by Platt, Sean
“And the other?”
“Dining room table. Looking through papers or something. They look pretty involved.”
Meyer looked to the right, to the home’s far end, toward the kitchen and the bunker’s hidden entrance.
“Okay,” said Meyer. “Let’s go.”
They stayed low, well beneath line of sight out the windows. But as they approached the glass, Meyer found he could easily hear the television blaring. He recognized the show. It was The Beam. A show he hoped he could catch up on later, and was loaded in the juke already.
Still, he peeked up, trying to get a look inside. Raj yanked at his shirt, and Meyer resisted an urge to push him away. This was his house, his errand, his preparations, his plan. He could look through his own windows if he wanted to.
He came back down.
“Motherfucker.”
Trevor shook his head.
“That’s Garth in there.”
“Who’s Garth?”
“Construction foreman. His crew built this place. I guess that explains how he knew it was here, and what it was built for.”
“So he knows about the bunker?” Raj sounded nervous, as if all bets were off.
“Yeah. But they finished the bunker a while ago, and last time I was here, I stocked it up and changed the code.”
“He can’t get in, then.”
“No. But he knows where it is.” Meyer looked at Trevor. “Did you check the kitchen?”
Trevor nodded.
“The bay window. The big one, overlooking the lake.”
Trevor nodded again. “Yeah. Nobody in there.”
“Could you see the broom closet?” He turned, miming facing the home from the other direction as Trevor would have, and pointed to his left. “Over here. Past the … shit … I guess there’s an oven there?”
“The oven is in the middle, Dad.”
“Right. I forgot. They were putting the fume hood in when I was here last time. But it’s here, and … ”
“I saw it, Dad.”
“You’re sure?”
“The door was open. I could see brooms and stuff. All over the floor, too.”
That made sense. They’d tried to access the bunker. That was why they were here. It might even mean Heather was safe. Maybe they thought she knew the code.
“But just an outer door. There was no inner door open?”
“You mean inside the closet?”
Meyer nodded impatiently. “Like there’s another room at the back of it.”
“Is that where the bunker is? Behind the closet?”
“Yes, and … ”
“Oh, that’s awesome.” Trevor was grinning, despite the situation. Raj too. Meyer wanted to punch them both back to reality.
“Was there another door open, Trevor?”
“Oh. No. Just a closet.”
“And you looked around the kitchen. All around it. Including the door to the porch. The windows.”
“As much as I could see.”
“How much could you see?”
“Unless someone was crouching behind the island, playing hide and seek … ”
“Fine.” He looked up again, peering in on Garth. He’d wondered about Garth from the beginning. Garth was greedy and very win-lose. He didn’t seem to believe in mutual benefit and kept wanting more from Meyer’s contract: more, more. It made sense that he’d come back to take what wasn’t his. It made sense that he’d brought a friend, but it made even more sense that the friend would eventually find a knife stuck in his own back, figuratively if not literally.
Garth was still watching TV, kicked back, his black mustache tenting as he laughed at something funny. Must be a commercial. The Beam wasn’t exactly a laff riot.
“Raj. Run up, and check the living room.”
Raj scampered low. Peeked up carefully. Then nodded.
Meyer and Trevor crept forward. He checked for himself, poking his head up to find a blond man in his forties shuffling papers, looking as comfortable as Garth, equally unlikely to get up and head to the kitchen in the next two minutes.
“Okay,” said Meyer, swallowing then affecting a certainty he didn’t feel. “Stay low, and follow me. Let’s see if we can get past them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Trevor looked back at his sister, on her horse near the tree line, mostly concealed unless you were looking directly at her. Piper was on her own horse beside Lila. For the first time in a long while, Trevor wanted to attract Lila’s eye more than Piper’s. In theory, he was about to be a hero and come out like the hunk on the cover of a bodice-ripper romance. That should impress Piper, if the world were a fair place. But instead of thinking along those lines, he looked to Lila. His sister, who’d been his best friend in the world for so long. Because even when siblings fought, they remained siblings.
They had to be fifty or seventy yards away, and still Trevor thought he could see the reassuring, concerned look in Lila’s eye — meant for him this time, not Raj.
You’ll be fine, she seemed to say.
I’m scared, Lila.
But of course she’d said nothing back, psychically, to try and reassure him, and of course she couldn’t see what he was trying to say in the first place. She’d probably been drooling over Raj as usual when Trevor thought she was looking at him.
There was a moment of resentment, and the fear reclaimed him. Trevor had never been so afraid. It was different from normal fright. This was fear mixed with adrenaline. The closest thing Trevor had ever felt was the time he’d played paintball, only once, in a warehouse battlefield outside the city. They’d given him a helmet, and even though the guns didn’t fire bullets and the danger wasn’t real, he’d fogged the helmet beyond his ability to see, wanting to rip it off and risk losing an eye. His chest had pressed into his three thick shirts until they constricted like armor. He’d run from obstacle to obstacle, firing until his gun ran dry, and wasn’t disappointed when the game was over. Because he’d barely been able to breathe, and could only imagine what real battle must feel like.
Like this. It’s like this.
But that wasn’t true; nobody even knew they were there. This was just waiting. This was creeping along, exposed and indefensible, knowing that being seen meant death. When they got the guns from the bunker and came back up? That would be battle.
But of course, his father would almost certainly insist on doing that part alone. Trevor wondered if it made him a coward to be relieved at the thought.
They reached the porch off the kitchen. It was at the home’s end, wrapping around from the rear to the expansive front, where there were deck chairs overlooking the edge of a mountain lake. Trevor had seen that view when he’d gone around to count bad guys, but it had barely registered. He was too worried about dying.
“What now?” Raj looked at the porch. They’d stopped just off it, knowing that rising onto its stained-wood surface would mean moving into plain sight to anyone walking into the window-strewn kitchen.
“If we’re lucky, the door will be unlocked. They carried supplies in this way a lot because the French doors give them twice the width to carry boards and stuff. But I don’t think Garth has been doing much construction since he came back.”
“What if it is locked?”
“Then we’ll be unlucky.” Trevor’s dad was looking forward at the door, mumbling. But Raj was asking a serious question, and there was still a not-insignificant chance that Raj might be shot before this was all over. Meyer seemed to decide that he deserved a real answer. “Try the windows.”
“And if the windows are locked?”
“Maybe we can break one. He has the TV up pretty loud. These are energy-efficient windows. Should normally be pretty soundproof, but I could hear everything back there.”
Meyer didn’t seem to like that option. If the windows were soundproof enough to muffle a loud television, they’d also be thick. Thick enough to create a louder-than-aver
age noise when shattered.
Trevor watched his father creep forward, duck-walking to stay low. Still, he was entirely visible to anyone who wasn’t blind inside the kitchen, and Trevor felt his heart ratchet up another pounding notch.
He gripped the handle, seemed to wish a silent prayer, then pulled down. The door sighed open. Meyer closed his eyes for a half second and exhaled.
“Now,” he said, waving. “Hurry.”
They scampered inside. The kitchen was large and bright, lit above from skylights. If not for the imminent threat of men in the other room and the blaring TV (which practically bellowed once the door was open), it might be possible to believe this was just another day in paradise. Even with the threats, looking out the large bay window, Trevor found it hard to believe that a fleet of alien ships was on its way, that what he imagined as enormous brushed chrome ball bearings would soon be floating above, hanging as if on strings.
“The door. Get the door.”
Trevor reached back and slowly pulled the glass door closed behind him.
One last time, Trevor tried to see the girls hiding at the tree line. They’d fallen back, perhaps to where he and Raj and his father had tied their own horses. Seeing nothing made Trevor feel unanchored. He wanted that final glance, one last look of assurance.
But they were gone. There were only trees and grass and rocks and mountain peaks in the distance. Quiet air. Birds chirping. Nature going about its business, oblivious.
Trevor closed the door, committing them.
Meyer said nothing. He crept quickly toward the closet, minding the mop and broom and dustpan lying on the floor at its foot. It struck Trevor as odd that the closet had been stocked, given that the rest of the kitchen wasn’t even finished — entire walls of cabinets missing, nude wires poking through holes in the drywall above as if waiting to be connected to can lights in the ceiling. But the construction crew must have to clean things up from time to time, or maybe his father had put them in there — either because he’d swept out the bunker below, or to make the closet’s disguise that much more convincing.
There was a panel already opened in closet’s rear. Raj leaned closer, curious. It had a keypad on its front, but there was also a futuristic-looking pad below, angled slightly forward. It had the shape of a hand drawn in white outline. Even in his fear Trevor couldn’t help feeling intrigued. It was a hand scanner. His father might have planned for the ultimate doomsday scenario, and that was cool. But his father’s grand and awesome style made it that much cooler.
He’d laid his palm flat on the glass when Trevor heard the distinctive sound of a toilet flushing behind him. The sound had fallen into a gap in the TV volume, and in the temporarily quiet kitchen, the everyday sound was downright chilling.
Trevor spun. So did Meyer and Raj. There was a sound of a toilet lid closing behind the door in a small alcove off to one side — a door Trevor hadn’t been able to see when he’d looked into the kitchen from the front.
“Go!” Trevor’s father hissed, his voice more exhalation than sound. “Hurry!”
But the man who’d been in the bathroom wasn’t a hand-washer, and he was sauntering out before they could take a single step, his belt halfway buckled. He was a man in his twenties, stubble haircut, a few days unshaven. He had a gun on his hip and a daredevil’s eyes — the kind of person who started fights for fun and, Trevor suspected, was either too brave or too stupid to be afraid of anything.
His gun was raised before anyone could flinch. He was too far to lunge at, too close to miss.
He faced them with his fly still open, his partially buckled belt hanging to the side like a brown tongue.
“Well now,” he said, a slow, maniac smile crawling onto his face. “Looks like we got visitors.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Meyer’s first instinct was to fight the man who’d confronted them — not because he was a warrior by nature, but because the adrenaline in his blood was insistent.
He’d been on alert — sure that something was coming, as he’d seen during his visions and felt, beneath his skin, for weeks after each ayahuasca ceremony — for months. He’d gone into higher alert when the news of the spheres’ approach had broken on the news, just like the world at large. He’d ratcheted up another notch after their Land Cruiser had been stolen, and hadn’t really settled since. Then he’d seen that his Axis Mundi was occupied. They’d broken into the kitchen, knowing the men in the house had guns and they did not — knowing that being seen might get them shot out of hand.
Meyer was amped enough to dive at the new man whether he held a weapon or not. But he was also at the back of a closet, with two kids between him and the problem. Boxed in.
There were three men in the house. Not two.
The man was watching them, his expression stern but also slightly amused. His whole head seemed to be reddish stubble, from head to unshaven face. He had cornflower blue eyes that were far too soft for a criminal, and a baby face peeking beneath his stubble. He was probably in his midtwenties, maybe less. He looked like a good kid gone bad — one of those fabled young men who’d been led down the wrong path by a sour crowd. But whatever was down that wayward road, this kid looked like he’d found it suited him fine.
“I guess you’re the lady’s husband,” he said, the gun at his hip, almost an afterthought. He looked down at his pants, laughed, took two protective steps backward, and went about the business of buckling up. He couldn’t do it with one hand occupied, so he set the gun on the kitchen island. It was a casual thing, disarming in order to zip his fly. But to Meyer, who’d made a living out of studying people, it came off as confident rather than careless. He knew they’d see that gun leave his hand and think of springing forward. But he clearly also knew he could get it again before they got close, and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
Meyer noticed something else, too. Beside the gun, a white residue was clearly visible on the dark stone around the banked oven, below the new steel fume hood. It might be drywall dust, but Meyer doubted it. Not after seeing the kid’s tiny pupils, and the way he kept pressing his nostrils closed and sniffing.
He wasn’t just cocky. He wasn’t just confident. He was also high, wired. If Meyer had to guess, he’d probably love to pull the trigger, just to see the blood flow.
Garth wasn’t like that. Not even the worst Meyer had seen in Garth was like that. But he’d found an appropriate henchman to help him take the Dempsey house: a wild card willing to shoot first and party later.
“You gone deaf, then?” he said when Meyer didn’t reply. The kid had some sort of an accent, but Meyer couldn’t place it. It wasn’t quite Western, Southern, or East Coast. It might be the accent of reckless youth — a way of clipping speech, somehow turning cocksure and careless into sound, then using it to shave edges from words. “Maybe I’ll shoot you in the leg.”
“Whose husband?” The shift in his group’s position, as Meyer moved from the back of the closet, was subtle. But it put him at the front, the gunman’s weapon pointed at his chest, rather than at Trevor or Raj.
“The lady we got.”
“Is she alive? Did you hurt her?”
“Sure, she’s alive.”
There was an oddball item on the stove’s other side, and it took Meyer a moment to place it: a tiny crystal candy dish his mother had given him when he’d seen her six months ago in Denver. Somehow it had ended up here; somehow it had ended up on the kitchen island; somehow the new, armed occupants had seen fit to bring it down and fill it with M&M’s. Had they run out to buy the candies? It seemed a strange thing to do while occupying a house and holding a hostage, but it’s not like Meyer had stocked the place with food. At least not outside the locked bunker.
The kid popped an M&M in his mouth, then spoke around it. “We ain’t savages.”
“Who are you?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
&nb
sp; There were footsteps from behind the kid, and for a second Meyer imagined Piper and Lila, somehow in the home’s belly, somehow armed, somehow having skirted the other men. Ready to strike with baseball bats, maybe. The kid wasn’t even turning to look. He’d be easy prey.
But of course, Meyer had made it clear that the girls should keep their distance, and neither Piper nor Lila were any good in a fight, let alone a bare-hands hostile takedown of two armed brutes. With luck, they’d already be riding away — to get help, Piper would tell herself to make abandonment easier.
It was one of the other men. Meyer heard him before he saw him.
“Who are you talking to, Wade?”
Wade didn’t answer. He popped another oversized M&M in his mouth with his free hand. Had to be peanut.
A second man came around Wade from the back, watching the kid rather than the open kitchen. He only noticed Meyer and the boys once fully inside. He stopped like a wind-up toy out of steam. It wasn’t Garth. This man was sandy blond, Meyer’s age, with quiet, pale-blue eyes that matched Wade’s. Were they father and son? There was no other resemblance, but two home raiders with pretty blue eyes wasn’t something a person usually expected.
“Who the hell is this?” The newcomer’s voice had the faintest lilt, as if he’d been born in England and hadn’t quite lost the affect.
“Dunno.” Then, speaking to Meyer: “Who is this?”
“This the guy Garth was waiting for?”
“I don’t know. Go ask Garth, you wanna know so bad.”
“Where did they come from?”
“You got a lot of questions, Remy.” Another M&M. The kid was rail thin, almost emaciated. Apparently, the drugs he was clearly on were a fair counterbalance to his high-fat diet. “I don’t know. Found ‘em in the closet.”
“The … the closet?” Remy sounded like he didn’t understand the word.
“Yeah.”
“That one there?” He pointed.
