CHAPTER 4: UNDERWORLD

Erich tapped his foot impatiently, watching the timer on the hatch whilst absentmindedly cycling the cylinder of his revolver. It was set for noon on November first, something that GSD Inc. thought would be more courteous to the people they had preserved. The seconds ticked by rhythmically with his foot until it read noon. A beeping sound went off. A hissing sound was heard as the pressurized door started to open.

"It's open!" he shouted up the stairs. His brother was the first one there, followed shortly by their parents. The hatch swung open, bathing the basement in red light. The family cautiously moved in. Once past the hatch, they found themselves in a room with another security door before them.

"Decontamination phase over," a robotic voice said thru a loudspeaker in the corner. Regular lights flicked on and the door before them opened. A floating eyebot zoomed in.

"Greetings Vogl family!"

"How do you know who we are and what are you?" Bob asked it.

"I was originally Lars Kupa, CERN scientist. I know who you are because I've had the last 200 odd years to learn everyone in the county."

"Wait," Steve said. "You have a name, not a designation like a Mr. Handy?"

"Correct," it bobbed as if nodding. "Three hundred scientists, including myself, had to stay below to monitor everything. AI's that are around too long tend to go into redundancy so we had to stay behind. And I'm sure you are aware, flesh only lasts so long." It spun around and popped a rear hatch, revealing a brain in a glass jar with many wires in it.

"Wow, you musta gotten bored," Erich commented.

"No not really, too much to do monitoring vital signs of all the people and making sure the clankers produce enough goods for the revitalized society to continue. Now I must leave you for now, other families and individuals to meet and greet. There should be a Repconn Eyebot coming up soon to answer your questions." With that, Lars flew off. Soon another hovering robot replaced him.

"I am Unit AE-9183. Please direct any and all inquiries thru me and I will answer to the best that my databanks will allow. Now please follow me to your store rooms." They followed the robot to find themselves atop a catwalk.

All around them were massive support beams, hydraulics and miles of catwalks. Other people were being led around by similar eyebots while the preserved scientists flew around doing all sorts of tasks. Looking up, they saw large blast doors, retracted so that their homes could be topside.

"What store rooms?" Mrs. Vogl, Lynn, asked.

"For the past 223 years, we have had food extruders combined with medical organ replication devices create food supplies according to what we found inside your homes while you were in stasis. Other supplies based on what we found in your homes were also made such as toiletries, cooking oils, limited construction materials. In the case of you, the Vogl family, we found within your garage several drums of gasoline that we used to produce even more of and the ammunition in the calibers of the weapons registered to you as you were found to have the most firearms on this block."

They were quite taken aback by it, but Erich was grinning ear to ear at the ammunition part.

"That food or any of it for that matter can't be any good," Lynn said.

"In fact it is madam. Our freezers had been specially designed to preserve food for 300 years, combined with the proper chemical baths. We will simply thaw out what you need upon request and sanitize it for consumption. Stabilizer's have been added to fuel and ammunition as necessary."

"There has to be other CERN facilities like this," Erich said.

"Indeed there are. On each continent except Antarctica. CERN's own labs served as the Europe branch with other facilities such as this one in Tokyo, Japan; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Sydney, Australia and Johannesburg, South Africa. The intent of Project: Underworld was to preserve as many humans as possible while maintaining cultural diversity." They walked down a few flights of stairs and soon found their personal store room. "Here you are."

Inside, they found grocery style freezers, each marked for the different food in them like poultry, beef or beverages. There had to be several supermarkets worth of food there just for their family. In the back did Bob and Erich find their ammo: there had to hundreds of thousands of rounds of .22LR, .38 Special, .357 Magnum, 9mm, .45ACP, .380ACP, .45 Long Colt, .410 bore shot shells, .454 Casull, .460 Magnum, 12 gauge buckshot, .223, 7.62x39mm, 8mm Mauser, .30-30 Winchester and .30-06, all spread between copper washed, brass washed, full metal jacket, hollow points, jacketed hollow points and even a few of the rifle calibers in armor piercing.

"I've died and gone to heaven," Erich whispered.

"INFINITE MEAT AND PROTEIN POWDER FOR THE WIN!" they heard the bellow from four rooms down.

"Sounds like Connor and his family got to their locker," Steve said.

Indeed the bodybuilder had. And not just one flavor too for his protein shake powder but many others. The fridges held his favorite snacks: deli meat in two pound portions, just like in his fridge back topside. "Hey Unit 1349!" he shouted.

"Yes Mr. Duffy?"

"If say I ever run out, would you be to replace he stock?"

"Yes sir. We would work our processors to get a ready supply to make sure you stay topped off, even now we can turn them back on. All you have to do is ask."

"Sweetness."

"Where's the dog food?" his mom asked.

"Third self, just after the freezers Mrs. Duffy."

"All right good, Molly and the other two need to be fed soon and I just ran out the other day… century I guess."

Another eyebot floated in just then. "Unit 0185 reporting." Attached to it was a tray. "Here are your new cellular phones. As the old networks have long since been destroyed, everyone is now on CERN's own private phone network." Three smart phones sat there; large touch screens with a few buttons near the bottom, the middle one had it's slide out keyboard revealed.

"What no retro turn dial?" Connor asked.

"That fad phase that the American people went thru before the end of the civilized world had no efficient purposes and was only for aesthetic appeal."

"Any restrictions like minutes, texting?"

"Infinite."

Connor let out a low whistle.

"As they are linked to CERN's network, there is a voice operation system installed that allows you to call anyone in the network as long as you know their name. The setup is rather easy and they come with a tutorial."

"Powerful toy," James commented.

His son had a thought just then. "Hey 1349?"

"Yes?"

"I recently acquired some power armor. Would you or any of the other robots be able to work on it?"

"Leave it down near your hatch before you rest for the night and a maintenance droid will bring it back here to work on."

"Deal. Now then…"

The new phone in Erich's pants pocket vibrated, that being the default setting. "Who the fuck is calling me?"

He put it to his ear and was greeted with a "MEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAATTTTT!" He sighed, "Yeah I heard you-"

"MEAT!"

"Ammo!" Erich shut it off. He turned to 9183. "How many rounds of any caliber can your machines pump out in say an eight hour work day?"

"On a single caliber we can probably produce upwards of 8,000 rounds if all the ammunition machines that were assigned to your cache as they no longer have other variations to make like with your current collection."

"Great. Me and my friends just picked up a few new toys. Now is that limited to standard ballistic ammo or can they make the charge packs for energy weapons?"

"Our researchers incorporated into our Ammo-Bot 9001 series automatons every known weapon system at the time before cryostasis. We can make energy packs, bullets, napalm and even explosives if need be. But we caution against the production of explosive materials."

"Yeah, last thing we need is him running around with a grenade launcher," Steve remarked. "Well I'm going back topside, checking in on some of my friends."

"Be back by dinner," his mother told him.

"You carrying a piece?" his dad asked. Steve showed him a fully automatic Glock G18 tucked in his belt It was one of his acquisitions from the gun store trip. "All right have fun." Lynn looked at him skeptically, she never bought into the whole gun thing that her husband and oldest son were into. "What? With the trouble we ran into the other week, there are bound to be crazies."

Later that night, the circle of friends gathered at the remains of the Madison Meadows park. "Where's Jamie?" Leslie asked.

"Still at my place," Greg answered. "She's still pretty upset about losing her family." Unfortunately for Jamie, her father had lived in neighboring DeKalb county, right outside CERN's selected preservation population. Her mother lived just over the border in Indiana while her older brother Albert was stationed in Japan, working on jets that came back from bombing runs against China.

"HEY YOU GUYS!" came a call. Striding toward them in the fading sunlight was another of their group, Heather Shedd. She was of average build with a freckled face and hair as orange as copper. "Quick question!" she stated once getting to the ring of her cohorts. "Why the hell is Connor running around in a tin can?"

"Because he's the juggernaught, bitch," Dan replied without missing a beat.

"The Brotherhood Knights that have been around town since we took our trip told him to exorcise with it on so he can move with it more fluidly," explained Erich. "Speaking of him." He pulled his phone out and called their large friend over. Immediately his heavy footfalls and glowing bits of his armor denoted he was with them. "Connor and I have been talking."

"Uh oh," remarked Brian.

"We've been thinking-"

"Oh that's even worse," said the bearded one again.

"Can I fucking talk here?" Erich gave Brian a dirty look.

"Proceed."

"Anyway! With the Brotherhood of Steel expanding all outward around the county, we were thinking. Namely, we are gonna need more materials and goods. Yes CERN did provide all our fuel, food and in some instance ammo as well as a communication hub."

Connor took over. "We were thinking, we're all young and after the other week, armed to the teeth. So Erich and I reached the decision that someone has to supply at least our immediate towns with such things as extra or industrial building materials, spare parts that the robots might not be able to make as well as connecting to DuPage to the rest of the country."

"And you think that someone should be us?" Jeff asked. He was another member of the group, albeit he wasn't present for the trip to the "toy store". He was just under a scant inch shorter than Jamie, very skinny and with a crop of unkempt bleach blonde hair. He was sporting a Heckler & Koch MP9 10mm submachine gun under the open jacket he had on.

"Aye," Connor replied.

"I put in orders with my ammo bots to have them mass produce bullets for all the weapons we took from GAT so we will be more than prepared. We just need to find enough all terrain vehicles to handle it all," Erich told them.

"How are we going to fuel them?" Greg asked. "Last I checked, before the world ended, gas was almost $3000 a gallon and the gas in the stations had to have gone bad."

"Well lets just say that a certain someone filled up several gas tanks and a barrel or two of regular AND diesel before we took the two century nap without paying," Erich said, looking away.

"You could have shared some man," Brian commented.

"I did. With Connor and you two when we went to GAT." They all rolled their eyes. "All right Greg, you're the expert on when the shit hit's the fan. The shit hit the fan and clogged up the motor. What are we expecting weather wise?"

"Well, since us and the Reds fucked the world over, not to mention the Euro trash and all the Arabs going at it with nukes…" he thought for a second, "the atmosphere is definitely screwed. Probably won't rain for maybe another half century at best, no snow for maybe three times that. Maybe just snow lightly. I will tell you this, this winter is going to COLD."

"All right then. This is where Con and I left off. We get who wants to tag along by spring and leave then. We spend the winter getting supplies ready and helping the Brotherhood to fortify our homes." Erich scratched his head. "Either tell the big buy or myself by the end of January if you're in or not."