That thought made Threadgill glance at the man who had battered Trahn into unconsciousness. Jeff Greer lay on the floor almost at their feet, his face a bloody ruin from the shot Threadgill had fired just in time to keep the man from shooting him again.
Threadgill knew he couldn’t worry about that now. He grabbed Trahn’s shoulder and gave him a shake.
“Come on! You gotta tell me what’s going on here. Has that elevator started back down?”
Trahn shook his head, pawed his hair back away from his face. He swallowed hard and looked at the readings on the console.
“The system shut down from the . . . from the power spike when Greer’s shot made it short out. Everything’s rebooting.”
“How long is that gonna take?”
Trahn looked at Greer, then shuddered. In a choked voice, he said, “I don’t know. It should be further along than it is.” He pointed a trembling finger at a status bar on one of the screens. “It looks like it may have gotten hung up somehow.”
Threadgill suddenly felt cold inside. “You mean the environmental systems aren’t working?”
“Nothing’s working,” Trahn said.
“Well, fix it! Without that life-support equipment, we’ll all die.”
Trahn leaned both hands on the console, obviously as dizzy as Threadgill was. “No. We have several days’ supply of usable water stored, and the air won’t go bad for hours.”
“Hours! What if it’s days before the computers start working again?”
“It won’t be. They may have to restart again, but they’ll boot back up in time, I’m sure of it. There are enough fail-safes and redundancies—”
Threadgill grabbed his arm. “What if they don’t?”
“Then we . . . we’ll have to get up to the surface somehow.”
“But the surface is poison!”
Trahn shook his head again. “As far as I know, there’s never been any sign of biological contamination in the air. The only real threat is the radiation.”
“But the air’s still bad, right?”
“It’ll keep us alive right now. We don’t know what the long-term effects would be. That’s better than suffocating to death in a matter of hours, though.”
Threadgill slumped into Trahn’s chair, unable to stand up anymore. Already the atmosphere seemed stuffier and hotter to him, but that might be his imagination running wild, he told himself.
“You can’t stop that elevator from coming back down?”
“I told you, I can’t do anything.”
Threadgill brightened slightly. “But if the computers are down, whoever’s inside it can’t open the doors.”
Trahn made a face. “That’s not strictly true. The motors that control everything about the elevator, including the doors, run off electrical power, but they’re not computer-operated. Our generators are still working.” He pointed to a glowing display as proof of that, but the numbers didn’t mean anything to Threadgill. “You need an access card to get into the elevator, but you don’t need one to get out.”
“Holy crap,” Threadgill said. “The project’s about to be under attack.”
Trahn nodded and said, “I think there’s a pretty good chance of it.”
* * *
“Get out of here!” Larkin yelled at the crowd that had been drawn by the gunshots and the grisly sight of the guards’ dead bodies. “Everybody get away from here now!”
He didn’t know who—or what—was riding on that elevator, but he was convinced it wouldn’t be anything good.
He pulled the .45 and leveled it at the elevator door in a two-handed grip. There was no light to indicate the elevator’s progress, and he couldn’t hear it anymore because in addition to stampeding, the people in the crowd were yelling and screaming as well. It was chaos behind and the unknown in front, and standing between, as it had been so often in human history, was a rough man ready to do violence.
Larkin glanced over his shoulder as the tumult subsided slightly. The mob of nightclothes-wearing residents had cleared out of the immediate vicinity.
That was good, because when he looked at the elevator again, the doors started to open.
Gunshots erupted before the gap was more than a couple of inches wide.
Larkin opened fire as he backed away. The people in the elevator had to be survivors from the surface, and clearly, they didn’t come in peace. Aiming between the doors as they slid apart, he emptied the .45’s magazine. The thunderous roar from the Colt was deafening, especially in these closed spaces. The barrage brought screams from inside the elevator, and the shots stopped for a moment.
That gave Larkin the chance to duck around the corner at the end of the short hallway, back into the main area of Corridor Two. The bystanders were really scattering now that an actual battle had broken out.
But help was on the way, although Larkin wasn’t all that glad to see it. Jill ran toward him, gun in hand and an anxious expression on her face.
Larkin waved her toward the wall on the other side of the opening. She veered and put her back against it. Several men Larkin recognized as fellow members of the security force hurried toward the hall leading to the freight elevator, too. Thankfully, they were smart enough not to dash out into the open and expose themselves to the invaders’ guns.
Invaders, Larkin thought. That was exactly what they were dealing with here. Fellow human beings—fellow Americans—who had wound up in a hellish situation through no real fault of their own. But from the looks of things, that tragic situation had warped their brains until they didn’t want to do anything except lash out at the residents of the Hercules Project. Their minds were full of hate and the lust to kill.
At the moment, however, they weren’t shooting anymore, so Larkin took advantage of the opportunity to replace the magazine he had emptied with a full one. When he had done that, he risked a glance around the corner and saw that the elevator doors were closed again. He didn’t believe they would stay that way for very long.
“People from the surface?” Jill called across the hallway’s opening.
“Nobody else it could be,” Larkin replied.
“It sounded like they were well-armed.”
“They’ve got a lot of guns, anyway. Don’t know how good they are.”
“As long as they throw bullets, they’re dangerous.”
Larkin couldn’t argue with that.
“Have you seen Chuck?” he asked.
“Mr. Fisher?” Jill shook her head. “No, I haven’t. I’m surprised he’s not here with you.”
Larkin was surprised, too, and he thought that Chuck Fisher’s absence didn’t bode well. Fisher should have heard any alarm that went out, and Larkin couldn’t imagine him not showing up immediately to see what the trouble was. The only reason he wouldn’t, was if something had happened to him and he couldn’t.
“Since you were ready for them and kept them from getting off the elevator, maybe they’ll give up and go back up to the surface,” Jill suggested.
Larkin thought about that, but only for a second before he shook his head.
“They didn’t get down here quite fast enough to take us by surprise,” he said, “but what do they have to gain by going back up ? It’s no fit existence up there. They’ve all got radiation sickness already, and sooner or later they’ll either die from it or starve to death. They’d probably just as soon go out quicker and kill some of us in the process.”
“But they don’t gain anything by that!”
“Maybe they just want to be more comfortable in the time they have left. Or maybe they haven’t given up hope yet, even though the odds are against them. Or maybe they’re just mad and want to hurt somebody. No matter what they want, we can’t let them in here.”
“We’ll stop them,” Jill said.
Larkin hoped she was right. But they were going to have a fight on their hands first.
* * *
Inside the elevator, Charlotte Ruskin was breathing hard, trying to fight down the terror
that had filled her when the guns started going off. Even though she had killed three men herself in the past hour, she hadn’t been prepared for the earth-shattering roar, the choking stench of gunpowder, and the overpowering feeling that the world was coming to an end around her.
Even though the shooting had stopped, she couldn’t hear anything. She wasn’t sure her hearing would ever return. She looked at Nelson, saw his lips moving, but couldn’t make out the words. She was no lip-reader, but gradually she realized he was asking her if she was all right.
She nodded. The people from the surface were packed in so tightly there’d been no chance of a bullet penetrating to the back of the elevator. She wondered if that was why Nelson had made sure the two of them were back here. The others were—what was the old-fashioned term?—cannon fodder.
He put his mouth next to her ear, and she was a little surprised to hear him saying, “We have to try again! That’s why I brought this along!”
He reached under his shirt and brought out something she didn’t recognize at first. For a second she thought the red cylinders fastened together with duct tape were sticks of dynamite and wondered if he was crazy enough to set off an explosion down here?
Well, why not? What did they have to lose?
Then she realized they weren’t dynamite at all. They were road flares, the kind the police set out when there was an accident. There was no telling where he had gotten them. During the more than eight months that had passed since the war, he’d had time to wander all over the devastated countryside.
“Give me room, give me room!” he shouted at the other people in the elevator. Charlotte’s hearing was coming back. The survivors wedged themselves aside. Charlotte caught at Nelson’s ragged sleeve.
“Be careful,” she told him.
He just grinned over his shoulder at her, then said to the others, “When this goes off, we go out right behind it, understand? They won’t be able to see us, so they’ll be shooting blind. We go out and we don’t stop until they’re all dead.”
That brought a cheer from the others. Nelson’s back was to Charlotte, so she couldn’t tell what he was doing with the flares. But then he jerked a nod at the man crowded up next to the elevator controls. The man must have pressed something, because the doors started to open again.
Charlotte just had time to wonder about something—wouldn’t they be shooting blind because of the flares, too?—when Nelson tossed them out, and a hellish red glare erupted and seemed to swallow the whole world.
Chapter 38
Larkin saw the bundle of taped cylinders come flying out of the elevator to bounce along the short hall and out into Corridor Two. He thought they were explosives and yelled, “Everybody down!”
A huge fear for Jill’s safety filled his heart.
But then instead of blowing up, the bundle seemed to turn into the flaming heart of the sun instead, and Larkin knew he’d been wrong. They were highway flares, and they were so bright he couldn’t see anything else.
He knew what was going to happen, though, so he shoved the .45 around the corner and began pulling the trigger as fast as he could while he swung the barrel from left to right. Slugs sprayed through the hallway, but a deathstorm of lead came right back at him. He sensed the bullets flying through the air as much as heard them.
There were too many of the invaders. Some of them had to be down, but others took their place. Larkin didn’t know if the other security forces could hear him, but he bellowed, “Fall back, fall back!”
His eyes had squeezed shut as he was emptying the Colt. Now he opened them to tiny slits as he turned and ran away from the hall. His vision had adjusted a little, so he was able to see where he was going, even though the red glare lingered along his optic nerves and in his brain. There was a small common area not too far away, where residents of Corridor Two could get together. Larkin stumbled into it and dropped behind one of the benches to use it for cover.
The survivors from the surface were boiling out of the corridor now, firing pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Some of them howled like wild animals, others shouted curses or just yelled incoherently. As they swarmed past the still-burning bundle of flares, they blocked the hellish light, so Larkin began to be able to see better. He rammed home a loaded magazine into the Colt and aimed over the back of the bench.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The evenly spaced shots took down three of the attackers, spilling them limply to the floor. They drew attention, though, and Larkin had to duck as slugs and buckshot hammered the bench. More of the crazed intruders charged toward him, firing as they came. He knew his position would be overrun within seconds.
Then another figure leaped through the haze of gunsmoke that was tinted red by the flares. Shots spurted from the Glock Jill held and drove some of the attackers off their feet. She burst through their ranks, spinning and firing as she whirled through the air. A man’s head jerked as blood and brains flew from it. Another twisted around from the impact of a slug in his chest. Larkin rose up and fired past Jill, his bullets shredding another of the attackers.
She leaped behind another bench and crouched there, breathing hard as she looked over at her father. Larkin nodded in thanks.
Gunfire roared along the corridor as the people from the surface scattered in their murderous rampage and the residents fought back. Larkin raised his voice over the racket and called over to Jill, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, Dad. Look!”
Larkin turned back to the elevator hallway in time to see Charlotte and Nelson Ruskin dart out of it and run in the other direction, toward the Command Center. So those two had been reunited, just as he’d thought, and now they were on their way to cause even more trouble. If they reached the Command Center, there was no limit to the damage they might do. They might wreck enough equipment to put the whole project in danger.
“Son of a bitch!” Larkin said as he surged to his feet. “We’ve got to stop ’em!”
He took off running after the Ruskins. He knew without looking that Jill was right behind him.
* * *
Charlotte panted as she tried to keep up with Nelson. He had grabbed up a rifle that one of the other men had dropped, a military-looking weapon—Charlotte didn’t know what they were called—and held it in front of him at a slant across his chest.
“What are we . . . going to do?” she managed to ask.
“I remember the Command Center from the tour we took. Moultrie will be there. If we can get our hands on him, we can force the bastard to do whatever we want.”
“We should kill him! He locked you out!”
“That would be a waste. Look out!”
Two men in the red vests of the security force had popped into sight in front of them. Both men were armed and tried to raise the pistols they held. Nelson skidded to a stop and brought up the rifle, firing three swift shots before the guards could get off even a single round. They both flopped backward as the bullets tore through them.
Nelson grabbed Charlotte’s hand and tugged her on. They ran past the dying men, who were gasping out their last breaths.
“What about the people who came down here with you?”
Nelson shook his head. “They’re on their own. They knew it might be a losing battle. But they’re getting to strike back, and that’s all they care about. I want to take over this place so we can bring down even more of them and wipe out everybody! That’s why I need to get my hands on Moultrie.”
He was insane with hatred, Charlotte thought—but she felt her lips curving in a savage grin right along with his.
In this world, what was left but madness and revenge and death?
“There’s the entrance to the Command Center,” she told him, “straight ahead!”
* * *
Threadgill tried to push himself up from Trahn’s chair. All the surveillance cameras were down, along with the computers, so he couldn’t see what was going on out in the project, but he could hear the rattle of gunfire and k
new hell was breaking loose. He needed to be there, doing what he could to help.
He had lost enough blood, though, that he was too weak to stand. His muscles simply refused to obey him.
“Trahn,” he mumbled. “How’re the computers doin’?”
“They crashed again,” Trahn said as he hovered over a keyboard. “I forced another restart. Maybe they’ll reboot this time.”
“They damned well . . . better,” Threadgill said.
“Oh, my God!” Trahn exclaimed. “Mr. Moultrie!”
Graham Moultrie, clad in hastily pulled-on jeans and T-shirt, shouldered Trahn aside and reached for the keyboard. He stopped before he did anything and stared at the monitor.
“Five minutes,” he muttered.
“Sir?” Trahn said.
“It’ll take at least five minutes for the computers to be up again. How many reboots is this?”
“It’s the second one.”
Moultrie nodded. His face was drawn and tense, but he seemed composed. “Let’s hope that does it,” he said. “The electrical grid is intact and emergency systems are running. That’ll hold us until the system is fully functional again.”
Trahn heaved a sigh of obvious relief. He said, “I knew you’d be prepared for any contingency, sir.”
Moultrie smiled grimly. “Don’t count on that yet. We’re under attack from the surface.”
“What?” Threadgill again tried to stand up. “I gotta go help—”
Moultrie put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re hurt, Adam. You’ve done enough already.” He glanced at the body on the floor. “Is that Jeff Greer?”
“Yeah. When I got here to see what the alarm was about, he shot me. I didn’t have any choice but to kill him.”
“Was Charlotte Ruskin with him?”
Threadgill found the strength to shake his head. “Didn’t see her. How about you, Trahn?”
“She . . . she was here,” the technician said. “She and Greer forced me to open the hatch at the top of the elevator shaft. They had an access card for the override.”
The Doomsday Bunker Page 25
