Fatal Storm by Lee Driver

something out of a
sixties Sears catalog. And the younger men salivated over his 1968
Ford Fairlane which had less than twenty thousand miles on the
odometer.
    “Back when I was growing up we lived in a
brick bungalow with one bedroom and one bathroom. Me and my two
brothers slept upstairs in the attic which was converted into two
bedrooms. We had two inches of ice on the inside of the windows in
the winter. Two inches. And we didn’t have air conditioning.”
    “It’s a wonder you survived.” Mike shoved his
boot against a boulder, flipping it over which disturbed a family
of multi-legged insects. Abe continued as though he hadn’t heard
Mike’s rhetorical jab.
    “My dad provided for a family of five on ten
thousand dollars a year. But look at that house. Bet it takes that
much just to pay the monthly electric bill.”
    One of the dogs started scratching at the
ground, sniffing, scratching some more, then laid down. Another dog
started to bark an alarm and then the boots started pounding toward
the area.
    They moved quickly to where the lead dog lay.
Colonel Tom Hegner held his arms out to keep the men back. He knelt
down and patted the German shepherd on the head. “What did you
find, Abby?” Two guardsmen approached with shovels while the
colonel took a gloved hand and raked away leaves and dead weeds
with his fingers to reveal a square slab of concrete.
    They were gathered now, all ten guardsmen
surrounding the colonel and cadaver dogs. “Well, Abe,” Mike said.
“In your day, what significance was a square piece of
concrete?”
    “It’s probably a cover to an old well. Since
this is unincorporated area, I doubt they were hooked up to city
water. However, with a mansion this size, I doubt the owners had to
carry water from a well. Place has electricity and all the other
modern conveniences. The well probably hasn’t been used in decades.
Might have been dug and never used.”
    Colonel Hegner said, “Let’s see if it will
pry off. According to Abby, there’s something here.”
    They didn’t need the shovels to pry off the
lid, just four strong men to lift and move it to the side. The well
was six feet across, the walls lined with brick. Several of the men
stepped back, expecting the scent of decomposing flesh, but all
that escaped was a musty, moldy odor.
    Hegner leaned over the edge. It was too deep
to see the bottom. “Let’s get a light down there.”
    Within five minutes, one young guardsman was
suited up like a rock climber. Hegner checked the guard’s helmet,
turning on the miner’s light in the front. “Your mike working,
Biejewski?”
    “Testing one, two, three.” Biejewski was
slight in build yet quick and agile as a crab when it came to
climbing.
    Hegner checked his own earpiece. “Coming in
loud and clear.” The colonel shook his head as Biejewski hooked the
rope onto the side of the well, gave it a few tugs to make sure it
held, then started down. “Bebe. Young, dumb, and fearless,” Hegner
said under his breath. In his youth Hegner probably would have been
just as daring.
    Hegner heard Bebe’s voice in his earpiece.
“Pretty slimy walls. Mold, multi-legged creatures. I’ve descended
about thirty feet so far. No sign of scraping on the sides to
indicate anyone or anything had been tossed down here
recently.”
    Hegner wasn’t above asking Abe’s opinion.
After all, Abe was at least fifteen years his senior. “Abe, what’s
the water table in this area?”
    “I’d say they’d have to go down a minimum of
one hundred feet to hit water.” Abe leaned over and peered down
into the vast cavern. “Hope it isn’t two hundred feet or Bebe would
have had to pack a lunch. In my day...” Everyone groaned.
    “I can see bottom, I think, Sarge,” Biejewski
yelled. “I’ve gone down a little over one hundred fifty feet.”
    The men jockeyed for a view. They were of all
ages and backgrounds. Almost all of them had been deployed to the
Gulf region during the BP oil spill last