by Jeff Carlson
Worse, they were given equal time on the computers, which had slowed her data processing to a crawl. She’d tried to tell General Strickland how critical her work could be, but everyone said their work was critical. Strickland had ordered them to work in rotation. The rest of the time, Emily was left scribbling on paper or pacing through the same cramped sections of the bunker, hoping to anticipate her next set of results—hoping for a breakthrough—hoping to run into a familiar face who was also off duty.
For a brief time after she’d reached the bunker, she’d relaxed. Now each day felt like the lowest point in her life. Somehow even the terror she’d experienced aboveground seemed better than Bunker Seven Four’s stale, congested spaces.
The pressure to give General Strickland something he could use was a constant weight. Emily’s shoulders ached with deep-set knots. Her mouth hurt from grinding her teeth in her sleep.
“Here,” she said, folding her scrap of paper before handing it to the SEAL. “Thank you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Would he read it first? Probably. She had to assume Drew wasn’t the only one who’d see her note, so it was friendly, yet short. Please find me. Emily. She had more she needed to say, but not for public consumption.
She turned and left, folding her arms over her chest against the cool air. Maybe she lingered too long. Behind her, the SEAL cleared his throat.
By decree, the corridors in the complex and other priority areas were kept clear of supplies or idle people. Guards had been posted to enforce the new rule after six civilians were caught making camp behind the enormous diesel tanks in the power room.
Emily relished the near-solitude of the corridor. She would have stayed if the SEAL allowed it because there were so few places to escape the crush of refugees.
At the intersection, she went left like the SEAL would expect if she was leaving the complex. Four soldiers passed, arguing about a radio transmission. But at the next corner, Emily turned left again when she should have gone to the exit, fighting a jolt of tension.
If they catch you…
She knew the complex better than most civilians because Bugle had taken her on three tours. Each walk had felt more and more like a date. Bugle was energetic and fun—and Emily missed Chase. She wanted to be with someone at night.
Why not Bugle? He wasn’t right for her. More and more, she thought of him as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, a sweet, floppy-armed guy with a great heart. Bugle could be wise in his way, but he seemed more like a brother than a potential romance. Emily was careful not to lead him on.
She loved to laugh at his jokes. Nevertheless, she’d continued to wear her rings—her engagement ring and Chase’s class ring—hoping Bugle would catch on. She wasn’t sure if he could tell the difference between friendship and courtship.
At least he’d inadvertently shown her a place to hide.
The outer corridor led to two exits into the cavern as well as a low-traffic corner where their computer servers and utility controls were stored. The hiding place was a short, L-shaped branch to the locked door of the server room.
Emily ducked into the dead-end space and pressed her back against the wall. Her body wanted more oxygen, but she struggled not to gulp for air. More footsteps jogged through the corridor. What if someone heard her?
She knew it was crazy, but she needed this secret place. There was nowhere else for her to cry.
At top capacity, in the event of nuclear or biological war, Bunker Seven Four’s air filters had been rated for thirty days, as were their food and fuel supplies, although the air was fine and Drew’s squads were able to scavenge outside through the nearest towns. His raids had extended their ability to live underground almost indefinitely.
Day after day, Emily found the lack of space disorienting. Her longest view was in the tunnel, where the soldiers had left two hundred feet open for walking or jogging. The entrance itself had been blocked off to stop the pulse. The rest of the tunnel was crammed with vehicles, gear, and the thirty-foot pockets they’d created for sleeping areas. The complex didn’t have room for so many people. Strickland had segregated his military personnel from the refugees.
Emily’s spot was in the third sleeping area in the tunnel, which was wretched. No amount of blankets could keep her warm. It didn’t help that many survivors woke with nightmares or couldn’t sleep at all, especially after a series of earthquakes rattled the mountain. Each time, everyone thought Chinese missiles were detonating outside.
Two women were catatonic with sleep deprivation. Some people had given up on social norms. One man stared blatantly at Emily and the other women. Other people farted or burped no matter who was nearby. A few didn’t bother to wash.
One thing the bunker didn’t lack was water. Moisture seeped through the rock, leaving puddles, moss, and dribbling streams. Drains led to more pipes, most of which led to reservoirs in the deepest part of the cavern. Those ponds were full now. Outside, the rain had been constant. The mountain was a sponge.
Everyone was allowed cold showers as often as they liked and five gallons of hot water every fourth day. Too often, a hot rinse was the highlight of Emily’s week. Fifteen minutes of privacy without her days-old clothes were a delight; the good smell of the soap; the clean, slick lather on her legs and neck. Emily supposed she wasn’t the only woman masturbating in the plastic stall. Others had brought men into the shower with them one at a time.
The sexual tension was especially noticeable among young survivors like herself. Most were geeks and eggheads. They’d spent their lives being more cerebral than physical, but the urge to touch each other was the most basic imperative of any threatened species: to breed. No one actually wanted babies. That would have been ludicrous. But stress and close quarters generated pheromones—and lust—and quarrels and posturing and seductions and fights.
Some of the survivors had paired up, relieving their pent-up desires. For the most part, those couples seemed like the happiest people in the bunch. Others broke up as swiftly as they’d found each other, then nursed a grudge or carried a torch. Emily thought they were happier than the rest, too, absorbed in their personal dramas.
Like the Osprey, the bunker was a miniature world unto itself. This group was much larger, so they were taking longer to settle into their rhythm, but she hoped they would overcome everything that poisoned them—their trauma, their isolation, and their dread.
Drew had led a team outside to reinforce the bunker’s communications array. They were in steady contact with other shelters, even the president. Emily had been allowed to send dozens of questions to biologists across the country, but reception was spotty. Everything had to be encrypted to keep it from being intercepted by the Chinese.
Reception was best at night, when the rate of errors could be as low as 40 percent. During the day, if the pulse was particularly intense, the error rate was total. Even if the soldiers hadn’t reserved the lion’s share of the radio time for their own codes, Emily couldn’t successfully transmit her data. Her files were too large.
That meant she worked alone. She found it impossible to build relationships with experts she knew only as transcripts on paper. Too many people had come and gone. Sometimes she still thought of Michelle, Colonel Bowen, and the other men and women she’d met in the hospital.
Silver Lake had fallen silent. They were lost.
As much as Emily hated being underground, most of the safe places on the surface hadn’t lasted. The survivors had been forced to abandon their shelters for lack of water and food or they’d been driven out by fire.
The Neanderthal attacks were escalating.
If anyone had a solution, the time was now—before the last holdouts were destroyed—but not everyone agreed on the evidence. Some of the science teams in Bunker Seven Four were looking for a viral trigger as the cause for the attacks. America’s military and intelligence leaders couldn’t let go of the idea that China might be responsible. Most of the geneticists agreed with Emily’s theor
ies, but they were pursuing their own lines of research.
Her own work was muddled. The light seq tests she’d started at the hospital had been pointless except as quick, unreliable indicators. Then she’d lost six days helping the soldiers set up their labs and cobble together enough servers scavenged from outside to handle the workload.
Emily had taken three weeks to analyze, assemble, and compare the deep sequencing of her RNA samples—and she wasn’t happy with her results.
She needed to talk to Drew because it was vital for her to join him on his next raid. That’s what she told herself. How much of her anxiety stemmed from the need to walk in fresh air and sunlight? Her new plan was definitely an excuse to see Drew.
Her hiding spot didn’t last. A few minutes later, the sound of boot steps reverberated in her dead-end corridor. Sitting on the floor, Emily made herself smile as an Air Force captain nearly tripped over her feet. He glanced at the server room door. “What are you doing here?”
She showed her pass and her paperwork. “I needed somewhere to think. I’m one of the biologists—”
“Ma’am, this section is off-limits. Get up.” His tone reminded her of Drew, who used the same formality as a shield. But this man was rough. He grabbed her elbow and led her away.
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she said. “I just… I need somewhere to work.”
“Security!” he called at the intersection. “Security!”
He’s overreacting, Emily thought as the Navy SEAL ran into view. Another armed guard appeared behind him. Emily felt her cheeks burn. General Strickland would learn she’d bent the rules.
“What is your name?” the captain asked.
“Dr. Flint. I need somewhere to work.”
“Get her out of here, then close the hatches,” he told the SEAL.
“Honestly, I…” Emily said, but the SEAL gestured rudely. Did they really think she was up to something? What? Stealing food?
The SEAL escorted her to a hatch, which was where she’d entered the complex. The stairwell was hardly more than a short ladder. Voices rose from the cavern outside. She felt a breeze caused by the temperature differential. The cavern was always colder than the complex.
“Go,” the SEAL said.
Emily climbed down, leaving the white corridor for a rocky hollow full of shadows and machinery. The SEAL shut the hatch above her. He locked it with two resonant bangs. The complex towered above her, partially concealed in the dark and by the sweeping contours of the rock. Emily stopped on the ladder, fighting her loneliness and more tears.
Don’t cry. Goddamn it, don’t cry.
Her hand discovered some kind of graffiti on the outside of the third step. Otherwise she wouldn’t have seen it. An inch-long crucifix had been etched into the metal plate beside a formation of four notches like an H.
She ran her thumb over the carving, wondering at its ridges and divots. Was it the beginning of someone’s name?
Graffiti had been outlawed by General Strickland, although it continued to appear throughout the bunker. Clean-up details had been another source of conflict between the soldiers and the civilians, with accusations that some of the obscenities, prayers, and artwork must have originated among the soldiers themselves. No one else had access to the spray paint used to sketch a blue landscape on the wall near the water reservoir.
Bishop DeSoto had gone so far as to assert that some graffiti was a positive outlet. Paintings like the landscape should be allowed, he said. Privately, Emily agreed, but if she was going to argue with Strickland, she wanted to argue about better lab conditions.
The graffiti intrigued her. Some people had been stupid enough to etch their initials into the steel, masonry, or naked rock. They were discovered and disciplined. Even the vandals who left anonymous marks or drawings risked punishment. Why?
They wanted ownership. They wanted control. Emily had felt the same compulsion when she’d written Chase’s name on the hospital’s list of known dead. Oblivion was too close. Everyone was afraid of being forgotten. If Emily hadn’t had her work to occupy her, she might have scratched her name into the rock herself.
Maybe I will anyway, she thought, ducking her eyes from the crucifix. It was so puny and helpless. Then she jerked her hand from the ladder as a man approached. She stepped down.
“Emily,” he said. “We’re having a meeting in the tunnel in fifteen minutes. You should be there.”
“I…”
“We need more votes if Strickland’s going to listen.”
Emily nodded. At the barracks door, she’d been angry with the SEAL, but the soldiers expected foolishness from civilians. She needed to be more politic in how she treated her fellow refugees. Whether she liked it or not, she was one of them.
“Sure, Jake,” she said. “What are we voting for?”
“Rooms. There’s no reason we can’t arrange the supplies to make our own rooms.”
A thin man in his thirties, Jacob Leber was a mechanical engineer with too little to occupy his time. He worked in the machine shop, building armor to suit Drew’s needs outside, but it wasn’t enough, so Jake had usurped the role that should have belonged to Senator O’Neal or Mayor Reaves. He’d harnessed the discontented factions among the civilians with attainable goals like less-restricted access to ibuprofen or an extra TV to watch movies.
“I’ll vote for private rooms,” Emily said. “Can you tell everyone, please? I’m late for a follow-up.” That was a lie, but she would scream if she had to sit through another meeting. “God knows we’ve been packed in this tunnel like sardines.”
“Good. We can count on you?”
“Yes.” Emily sidled past Jake into the cavern, which was an odd combination of bare rock and technology. Bundles of pipes and conduit ran along the passageway: water lines, sewer lines, forced air, heat, and fuel. The floor was concrete, yet spattered with dirt. Emily smelled ozone and grease, but beneath the man-made smells was the dank, wet scent of the earth.
Silhouettes walked in twos and threes past the lights on the wall. They were going to Jake’s meeting. Emily moved in the opposite direction, faking a smile in response to each questioning look. She pointed apologetically at her paperwork. “Thanks,” she said.
“You need to come with us,” a woman answered, her face set in a stubborn frown.
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
The woman had walked past Emily, but started to return. “I don’t think you realize—” she said until one of her friends caught her arm.
“Karen, don’t,” he said.
They left. Emily stood looking after them with her heartbeat shaking through her chest. First there had been peer pressure to attend their meetings. Now they were openly intimidating her. Emily resented it.
I’m closer to solving this than you’ll ever be, she thought. Let me work.
I can save you if you let me work.
Ahead of her, the tunnel was blocked by the front end of an eighteen-foot trailer, scrap metal, and acetylene tanks. Between the trailer on one side and the pipes on the other, the path narrowed to four feet.
Emily hurried through the tight space. Beyond this trailer were two more trailers lined up like train cars, their windows caked with years of moisture and grime. The lights were off in the first trailer. It was Jacob’s machine shop. The next trailer had been transformed into the science labs. People should have been inside if they hadn’t left for the meeting. Emily considered entering herself, but if anyone caught her using the equipment out of schedule, they’d have another reason to ostracize her from the group.
She rapped on the door of the third trailer. It had been divided into a computer room and the bunker’s only jail cell. A soldier opened up. He was often on duty here. “Dr. Flint,” he said.
“I’d like to talk to him, please.”
“Sure. Let me call it in.”
Securing permission was standard operating procedure, but Emily worried she might be denied because of the misunderstanding inside the com
plex.
She paced restlessly between the trailer and another stairwell into the complex. This hatch was always locked except when the prison guard changed shifts, yet Emily paused, then moved closer when a familiar shape caught her eye.
A tiny cross had been etched into the third step from the top. This cross had a formation like an A alongside it. Her first thought was someone had found a new way to carve their initials, separating the two letters while uniting them with the crucifixes, but she couldn’t think of anyone whose initials were A. H. or H. A.
The slashes might not be letters at all. What if they were hash marks? Was there anything to count except the movements of the soldiers… ?
You’re being paranoid, she thought. You’re tired.
But some of the people in this bunker were very smart, and others were sick with grief. What if they were planning something dangerous?
Standing at the ladder, Emily’s mind raced like a stopwatch flickering down to zero. Suddenly the Air Force captain’s shouting made sense. He’d acted like she was a rat because the base personnel were concerned. She wasn’t the only one with personal ties to the soldiers. Other informants might have passed on rumors or clues.
Emily knew there were civilians who wanted into the complex. Eight days ago, she’d overheard a group of men whispering that Strickland should empty the tunnel and let everyone live behind the blast door. The crowding would be insufferable, but there was a larger issue.
If the war with China boiled over, nuclear strikes outside the mountain would kill everyone in the tunnel, which was designed to absorb and deflect blast waves away from the complex. Emily had expected a noisy meeting on the subject. Nor could she blame them. A few VIPs had been rescued with their dependents. Among the sixty-four civilians were five children, a wife, and two husbands with no strategic value, merely the good luck to be rescued. The need to protect them might have twisted someone’s thinking beyond the normal instinct of self-preservation.
