by Ike Hamill
“Liam?” Mike asked.
He realized that he had just been standing there, looking down at the arrow on the floor left by a marker.
“You don’t like this place, do you?” Mike asked.
“No! Just the opposite. I had my doubts, but I think I do like this place. We’re going to be safe here.”
“I hope you’re right."
While people moved some of the supplies they would need immediately, other teams fanned out and completed the inventory of the rooms. They brought their findings back to Robby and Sariah, who studied the map on the display in the kitchen. Once they knew the scope of the place, they set out to make room assignments. Mike suggested a lottery amongst the small families to determine who would get the private quarters. In the end, they didn’t have to resort to that.
Many of the families were just as happy to take up residence in the big quarters, once they saw how the dividers would offer them privacy at night. In the end, thirty-nine took the private quarters and the other sixty-eight moved into communal bunks. The rooms not chosen were the ones located farthest away from the cafeterias.
Liam was the exception. Once everyone had picked their rooms, Liam found his own space, on the outskirts of where everyone else had settled. He chose a private room that nobody else wanted. He had his own bathroom and his own control panel.
Once he marked his room—people put tape on the wall outside their door with their name printed on it—Liam wandered back to the closest cafeteria. That was the one where Carrie was eating a salad.
“You want some?” she asked him as he sat down. “We have a bunch of greens that have started to wilt already. They have to be eaten soon.”
“No, thanks,” Liam said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I… uh… I don’t have anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I jumped into a truck with Jackson and then we grabbed Merle and came right up here. I don’t have my toothbrush or even a change of underwear.”
“Oh! Gosh,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin and standing up. “We’ll get you squared away. Where’s Rebecca? Becca?”
Someone pointed them down the hall. Liam shuffled behind, feeling ashamed that he was the only person who hadn’t planned ahead for this. They found her outside one of the common rooms. She was rolling a suitcase down the hall.
“Rebecca, you know Liam, right?”
They both nodded. Liam recognized her, but he wouldn’t have been able to come up with her name. He repeated it to himself in his head, knowing that there was no way he was going to retain it.
“He was one of the heroes who tracked this place down for us,” Carrie said. With that, she took the shame away from him. “Downside—he doesn’t have a thing with him. We have to get him decked out with everything. I’m talking clothes, toiletries, books, music? You like music?”
“Uh… Sure?” Liam said.
Liam was whisked away with Rebecca. She took him to the next cafeteria. There, in the corner, people had stacked boxes of extra supplies. Rebecca moved through them with quick efficiency. She laid out several sets of clothes, holding them up in front of Liam first to make sure that they would fit and look good on him. He had very little input into the process. Usually, Liam preferred to find a big stack of solid-color shirts and he would just work his way through the pile. It was easier that way. Rebecca told him which shirts would go with the pants he had on, as well as what combinations to stay away from. Liam nodded and retained nothing.
When she was done, he had plastic bags of clothes, bathroom products, and books. He had turned down the music she offered—he didn’t recognize any of it and he hated using headphones.
Liam headed back for his room.
He was still using the markings on the floor to navigate. Earlier, he had taken a wrong turn. There was something about the walls that seemed designed to confuse him. The marks on the floor never changed.
Laughter made him slow down and glance through a door. The tape next to it said, “Janelle, Jim, & Robby.”
Before he could duck their notice, Robby said, “Hey, Liam, come on in.”
He entered just far enough to make eye contact with all three of them. They were spread out on the bed with cards between them.
“I’m just headed back to my room to put away my stuff.”
“We need a fourth for Hearts. Why don’t you join us?” Jim asked.
Janelle nodded vigorously.
“I don’t know how to play.”
“We’ll teach you,” Janelle said. Her smile was spreading wider with each nod.
“She’s looking for a new patsy to pass her moonshot cards,” Jim said with a frown.
“Go drop your stuff off and come right back,” Robby said, patting a spot beside himself.
“Yeah. Okay.”
The farther away Liam got from Robby and his family, the less pull their invitation had. His door opened for him as he approached. Other people had mentioned that—their doors were opening automatically once they went in and out a few times. They had some kind of facial recognition or something, Mike had theorized.
Liam was glad for it. He put the bags on his bed and used the bathroom while he thought about it. A card game was a small price to pay to maintain civility. In these first few hours in this place, he had to present himself as stable if he wanted to maintain his independence. Back in Donnelly, he had learned the hard way that if he was too antisocial, it only led to more drop-in visitors. They visited him with fake smiles and wandering eyes, trying to determine if he was going to harm himself.
He had finally reached a peaceful equilibrium with the community. He didn’t want to make the same mistake here in the bunker.
Before leaving the bathroom, he triggered the control panel. Reliably, he could make the menu come up and then activate the camera outside his door. That was all he had figured out though. The other functions of the thing were a mystery to him. That was another good reason to go back to Robby’s room. Maybe he could get a quick lesson on how to bring up the other functions.
The bathroom door sensed that he was leaving. It slid open and Liam saw that the lights had dimmed in his room.
“Is it bed time? Is there a curfew?” he asked the empty room. The art on the wall had changed as well. The scene of a frozen pond and snow-covered house was now draped in blue. Nighttime had fallen on the light box.
Liam smiled. It was a fun little world encapsulated in the frame.
When he moved to the main door, it stayed shut. Liam’s shoulders fell with a sigh. The door wasn’t quite as smart as he had hoped. He put out his hand and touched the door. Instead of sliding to the side, the door stayed put. Liam put a little more pressure on the door and jerked his hand back. He clutched his hand to his chest.
“You shocked me?”
Liam took a step back, looking at the room with new eyes.
“I need this door open,” he said aloud. He reached a trembling hand toward the door again, but stopped before it made contact. The shock hadn’t really hurt. There was no way that he was going to ask for seconds though.
Instead of touching it with his hand, Liam put his toe against the door and tried to shove it with his foot. It didn’t move immediately. Before he could kick at it again, the door slid to the side. Liam rushed through. He was still holding his hand to his chest protectively as he slipped into Robby’s room.
“Hey! You came back. Good thing—we’re just wrapping up,” Robby said.
“My door,” Liam said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It didn’t want to open.”
“When? Just now? How did you get in?” Jim asked.
“No, I got in okay. I didn’t want to let me out.”
Robby and Janelle were looking at each other. She was the one who voiced their thought.
“Like the pantry,” she said.
“What did you do to get out?” Robby asked.
“I kicked it,” Liam said. “I think it shocked me.”
“Shocked you
?” Robby said. His eyes settled on Liam’s hand. He reached out and took Liam’s hand in his own, turning it over and back to look for an injury.
“Yeah. When I pressed my hand against the door, I got this… Ow!” Liam said, jerking his hand back.
“Sorry,” Robby said. “You have the same thing I do—a little arthritis in your hands. You know, I get that feeling sometimes too, especially when I press on things. It feels like a little jolt. Is there a chance that’s what you felt?”
Liam rubbed his hand and thought about it. When Robby had squeezed his knuckles, it had felt like a shock. It wasn’t exactly the same, but he had to admit that it was close.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Can I deal now?” Janelle said. She shuffled the cards one more time.
“Yes. Please,” Robby said. “Jim, why don’t you explain the basics.”
Once the kids started to yawn, Robby gathered the cards together and reached for the box.
“I want to play something else,” Janelle said. She was laying across the pillows, barely propping up her head with one lazy arm. Jim was still sitting upright with his head hanging low between his shoulders.
“I wonder if the puppies are okay,” Liam said.
Janelle’s eyes perked up at the idea of puppies.
“The ones we found?”
“You guys found them?” Liam asked her.
“They did,” Robby said. “I long for the day that my kids will actually stay put when I ask them to stay put.”
Jim giggled.
“It’s not funny,” Robby said.
“It’s a little funny,” Jim argued.
“No.” Robby shook his head. He looked completely serious.
“That’s not fair,” Janelle whined. “We always do what we’re told when it’s important.”
“Okay. Time for sleep,” Robby said. “Brush your teeth and put on your pajamas.”
Janelle dragged herself off the bed, flowing like a liquid until she got to her feet. While she shuffled off, Jim flopped to his side.
“I like this place,” Liam said, looking around.
“Yeah,” Robby said. “All the rooms are slightly different, like an upscale hotel. This is a good one though. It suits us.”
“Sure. I mean this place in general though. The whole bunker.”
“Oh?”
“It’s cozy. It’s like everything was thought out. Maybe we should stay here.”
Robby shrugged. “I’m sure a lot of us would like to see actual daylight once in a while.”
Liam watched as Jim’s eyes blinked slower and slower until he finally let them rest.
“This place is learning,” Liam said. “I wonder if there’s any way to control that.”
“Learning? I haven’t seen any controls for that—at least none that I’ve figured out,” Robby said.
Janelle came from the bathroom and shuffled toward the bed. Her eyes were half-closed. The weariness had transformed her from a precocious youngster, back into a little kid. Robby got up and pulled down the covers for her. Liam stood and began to move toward the door. Robby put up a hand to signal him to wait. Liam leaned against the wall and watched as Robby coaxed his son toward the bathroom next.
“Hang out with me in the hall for a bit, would you?”
“Sure,” Liam said. He went to the hall and settled down on the floor, leaning back against the wall. The door across and down led to one of the barracks. Several strips of tape were labelled with the inhabitants. Kendall lived there and Sandra. There were two Erics in the same room. One was Eric R. and the other was Eric A. Liam tried to conjure faces to put to those names. He didn’t know if he was making them up. He recognized Ty’s name, although he couldn’t remember him coming in. There had been so many people, shuffling back and forth.
A mental image came to him of Ty carrying a heavy box and ducking through the exit. Liam nodded to himself. It had to be an authentic memory, didn’t it?
“Hey,” Robby said. He leaned against the wall and then slid down.
“Did you see Ty? What was he wearing?”
“Doesn’t he always wear those blue scrubs? That’s how I always picture him. I think I saw him in the cafeteria. Yeah, he had his foot up on a chair. Dr. Matthew was looking at it.”
Liam nodded. That image came to him as well. Again, he didn’t know if it was something his brain had conjured up. The whole day seemed like a half-remembered dream.
“This place has just sat here, for all these decades, waiting to be inhabited,” Robby said. “It’s strange to think about, isn’t it?”
“The world still has secret places,” Liam said.
“True. Back when there were people everywhere, I think a lot of us assumed that all the dark corners had been illuminated. I remember watching a documentary about the ocean, talking about it as the last new frontier. Now, I’m starting to think that people had grown adept at exploring, but they had also gotten really good at hiding.”
“Mike said that the technology of this place was like nothing he had seen. Do you think that’s true?” Liam asked.
Robby shrugged. “I suppose. It’s odd, that’s for sure, but I don’t think it was really revolutionary. I guess if you put it in the context of when this place was probably built, it was pretty advanced. I figure this might have been first made during the Cold War and then updated. If that’s true, it was either the product of amazing planning, or they revamped it quite a bit along the way.”
They were silent for a minute. The door to the barracks slid open and Liam caught a glimpse of the room. Several of the privacy partitions had been activated, dividing the room. A man—Liam figured it was one of the Erics—emerged and pointed one way and then the other before he set off. Robby raised a hand to him and the man smiled and waved back.
“I read your account—your first encounter with the ball of light,” Liam said. “You went in?”
Robby nodded. A melancholy look passed through his features and then he glanced over his shoulder into the room and smiled again.
“You don’t regret coming back out?”
“I… Sometimes. I definitely did at first. It would have been easier, at least at the time. I’ve seen ghosts. The people in the light were no ghosts. I believe they were the authentic people who I knew, and everyone was there. It wasn’t life though. It was a pause button, you know? It was a perfect picture of them, but it was on pause.”
“Is that the way you felt at the time?”
“No. You’re right. I may be putting a spin on it. But we all revisited what might have been, didn’t we? The Origin gave us a glimpse of that. I don’t hold any regrets that I didn’t do the right thing.”
“Because of your kids?”
“Partly. Mostly, I guess.” Robby looked down and traced his finger on the floor between his legs. “Also because I think we have some responsibility to our ancestors. Think of it—we’re all links in an unbroken chain that goes back to the very first spark of consciousness. At some point, we reached a level of intelligence where we began to contemplate the nature of existence, and some of us chose to set that burden aside. If we really recognize that some of our ancestors, facing much larger challenges and far greater pain, managed to survive just to give us the chance to live, I think we have to hold fast and persevere.”
“Or, you could look at all the ground we’ve lost and realize that none of it amounted to anything. Everything is born and then dies. It’s true for you and me, and it will be true for humans and planets.”
Robby exhaled. “Cheery.”
The silence grew. Liam didn’t want to leave Robby with the idea that he was completely morose. It wasn’t just because he didn’t want Robby to feel the need to look after him. Liam didn’t want to bring Robby down for no reason.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to say that it’s all pointless.”
“No, I know you didn’t. We’re just talking. We’re allowed to say things just to see how they sound.”
Liam liked that. Th
e idea was a mini-revelation to him, in fact. When he talked with Corinna, he grew weary of policing his thoughts, not knowing what might set her off. She was always criticizing him for not being positive enough. He would keep his thoughts to himself rather than listen to another lecture.
Robby started to get up. “I should go back to the control panel. I want to find a view of the outside. I know it must be there somewhere, but I haven’t found it. They must have had some way of monitoring conditions on the surface so they would know when it was safe to go back up. There has to be a way to adapt those sensors for our current situation, you know?”
“I think maybe the panel in your bathroom is only for living conditions,” Liam said. “You might have to go to the big control room—the one that turns on and off the whole place, you know?”
“Oh?” Robby asked.
“Didn’t I mention? When we first came in, beyond all the defensive stuff, there was a color coded set of controls that turned on the power, water, and air. Plus, there were some controls that did things that we didn’t understand. I didn’t see a display there, but maybe it was hidden, you know? I would think that anything dealing with the surface might be…”
Robby interrupted. “Can you take me there?”
Liam shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Chapter 67: Jackson
The light was in Jackson’s eyes. He wanted to get up, close the blinds, and go back to bed. When he opened his eyes, the pain came back to him. He couldn’t breathe. The moose had rolled, letting sharp daggers of light shoot back into his eyes. Its antler was still pinning Jackson in place.
“Merle?” he tried to ask. His voice only croaked.
His left arm wasn’t going to be of any help. He could press his elbow against the steering wheel, but the angle was wrong. It wasn’t giving him any leverage. His right arm was pinned beneath the moose’s head. Jackson couldn’t even feel his legs.
Tears began to gather in his eyes and make their escape down his face. They burned as they fell. If he only knew that Merle was okay, he would rest. Until then, he wouldn’t accept death.
