Sam Fisher- Under Truck

  The truck’s engine started, and a plume of blue gray exhaust burst from the muffler pipe.

  Fisher sprinted forward, ducked down, wriggled beneath the truck’s bumper, looked around. He wrapped his left arm over the bed’s crossbeam support, his right over the winch drum’s vertical post, then pulled himself off the ground and wedged his feet against the interior wheel fender.

  With a growl, the engine revved, and the truck started moving.

  After a brief stop at the gate, the truck turned left down the dirt road and descended toward the lakeshore, where it turned right, or west. Through the truck’s step bumper Fisher watched the fort fade into the darkness.

  THEY drove for fifteen minutes on the relatively flat shore road, then suddenly the truck ground to a stop, the brakes squealing softly. Under the wheel well fender, Fisher could just make out the gray granite wall of the escarpment, two hundred yards away.

  Faintly, over the rumble of the engine, Fisher heard Carmen’s higher-pitched voice, followed by that of what Fisher assumed was the major’s. An argument. The exchange lasted thirty seconds or so, then the gears engaged, and the truck started moving again.

  The truck rolled forward about a hundred yards, then turned right toward the escarpment. Beneath him, Fisher watched the dirt road turn into rutted parallel tracks in the meadow grass. After another hundred feet, he heard the gears change and the engine drop in pitch as the truck started up an incline. A few moments later, Fisher saw the granite wall roll past the side of the truck. Entering a canyon.

  For the next twenty minutes the truck continued winding higher and deeper into the mountains, bumping and tipping over an increasingly undulating and rocky road. Finally they slowed and then ground to a stop, then started backing down an incline. Everything went dark, and Fisher caught a whiff of dank water, mold, wet soil.

  A cave.

  The truck rolled for what Fisher guessed was another hundred feet, then stopped.

  Now Fisher heard something else: the gurgling rush of water.

  A river. An underground river.

  He loosened his grip slightly and let himself drop toward the ground until he could see under the bumper. The truck’s headlights were still on, casting a white glare along the cave walls, but still it was too dim to see much. He flipped his goggles to NV.

- Fallout, Chapter 48