by Jordan Rivet
“Now then,” the woman said. “My name is Theresa Simmons. I spoke to some of you on the phone during the screening process. I am the Northwest Regional Bunker Reservation Project Coordinator. I will guide you through your orientation until we move to the bunker facility for your final processing.”
Joanna was pleased to put a face to the voice she’d heard over the phone. Theresa seemed perpetually busy and frazzled, but she had a warm smile.
“Please come to me if you need anything, or if you have any questions about the program,” Theresa continued. “You will notice from your handout that we can’t let you leave the school, so please don’t sneak off to Target to buy socks or anything like that. I should be able to get you whatever you need within reason, so just ask.”
After going over a few logistics, Theresa introduced the man with the gray beard. “Dr. Huntington will explain the basics of the bunker reservation program. Your other instructors will teach survival skills, coordinate your fitness regimen, and help you plan our future community. We have a lot to cover in a short amount of time, but I have confidence in all of you.”
“Thank you, Theresa.” Dr. Huntington stepped forward as Theresa bustled out the door, no doubt to deliver a similar speech in the next classroom. “You are all involved in an exciting project. I hope you appreciate the opportunity to be a part of history. Our bunkers represent the best hope for humanity.” His voice took on an oratorical quality, a faint sheen of sweat coating his brow. “Together, we will resettle the earth. Our species will prove its resilience, and our ingenuity will usher in a new era. Mother Nature herself will be thwarted when we reemerge from the bunkers to begin anew!”
“Sheesh, do you think they all talk like this?” Ruby whispered to Joanna.
“Hey, they’re thwarting Mother Nature herself,” Joanna said. “Are you saying you’re not impressed?”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “I’ll be impressed if we survive.”
“You think we won’t?”
“A lot can happen in two hundred years.”
“True,” Joanna said. “But even if we don’t make it, some of the bunkers will.”
Dr. Huntington explained how the cryo tanks worked, his words quickly dissolving into technical speak laced with a generous dose of hyperbole. Joanna did her best to listen, but she’d already read enough to know the basics of modern cryogenics. She found herself paying closer attention to Dr. Huntington’s body language than his words. The feverish light in his eyes and the quick, jerky way he waved his hands gave the impression that he truly believed the cryo program was fulfilling some great destiny. It was refreshing after the doom and gloom of the previous months. Dr. Huntington had to be in his fifties, though. She wondered if he would even get to enter cryosleep with them in the end.
After Dr. Huntington’s speech, they met Colonel Geoffrey H. Waters of the United States Army. The square-jawed soldier lectured them about security and how important it was not to wander from the facility.
“It’s a dangerous world out there,” Waters barked. “People will try to get in here, and you cannot let them, not if you want to survive. Do not give out information about the program. Do not accept packages from strangers. Do not walk around alone. Your lives depend on it, and so do the lives of everyone in this camp. I won’t have my perimeter compromised by some bleeding heart who thinks they can sneak their friends into cryo with them. We are at war, as far as I’m concerned.”
Joanna found herself sitting up straighter while Colonel Waters spoke, as if he’d expect a salute at any moment. In a nearby seat, Blake listened with a similar upright posture and laser focus, his own military training showing. He’d told them he was a US Army veteran. Joanna wondered how exactly Blake had ended up prepping for cryosleep instead of guarding the perimeter.
A survival expert with a bushy beard and a fishing vest took the floor next, and that was when Joanna borrowed a spare pen from Chloe to take notes. She had been on a few weekend camping trips, but she didn’t have the skills to survive in a potentially inhospitable environment. They didn’t know exactly what the atmosphere would be like two hundred years after the impact. They could only guess at how many plants would survive, lying dormant when the smoke, ash, and dust blocked out the light. The bunkers were being loaded up with seeds and farming supplies. It would take a while to grow crops of their own, and they hoped some plants—both edible and those useful for building shelters and fires—would have time to flourish before they awoke. No matter what, a lot of hard work lay ahead.
Joanna took a break from sketching a wickiup shelter to glance over at Vincent, who appeared to be listening attentively to the lecture. She wondered how many of the officials knew his secret. He had insisted he wouldn’t be a liability, but she couldn’t help worrying about him. She wasn’t sure she could do the manual labor establishing the settlement would take. She couldn’t imagine doing it without the use of her eyes.
Judging by the glazed looks on her classmates’ faces, Joanna wasn’t the only one feeling a little fried by the time the morning session ended. They shuffled to the cafeteria in silence, the reality of what they’d be dealing with in the future finally sinking in. For the first time, Joanna wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake. What if she just wasn’t cut out for survival?
Garrett joined her in the lunch line. “How are you holding up, Joanna?”
“Think anyone will notice if my brain dribbles out my ears?”
Garrett chuckled. “That was a lot to take in. They weren’t kidding about covering everything in a short amount of time.”
“How much of the survival stuff did you know already?” Joanna asked.
“A bit,” Garrett said. “Like they said, the biggest issue will be assessing our environment when we get there. We don’t want to waste our seeds by planting them at the wrong time or choose a poor spot for our settlement.”
“Or eat poisoned berries on our first day.”
“That too.”
The line moved, and Joanna and Garrett advanced a few steps. He stopped a little closer to her than before, and she caught a whiff of his strong, clean scent, like fresh laundry. Sheesh, he even smells good.
“Wouldn’t it have been better if they just chose people who know all this stuff already?” Joanna said. “Something doesn’t quite add up about the program.”
Garrett picked up two lunch trays and handed one to Joanna. “Maybe it’s better to have people start from scratch so we all learn the same things. They seem really invested in group harmony here.”
“I’ve noticed. I’m surprised we haven’t sung ‘Kumbaya’ around a campfire yet.”
They filled their plates almost to overflowing. The food was surprisingly good at Apocalypse Camp, and everyone wanted to make the most of it before they had to start growing their own food. When they walked to the Blue Seven table together, Garrett pulled out a chair and offered it to Joanna. He was almost too much of a throwback to be real. She wondered if all young men from Montana were still taught to hold chairs for girls in this day and age.
Garrett took the seat next to hers and attacked his plate with gusto. Nothing seemed to faze him, and his upbeat presence helped to soothe Joanna’s worries. Still, she sensed she was missing something about BRP, something important. Earth would be an all-new planet when they awoke, and they didn’t have enough time for astronaut training. They would exercise and attend lectures, but then they’d be thrown into a lifeboat—along with a handful of experts—and told to work together or perish. She had to wonder if this was really the best way.
Later that afternoon they trooped outside for their first team workout. They gathered behind the main dormitory building, where a mere fifty feet separated the school from the forest. The sound of rustling trees and the fresh scent of summer filled the air. The sun shone bright, as if to remind them they were about to be destroyed by another burning celestial blob.
Blake had been appointed fitness leader for their group and three other teams—Red Two
and Three and Blue Six. BRP was quick to assign responsibilities to the participants, as Garrett’s team-leader status and Beth’s driving duties demonstrated. They were told they were being “empowered to take ownership of their community” as soon as possible. Joanna figured BRP was just short staffed.
The four groups stretched and did jumping jacks to warm up while Blake gave them a pep talk.
“You’re about to put your bodies through hell,” he said. “My job is to make you as strong as possible before you go under.”
“Will it make a difference?” Joanna asked. “I thought cryosleep keeps you in absolute stasis.”
“This is uncharted territory,” Blake said. “No one has been put away for that long. No telling what it’ll do to the body.”
Chloe raised her hand, and Blake acknowledged her with a crisp nod.
“What if we wake up and can’t move?” she said.
“You’ll feel like shit whether you can move or not,” he said. “Trust me on that one.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “You’ve been in cryosleep before?”
Blake hesitated for a moment before nodding.
“What was it for?” Chloe asked eagerly. She looked ready to sit down in the dirt and add to her notes.
“That’s classified. Anyway, I wasn’t in for very long.” Blake frowned and rolled his shoulders, as if worried he’d said too much already. “Enough chatting. We’re doing suicide runs. Look sharp!”
Joanna and Chloe exchanged curious glances. Why had Blake gone into cryosleep before? Some Army mission? He might not have been in for long, but that still put him several large steps ahead of the rest of them. Unless some of the others had also been in cryosleep before.
Joanna didn’t have long to wonder about it. The suicide runs revealed how woefully out of shape she was. The soccer team she’d played on in high school had disbanded months ago, and she hadn’t done much to keep up with her fitness. Before long she was gasping like a guppy on a kitchen floor, and she stopped worrying about her teammates’ cryosleep histories.
Blake didn’t ease up, leading them in a hellish bout of pushups, sit-ups, and leg-lifts after the suicide runs. He marched along the line, shouting at anyone who wasn’t going low enough or keeping their body straight enough. Next, he made them run all the way around the school, from the forest to the fence lining the main road to the smaller dirt road that led off toward the river and back to the empty forest.
While Blake channeled his inner drill sergeant, Garrett offered encouraging words to anyone who was struggling, occasionally dropping back to cheer on the slowest runners. When Blake, Troy, Ruby, and a few other guys decided to race along the straight edge of the woods, Garret stayed behind, quickly winning over the members of Blue Six and the two Red groups who needed the positive reinforcement. He might have been selected as Blue Team Seven’s group leader because he was the first to arrive and be handed a clipboard, but Joanna suspected he would have ended up in charge anyway.
She would have spent more time admiring Garrett’s natural leadership skills if she weren’t too busy sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna. They were all wheezing and swearing by the time Blake finally ended the workout. Garrett didn’t swear—of course—but his white T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, and Joanna had to bend down to tie her shoe to avoid staring at his athletic figure—at least directly.
Garrett clapped Vincent on the back and offered to guide him toward the showers.
“Or you could carry me.” Vincent had his hands on his knees, and he was gasping in the pine-scented air.
“I’d drop you, dude,” Garrett said. “Blake doesn’t mess around. My arms are shot.”
“Perhaps I’ll just lie down until the comet hits, then,” Vincent said.
“Suit yourself.” Garrett twisted to crack his back and grinned at everyone. “See you all at dinner?”
“Only if they’re serving hamburgers,” Joanna said. “Otherwise, we may have to sneak over the fence and find a McDonald’s.”
Beth gave a whimper from where she lay flat on her back, tattooed limbs sprawling. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
“You’re all wimps,” Ruby said. “I could go for another lap.” She was smiling for once, only a touch of sweat freshening her face, and she teased the guys who’d been slower than her good-naturedly as they walked back to the dorms.
Now there’s a girl who can handle the apocalypse, Joanna thought. Surely BRP should have recruited more soldiers and angry biker chicks and Olympic medalists. So why did they choose ordinary people like me?
The vetting process had been bare-bones: computer-generated names, a scan of mental and physical health records, a quick phone call. BRP had declared the importance of preserving the human race as it was: flawed and random and full of potential, as if randomness were akin to godliness. If they’d had more warning before the comet, there might have been more debate over this philosophy. Perhaps BRP should keep only the best and brightest in stasis to create a superhuman race in the future. On the other hand, Joanna couldn’t imagine how long it would take to define the word “best,” much less carry out the rest of it.
For her part, she wasn’t sure she was up for the task ahead.
Chapter Nine
Despite Joanna’s youth and the boot-camp fitness regimen, the prospect of climbing out of the bunker intimidated her. The cryo chamber was fifteen hundred feet beneath the surface, and the service ladder attached to the mineshaft wall was the only way up.
“But there is a ladder. Be thankful for small mercies,” Joanna told the debris-filled mineshaft. It was something Garrett would have said.
She squeezed through the gap beside the large rock wedged into the shaft and climbed a short way up the ladder to test the rungs. They seemed sturdy enough. The smell of rust and damp earth pressed in close as she paused to wipe dust out of her eyes and shine her light farther up the shaft. The beam followed the dull glint of metal until darkness overwhelmed it. So far, so good. Just because the ladder was intact down here didn’t mean it would be all the way up, but it was better than nothing.
She climbed back down through the lift cage and past the jumble of rocks to exit the mineshaft. Brushing dirt out of her hair, she considered whether to attempt the ascent right away. She must have been awake for at least half a day by now, but she didn’t know how long it would take to climb fifteen hundred feet. She couldn’t stand the thought of spending the night so close to the bodies of her friends. At least on the surface any corpses that hadn’t been incinerated when the comet hit would have decayed long before now.
“A pleasant thought,” she muttered.
She wondered what it would be like up there. What sort of barren, alien land awaited her at the top of the ladder? Would she feel the passage of time in the air? More importantly, what if the top of the mineshaft was blocked, as the bottom had been at first? What if she climbed fifteen hundred feet and then couldn’t get out?
“You won’t know until you get up there, Joanna. No point in obsessing over it.”
Something else drew her to the surface, more powerful than her desire not to sleep in a room full of bones. The mineshaft on the other side of the cryo chamber. If any part of the cavern had remained intact, people could even now be emerging over there. There was a chance, however slim, that she wasn’t the only survivor.
That tiny possibility made the decision for her. The sooner she reached the top, the sooner she could see the other mineshaft for herself. She would camp beneath the stars that very night.
The first order of business was to rig a safety system. She combed through the half-collapsed storage room, where she found plenty of heavy-duty rope but no climbing carabiners. The storage rooms easiest to access from the exit chamber had been stocked with items BRP believed they’d need in their first few weeks: survival packs, a few tools, water filters, and first aid kits. The deeper tunnels surely contained climbing gear, but they were packed so tightly she’d have to remove everything box
by box, an operation that would take weeks—if it didn’t trigger another cave-in.
“Keep it simple. All you need is rope and the right kind of knot.” She paused in the midst of examining a heavy nylon coil. “And maybe you should stop talking to yourself.”
She tucked her flashlight under her chin, sat on a pile of rubble, and unpacked a dusty survival knapsack, setting aside the heavier items so she could carry extra rope. She removed most of the food, leaving only enough for a day and a night, and crammed in extra water bottles. She could retrieve more food after assessing the conditions on the surface, and she was getting tired of freeze-dried protein, anyway. When she finished, the survival pack was light enough to carry up the ladder along with a whole lot of strong nylon rope. As a final touch, she slung a pickaxe through her belt loop.
As she secured a makeshift harness around her waist, she was surprised to find herself feeling positive about her chances of survival. At least she was doing something. As the end of the world approached, their instructors had told them staying busy was the best way to stave off an existential crisis. They were encouraged to focus on their lessons and their teammates and not think too much about the outside world. The enforced cheeriness was almost as important as their survival training. BRP might have been misguided in some ways, but they’d been right about this.
Holding tight to optimistic feelings, Joanna returned to the mineshaft and clambered over the bottom layer of debris in the broken lift cage. She looked up the dark shaft, stomach lurching. Fifteen hundred is a lot of feet.
The longer she waited, the darker it would be when she reached the surface. She was desperate to feel the breeze on her face, to sleep under the wide-open sky. She might be buried alive, but she didn’t intend to stay that way.
“Here goes nothing.” She checked the rope around her waist once more, adjusted her backpack, and began to climb.
