by Jordan Rivet
Her legs wobbled dangerously, and she dropped into a dirty swivel chair before they could give out. She twirled back and forth in the creaky chair, considering her options. Two hundred years was supposed to be enough time for livable conditions to return to the earth, but no one could know for sure. The BRP early risers were meant to figure all this out before she awoke.
As Joanna stared at the jumble of broken computers, she realized it didn’t matter if all this fancy gear worked. She could either go up there and risk dying in an uninhabitable atmosphere, or she could stay underground for the rest of her life, eating protein bars, waiting for the lights to go out for good. Worse, every inch of this bunker carried memories of the people who were supposed to help her move forward. She couldn’t live here forever with her friends’ ghosts.
She tapped at the least damaged computer one more time. It remained stubbornly dead. No way to verify the safety of the surface air. No way to continue following the program. Joanna swiveled in a complete circle, surveying the decimated control room. She had a simple choice here: stay or go.
“You can’t follow the program anymore,” she said into the silence. Her voice was shaky at first, but it grew stronger. “The situation has changed. You make the decisions now.”
After all the programming, all the training, at the end of the day—no, at the end of the world—it was up to her to survive.
“Okay, then,” Joanna said to the empty room. “I’m going out there. Now.”
Chapter Seven
The mineshaft doors wouldn’t open.
“Freaking Murphy’s Law.” Joanna stabbed at the button again and again. It made a tinny dinging sound, but the lift doors didn’t budge. So much for going out there right now.
She dug through the rubble where the storage tunnel wall had fallen into the control room and found a rusty crowbar. She also discovered a stack of emergency survival packs, which she searched for a flashlight to stick in her back pocket. Hopefully some of the storage chambers hadn’t been damaged in the quake. She was still assuming an earthquake had caused the destruction of the cryo bunker long after the comet strike, though she might never know for sure.
She attacked the jammed mineshaft door with her crowbar. It felt good to tackle a simple, physical problem. The scream of metal filled the dusty room, and sweat coated her forehead. She wasn’t going to let a door defeat her.
“Freaking . . . Murphy . . . and his . . . freaking . . . law.”
She remembered mentioning her last name was Murphy during their very first team dinner after the whitewater rafting adventure.
“The kids made a lot of jokes about it in junior high.”
Blake popped open a bottle of soda with his teeth. “I don’t get it.”
“Murphy’s Law,” said Chloe, sitting next to Joanna and setting down a plate piled with salmon, peas, and two enormous slices of carrot cake. “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
Ruby snorted. “Story of our lives.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” Garrett leaned across the table toward Joanna. “I think everything happens for a reason, and you need to do your best to work for a positive outcome.”
“Even the comet?” Ruby asked. “What’s the reason for that, Captain America?”
“I’m not saying I have the answers,” Garrett said. “There’s a reason, though.”
“I don’t think everything will always go wrong,” Joanna said. “But I don’t expect everything to turn out my way, either. We Murphys have never been that lucky.”
“Until now,” Garrett said.
Joanna had smiled at him across the cafeteria table, but she hadn’t felt particularly lucky, despite being chosen for BRP. She’d said goodbye to her family forever and embarked on a difficult new life. The reality turned out to be worse than she expected.
At last, she managed to force the mineshaft door open a crack—only to find the cavity behind it filled with rubble.
Yep, you’re a lucky one, all right.
She wedged a rock into the crack to keep the door open and shined her flashlight through to see how bad it was. One side of the lift cage bent inward as if someone had run into the opposite side with a truck, and the ceiling had partially caved in. Rocks and dirt from the collapse weighted down the intact part of the cage roof, but she couldn’t tell how high it was piled, or if the mineshaft was blocked entirely. There was a distinct possibility she was trapped.
“Don’t panic.” Joanna wrapped her hands tighter around her flashlight, repeating her mantra as quickly as she could. “Don’t freaking panic.”
What if she never walked on the surface of the earth again? What if she was condemned to live down here with the bodies forever, pacing between the exit chamber and the lockers, eating nothing but protein bars, slowly going mad from the lack of human interaction? It was anyone’s guess if she’d lose her mind or run out of breathable air first.
“I said don’t panic,” she said desperately. “Stay calm, and think about your options.”
The bunker had a backup mineshaft on the opposite side of the cryo tank chamber. Reaching it would require tunneling through the collapsed cavern past eight hundred cryo tank coffins. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that—or if it was even possible. The rocks that filled the cavern beyond tank 200 were a lot bigger than the ones crammed into the space in front of her.
She had a better chance of clearing the rubble from this mineshaft than of getting to the other one—at least underground. She refused to accept that she was stuck down here. She might not believe everything happened for a reason, as Garrett did, but Joanna wasn’t prepared to go down gracefully with the great ship Humanity.
She summoned every ounce of strength she had left and wrenched the door open another foot. The jerky motion released a particularly large and jagged stone, which must have been anchoring the whole pile. A torrent of dirt and rocks rushed out of the mineshaft after it, nearly knocking her over. Clouds of dust billowed into the control room like soot from a cartoon chimney.
Coughing and spluttering, Joanna retreated to the exit chamber. As she stumbled through the doorway, the light fixture closest to her sparked and went out. Then another. A crack echoed through the chamber, as loud as a thunderclap.
She halted, eyes stinging from the dust.
Another crack, louder, deeper. Another light, gone.
Then silence.
Joanna didn’t dare breathe. Only three lights remained, illuminating the deepening fissure in the ceiling. She wanted to run, to ascend to the surface, to scream. But every step, every sound threatened to knock something askew.
She blinked, trying to clear the grit from her eyes—and then, as if the stir of the air was all it took, the ceiling split open like a melon.
Rocks and dust rained down on the ratty couches, snuffing out the last of the lights. Joanna dove for cover, flattening herself against the wall and covering her head with her arms. A grumble like a jet engine, like a hurricane, assaulted her senses. Darkness and dust billowed. Stones pelted her tender arms.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The rocky rainfall ceased. Silence reigned once more.
Joanna was as alive as she’d ever been.
She pulled the flashlight from her back pocket and clicked it on, opening a tunnel of light in the swirling dust. A huge chunk of rock had landed not three feet from her.
“That was way too close.”
She stumbled to the cupboards to grab as many supplies as she could, praying all the loose rocks had already fallen. She needed to get out of here before the next collapse. She had surely just used up a lifetime’s share of luck.
Half the cupboards were still accessible, containing plenty of food and water for one person. She’d barely started digging into the large storage area on the opposite side of the control room. Once she found a way up the mineshaft, she could make a decent camp on the surface. She clung to optimistic thoughts, trying not to look at the spot where she’d sat
down to stretch, now covered in three feet of debris from the collapsed ceiling.
Just get the water and go. You can do this.
She stuck the flashlight in her mouth to free her hands, and the beam landed on the door to the cryo chamber. The things she’d seen there were already taking on a nightmarish quality in her memory: the bones, the broken tanks, the bodies. She never wanted to walk through that door again. But there could be a way to access the other mineshaft, one she’d been too distressed to notice when she first emerged from stasis. And she couldn’t help hoping that she’d been wrong and someone else would be awake—and alive—after all.
Stamping down her trepidation, she tiptoed to the door and opened it as gently as possible. The cryo chamber looked like a bombed-out science lab. The emergency lights still burned red, except for the blue glow seeping from beneath the stone slab hiding cryo tank number 188. With the lights out in the exit chamber, she could end up camping in her old cryo tank if she was really stuck down here.
That’s a nice thought. Fighting the urge to throw up, Joanna advanced a few paces into the chamber. The stone slabs blocking the far tanks looked as solid as ever. The mineshaft on the other side of those rocks might as well be on the other side of the planet. She couldn’t possibly dig past the debris without bringing the rest of the chamber down on herself and the bodies.
She shuddered. “Stop thinking about the bodies, Joanna. That’s not helping anyone.”
The collapsed section of the chamber called to her, haunted her. Tank 337 was back there. Garrett’s tank. Near him would be Ruby: 338, Chloe: 584, Beth: 585, Vincent: 707, and Blake: 708. Troy had been paired with Joanna in the 150-200 section. Except for the fifty early risers, they were supposed to wake up in twos, spaced out enough that they could help one another out of their tanks and then gradually reassemble their teams. The actual pairs and numbers had been random. Joanna could just as easily have been with Garrett in the 300s, where those pyramid-sized stones had come down. Instead, she had been randomly selected to survive. Garrett thought everything happened for a reason. Well, screw that.
She eased the door to the cryo chamber shut, collected two heavy water tanks, and picked her way across the darkened exit chamber to the control room. That was enough facing her ghosts for one morning. She had to keep moving forward. Or in this case, up.
The dust from the mineshaft was settling over the control room computers. Wrenching open the door had discharged even more rocks and loose dirt than she expected. She climbed over the rubble and into the battered lift cage for a better look. Some large rocks still blocked the shaft above, wedged tight against its sides, but they weren’t too packed in now that she had released the bottom few feet of debris.
She pocketed her flashlight, slithered around the rocks blocking the shaft, and scrambled toward the top of the cage. She felt around the intact section of the roof and touched something hard and metallic. Strange. She clambered farther up the rock pile, feeling her way carefully. The thing was long and coiled. Serpentine, even.
“If there’s a snake down here, I’m going back to sleep.”
With lots of grunting and a little swearing, she got her head through the space between two big rocks. Bracing herself against the cage, she pulled the flashlight back out of her pocket and switched it on. Coils of thick cable rested neatly atop the intact section of the cage as if it had been placed there intentionally.
Joanna shined her light up the shaft. One more huge rock was lodged across it, blocking more than half the gap. Above that, the way looked clear. Unfortunately, with the cables no longer attached to the hoist system up above, this lift wasn’t going anywhere. A glint of dull metal revealed a service ladder still attached to the wall of the mineshaft—not the wall that had caved in, fortunately. If she ever wanted to walk on the surface of the earth again, she would have to climb.
Her training definitely hadn’t covered this.
Chapter Eight
BEFORE
Their orientation, like the rest of BRP, had been fairly slapdash. A small group of government officials and scientists created the training curriculum used at every bunker program across the US, relying on concepts drawn from a mix of theoretical papers and hastily scrawled plans. No one knew what the world would be like after the comet strike, but the officials did their best to prepare the bunker denizens before putting them to sleep beneath the ground.
The instructional portion of their orientation officially began in a large classroom the day after Joanna arrived at the school in eastern Washington. The rafting activity had proved a welcome distraction after the events of the past months, and the magic combination of fresh air, cold water, and adrenaline left her pleasantly exhausted. She fell asleep the moment she climbed into her bunk in the dormitory, long before worries about the future or thoughts of her parents could interfere. She awoke feeling refreshed and ready for her first day of class.
Garrett had arrived in the classroom early to save seats for everyone on Blue Team Seven. He smiled at Joanna as she strolled toward the desks he’d secured near the window, where Ruby, Blake, and Vincent were already seated.
Joanna grinned back, trying to match Garrett’s frank attention. She was so busy gazing confidently into his eyes that she didn’t notice a pair of long legs sticking out from the front row. She tripped and went sprawling.
“Smooth,” Ruby said.
Joanna leapt up, face red, and took a bow as a few people from other teams laughed good-naturedly. Garrett reached her as she was turning around, and she bumped into him.
Garrett held out a hand. “Are you all—?”
“I’m fine! We’d better sit down before class starts!”
She dove for the nearest Blue Seven seat, ending up between Ruby and Vincent.
Looking vaguely bemused, Garrett returned to his own desk, and Joanna noticed an empty spot next to him. Too late to move now. She shuffled the printout on her desk, trying not to feel disappointed at the missed opportunity—or think about the embarrassing little scene in front of the entirety of BRP.
“You’re kind of a klutz, aren’t you?” Ruby said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Joanna said.
“Anyone want to fill me in on what this paper says?” Vincent waved the printout. “Or are we meant to write about what we did on our summer holidays?”
“It’s a list of rules.” Joanna scanned the page quickly. “We’re not allowed to leave the camp, fight, smoke, take recreational drugs, or get pregnant.”
“Good thing they included that last one,” Ruby said. “Procreating is obviously the first thing on our minds right now.”
“I doubt it would be safe to go into cryosleep while pregnant,” Joanna said, choosing to ignore Ruby’s sarcastic tone. “We’ll have to procreate eventually.”
“Oh goody.”
Joanna turned back to her printout. “We also can’t tell anyone where the bunker is.”
“Where is the bunker?” Vincent asked.
“We won’t know until we get there.” Beth, the tattooed woman who’d driven their van yesterday, squeezed into the seat behind them. “I’ve been trying to get an answer about that all week.”
“Don’t trust us not to let in a horde of friends, eh?” Vincent said.
“Pretty much.” Beth took a nail file out of her pocket and began working on her fingers. “There was a crazy guy at the gate the day I arrived. Apparently, he’d been trying to argue his way into the program since the night before.”
“What happened to him?” Joanna asked.
“No idea,” Beth said. “But I bet he won’t be the last person to try breaking in here once word gets out where we are.”
“It sucks that they can’t save everyone,” Joanna said. “I mean, are they even trying to build more bunkers?”
“Rumor is they’ll barely have ours ready in time,” Beth said. “Only so many deep caves could be converted to cryo facilities on such short notice.”
Just th
en a lanky man with a trim gray beard and a lab coat entered the classroom. A woman with a blond bob and sensible pumps followed, carrying a clipboard stacked with papers, an extra-large box of condoms, and a lime-green travel mug. She dumped her armload onto a desk at the front of the classroom and began calling roll. When she got to each group leader, she handed over a small stack of schedules to distribute to their charges. The entire cohort was divided into color-coded teams of fifty or sixty, the most the classrooms could hold.
Joanna studied the other BRP participants as they responded to their names. She was on the younger end of the class. The random selection system was supposed to choose able-bodied people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, but a man in a navy blazer sitting nearby had to be at least forty, and the woman beside him looked even older. Another woman wearing an elegant silk jumpsuit was missing an arm. Vincent wasn’t the only ineligible individual who’d bought his way into the program. Some people still didn’t believe the comet strike would wipe out all of humanity as predicted. They were only too happy to take money or survival goods in exchange for favors, including looking the other way when someone clearly didn’t fit the program parameters. It made Joanna feel squeamish that anyone with a disability had been summarily excluded from the program. She wasn’t sure if she felt better or worse that people with enough money could find their way around that restriction. BRP selection might claim to be random, but it was anything but fair.
As she finished scanning the classroom, she turned back around to find Garrett looking over his shoulder. She wasn’t sure whether he meant to look at her or the class in general, but he caught her eye and smiled. She smiled back, feeling almost guilty as her heart skipped a beat. They had a lot of horrible stuff to worry about right now. Butterflies were definitely inappropriate.
Chloe had ended up taking the desk beside Garrett. She hardly seemed to notice her seatmate, too busy scribbling notes in the margins of the printout. She only put down her pen when the blond woman finished her roll call.
