The Doomsday Bunker

by William W. Johnstone

  “You’re going to have a military force down here?”

  “A security force,” Moultrie said with a shrug. “I’d like to think that everyone will be on their best behavior at all times, but I’m realistic enough to know that won’t be the case. It’s possible we’ll have to step in and restore order now and then. When and if that happens, I want men I can count on. I think you could be one of those men, Pat, along with your friend Adam.”

  “Sounds like you know quite a bit about us,” Larkin said as suspicion stirred again in his mind.

  “An arrangement like this requires trust on both sides,” Moultrie said. “And you know what they say . . . There aren’t many secrets left in the world.” He smiled and gestured again. “Let’s look around some more.”

  They walked along the main corridor, Moultrie opening doors to show Larkin storage areas and a dining area with a large kitchen attached to it. “We’ll provide meals for people who prefer that, or people can cook in their own units, sort of like an assisted-living center for the elderly. Everyone’s food consumption will be kept track of, though, either way. There’ll be enough rations stored down here to keep the population alive for a number of years, plus we intend to grow crops hydroponically—that area is down on the lower level, too—and we’ll be raising both rabbits and chickens, as well, to stretch our food supplies. But it’s unlikely we’ll be able to feed ourselves indefinitely.”

  “Your population will grow, too,” Larkin pointed out.

  “Undoubtedly. And we probably won’t have many elderly residents, so they won’t die out at the same rate as babies are born. But we’ll deal with that as it happens.”

  Larkin pointed through an open door into a room lined with sturdy-looking cabinets. “What’s this?”

  “Our armory. We’ll have some weapons to start with, and residents will be allowed to bring along their personal firearms, at least a certain number. But they’ll all be kept here and used only for practice and in emergencies.”

  “Some people won’t like giving up their guns.”

  “We’re talking about a situation where there are a lot of things people don’t like.”

  “Armageddon,” Larkin said.

  Moultrie shrugged. “Or a reasonable facsimile.”

  “You have medical facilities?”

  “An infirmary and an operating room, plus a large supply of every drug we can think of. A woman like your wife will be a very welcome addition to our ranks, Pat.”

  That nickname was getting under Larkin’s skin, but he still suppressed the urge to say anything about it. Instead, he said, “So you know she’s an ER nurse.”

  “Of course. A very highly regarded one, too. Honestly . . . you two are just about perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better couple to join us.”

  “We’ll have to do a lot of thinking and talking about it,” Larkin said. He added grudgingly, “I have to say, though, you seem to have thought of everything. This looks like a viable operation.”

  “Just as viable and self-sustaining as I can make it,” Moultrie said. “You have my word on that.”

  “Where are your generators?”

  “Down on the lower level as well. We actually have our own power plant, as well as equipment to recycle both air and water.”

  “So we’ll be drinking our own piss.”

  “You’re already doing that if you have any sort of municipal water supply. We just—you’ll pardon the expression—streamline the process.” Moultrie pointed up. “There will be sensors in place on the surface to instantly detect any sort of radiation or unusual chemical or biological activity. We can monitor that around the clock and keep the shelter completely sealed off as long as there’s the least bit of danger. Food, clean air and water, sustainable resources, and enough hardened steel and concrete to withstand anything up to a ground zero nuclear hit . . . what more could you ask for when it comes to survival, Patrick?”

  The guy was good, Larkin had to give him that. Moultrie must have noticed the slight tightening of his mouth when he called him Pat and adjusted accordingly.

  “You say there are separate apartments in the old missile silos?”

  “That’s right. Twenty in all, with full kitchens, two bedrooms, and two baths. I wouldn’t exactly call them luxurious, but they’re very comfortable. If it weren’t for the lack of windows, you’d think you were in a nice apartment house.”

  “How much?” Larkin asked bluntly.

  “I’ll give you our price list when we get back to the office,” Moultrie said.

  That didn’t bode well, Larkin thought, if it cost so much to get in here that Moultrie didn’t want to say the numbers out loud. Or maybe it was just easier to hand out a price list. Larkin supposed he would find out.

  “Also, you don’t have to come up with the entire cost at once,” Moultrie went on. “You can put down a deposit to hold your space and pay it off either in installments or in a lump sum when everything is complete and the place is ready to move into.”

  “But once it is, you’ve got to be paid in full to get in if the shit hits the fan.”

  “That’s the way it works,” Moultrie said quietly.

  “Survival on the layaway plan,” Larkin said.

  Chapter 5

  May 25

  As Larkin was driving away from the Hercules Project, he had the satellite radio in the SUV tuned to a news channel. The announcer was talking about a series of riots in Indonesia that had resulted in more than a hundred deaths before being broken up by a typhoon that swept in and killed several hundred more. Meanwhile, one of the socialist countries in South America was descending further into chaos and starvation, one more domino toppling in a seemingly endless chain. Larkin grunted and switched the station to some music. He didn’t care what kind of music it was; he just wanted to hear something other the constant litany of death, discord, and destruction.

  As he drove through the countryside west of Fort Worth, it was hard to believe there was so much terrible news in the world. The landscape was green and beautiful, with nice houses tucked in among trees and cows and horses grazing in the fields. From some of the hills, he could see the downtown skyscrapers about ten miles away, shining in the sun.

  A vision suddenly appeared in his head: those buildings disappearing in an instant, in the searing fireball of a nuclear explosion. Adam Threadgill had mentioned growing up in this area and being scared of such a thing when he was a kid. Larkin’s childhood had been spent in Kansas and Nebraska, without any military targets nearby, but even so he could remember what that Cold War paranoia felt like.

  Only it wasn’t paranoia if somebody was really out to get you, he reminded himself, and for a while there, the United States and the Soviet Union hadn’t been all that far from actually launching nukes at each other. Larkin had been born a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, so he didn’t remember that incident himself, but it had had enough of an effect on the nation’s consciousness that he had been aware of it for as far back as he could remember. He remembered hearing fear in his father’s voice when he talked about the Russians . . . and in young Patrick’s mind, his dad had been invincible, never afraid of anything. If he worried about being bombed, there must be something to it.

  Then that anxiety had receded after the fall of the Soviet Union, only to resurface with new faces behind the bombs. It wasn’t missiles people worried about now, but rather truck bombs or suitcase nukes or drone payloads being wielded by Islamic terrorists. As so-called “refugees” from the Middle East continued to flood into the country over the objections of nearly everybody except the politicians in Washington, people couldn’t help but wonder how many of those young men came to America seeking not sanctuary but rather an opportunity to sow carnage.

  The trouble didn’t necessarily have to come from overseas, either. Plenty of it was already here in the form of homegrown terrorists, the children of legal immigrants from earlier generations who had been corrupted by a ceaseless barrage of hate coming fro
m their Middle Eastern cousins. And so there were bombings, shootings, stabbings, all sorts of violence, and the worst part of it was . . . you never knew where it was coming from. No wonder people were stressed out.

  Throw in the racial unrest relentlessly stoked by politicians, so-called community leaders, and the media, and it was hard to leave home without thinking, Well, this might be the time when I don’t come back.

  That didn’t even take into account all the little things that could kill you, like some new superbug resistant to any treatment, or the rising tide of cancer—God, Larkin couldn’t even begin to count all the friends and acquaintances he had lost to one form or another of cancer !—or the dementia that seemed so much more prevalent than it used to be, or an allergic reaction to some common, everyday food or item, or the stress and depression that led people to medicate themselves into a stupor until it finally seemed that ending it all was the easiest way out . . .

  Were there still good things in the world? Sure, logically Larkin knew that there were. But sometimes it was hard to pick them out from the tsunami of crap that seemed to be washing over everything.

  By the time he got back to his nice, comfortable house, he was feeling anything but comfortable. Graham Moultrie had made plenty of good points, and from what Larkin could tell, the Hercules Project was being developed into the sort of safe, secure place where somebody really could ride out all sorts of catastrophes.

  He glanced down at the brochure lying on the seat beside him. The prices were high, but not out of reach. One of those apartments in the old missile silos could be had for $80,000 per person. The more spare accommodations along the main corridors went for $60,000 per person, and space in the barracks-like lower level was 50 grand per. Kids under the age of fifteen were half-price. The down payment/deposit was 20 percent of the total. It could be done, Larkin thought as he parked in the garage and then picked up the brochure from the seat.

  Susan’s sedan was parked in the garage, too. He had left the house before she was awake, but she would be up now, getting ready to head to the hospital for her shift. He went in through the garage, into the kitchen, and found coffee in the old-fashioned coffeemaker. He’d never cared for those new ones with the plastic cups and pods and things.

  As he poured himself a cup, she came into the kitchen fully dressed in her scrubs but toweling her hair dry. “I saw your note saying you’d gone to run an errand,” she said. “Get it taken care of?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “What’s your plan for this afternoon? Going to get some pages done?”

  “Thought I would.”

  “Maybe you could unload the dishwasher, too?”

  “Sure,” Larkin said. After everything he had seen and thought about this morning, worrying about dirty dishes seemed almost trivial beyond belief, but Susan was right: life went on, and that included all the mundane chores that went with it.

  Yeah, life went on . . . until it didn’t.

  “If you’ve got a few minutes, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Susan looked at him and frowned. “This isn’t a situation, is it? I hate situations.”

  Larkin laughed and shook his head. Any time one member of a couple announced that they had a “situation,” it almost always wasn’t good.

  “No. You know I went to lunch with Adam Threadgill the other day.”

  “You have lunch with Adam every week unless something comes up.”

  “Yeah, but this time he was telling me about this new place west of town—”

  “A new place to eat? Ooh, I like the sound of that.”

  Larkin made a face and shook his head. “Well, they have food there, but it’s not exactly a restaurant.”

  “A bar? I’m not much on bars, you know that.”

  “It’s more of a place you go and stay.”

  “A bed and breakfast? A resort? Those places are expensive. Although, if you wanted to call it, like, a second honeymoon . . .”

  Larkin sighed and held out the brochure to her. “Just take a look and think about it, all right. I took a tour of the place and can tell you all about it.”

  Susan glanced down at the brochure, which had a mushroom cloud on the folded front. She looked right back up and said, “No. This is some sort of crazy fantasy, Patrick.”

  “I wish it was.”

  She pushed the brochure back in his hand and snapped, “I have to get to work.”

  “Then we’ll talk about it later—”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. However much this costs, we can find better ways to spend the money.”

  “Better ways than survival?”

  She just looked at him, shook her head, and walked out of the kitchen.

  * * *

  That was the way it had been ever since, Larkin bringing up the subject from time to time, Susan refusing to even talk about it . . . but gradually getting less steadfast in her refusal. Larkin hoped that was because some of his arguments, even the snippets of them she listened to, were getting through to her. The fact that the news seemed to be getting worse and worse all the time probably had an effect, too.

  In making the arguments to her, he realized he was making them to himself as well. When he’d driven away from the Hercules Project, he had been undecided about what was the right thing to do. Moultrie had made a compelling case, and so had the things Larkin had seen with his own eyes. But he’d been raised to be frugal, and spending a chunk of money that big just went against the grain for him, even when it was in a good cause. He’d had doubts about nearly every big purchase he had ever made in his life, he recalled, and most of them had turned out just fine. Not just fine, but in some cases downright great. So history told him—in more ways than one—that he didn’t have any reason to drag his feet about this.

  No reason other than getting Susan to see the practicality of it, too.

  After their conversation about “the new normal” the night before, he hadn’t said anything else about the idea. This morning he had coffee and breakfast—pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon—ready when she came into the kitchen. He wasn’t trying to suck up to her; since retiring, he had discovered that he actually liked cooking . . . as long as it was basic stuff and didn’t get too complicated.

  She was still in her nightgown and looked great to him. He enjoyed the casual intimacy of their decades-long marriage. He was about to say good morning to her when she walked through the kitchen and on into the living room. The open-concept design of the whole living area allowed him to watch her as she picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV. The big screen came on.

  “I had the TV on in the bedroom,” she said as she glanced over her shoulder at him. “This was on.”

  “—shooters’ motive is unknown at this time,” a solemn voice was saying over an apparent live shot of what appeared to be a mall somewhere. A graphic listing the town of Pembroke Pines, Florida, was at the bottom of the screen. Emergency vehicles were parked around the mall, but that was all that could be seen because members of the media were being kept back a considerable distance. “There are reports of multiple fatalities, and at least a dozen injured have been transported to nearby medical facilities. There appear to have been at least three shooters, and as far as we know they are still active inside the mall. Police have cordoned off the area, and we believe that SWAT teams have gone in—Oh, my God! What was that?”

  The live shot bounced on the screen as the camera was jolted. Larkin gripped the edge of the counter hard as smoke and flames erupted from the mall and people screamed and shouted. The view tilted and careened as the person with the camera fled. For a split second, the camera caught sight of a massive fireball rising and enveloping the mall. Larkin felt sick.

  Susan muted the sound on the TV but left the picture on, although there was nothing to see but chaos. She turned, looked at Larkin, and said, “That place out in the country . . . I’m ready to talk about it now.”

  Chapter 6

  The des
truction in Florida was massive, even though the newscasts kept harping on the fact that it hadn’t been a nuclear explosion that had destroyed the mall and killed the hundreds of people still inside it when the blast went off. The fact that it was a conventional bomb didn’t make them any less dead.

  Since all the security cameras inside the mall had been destroyed as well, it was thought at first that the exact chain of events would remain unknown. However, within hours of the attack, cell phone video shot and sent out from inside the mall during the incident began to surface. Although the footage was often shaky, naturally enough, since the innocent people taking it had been terrified, it was clear enough to show the three young men of Middle Eastern descent opening fire on shoppers with semi-automatic pistols. No one else in the mall seemed to be armed; no one returned the fire anyway. People screamed, ran, and tried to hide instead.

  Mall security guards showed up and engaged in a gun battle with the shooters. One of the men was hit and apparently killed. The others retreated into a store. Emergency personnel began to arrive and evacuated some of the wounded. The mall was effectively in lockdown, however, with most of the customers who’d been in there when the violence started still there, hiding, afraid to venture out and maybe become a target. Then the police had lobbed in tear gas and stormed the store where the remaining shooters had holed up . . .

  And all the streaming video ended at that point.

  Eventually the investigation into the attack determined that the three suspects (they were seldom, if ever, referred to in the media as terrorists) had parked a rental truck at the loading dock of one of the mall’s anchor stores. It had been packed to bursting with explosives and had been triggered with a remote detonator. The horrific blast destroyed more than half the mall, including the area where the attackers had taken shelter. It was a classic suicide bombing on a huge scale. If they hadn’t been trapped, if they had gotten away somehow, they might have waited until they were clear to trigger the bomb, but the consensus was that they’d had no real intention of surviving.