“But what if—”
Larkin held up a hand to stop her. “I said I’d be fine.”
Moultrie turned to Fisher and said, “Find one of the maintenance guys and borrow a hammer. Meet us at the inner door.”
Larkin patted Jill on the shoulder and told her, “Just relax, kid. Don’t worry about me.”
He felt his daughter’s anxious gaze following him as he left the Situation Room with Moultrie.
“I appreciate you stepping up like this, Patrick,” Moultrie said as they headed for the hallway leading to the main entrance and the blast doors. Along the way, they passed a number of the residents, none of whom had any idea what was going on. Most smiled and nodded pleasantly as Larkin and Moultrie went by. The two men walked at a casual pace, taking pains that their gait didn’t reveal anything was wrong.
“Somebody’s got to do the job, and I’m not as vital a cog as you and Chuck,” Larkin said.
“I don’t know about that. I like to think that everyone down here is a vital cog in the way the project functions. We’ve made it so far.”
“But since we’ve been down here, we haven’t really been tested,” Larkin pointed out. “The friction with Charlotte Ruskin and her bunch doesn’t really count.”
“No, you’re right about that.” Moultrie sighed. “That grace period may be over. We may be tested sooner than we’d like.”
Larkin could understand Moultrie’s concern, but at the same time he really didn’t see how Nelson Ruskin and any other survivors up on the surface could pose a serious threat.
Along the way, they also passed a set of heavy steel doors. Larkin knew that on the other side of those doors was a short corridor leading to a freight elevator that Moultrie had used for bringing supplies down here during the months before the war when he’d been developing the project. Larkin pointed at the doors with a thumb and said, “What about the elevator?”
“You mean as a way for outsiders to breach the project?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Impossible,” Moultrie said. “The elevator is down here, and the top of it is solid steel. It would take a week to cut through it. At the top of the shaft is a hatch made of steel and concrete thick enough that a bomb would have to land directly on it to even make a dent. And that hatch was inside a building that’s now debris. Outsiders wouldn’t even know the elevator shaft is there. Despite all that, just as a precaution we have cameras monitoring it. You know that, Patrick.”
“I know, but it’s still another potential way in. We should probably have guards stationed there around the clock, too.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea. Why don’t you say something to Chuck about it when you get back from this job?”
“All right.”
“And be sure to tell him it was your suggestion, and I agree with it.”
Larkin didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t give a damn who got credit for an idea, only that it was implemented properly and did what it was supposed to.
He started to say something about another rumor he had heard, that Moultrie had a private elevator somewhere in the project that only he and Deb knew about. Larkin decided not to mention it at the moment, but he would feel Chuck Fisher out about the possibility later. If there was any truth to the gossip, that was another avenue of ingress that would need to be secured.
They reached the corridor leading to the blast doors without attracting any undue attention and went through the regular doors to wait for Fisher, who showed up a couple of minutes later carrying a large, heavy hammer. He held it up and said, “Didn’t think you could use a sledgehammer for something like this, but this one’s got plenty of heft and ought to do the job.”
Larkin took it, weighed it in his hand, and nodded. “That’ll work.”
Fisher threw a latch that locked the door leading into the hallway from Corridor One. They didn’t want any of the residents wandering in here right now. Moultrie went to the control panel next to the interior blast door and began pushing buttons on it as he said, “There’s an intercom on the wall in there, Patrick. We’ll be able to hear you as well as see you, so you can let us know when you’re ready to be let back in. Are you sure you’re all right with going through with this?”
“I’m not gonna back out now,” Larkin said.
“All right.” Moultrie thumbed one more button, and machinery began to hum. That sound built to a rumble, and then with a low hiss that signified the airtight seal was breaking, the blast door began to swing open.
As soon as the gap was big enough, Larkin slipped through it into the antechamber. He looked back and nodded curtly to Moultrie, who returned the nod and began entering another sequence on the keypad. The door reversed itself and settled back into place. Larkin heard the seals tightening into position. Dim, recessed lighting shone from the ceiling as he turned toward the outer blast door.
He was alone now in this steel and concrete bubble between two worlds, the sterile safety of the Hercules Project and the outside that had been devastated by nuclear fire.
He took a deep breath, walked over to the other door, and began tapping on it with the hammer.
Chapter 32
Larkin had learned Morse code when he was a young man, even before he was in the Marine Corps, because he had thought for a while that he might want to be a ham radio operator. He had never gotten very involved in the hobby, but he still remembered the dots and dashes. He was sure he was rusty at it, but he believed that if he took it slow, he could make himself understood.
Provided, of course, that Nelson Ruskin also understood Morse.
Larkin began by tapping out CQ several times, the universal hail for hams. When there was no response, he tried H-E-L-L-O, then Ruskin’s last name. The clanging impacts of hammer against steel were loud in the antechamber, but he knew the sounds would be muffled by the time they passed through the blast door. He paused to listen.
Moultrie’s voice came over the intercom speaker. “Anything, Patrick?”
Larkin held up a hand in a gesture for silence, knowing they could see him on the monitors in the Situation Room, and leaned closer to the door.
It was faint but there: Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I hear him,” Larkin said, keeping the excitement out of his voice. “What does Jill see on the camera?”
“Ruskin has moved on down the steps to the door. She can’t see what he’s tapping with. The heel of his shoe, maybe.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty quiet, but he’s definitely responding. Let me try again.”
He hammered out Ruskin’s name again, then stopped and listened intently. It wasn’t really a tapping he heard but more of a thudding instead, lending credence to the idea that Ruskin might be using his shoe. The sounds came in a steady rhythm. Larkin grimaced. The man on the other side of the door wasn’t sending code.
“I don’t think he knows Morse,” he reported through the intercom. He tapped a query but the only answer was the steady thumping. It stopped abruptly.
Then as Larkin frowned and pressed his ear to the door, he heard something that took him by surprise.
Bump-bump-ba-bump-bump . . . bump-bump!
He straightened, threw back his head, and laughed, unable to suppress the impulse.
“Patrick, what the hell?” Moultrie asked with a tinge of alarm in his voice. Maybe he thought something was wrong with the air in here after all and it was making Larkin crazy.
“He gave me the old ‘Shave and a Haircut,’” Larkin said. “That’s something I never really expected to hear again, especially coming from outside.”
Chuck Fisher spoke up, saying, “This isn’t a joke.”
“No, but it’s human. Ruskin can’t understand code, so he doesn’t know what we’re saying, but he knows there are people in here and he’s telling us that he’s human, too. Damn it, he’s asking for help.”
“We’ve been through this,” Moultrie said, his voice flat. “However many people are up there, they’re not comi
ng in. Not now.”
“Wait too long and they’ll all die,” Larkin said, then realized that might be exactly what Moultrie was hoping for.
“Can you ask him what he wants?”
“I can ask, but he won’t be able to answer because he won’t know what I’m saying.”
“Go ahead and try . . . Wait a minute.” There was a pause, then Moultrie went on, “He’s gone back up a few steps so he can write in that notebook and show it to us. Jill’s relaying the information to me. He’s written . . . I know you’re sending code . . . I can’t understand it . . . I’ll see if I can find somebody who does.”
“Then there’s more of them!” Fisher said.
“We knew that,” Larkin said. He listened at the door again. “I don’t hear anything else.”
“Ruskin is going back up the stairs,” Moultrie reported. “Let’s get you out of there, Patrick.”
“No, let’s give it a few minutes.”
“We don’t know how long it’s going to take Ruskin to find anyone who understands Morse, or if he even will.”
“Yeah, but he might get lucky. Let’s just wait a little while and see.”
“You’re the one who’s stuck in there,” Moultrie said. Larkin could hear the shrug in his voice. “As long as you’re not getting claustrophobic . . .”
“I’m still good to go,” Larkin said.
“We’ll let you know as soon as we know anything.”
Larkin stood there waiting, concentrating on his breathing and forcing himself to take deep, regular breaths. He’d never had a problem with claustrophobia, and he wasn’t feeling any twinges of panic now. Still, he was aware of the tension ratcheting tighter inside him. He hoped that Nelson Ruskin would be able to locate someone who understood Morse because he didn’t want to have to work himself up to start this effort over.
After twenty minutes that seemed much longer, Moultrie said, “Someone’s coming back down the stairs. It’s . . . wait a minute . . . it’s Ruskin and another man. Jill says this one is older, with white hair and a beard. He’s wearing . . . an old army jacket. He has something with him . . . looks like a wrench—”
Larkin heard the sharp impact of metal against metal and said quickly, “Hold on!” He didn’t need Moultrie talking while he was trying to listen. He leaned closer to the door again.
C-Q-C-Q
Larkin’s pulse jumped as he recognized the letters.
The man on the other side of the door followed with Who goes there?
Larkin lifted the hammer. His telegrapher’s fist was slow and laborious, but he got the message through, letter by letter.
Patrick Larkin. Who am I talking to?
Earl Crandall, U.S. Army, retired.
I’m one of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.
Dogface!
Leatherneck!
Who you got in there with you, son?
Some friends. Larkin wasn’t going to give away any more information than he had to. How about you?
Same here. We’re in bad shape, Marine. Could use some help.
How many?
Crandall hesitated, then tapped out, Just a few.
Larkin didn’t believe him. That pause had been telling. The outsiders were wary, too. If there were honestly only a few of them, Larkin didn’t think Crandall would have hesitated to say so and might well have provided an exact number.
Sorry, can’t open up.
We need help. Women and children sick. Not much food.
Larkin believed that, and his guts twisted a little at the thought of what those people had to be going through. What they had already gone through. He was glad Susan wasn’t here. With her instincts, this would be hell on her.
He realized he was the only one inside the project who knew what was going on here, the only one who understood the conversation, at least for now. Moultrie might have equipment picking up and recording the words Larkin and Crandall were tapping out, so they could be analyzed later, but for the moment he was the sole representative of the Hercules Project and could tell Crandall whatever he wanted.
But unless Moultrie agreed with it, those would be only empty words.
Sorry, Larkin tapped again. No can do. Before Crandall could respond, he went on, Nelson Ruskin is with you?
If Morse code being tapped out by a guy with a wrench could sound surprised, what came back from Crandall did. Ruskin is here. You know him?
Tell him his wife is alive and safe.
There was a moment’s silence, then Crandall tapped urgently, Get her. Let them talk.
No can do, Larkin sent again.
Does she know he is alive?
Not yet. Will tell her. That was a lie, but Larkin didn’t see how it could hurt anything.
Thank you. If you can’t open up, can you send help or supplies to us?
Will work on it, Larkin replied. Maybe that wasn’t a lie, he thought. Maybe the engineers and technicians could work out some way to get a few supplies to the surface. They were ingenious; they ought to be able to do that.
But then his spirits sank again. Even if it were possible to deliver them, Moultrie would never give up any of the project’s supplies. Especially when the food wouldn’t make any difference in the long run. The survivors truly were doomed if they stayed around here. They would be better off heading for one of the less-damaged parts of the state. If they had any more vehicles, they could get away from the residual radiation here on the edge of the destroyed Metroplex. The chances of long-term survival would still be very slim, but any chance was better than none.
Thank you, Crandall tapped. Asking again, will you let us in?
No can do. Larkin was beginning to hate that phrase, but it was the only answer he could give.
After a few seconds, Crandall tapped, Will check back later. Really need medical assistance and supplies.
We know. Larkin left it at that.
He didn’t hear anything else, and after another short delay Moultrie said over the intercom, “Jill says they’re going back up top. What did you find out, Patrick?”
“Get me out of here and we’ll talk about it,” Larkin said in a voice thick with emotion. Maybe he had never been claustrophobic before, but right now the walls were starting to close in on him a little.
* * *
“He wouldn’t say how many of them there are?” Moultrie asked once Larkin had returned to the Situation Room, where Jill was still on duty at the monitors. Fisher stood to one side, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
“He claimed there are only a few,” Larkin replied, “but I didn’t believe him. He took a little too long to answer.”
Jill said, “That’s reading a lot into somebody tapping on a steel door with a wrench.”
“I know. But that’s the way it seemed to me.”
Fisher said, “You didn’t tell him how many of us are down here, did you?”
“No. I didn’t really tell him much of anything except that we can’t help them. He asked if there was any way we could send some supplies out to them. I told him we’d look into it.”
“We can’t do that,” Moultrie said immediately. “We can’t risk giving up any of our own supplies.”
Larkin nodded slowly and said, “I know.”
“You gave him false hope, Dad,” Jill said. “Isn’t it better if they know the truth?”
“Is it? Sometimes the truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
For a moment, they were all silent. Larkin considered revealing to the others how he had passed along the information that Charlotte Ruskin was alive and well to her husband. He knew Fisher would complain about that, however, so for now he kept it to himself.
He looked at an image frozen on one of the monitors, a screen capture from the footage caught by the stairwell camera. It showed a man with a leathery face, his permanent tan set off by a close-cropped white beard and white hair drawn into a short ponytail at the back of his head. He wore an old army jacket, as Jill had reported earlier. Earl Cranda
ll didn’t look sick. In fact, he looked like kind of a hardass. Larkin knew the type. He’d been accused of it himself.
He wasn’t sure if the past eight months had changed him, though. He felt keenly the loss of those millions of people who’d been wiped out in an hour or so of nuclear hell. Any man’s death diminishes me, John Donne had written. Larkin wasn’t sure he would go so far as to agree with that, but millions of deaths made him feel diminished, no doubt about it.
On the other hand, Crandall, Nelson Ruskin, and whoever was left alive up there would have been toughened up, even more than they were to start with, in the case of Crandall. Even worse, they had nothing left to lose.
He couldn’t afford to turn into some damn softhearted pile of mush, Larkin told himself. He had to stay as hard inside as any of those people on the surface.
Because sooner or later, it might come down to him and all the others down here defending their way of life from those who wanted to take it. If many of them were like Earl Crandall, Larkin and the rest of the residents of the Hercules Project might have one hell of a fight on their hands.
Chapter 33
As soon as Nelson Ruskin had revealed who he was, Moultrie had cut the feed to the other monitors in the Command Center so it went only to the Situation Room. His standing orders were that nothing anyone on the Command Center staff learned in there could be discussed with anyone else. Just like Vegas, what happened there stayed there. And the hand-picked staff, devoted to the safety and security of the Hercules Project, could be depended upon to follow those orders.
Usually.
Charlotte Ruskin was on the way to her job in the hydroponic gardens when she heard her name called behind her. She stopped, turned, and saw a man walking quickly toward her, trying to catch up. He looked vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know his name, or at least couldn’t recall it if she’d ever heard it.
“Yes?” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you remember me, Mrs. Ruskin? My name is Charles Trahn.”
“Of course,” she said, although she didn’t, really.
“I came to one of your meetings and listened to you and Mr. Greer speak.”
The Doomsday Bunker Page 21
