy I ever knew. Hell, he was probably the smartest guy in that whole mud hole town we lived in. Of course, he graduated top of our class in high school and then… stayed. No one was more shocked than me. I mean, he had the whole wide world waiting for him and he chose to stay in tiny insignificant Patch of Grass, Arizona. Of course I didn’t find out about The Project until later.
And me, well I was pretty ordinary. I wasn’t any great student. I didn’t have any major ambitions. My mom and dad owned a tourist shop along with a restaurant and a neighboring motel by the highway, and that’s how they made their living, feeding sheltering and selling useless junk to motorists. That’s all our town really was, a jumped up rest stop for people heading from Phoenix to Vegas. And believe it or not, our little place was the crown jewel. I started working at the store when I was 13 and I was still working there now, at 20. Eventually Mom and Dad would retire and I’d own our little kingdom. That was going to be my future and I’d pretty much accepted it. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible. That is if I lived long enough to inherit it. And the way things were going, it didn’t look good.
I sat back and grabbed onto the hand holds and began praying like mad. We entered the hills and Jasper started steering us in a zigzagging random course around them. I could hear the growl of the dirt bikes echoing all around us, but I couldn’t see any of them. That was good, right?
Then suddenly there was a loud bang and Jasper nearly lost control. Christ, we’d lost a tire. We screeched to a halt and Jasper killed the engine. We all simultaneously hopped out and looked at the tire. It had been blown to smithereens. Of course, we had a spare but they’d be on us long before we’d have a chance to change it. Then Roy shouted, “Look!” and pointed toward a crevasse in the rock. It looked like it was just wide enough to fit the jeep. We never would have seen it if we hadn’t broken down right in front of it. Jasper put the jeep in neutral and the three of us quickly rolled it into the large crack. It went back quite a ways, much father than I would have guessed. We’d gotten about twenty feet in when I looked back and saw a dirt bike race past the entrance. That was close. The cave turned to the right and suddenly we found ourselves in a small valley. It was completely surrounded by rocky cliffs and it looked like the cave was the only way in or out.
But that wasn’t the oddest thing. We obviously weren’t the first people to come here. In the center of the small valley was what looked like a hut. And surrounding it on the compass points were four long flat boxes. Of course, Jasper headed straight for the structures. He had an insatiable curiosity, and I followed after, along with Roy. We started at one of the log flat boxes. The top was a door and Jasper started to pull it open. It didn’t come easily. Roy and I had to help. It was obvious the hinges were rusty and these doors had not been opened for many years. There was what looked like a mirror inside.
“Ha,” he laughed. “Solar cells.” He quickly opened the rest of the flat boxes and discovered that they were the same. The hut had a lock on it, old and rusted like the hinges. But Japer had some bolt cutters with him. He’d used them to cut the chain link fence that surrounded the army’s land we were on, and now he used them to cut the ancient lock.
“I’m not sure you should be doing that,” I said.
“Bobby and his minions may still find us,” said Jasper, “We may need to barricade ourselves inside.”
Well, there was no arguing with that. For the past year or so, Bobby Bishop and his gang had made our lives hell. Ever since Jasper and I saved Roy from them, it was like it was his personal mission to destroy us. I guess he felt the only thing worse than a fag was one who fought back.
Jasper pulled at the shed door. It was almost frozen with rust; so once again it took all three of us to open it. It was pitch black in there. This shed had no windows. Jasper ran back to the jeep for his flashlight (he had a full camping package back there) and we were able to shine a little light in there.
We were wrong. It wasn’t a shed. A long flight of steps seemed to lead down into a black, black pit.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked.
“It’s some kind of a bunker,” said Jasper, “probably built back in the days when they were still planning to conduct nuclear tests here.”
“It’s creepy,” said Roy.
“Let’s see if we can do something about that,” said Jasper, shining his light on what looked like a fuse box. He pulled open the rusty door, and flipped a couple of switches and suddenly the place was filled with a dim yellowy light. “Solar panels,” said Jasper. “You’ve got to love ’em.”
“It’s still creepy,” said Roy. And he was right. All the lights seemed to do was create long dark shadows which reached out toward us from every direction.
Jasper turned and shut the door behind us, blocking out what little daylight there was. The door had a bar on it and Jasper slid it creaking into place—the sound sent the hairs on my back standing on end. “There,” he said. “That should help if Bobby comes calling. Shall we go investigate?” He flashed his light at the descending stairs.
“Why?” asked Roy. And I had to wonder that myself.
“If this is a shelter,” said Jasper, “It could be fully equipped. And since it’s so well concealed it might be the ideal location for our little gatherings.”
“Our little gatherings” were what had gotten us into this mess in the first place. Finding places where we could meet without the redneck patrol busting in on us had been getting harder and harder. For a long time Jasper and I had been doing ok getting together in secret. We frequently got together for jerk sessions with the latest Flex magazine or some porno we managed to secretly import.
But as low key as we kept things, there were a few facts we just couldn’t get around. It’s hard to be private in a town as small as Patch of Grass. Neither of us ever dated girls and we were frequently together. A couple of the good ol boys began to suspect. They began hassling us at restaurants and on the streets, calling us fag boys and sometimes shoving us around.
And the worst of these guys was Bobby Bishop. He was a big guy, about six two and naturally bulky. And he was just plain bad tempered and mean. If there was a bar fight in town, you can bet Bobby was at the center of it. And he had a group of guys, just as mean, who seemed to follow him around. These guys never seemed to be employed, so where they got the money for beer and dirt bikes was always a mystery to me.
Once Bobby and his gang caught Jasper out by himself at night. They beat him up pretty bad; put him in the hospital for a couple of nights. The law was largely unhelpful. I think they pretty much agreed with Bobby. So after that, Jasper got a taser and some pepper spray. And that, of course, was how we met Roy.
“Dude, there’s nothing sexy about this place at all,” said Roy, looking around the small, dank shed.
“Maybe, maybe not, let’s see what’s below.” With that Jasper started down the steps. I don’t know what made us follow. Was it curiosity or just the fact that Jasper had the flashlight? Whatever it was, we went down about three stories worth of steps before we came to the bottom.
To give Jasper credit, the room we found ourselves in was sparsely furnished, and much more brightly lit, but it was pretty plain and very dusty. There were some chairs, a table, even a desk with an ancient PC.
“Well,” said Roy, looking around, “I guess this place could work.”
“I suppose we could see what the rest of it looks like,” I said, encouraged by the brighter lights. There were a couple of doors in the room, plus what looked like a window with blinds on it. They were closed.
But Jasper was already examining the computer. He started looking for the CPU and the on switch but what he found was a bunch of cables. He followed the cables up and over. It looked like they went through the wall by one of the doors. Jasper opened the door and looked in.
“Merciful God,” he said. I looked past him into the room and saw a huge machine which took up all the available space.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s the computer,” he said. “No wonder I couldn’t find the on switch.” Then he headed into the room and started examining the giant machine.
Jasper never met a computer he didn’t like. And, in school, no subject had caught him up like computers. By the time we graduated high school, he had become an IT consultant for the local mining company. And they were glad to have him because finding competent IT people who wanted to live out in the middle of nowhere was no easy task. Jasper liked the job because he only worked when they needed him and it paid him enough to finance The Project.
Oh yes, The Project. I’d first found out about The Project a couple of months after we graduated high school. I’d gone over to his house for one of our standard jerk sessions and couldn’t help but notice all the new expensive computer equipment installed all over the place.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“It’s my project,” he’d said.
“What project?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “Don’t be offended. I haven’t even told my own mother. I can’t tell anyone. It’s top secret. Until it’s done I can’t breathe a word about what it is to anyone. Ever.”
It took me another two months to get it out of him. He’s spent his college fund on all this computer equipment. He was designing the next generation of search engine for the internet. According to him, this search engine would do more than just look for a bunch of random word matches. His engine would be able to understand context. It would be able to find you exactly what you were looking for quickly and efficiently, rather than several hundred close-but not-quite-matches. And the more you used it, the more it would learn about your interests, and the better it would get at finding what you needed. It would be dynamic
“You probably don’t understand what that means,” he said.
Oh, I understood what it meant. It meant he was going to be a billionaire by the time he was twenty-five. Of course, he swore me to secrecy. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t know anyone in Patch of Grass who would give a crap.
“That’s got to be one hell of a computer,” said Roy, staring at the giant machine in the underground room. “I wonder how much it’s worth.”
“Not much,” said Jasper. “My lap top probably has ten times the processing power, but back in the day, this must have been state of the art.” He found a switch, hit it, and the antique whirred into life. “One thing’s for sure; this stuff’s a lot newer than the fifties.” He turned and headed back out to the first room. He sat down at the monitor and we both peered over his shoulder, but the screen was nearly blank. All there was, was a flashing curser and a C:. “Yup,” said Jasper. “I’d say we’re looking at vintage eighties tech.”
“So, no Halo,” said Roy.
“Ha,” snorted Jasper, “we’ll be lucky if it has Pong.”
“Pong?” asked Roy. “What the hell is Pong?” But Jasper was too busy typing in strings of characters and I had no idea what he was doing. But it had some effect. The computer was spitting more strings of characters back at him. I had no clue what it all meant, but he seemed to.
“What are you doing?” I had to ask.
“Most of this stuff is password protected,” he said. Now there was a shock. “But a lot of the early programmers would create their own passwords and then hide them in the program code, so if they needed to, they could always get in.”
“So? Who cares what’s on some twenty five year old computer?” I said.
“Aren’t you even a little curious what they were doing down here?” he asked.
“Not especially,” I answered.
“Well, I am,” he replied, and then he went back to examining his computer gibberish.
“What’s in here?” asked Roy as he tugged on the other door in the room, but it was locked. I went over and looked at it. It didn’t look like the computer room door at all. I was large and metal.
“It looks kind of like a walk in freezer,” I said.
“Maybe we found some kind of underground food storage place,” he said, grinning. “Too bad it’s locked, ’cause I’m starved.” I looked and, oddly enough, I saw no sign of a key hole, not anywhere on the door or the handle.
“I wonder how you open it,” I said. Then suddenly I heard a loud metallic click and the door swung open a crack. Roy and I jumped back about three feet. “What the…?”
“The computer opens it,” said Jasper, laughing at our surprised reactions.
“You could have warned us,” I said.
“Not for all the tea in China,” he gafawed.
“So did you get that thing working yet?” asked Roy.
“It’s already working,” Jasper replied, “But I did manage to get some of the software up and running, if that’s what you meant?”
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Roy,” I said. “He gets this way around computers. You’re lucky you haven’t had to see that side of him yet”
“I don’t mind seeing that side, although I’d rather see his backside,” Roy said, leering.
“Come on, Roy, we explained that to you,” I said for maybe the millionth time.
“You guys worry too much,” he said. “I’m not some blushing virgin. I’ve seen a lot more action then either of you.”
Sadly, that was no doubt true. We first met Roy about a year ago. We were driving through town after dark, always a dangerous proposition, when we spotted two of the gang’s dirt bikes parked by the side of the road. We looked around to try and figure out where the ass holes might be, but there weren’t any bars or liquor stores in the area, and it was the wrong part of town for whores. Then we heard the cries. Someone was getting the shit kicked out of them. I saw Jasper go pale. He pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed his taser from the glove compartment.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
“Either come with me or shut up,” he said, and he headed toward the sounds of the ass whooping.
Why did I think this was a bad idea? But I grabbed the can of pepper spray and followed after him. The trail led us to a small, dark alley, and sure enough there were Jeff Spangler and Steve Jones, beating the crap out of a cringing pathetic figure.
“Back the fuck off!” shouted Jasper. I was a little stunned. I don’t think I’d ever heard him curse before.
“Oh look, Steve,” said Jeff, letting up on his victim and looking over at us. “Two more of ‘em.”
“It’s like a fag boy convention,” added Steve.
And that’s when Jasper charged. They weren’t expecting that. It took them completely by surprise. Hell, it took me completely by surprise. One jab with the taser and Jeff was writhing on the ground. I couldn’t let my friend do this alone. I ran up and hit Steve in the face with a blast of pepper spay.
“Oh fuck!” he cried as his hands went to his face.
I looked down and saw their victim. He was a kid, still in high school by the look of him. Bruised and bloody, he was staring up at us, looking like he didn’t know who to be more afraid of. He was half out of it and didn’t look like he could walk on his own.
I looked back at Jasper. He looked like he was about to taser Jeff again, even though the thug was out for the count.
“Jasper, can you help me with this guy? He’s in pretty bad shape.”
Sparing one last glace at Jeff, Jasper came over and helped me get the kid to his feet. Then with both of us supporting him, we got him out of the alley as quickly as we could. Steve was still shouting behind us. “We’re going get you fagots for this. We’re gonna fuck you up. Wait and see. Ah fuck, that hurts!”
We got the kid into the car and drove straight to the medical center. We really didn’t have a hospital. On the way, I found out his name was Roy. We tried to find out where his family was, but he said he didn’t have one.
The nurse at the medical center patched him up, and made him spend the night there. It seems she knew him. He’d been in there before, and there wasn’t any talk of insurance or medical bills.
The next morning when I stopped by Jasper’s to pick him up so we could go visit Roy, Jasper’s little brother Grant told me he’d been arrested. Apparently one of the Red Necks had filed a complaint. They’d confiscated Jasper’s taser and pepper spray and taken him down to the station.
I was off like a shot. When I got to the police station, I found Jasper’s mom in the lobby. She was crying. She said they wouldn’t tell her anything about Jasper and kept trying to get her to go home. She wouldn’t leave, of course. I sat with her for the next hour until Jasper finally appeared. He had a few bruises on him that weren’t there the night before. I tried to ask, but he said he didn’t want to talk about it.
We drove Jasper’s mom home, and as soon as we’d seen her safely into the house, he turned to me and said, “Let’s go see Roy.” On the way to the medical center he finally told me what happened.
“I’ve been released on a kind of probation,” he said, “unofficial, of course. I can’t own any weapons or be out on the street after 10pm. If I violate any of these conditions, even once, I will go to prison.”
“That’s crazy!” I said. “They can’t do that.”
“Of course they can. As I said, it’s unofficial.”
“Didn’t you tell them about Roy?”
“They didn’t seem particularly interested,” he said rubbing one of the bruises on his cheek. “They did, however, offer to drop the whole incident as if it never occurred. There’s just one condition.”
“What?”
“That I leave town.”
“They can’t do that,” I said. “My dad knows people. We’ll get a lawyer. We’ll fight this.” My dad had worked in that store his whole life. He inherited it from his dad. He was president of the Chamber of Commerce. Our family had been here for generations. And in Patch of Grass, that counted.
“You don’t understand, do you? Your father is the only reason you weren’t in the next cell. He’s already used his connections to protect you.”
His words were like a hammer. I often wondered why they beat the crap out of Jasper, but never me. There had been opportunities. But I guess they must have known they couldn’t get away with it. Christ, I wouldn’t have given them credit for being that smart.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m staying, of course. Another year or two and The Project will be completed. Then I’ll leave this shit hole in style.”
We pulled into the parking lot at the medical center just in time to see Roy stumble out the door. He was taller than I realized, he must be close to six feet. He looked horrible. Over night his bruises had blossomed into huge black and blue patches that nearly covered his face, which was already badly misshapen due to all the swelling.
He froze as soon as he saw us. He looked like a dear caught in headlights. It was like he couldn’t make up his mind to run or stay where he was. In the end, I was pretty sure it was his injuries that decided for him. Running was just out of the question.
“Roy?” started Jasper. “Can we give you a ride?”
“Nah, that’s ok,” he said. Christ, he looked terrified. Then I realized, oh my God, he thinks we’re going to rape him.
“Well, let us buy you breakfast, anyway,” I said, nodding at Rosa’s Dinner which was just across the street.
I could tell I’d caught his interest. He must be starving. But he still looked really undecided. “Come on,” I said. “No strings attached. Really.”
I think his hunger decided him more than my persuasive ability, and a few minutes later we were sitting across from him in the diner and he was shoveling eggs down his throat like he’d never eaten before in his life. I couldn’t help but notice how he scoped the place out as soon as we walked in. I realized he was identifying all the exits in case he had to make a quick break for it. What could have happened to this kid to make him like that?
Piece by piece we got his story. He was sixteen, and from Phoenix. About a year ago, he had come out to his parents and they had thrown him out of the house. He’d been wondering homeless pretty much ever since. He made his way in the world, traveling up and down the highway turning tricks for truck drivers. He’d been raped more times than he could count. The last time, he’d woken up bleeding by the exit to Patch of Grass. He decided he’d had enough of truck drivers, and wanted to see if the miners were any better. He’d been giving some guy a blow job behind McIntyre’s, one of the local bars, when Steve and Jeff had found him.
Jasper and I looked at each other and just from the glance we knew we were going to do everything we could to help Roy. Jasper offered him a place to stay while I promised to do what I could to find him a more permanent situation. Patch of Grass was no paradise, but it was a hell of a lot better than what he had now. Roy tried to tell us he didn’t have any money, that’d he’d been robbed the night before as well as beaten. It took us a long time to convince him that we didn’t care, that we didn’t want his money.
“Ok,” he finally said, shrugging. “Which one of you wants to go first?” It took us another ten minutes to convince him we didn’t want his sexual favors either.
Jasper’s dad ran off shortly after his brother was born, so at this point Jasper was pretty much the head of his household. His mother offered a token objection to taking in a total stranger off the street. But Jasper insisted and what Jasper wanted, he usually got. And that’s how Roy entered our lives.