“There are a lot of people here,” Susan said. Larkin could tell she was trying to be as gentle with the woman as she could. “I’m sure you just haven’t found each other yet. He’s probably looking for you, too.”
The woman didn’t seem to hear. She turned away and pushed into the crowd again, crying, “Nelson!”
“That poor woman,” Susan said quietly as the press of people swallowed the searching woman. “What if her husband didn’t make it?”
“Everyone’s fingerprints were scanned as we came in,” Larkin said. “We’ll know soon enough who got here in time and who didn’t.”
He looked around the big room. He was pretty good at estimating crowds, and he would have said there were almost four hundred people here . . . but not quite. That meant some of the residents of the Hercules Project hadn’t arrived before Moultrie locked everything up. They’d been left outside to wait for whatever fate had in store for them.
So far he hadn’t felt the vibrations from any more nuclear explosions. American anti-missile defenses had been able to take out some of the attackers. Maybe the missile that had fallen between Fort Worth and Dallas would be the only one to strike the area. That would give some hope, however slight, for survivors aboveground, although the fallout and residual radiation might render the entire Metroplex virtually unlivable for years.
The speakers came on again and hummed for a second before Graham Moultrie said, “We have more news. Multiple missiles armed with nuclear warheads have struck San Antonio and Houston here in Texas, as well as Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Also, tactical nuclear devices have been detonated in Washington, D. C., New York, Boston, Atlanta, and Miami. It’s thought that these devices were planted and set off by terrorists affiliated with ISIS and other Islamic groups. The timing and the planning required to coordinate such attacks indicates that the terrorists were working with Russia and North Korea, and that a concentrated effort is underway to destroy the United States. There are reports that our counterattacks have caused widespread devastation in those countries. In addition, there have been nuclear exchanges between Israel and Iran, and between Pakistan and India.”
Everyone in the now hushed bunker heard Moultrie draw in a deep breath. When he resumed, the strain that they were all feeling was evident in his voice.
“The entire world is at war. There can be no doubt about that. The lines of communication are becoming more spotty with each passing minute. All conventional broadcasting is off the air, likely as the result of nuclear airbursts and the ensuing EMPs. Wireless networks are down as well. Satellite Internet connections are failing, doubtless due to infrastructure damage, but the fact that we’ve been able to maintain a connection here at the Hercules Project tells us that our aboveground equipment is still functioning. There are also operators sending on old-fashioned ham radio rigs that don’t depend on computers, and we have radios in the control center to pick up those transmissions as well. But I won’t lie to you, my friends.
“The world is going dark and quiet even as I speak to you now. On the eve of World War I, a British government official said, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. ’ The first part of that statement is true now for our entire planet. But I refuse to believe we shall not see them lit again in our lifetimes. Certainly, some of us will not. But as human beings, we cannot give up hope. That is why each and every one of us is here: because we still have hope that our world has a future. This is not the end, my friends. The Hercules Project is the beginning.”
The speakers clicked off again.
“Do you believe him?” Susan asked as she huddled against Larkin. “Do you think he’s right about there still being a future?”
“What other choice do I have?” he said.
* * *
The human mind can cope with only so much tragedy and trauma before retreating into a stunned state. So it was in the vast underground bunker as people began to sit down and talk quietly as they waited to see what was going to happen. There were still some sobs, but the terrified screams and angry shouts had subsided.
Susan, Jill, and the kids sat on one of the bunks while Larkin and Trevor stood nearby. Larkin saw the way his son-in-law kept swallowing hard and wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. He kept his voice down as he asked, “You’re thinking about your folks, aren’t you?”
Trevor swallowed again and said, “You know, I tried to get them to move up here so they’d be closer. And then, when the deal with this place came up, I tried again. I wanted them to invest in it. But they didn’t want to leave their home. They’d been there for forty years.”
“Can’t blame them for feeling that way,” Larkin said. “And listen, when you stop and think about it, Midland is a long way from where any of the bombs went off. Given the prevailing winds, the fallout might not even be too bad where they are. They can make it through, and when things calm down—”
“They’re in their seventies, and the electromagnetic pulses have wiped out technology,” Trevor interrupted. “How long do you think they’re going to survive once everything goes back to a nineteenth-century level?”
“People in the nineteenth century did okay.”
“Did they really? Life expectancy was a lot shorter then. Almost any little thing can kill you without modern medical attention. Besides, people back then didn’t know any different. People today aren’t equipped, either mentally or physically, to live under those conditions.”
Larkin knew Trevor was right about that. “Maybe so,” he said, “but I don’t think you should give up hoping that they’ll be all right.”
“I’m not going to. I’m just not sure it’s going to do any good.”
Larkin didn’t know what to say in response to that, but he was saved from having to say anything by a sudden commotion over near the stairs that led down from the upper level.
At first Larkin thought another fight had broken out, but then he spotted a group of people coming down the stairs, led by Graham and Deb Moultrie, who were holding hands. Several red-vested members of the security force followed them.
Moultrie stopped while he was still several steps from the bottom, so he could look out over the crowd. All over the bunker, people moved in his direction, eager to find out what had brought him down here and hear anything he had to say. He lifted a bullhorn to his mouth and his amplified voice filled the chamber.
“Please, gather around, my friends. I have more news, but I wanted to tell you face-to-face.”
“Is it over?” a man yelled. “Will there be any more bombs?”
“I can’t tell you for sure,” Moultrie replied, “but I believe the attacks have ended. The reason for my uncertainty is that we’ve lost all communication with the surface.”
Larkin glanced up. The surface was less than a hundred and fifty feet above their heads, but right now it might as well have been on the other side of the moon.
“All Internet and wireless networks are off-line,” Moultrie continued through the bullhorn. “We have no satellite or cable connections, and the ham-radio frequencies have gone silent as well. Our hope is that some of those ham operators will resume broadcasting at some point, so we’ll have some idea what’s going on in the world, but until then all we can do is wait.”
“What about your instruments on the surface?” a man asked, raising his voice to be heard.
“They’re functioning. Approximately half an hour ago, immediately following the detonation of the warhead in the Arlington area, thermal sensors detected a temperature spike to just under five hundred degrees lasting fifteen seconds. According to our calculations, our location here should have been on the outer edge of the thermal blast radius. We also detected wind speeds in excess of two hundred miles per hour from the concussion blast.”
Susan moaned softly as she stood next to Larkin. She knew as well as Larkin did that nothing living could withstand a heat wave like that. Not caught in the open, anyway. People hidi
ng in basements or storm cellars might have lived through such a fiery burst.
But that didn’t mean they were safe, because as Moultrie went on, “Our sensors have also picked up extremely high levels of radiation, and while the winds and the heat have subsided, the radiation has not. We’re shielded from the radiation here—our internal sensors continually monitor the levels, and we’re perfectly safe—but anyone on the surface who somehow survived the initial blast will suffer from radiation burns and poisoning that will prove fatal, probably sooner rather than later.”
“You’re saying we’re the only people left alive!” a woman cried out in a strident voice.
Moultrie shook his head. “No. I’m saying that we can be relatively sure of what happened in this area, but we don’t know what’s happened elsewhere, and unless and until we get word from outside, we won’t know anything more. I firmly believe that in the short term, there will be survivors from this attack. But with the widespread death and destruction, the collapse of civilization as we know it, the inevitable rise of disease, and the lingering threat of radiation . . . over time, we may well be the last ones left in this part of the world.”
People began to cry again.
“I want to assure you that the Hercules Project is secure,” Moultrie continued. “All of our equipment is functioning perfectly, just as we designed and intended. We will remain down here, safe and together, until our instruments indicate that it’s safe to begin exploring the surface. When the time comes, that will be done on a very limited basis until we can be absolutely certain what the situation is. I will not do anything—anything!—to risk the security of the project until I’m sure that—”
A woman lunged from the crowd and started up the stairs, hands held like claws and reaching out toward Moultrie as she screamed at Moultrie, “Murderer! Murderer! You left Nelson out there to die!”
Chapter 23
Larkin recognized the woman as the one who had come up to him earlier looking for her husband. Ruskin, that was her name, he recalled. It was obvious she hadn’t found Nelson, or else she wouldn’t have attacked Moultrie.
As the woman charged him, Moultrie moved quickly and protectively to put Deb behind him, even though the woman’s anger was directed at him. He lifted the arm holding the bullhorn to protect his face from Mrs. Ruskin’s hooked fingers, but he just shielded himself instead of striking back as she rammed into him and knocked him back against Deb.
By then, a couple members of the security force had moved around Moultrie. They sprang to his defense. Each grabbed one of Mrs. Ruskin’s arms and pulled her away from Moultrie.
“Don’t hurt her!” he shouted.
Mrs. Ruskin started screaming curses. Moultrie jerked his head toward the stairs and went on to his security men, “Take her up to my office. Somebody stay with her to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”
The woman tried to pull away from the men in the red vests, but they had good grips on her. Moultrie and Deb moved over to the edge of the stairs to give them room as they forced Mrs. Ruskin up the steps. The assembled residents of the Hercules Project looked on in mingled shock and horror. The security men reached the landing and went around it, out of sight. Everyone could still hear Mrs. Ruskin’s screamed oaths, though. The staircase muffled them, and after a moment they went away.
Moultrie took a deep breath and heaved a weary sigh. “This is a terrible thing,” he said. He wasn’t using the bullhorn now, but the bunker was so hushed and quiet that his voice carried to everyone. “You can’t blame the poor woman. I certainly don’t.”
A man near the front of the crowd asked, “Was she right?”
Moultrie smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. It was more like a death’s-head grimace. He said, “Do you mean about me being a murderer? I’d like to think she wasn’t.”
“But her husband didn’t make it?”
Instead of answering directly, Moultrie turned to Deb and held out his free hand. She gave him a sheet of paper. He faced the crowd again and lifted the bullhorn.
“As you know, we have the fingerprints of all the project’s residents in our files. We’ve been matching them against those of the people who entered the project today, so it’s a simple matter to isolate the ones who are . . . unaccounted for.”
“Dead, you mean,” a woman said.
“Not necessarily. As I mentioned earlier, we’re far enough from Ground Zero that it’s possible there were survivors.”
“But if the bomb didn’t kill them, the aftereffects will,” a man spoke up. “That’s what you said.”
“It’s all speculation at this point,” Moultrie said. “We don’t know what the long-term result will be.” He swallowed hard. Watching from the crowd, Larkin could tell that Moultrie was almost overcome by emotion. Moultrie lifted the paper and went on, “These are the people who were not able to be with us today. David Ahearne. Melissa Ahearne. Jacob Ahearne. Tamara Bradley. Matthew Beckerman. Teresa Beckerman. John Eldridge. Samantha Eldridge. Peyton Harwell . . .”
He continued reading names, among them Nelson Ruskin. For the most part there was no reaction from the stunned crowd, but at some of the names, someone gasped or cried out, and sobs began to be heard, grim counterpoints to the list Moultrie was giving them.
Finally, Moultrie lowered the paper and said, “That’s all. Thirty-three of our residents are unaccounted for. The current population of the Hercules Project is three hundred and seventy-four. Three-hundred and seventy-four souls . . . and God bless each and every one of us.” His nostrils flared as he drew in another deep breath. “Right now, my friends, and until we know differently . . . we are the United States of America.”
* * *
Moultrie and Deb went back up to the command center. Larkin assumed that’s where they were headed, anyway. A short time later, Deb’s voice came over the loudspeakers announcing that everyone should begin moving to their assigned areas. That was good, Larkin thought, because it gave everybody something to do. They needed something to occupy their minds and their energy, instead of just sitting around thinking about what had happened. He had seen the same thing in combat. All hell could be breaking loose, but if somebody had a job to do—and it had been drummed into them that they should do it, no matter what the circumstances—they were a lot more likely to stay alive and prevail against the enemy . . . whoever that enemy happened to be.
At this point, the enemy wasn’t really Russia or North Korea anymore. They had shot their bolt, done the worst they could. The main enemy of the residents of the Hercules Project was fear, ably abetted by grief, resentment, and anger.
Susan said to Jill and Trevor, “Let’s find your place first. Your father and I have everything ready in our apartment.”
“I could have used some more time to move things into our quarters,” Jill said with a sigh. “But I suppose we were lucky to have as much time as we did.”
That comment made Larkin think of the old saying about how the lucky ones in a nuclear war would be the ones killed outright.
He hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be true in real life.
Several sets of stairs led from the lower bunker to the main hallways above. People began trooping up the steps, mostly couples and families. The ones who had chosen to live in the barracks-like lower bunker were overwhelmingly single. Space couldn’t be wasted. Anyone who was single but wanted to live in one of the main corridors or a missile silo apartment had to accept that they would have roommates.
The H-shaped main corridors ran roughly east and west. The quarters that Jill and Trevor would be sharing with Bailey and Chris were in the southern corridor, designated Corridor One. The northern corridor was Corridor Two. The four silos were called Silos A, B, C, and D, starting with the one at the western end of Corridor One and running clockwise. The door of the Sinclairs’ quarters was labeled 1A09, which meant it was actually the fifth door on the left, going toward Silo A, directly across the broad hallway from 1A10.
Down at the
end of the corridor were wide double doors that opened into a reception area for Silo A. Apartment 1 in Silo A was located at this level, with four apartments underneath it, accessible by both elevator and stairs. Larkin and Susan were in Apartment 2, just one level down, with Jim and Beth Huddleston directly below them. Larkin wasn’t too fond of that idea, but he was glad that Jill, Trevor, and the kids would be so close.
When they went in, a door on the left opened into a small bedroom with two bunk beds in it. That wasn’t the optimal arrangement for the kids, but again, a certain level of privacy had to be given up. Along a painted concrete wall and around a corner, also to the left, was the small kitchen and dining area. A door in the left corner of that room led into the “master bedroom,” as Larkin wryly thought of it, another chamber on the cramped side with a full-size bed in it, along with a closet and a tiny bathroom barely big enough for the toilet and the combination bath/shower. Another bathroom and a storage area were beyond the kitchen.
Everything was pretty spartan. No living space other than the kitchen/dining room, but the dining table had space for six at it, so that was a little bigger than what they actually needed. The table would serve as a desk for Bailey and Chris, too, where they could do their homework. Larkin wasn’t sure how long it would be before the school was up and running, but he didn’t expect Moultrie to wait too long about that.
They could prepare food here, eat, sleep, study, read. The project had a good-size library of physical books, as well as a huge collection of e-books, movies, and TV shows that could be downloaded onto just about any device anyone could think of. Larkin wasn’t sure how the kids would get along without the latest popular social media site, but they would figure it out. Kids always did.
Under the circumstances, cramped though they might be, the quarters in the Hercules Project were quite possibly the most luxurious accommodations left anywhere in the world. A crazy thought, but it was true.
The family stowed the gear from their bug-out bags in the storage area, then Bailey and Chris sat down at the dining table and got out their phones. There was no Internet, of course, but Trevor had explained to them that there probably wouldn’t be, while they were inside the bunker, so they had already downloaded movies, games, and plenty of other apps to keep themselves occupied for a while. Their parents, along with Larkin and Susan, stood in the doorway watching for a moment, then retreated to the main corridor.
The Doomsday Bunker Page 14
