The Buried

by Melissa Grey

  The last thing she saw before the hustle of bodies blocked her view was Misha hauling Sash through the door.

  That was not what they had practiced.

  Drills were standard. They were the same, every time. Whichever room you were in is where you holed up. If you weren’t in a room with a hatch, you ran to the nearest one. Yuna had peeked at the blueprints for the bunker once over Gabe’s shoulder when he was fretting over ventilation shafts and power conduits, or whatever it was he liked to fret over. The bunker wasn’t one structure, but a series of them, linked together with a network of interconnected corridors. Each room was its own, self-sustaining mechanism. Air could be shut off or turned on. The electric grids were conjoined but could be operated autonomously.

  A series of panic rooms, Yuna remembered Gabe calling it.

  It seemed a fitting term now. Each room could be sealed away through several inches of metal.

  But Misha left.

  The hatch was still open behind him. She sprinted for it without thinking, with only the tiniest nascent sliver of a plan forming in her mind. The hatches were designed to swing closed on their own when the alarm sounded. Not much time.

  The door snagged at her sweater as she bolted through it, as quickly and silently as she could. It slammed shut behind her, leaving her in the corridor, bathed in the red glow of the safety lights. At the other end of the hall, she saw Misha round a corner, his sister in tow.

  To the dark room.

  It’s where sinners were sent to repent for their misdeeds. Where naughty children were locked away, left in the blessed dark to think about what landed them there.

  Yuna had spent a single night in it once.

  She couldn’t take Misha in a fight. But if she pulled off what she was hoping to, she wouldn’t have to.

  * * *

  She should have waited for Gabe.

  The thought followed her all the way to the hatch—the secret one. She had nothing on her person to assist in this harebrained endeavor. Not even one of their manual flashlights. Just her wits, frazzled as they were.

  The thought followed her through the shafts and resounded in her skull as she turned the hatch and climbed the ladder up and up and up. It echoed, loudly and persistently, as she opened the trapdoor in the floor of the manor’s ballroom.

  But there hadn’t been time. With the way things had gone with Moran’s inquisition, there was no telling what she would try next. (Moran had really nailed the inquisition thing down too, from the torturous interrogation to the ritualistic burning of heretical texts.)

  Yuna had seen her chance and she took it, even if it meant taking it alone.

  But when she emerged into the semi-fresh air of the house above, the thought recurred for one final jab.

  You should have waited for Gabe.

  She looked around for the loose piece of wood they’d used to prop the door open before. It was right where they’d left it (kicked, in their mad dash). Good. Perfect for an encore.

  Biting her lip, she gazed around the ballroom. It had looked big before, but it seemed so much larger now with only Yuna in it. She felt utterly dwarfed by its cavernous size. No matter how quiet she tried to keep her footfalls, each step bounced off the walls to scream back at her.

  (Sash throwing herself at Moran’s mercy to save them, to save her.)

  If there was something to be found in the manor, something to prove that Sash was right, that Moran had been lying to them all along, Yuna had to find it.

  (Red lights, ringing alarms. The frightened procession of souls away from the light and into the dark.)

  (The dark that was sacred. The dark that was safe.)

  It didn’t feel safe now, as Yuna retraced their steps from ballroom to the bedrooms on the second floor. It pressed in around her as if trying to soak into her skin, to contaminate her through her pores. It followed her up the grand staircase with its swooping wooden balustrades and its rotting carpeting. It nipped at her heels as she tiptoed through the corridors, past the empty picture frames and the fractured Grecian busts.

  The moonlight was less impressive than it had been the night they’d come up here. It was barely enough to see by as it filtered in through the soaring arched windows. If Yuna looked down, she could only just barely make out the shape of her sneakers against the ground.

  When she reached the door to Dr. Moran’s bedroom—her childhood bedroom—she paused.

  This was probably a bad idea. Another one to add to the growing list.

  But she didn’t know where else to look. Where to start. Especially not now that she knew she wasn’t alone up here, on the surface. There were rats and men who ate them and whatever that thing was that she and Sash heard.

  (It wasn’t human. She knew what humans sounded like, and that had not been human.)

  The door was ajar, just like they’d left it. Yuna stepped into the room. There was the massive four-poster bed with its dusty rose-colored drapes and its mahogany wood, nearly black in the gloaming. The wardrobe with its bounty of hideous dresses, most of which had gone out of style decades ago. The gilt-edged mirror in which she’d danced, the glittering frock catching the starlight as if she were a thing that had fallen from the cosmos to shine down on Earth.

  Everything was, again, almost exactly as they’d left it.

  Almost.

  The photo album, the one with the picture of Moran looking sullen in the Swiss Alps, was not where they had left it.

  Yuna had the distinct memory of leaving it open on the bed. She hadn’t bothered putting it away, because why? When no one lived in this house. When no one was ever supposed to be in this room.

  (When they were the only people left on Earth.)

  The album was now sitting atop the writing desk tucked into the corner. Closed. Its edge perfectly aligned with that desk, the album centered before the chair as if waiting for someone to find it.

  Yuna’s skin prickled into goose bumps.

  They were not alone.

  This shouldn’t have felt like a revelation, but it did. It very much did.

  Stop it. Focus.

  She had come here with a purpose. She had to see it through, no matter how scared she was.

  (And she was very scared.)

  Yuna stepped farther into the room, glancing around.

  If I was a dirty, dark secret, where would I hide?

  She started with the desk. It seemed obvious (too obvious) but she did it anyway. After closing—and locking—the door behind her, she went to work, yanking open drawers and rummaging through their contents. Report cards and love letters from a series of heartbroken admirers and small notebooks filled with text Yuna couldn’t hope to decipher.

  One was wedged into the top drawer, its cover less dusty than the rest.

  Jackpot.

  Yuna flipped open the book and began to read.

  And read.

  And read.

  DAY 92

  The air is still too hot.

  Beneath that, a series of numbers Yuna didn’t understand. Temperatures, probably.

  Oxygen levels are low. Supplementary O2 necessary.

  More numbers, these in a different metric. She scanned them without committing them to memory. They weren’t important. It was the words that mattered. The words.

  Sediment shows significant signs of contamination.

  Difficult to determine when soil will be arable again.

  Volume of substrate in water at toxic levels.

  Even more numbers now. Strings and strings of them. They seemed bad. Yuna didn’t know the first thing about chemistry but these seemed like chemistry. And they seemed bad.

  The experiment was a rousing success.

  “Experiment,” Yuna whispered.

  The word ricocheted inside her head, over and over and over.

  EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT. DAY 217

  Have noticed an interesting phenomenon. The atmosphere still contains a significant amount of substrate, with traces of reagent p
resent. Unexpected. Attribute to an uncharacteristically dry season. Minimal winds. The sunset is violently red. The color seems to keep the unfortunate creatures at bay.

  “Two hundred seventeen days,” Yuna muttered. Thirty days in a month, roughly. Divide two hundred seventeen by thirty and you get …

  Her mind was blank. Math was Gabe’s thing. Not hers. She was bad at it. She couldn’t think in numbers. Her brain didn’t want to hold them. She needed—

  A pencil.

  It took more fumbling than it should have to unearth one from the messy drawer. Her hands were shaking too violently for coordination.

  (Violently red.)

  On the back of what looked like a Christmas card, the skinny kind that had a special flap for money, Yuna scribbled two hundred seventeen. Then thirty. Divide one by the other and you get …

  “Seven months.”

  The pencil slipped from her fingers, rolling off the desk to land on the floor, its descent muffled by the plush carpeting under foot.

  Seven months. They’d lived in the bunker for seven months before adding the red lights. Yuna had been too young to wonder where they’d come from. As she got older, she’d started to think they’d always been there. But they hadn’t. They’d been added. Seven months after they’d fled down there, all of them, in a hasty rush, running through town with the sky on fire.

  Not the sky.

  The plant.

  The chemical plant where nearly every person in Indigo Falls worked. The plant founded by—

  “Cornelius Percival Moran.”

  It was the name written on the corners of the bunker blueprints. The initials, C.P.M., were stamped on every other wall plate. A signature from the man who built it.

  Yuna pushed the Christmas card aside and flipped through the journal, landing on a page about halfway through.

  DAY 1,096

  Substrate levels in water have gone down significantly. A shame. It’s almost drinkable now. Wouldn’t recommend it. Would burn you inside out.

  Numbers, numbers. More numbers.

  Soil levels have stabilized. Still not arable. Likely will not be for at least another year.

  Drinkable water. Soil arable in another year.

  Boundary for the experiment seems to have stabilized at town limits, as expected. Soil beyond this point substandard but nontoxic to humans. Habitation possible.

  Yuna did another calculation, the pencil (retrieved from the floor) shaking so wickedly in her hand, the numbers were hardly straight. Not neat and self-assured like the author of the journal.

  Moran. It was Dr. Moran. This was her room. This is her room. She wrote in this. She wrote these things.

  One thousand ninety-six days.

  Three years.

  Three. Years.

  “Habitation possible,” Yuna whispered. “Beyond this point.”

  Bile rose thick and cloying in her throat. She turned to the last page, her hands now trembling with such ferocity she ripped the edge of it.

  DAY 3,635

  Animal trials on toxin complete.

  Chicken deceased within 7 minutes.

  Human subject less than ideal. In remarkably good health for its age but still, age advanced.

  Moment from ingestion to cessation of cardiac activity: 18 minutes.

  Remains disposed of in incinerator. Will keep generators running off auxiliary power for a few more days.

  Toxin likely to take longer in younger, able-bodied subject. Will record findings later in the week.

  Yuna’s breath clogged her own throat, it was coming too shallow, too fast.

  DAY 3,636

  They don’t deserve me.

  The experiment best scrapped.

  Will try again in another town.

  It’s Lumnezia all over again.

  And that was it. The last entry. Yuna closed the journal, sitting back in the hard wooden chair.

  Three years.

  The area around Indigo Falls had been habitable three years after the Cataclysm.

  “Not a cataclysm,” Yuna said to herself. She needed to say it out loud. Needed to hear the words.

  Seven years.

  Seven years.

  They had stayed in the bunker seven years after that point. Seven long, hard years. Seven years of deprivation. Of food shortages. Of gloves. Of never-ending, heart-stopping fear at the brush of a bare hand against one’s own.

  The chair’s legs scraped against the floor as Yuna stood. It clattered to the ground, but it made no sound.

  No.

  That wasn’t right. It made a sound. It had to.

  She just couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything over the roar in her ears.

  Seven years.

  Seven years.

  Seven years.

  Seven years.

  Her lungs weren’t working. They weren’t pulling in air. They weren’t scrubbing it of oxygen dioxide, they weren’t pushing straight, uncut oxygen into her blood.

  Stumbling back, she looked at the journal lying open on the desk.

  Seven years.

  Go.

  The voice in her head sounded an awful lot like Junsu.

  Go.

  It was the last thing her brother had said to her.

  The sky had opened up and screamed, and he had told her to go so she had. She’d gone. She’d run. She hadn’t looked back. She hadn’t known she’d needed to. That that moment was the last time she’d ever see him.

  Skkritch.

  Yuna froze.

  That wasn’t Junsu’s voice.

  Click, click.

  Skkritch.

  Yuna held her breath, going as still as she could. Her muscles quivered under her skin, ready to bolt. Like a rabbit hiding in tall grass, praying the scary thing passes it by.

  Click.

  It was closer now. Whatever it was, it was closer.

  She could hide. She could fold herself into the wardrobe and go still. It had worked before. Whatever it was had passed Sash and her by, had failed to notice them, failed to find them.

  Seven years.

  No. She couldn’t hide.

  They had to know. And they had to leave.

  As quietly as she could, Yuna grabbed the journal and tucked it into her jeans.

  Go.

  And so, she did.

  Silence was a terrible thing. A great and terrible deafening thing. It was deep enough to drown in, powerful enough to tug you under.

  To call it deafening seemed odd to Gabe, but fitting too somehow. It roared in his ears for those minutes—hours?—as they waited in the cold, lonely darkness for the threat to pass them by.

  And though they didn’t see it or hear it or smell it or taste it, they knew, every last one of them, that it was a threat. It. Whatever had tripped the alarms, whatever had driven them underground in the first place, whatever it was keeping them here, in this industrialized coffin designed by a madman, buried like the living dead.

  The silence followed Gabe throughout the lockdown as he sat huddled with his family in their bedroom, sitting on the floor cross-legged, separated from them by some vast, undefinable distance. Lucas had tried to sit next to Gabe, to rest his head on his shoulder, but their mother had tugged the boy away. The two of them sat less than a meter away from Gabe, but it might as well have been a mile. It felt like there were two realities now. The one before he’d broken the rules and the one that came after. He had crossed a line into a place where they could not—would not—follow. And on the other side of that divide, he sat alone, wishing desperately that he wasn’t.

  Bang.

  He jumped where he sat, his arms tightening their stranglehold on his knees.

  “What was that?” Lucas whispered before his mother clasped a hand around his mouth.

  No one was supposed to talk during lockdown drills.

  But this isn’t a drill, is it?

  A long moment of sharpened silence passed between them, huddled in the dark like frightened rodents.

&nbs
p; Bang.

  Another loud metallic clang sounded from overhead and below and all around them. Gabe started again, but less this time. He knew that sound.

  Lucas whimpered, his voice muffled by his mother’s hand.

  “It’s the pipes,” Gabe whispered.

  At this point, he had already broken so many inviolable rules. What was one more?

  “Shut up,” his mother hissed. Gabe reared back as if struck.

  “Linda.” His father’s voice resonated in the silence.

  That was the last sound he heard for hours, save for the harsh rasp of frightened breathing and the soft muttering of his mother’s prayers to herself, her voice trapped inside her body.

  They sat in the dark—that blessed thing, that sacred thing—and waited. Full dark. Red light may have been safe, but the absence of it was even safer. They had to trust in it. They had no other choice. All their choices had been stripped away. And when Gabe had snatched one for himself, this was what happened. His friend punished for being brave enough to shoulder the blame for all their sins. His family treating him like a pariah.

  He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the red lights came on, painting his mother and Lucas in crimson shadows, like he was looking at them through a prism of blood.

  The PA system in the bunker crackled to life as Moran’s voice filtered through: “All clear.”

  Gabe’s mother stood, pulling Lucas up with her. Without a second glance back at her other son, she left, tugging Lucas out of the room by the hand. Lucas, at least, looked back.

  More slowly, his father rose, bracing his hands on his thighs, the way he’d started doing in the last year or so.

  “These old knees,” he sometimes said.

  He didn’t say it now.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabe blurted.

  He wasn’t. Not really. Not for going outside. Not for questioning the truths they’d been told all these years. Not for the ache of discovery that led him to break their most sacrosanct rules. But he was sorry for the disappointment that colored his father’s every movement, from the way he straightened his back slowly to get out the kinks to the way he wiped his glasses off with the hem of his T-shirt.

  “You should check on the filters,” said his father, still wiping down his glasses, longer than was necessary. “That sounded like a stuck pipe.” Sliding his glasses back on, he added, “I’m going to go check on your mother.”